Category: Inspiration
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When Lack of Sympathy is a Good Thing
Here’s an excerpt from Sue Bradford Edward’s recent blog post at Women on Writing: For about two months, I’ve been playing around with a rewrite. I’ll work on it a bit and then set it aside because it hasn’t jelled. Every now and again, I figure out a problem and get some writing done, but after…
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Some thoughts on writing from Donna Jo Napoli
I’ve been collecting quotes from writers and editors for the past 18 years or so. In fact, I just delivered a talk at the Michigan SCBWI’s fall conference on Mackinac Island that shared the quotes that I’ve been collecting for the past 18 years. I had about two pages worth of them from various events…
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Characters Who Are Too Dumb to Live
As I might have mentioned before, one of the tricky things about writing in the suspense/mystery/thriller genre is ensuring that your characters aren’t too dumb to live. There has to be a reason for them to keep their deadly secrets or roam through dangerous places. In fact, there was one series of books by a mystery…
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Writing Novels
Some writers don’t know what’s going to happen next when they sit down at their computers. Others follow their outlines religiously. Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Disc World books, compared his process of writing novels to wood carving on his website: You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you…
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That Which Does Not Kill Us…
Writers have co-opted an old expression for their own use: That which does not kill us, gives us something to write about. Right now I’m in the process of editing Calyn’s darkest moment. As I work through it, I’m keeping in mind a couple of experiences that I had. The first was being bitten by a…
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Mowing the Lawn II
Today as I was mowing the lawn, I thought of a way to bring all of plot lines together for the darkest moment. And I figured out when to have my character come to a truly horrible realization. There’s a reason I don’t have my kids mow and why I shovel by hand instead of…
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Research all Finished?
I had left open our last day in Egypt just in case I needed to go back and do any additional research, but it looked like it was complete. I had visited all the places that my characters had: Giza, Abusir, Ma’adi, the Metro, the Khan al-Khalili, and Al Ahzar park. My husband, the man…
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Prospecting for Gold Nuggets
My article Prospecting for Gold Nuggets is now up on the Institute for Children’s Literature’s website. It discusses how important it is to come up with a strong premise for your writing projects.
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Behind the Scenes of Saving the Griffin: Working with an Editor
“…it clearly demonstrated where the old cliche of “breath-taking came from.”
Kristin Wolden Nitz 