by David Boyne
Somewhere in my once-in-this-lifetime conversation with Ray Bradbury, he told me the same story I had read in his book, Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity.
It was the story of when he was a 9-year-old boy way back in October of 1929, and after weeks of tormenting from his peers he succumbed to their contempt and pressure. He did what they wanted: he tore up his collection of comic books.
Read Moreby Jason Black
Two months ago I wrote about the fundamental double standard, wherein we misjudge people because we can’t see deeply enough into their lives and minds. Given that we can’t do this, you’d think we would intuitively understand that other people can’t read us very well, either. Yet, in all our flawed glory, we engage in another doozy of misapprehension.
Psychologists call it the “illusion of transparency,” and for once, the name is apt. The idea is that we go through our lives believing that our feelings, our motivations, and our desires are as transparently obvious to others as they are to ourselves.
Read Moreby Anna Sheehan
Bow our authorial heads for Ray Bradbury.
There is a terrible fact about writing, one you won’t read about in medical journals. Did you know that everyone who has written a book has died, or will die? It is true, it is proven, and it is the kind of statistic that no one ever mentions. Intergenerative diseases like writing travel through entire cultures, pervading our thought processes and corrupting our children. And there is nothing we can do to stem the flow of death.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
Not so fast, Ms. Wolf. Over the past fifteen years (wow, I am gettin’ up there, eh?) that I’ve been editing women’s fiction, both at publishing houses and as a freelance editor, I’ve seen publishing trends for female writers come and go and have worked with some incredible female bestselling authors, yet never have I been more excited for my fellow woman than I am right now.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
In the old typewriter days, there were no brackets on the keyboard. Legal documents that could have no handwritten corrections had to use parentheses inside of parentheses. Consequently, interruptions within parentheses were confusing. Double parentheses at the end of a sentence looked strange and always reminded me of the eyes of Charles Shultz’s Lucy when she’s upset or surprised. Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that anymore. We have both brackets and parentheses, and they have separate duties.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
I have heard about an African tribe in which female members, early in pregnancy, go off with other women to pray, intending to hear the “song” of the spirit of the new child. Once the women intuit the song, they sing it in celebration of the upcoming birth. When the baby is born, the community sings it again, in welcome. And whenever the child goes through a rite of passage, the group sings the song in his honor. And if that tribe member does something considered socially aberrant, the community encircles him and, once more, sings the song. There is no punishment for the crime, only the acknowledgement that this person has forgotten the song of the spirit - who he really is.
Read Moreby Jason Black
We normally think of a novel’s denouement as a chance to wrap up loose ends from the story before typing “The End.” We don’t normally think of them as being essential to the portrayal of our characters. After all, the story’s over; how can the denouement matter much? But it does. If you mess up the denouement you’ll murder the characters.
Read Moreby Geroge McNeill
February, 1975. Hotel Chelsea, New York City.
There I was, poor as Job’s turkey, hunkered down and hiding out in a small, shabby room in a hotel, wondering how I’d pay the bill (much less eat) and waiting for a phone call that never came.
In short, I was a freelance writer, just living the dream.
Read Moreby Anna Sheehan
Success is a strange room to suddenly find yourself in. Having spent all my life amidst the crocodile swamps on the front lawn of the publishing industry mansion – or occasionally huddling, loose leaf papers in hand on the front porch, waiting for the butler to let me into the entry foyer – I got used to being an outcast. It’s a well-worn path. The front porch is littered with the abandoned manuscripts of those who came before and left unsatisfied. The swamp is also littered with dire warning signs of those who never made it to the porch: "Impossible," "Commercial sellouts," and (my personal favorite), "A waste of time."
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
When you are writing about amounts of money, should you use figures or spell them out? I’m pretty sure you already know that when you are adding a column of figures that contain a combination of even dollars and amounts with change, you add two zeros to the even amounts.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
There are a few things that a writer must decide upon before embarking on the journey that I like to call “Writing a Novel.” Okay, most everyone else calls it that too, but I just wanted to sound high and mighty for a brief moment (at least I’m honest). As an editor, I give countless recommendations to writers during the revision process—work on your character arc, tighten the plot, delete this scene, make every line of dialogue count, kill the hero, don’t use 34-point font, make your historical novel longer than 30,000 words, etc. You know, the usual. But there are some issues that you should really decide upon before you ever put pen to paper—or fingers to keys.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Several years ago, a friend of mine had lost a substantial amount of weight and a mutual friend asked if I thought she would be able to keep it off. I said, “ Oh yeah – sure!”
