As happens often, I found another parallel between training a dog and writing a novel. This time it had to do with arousal states in dogs and writing zones for writers. Essentially, there is an optimum state for a dog…
I completed the GrubStreet Novel Incubator Program this April and when I look back at that yearlong whirlwind, I still struggle to catch my breath. Most daunting was not learning so many (new to me) literary terms. Nor was it…
It’s almost a rite of passage to have to change the title of your book when it sells to a publisher, and I fully expected that to happen to me. I figured it would be just one more step in…
What do you mean editors don’t think they can sell the epic, decade-spanning horror slash literary mashup of the painting my Grandma found in Albuquerque that carried the soul of a young girl who died in a fire and haunted…
“What’s at stake here?” Sooner or later every fiction writer fields this question. Often the challenge appears as a single word – STAKES? – scrawled on a novel chapter or short story draft, plus or minus a coffee cup ring,…
Bad juju comes to most of us, and sometimes it comes all at once and sometimes it is a staccato of bad news, one thing, another thing, another thing, another. My response to trouble used to be assume professional stance at…