novel writing | novel writing
Oct.06.2011
When people ask authors, “Where do you get your ideas?”, authors tend to clam up or worse, get sarcastic - because the only real answer to that is, “Where DON’T I get ideas?” or even more to the point, “How do I turn these ideas OFF?”
The thing is, “Where do you get your ideas?” is not...
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Aug.27.2011
My brain tells me that 87 degrees is not that hot. It's less hot than my body temperature and tolerable. Just try telling my body that. My body feels warm and uncomfortable and I'm considering another long cold shower. Anything to feel cooler, even for a few moments. Perception and reality don't...
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Aug.06.2011
I’ve been informed that my mystery/thriller novel, With Full Malice, has been sent to the publisher’s art department for a cover.
How exciting!
The director said they’ll design a cover, then create the ARCs for reviews.
I can’t wait to see the cover. Will it be dramatic? Intriguing? Will it...
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Jul.22.2011
I grew up in a Frank Lloyd Wright house--or it would have been an official one if he'd had lived a little longer. In a few tours that were given before the house was knocked down last year, people asked me what was it like growing up in an "organic architecture" home. I've thought about...
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Jul.22.2011
FIVE THINGS I WISH I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT WRITING, PART III
FOUR: NOBODY REALLY KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT WRITING
Anyone who tells you how to write bestsellers is a sham and a liar. I can tell you how I write books. I write them with fear, excitement, discipline and a lot of hard work.
—Danielle...
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Jun.29.2011
The excitement of finding an agent for my novel has worn off, replaced by a feeling of having fallen in a deep hole, one deep enough to permit me to see the clouds drift by, but nothing else. Even when the plane flew by dragging the agent’s next message—“Now writing a pitch letter and assembling a...
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Jun.18.2011
I am finally catching up on some films I didn’t get around to last year for various massive personal reasons, and I just watched Black Swan, which is a great example of a blatant and shameless visual image system. Look at the fun Darren Aronofsky and his designers have with black and white: note...
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Mar.03.2011
I'm in a phase of my novel writing process that's launched by desire and excitement but becomes something I want to complete quickly so I can get to the good stuff. Plotting, outlining, planning, scheming, researching, brainstorming... whatever you want to call it, that's where I am. It's fun at...
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Jan.15.2011
Believe me, it takes true grit to write every single day. And it takes a double dose of grit to revise a manuscript and turn it into a finished product.
I mean there is that first draft. I struggled through that with my current book, Tessa and Claudine, and then I plodded along on a second...
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Dec.11.2010
I recently read part of the first draft of a novel where a 30th-birthday dinner was to end in conflict. This one didn't. The scene was well-written and the characters distinct, but the scene was flat as a newly tarred driveway. Why? No tension.
A scene can lack tension for various reasons. In...
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