A Novel Idea

There’s no denying it – today marks the last day of the four-week period I promised an agent an exclusive look at the “full.”  I’ve reminded myself that my email, months ago, noting that she hadn’t yet responded to my original submission prompted a quick reply and apologies.   She then read the manuscript and suggested [...]

So I’m driving along – you still in the backseat? – on the journey to this novel’s publication, feeling like I’m really making progress.  A lot of miles covered yesterday.  Additional research on a trio of stellar agents to query next, if, by the fast-approaching due date, the agent with the “exclusive” hasn’t responded, or, [...]

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. Aaron Copland When I read Linda Sue Park’s A Single Shard, a middle grade novel that won the Newbery Medal in 2002, the powerful writing transported me to 12th century [...]

When you are born, your work is placed in your heart. Kahil Gibran The same week I was putting final touches on the revision of my novel, Garrison Keillor wrote in an op-ed piece:  “… I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.”  Referring to today’s writer, “blogging like crazy” and [...]

We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection.  It’s about a process, a journey.  The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. George Leonard To write is to write is to write is to write is to write [...]

In his YA novel Feed, M. T. Anderson does an impressive job of circumventing outdated slang by inventing his own.  The story is set in the future, and a dude becomes a unit, jerks become corps, cool is now brag, and major is meg… as in:  Unit!  Did you like see that brag upcar on [...]

My time in Santa Fe is a sweet memory and I’m in the home stretch of the revision; at least that’s what I’m telling myself. One of these days soon I’ll embark on a word-by-word search and excavation of bon mots unlikely to pass a thirteen-year-old’s lips.  The occasional clinker materializes in even the best [...]

Revising can be slow-going.  Prior to this sojourn in Santa Fe, I’d already tweaked the first chapter too many times to count.  I spent the first week here revising those first pages again and again.  I’ve been slashing what’s extraneous and deleting anything that smacks of duplication.  Transcribing hours of notes from interviews and adding [...]

For you shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace.  The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing.  And the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12 The passage above graced a homemade Christmas card of ours years ago when we lived in Denver and [...]

When it comes to road trips, I’m really into the end points on the map.  Maybe it’s because I crisscrossed the country so often during my twenties that driving long distances finally lost its appeal for me.  By the time we’d added a kidlet to the mix, to be loaded into and unloaded out of [...]