The Writing Process
My Hands are Tied
I love my email. First of all, most of it is positive. Overwhelmingly. Going to the computer every day to write a novel takes either a certain amount of ego or a complete absence of good sense. Often a positive email gives me the necessary ego boost to start work. Sometimes it blunts what good sense is left after…
Read MoreAnd You Thought Research was Dull?
So, do you really believe novelists just make stuff up? After all, they call this fiction. We don’t know how it’s really done, so we fudge? Well, that would be the easy way out, but truth is, novelists HATE those letters you write us that point out Ash Wednesday and Easter do NOT occur…
Read MoreFinding Your Voice
Never having owned a beagle, when people asked if puppy Nemo had found his voice, I found the question odd. Yes, Nemo growled, and barked–or something that passed for one. And sometimes, Nemo even howled. This last was charming, a serenade similar to the one our Australian Shepherd used to warble when he sang along at birthday parties. Then…
Read MoreNo Cause for Alarm
“Tomorrow March 25 between 9:30 and noon, CBS Paramount pictures will be filming a TV scene on the Potomac River near the Key Bridge in which special effects (loud noise and fire) will simulate a small water vessel being blown up. This will be a heavily monitored and controlled event lasting only a few seconds. …
Read MoreDreaming Large
A story begins with a dream. Not necessarily the kind that involves pajamas and firm mattresses, but the kind we all have, that waking moment when our minds go spinning into outer space imagining what could be instead of what is.
Read MoreOn the Scent
Nemo and I take a morning walk almost every day. Nemo’s particularly fond of snow and ice, and Emilie is not. Despite this, we find ways to cope. A regional park not far from my house offers trails through the forest, as well as a wide road that’s plowed at the first sign of snow. On snowy…
Read MoreIn Elisa’s Footsteps
Some years ago, in the middle of reading a loosely researched novel about New Orleans where “cable cars” zoomed down the “median” on St. Charles Avenue, I decided I would never write about a place I had not, at the very least, visited for an extended time. In New Orleans we had streetcars, and we…
Read MoreWith a Little Help From My Friends
My pre-Inauguration trip to Florida was not all sand sculpture and walks on the beach. A lot of it involved eating. . . no, that’s not what I meant to say. There certainly was plenty of that, too, but grouper tacos were not the real reason I flew back into the scenes of my childhood. …
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