I remembered this exchange recently and realized I’d been wrong. That person had gone on to regain the weight. But although I was clearly wrong, there wasn’t any other answer I would have preferred giving, and certainly not the one that would have made me right. I had been asked to give my prognosis, but a prognosis is ultimately just a guess. So I guessed in favor of the best change.
Read Moreby Jon Jefferson
A couple years ago, as I was preparing to head out on book tour with Dr. Bill Bass – the forensic anthropologist I consult with in writing the Body Farm novels – I got an unusual heads-up from a bookstore in Nashville: A guy I’d written about in a prior, non-fiction book was planning to show up at our Nashville book signing. The guy’s name was Sam John Passarrella, and the book chapter I’d written about him – “Fat Sam and Cadillac Joe” – recounted the abduction and killing of a fast-talking, Cadillac-driving con man who’d sold Sam a stash of stolen silver bullion.
Read Moreby Jason Black
There is a double-standard so common in the way we judge people that it is almost invisible. Everybody does it. I do it. I’ll bet you do it. And if you’re clever, the characters in your books will do it too.
The double-standard is in how we view mistakes: we interpret our own failings as the result of circumstance, but use the failings of others as evidence of obvious and tragic character flaws within them. For example, if I’m late it’s because of traffic lights and a little old lady in the car ahead of me who didn’t understand how to work her gas pedal.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
I’ve noticed in things I’ve been editing lately that many people don’t know about Oh. When you begin a sentence with it, it must be followed by a comma.
Oh, I forgot to lock the door.
Oh, here it is.
Oh, well, we can catch the next ferry.
by Erin Brown
Often, when I write these monthly articles, I try to illuminate the realities of finding runaway success in publishing to my readers (“wouldn’t you rather do something easy like cure cancer?”)—not to rain on anyone’s parade, but to honestly clarify how tough it is to get a book in print nowadays through traditional channels. And if you’re a regular follower of this column (yes, I’m talking to you four!), you know how I feel about the very high mountain one must climb in order to find self-publishing success: bring along crampons, an ice axe, and a Sherpa, please.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
When we got our cat, Lou, though we stopped and bought supplies on our way home, we forgot to get any toys. One of the first things Lou did was disappear down the hall and return with a mouse-sized porcupine finger puppet he had extracted from a bag full of puppets stored under my son’s bed. It was as though Lou had so clearly known his desire for play, the gods kindly and immediately directed him to what might be of use. Porcupine became, and has remained, his favorite toy to date.
Read Moreby David Boyne
Long ago and far away, in a galaxy not unlike our own but which no longer exists, in a place without iPads and Kindles and where cell phones were the size of toasters and traffic on the information highway was jammed with the cacophonous beep-buzz-honk-screech of dial-up modems, I came down with an incurable, life-altering fever.
I was living in Oregon and it was January. I had just completed a five-mile bicycle commute in a rainstorm, and as I rolled my bike through the doors of the printing store where I worked, water cascaded from me, soaking the carpet.
Read Moreby Debra Borys
Sometimes real life creeps into fiction even when the writer isn’t expecting it. Our opinions and experiences and biases show in ways we may not recognize until years later, when we look back on our work.
We also weave reality into fantasy as a deliberate choice. My work as a volunteer with homeless youth and adults completely changed the way I view that guy on the corner with a paper cup and a sign.
Read Moreby Jason Black
We’ve all heard to keep conflict in every scene, to maintain pacing and sustain our readers’ interest. However, the way a character conducts himself during a conflict is wildly indicative of what kind of person that character is. Every conflict revolves around a set of axes that govern the manner in which the conflict unfolds, and each axis presents characters with a choice: to take the high road, or the low. Those choices speak volumes about the people themselves.
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