Getting to Writers' Conferences

My novel, Leave the Frigging Marshmallows, has been in process for a while. Years.

Novel notes. Photo by Robin Israel.

Part of this is because I question myself. Part of it is because I want it to be great. And part is that it is just difficult to find my way through a character-driven novel with multiple complex characters and their individual stories without any real instruction beyond other novels.

I can read all the books on craft in the world, but they never seem to fully apply to my characters and their stories. They often help me expand and enrich my characters more, and I'm grateful for that, but it often complicates things further. Often, books on writing focus on plot and structure and, when I impose such things on my characters, they fight back and story becomes forced. I really want to find a way through this messy thing.

That's the reason I started attending writers' conferences last summer. I had avoided them for a while because I thought of them as pitch sessions and I wasn't ready to pitch anything, but then I started

The Most Exciting Literary Time of the Year

The Tournament of Books is not considered a great prize and there is no monetary award, just a rooster, but I contend that it is the most exciting literary time of the year--better than the Pulitzer, the Man Booker, the National Book Award, and even the Nobel.

Woohoo! Image: "Ride a Cock horse!" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by rubyblossom.

All those other awards are given under a shroud and with just a few lines of justification. Spend a few days in anticipation while waiting for the announcement, yeah. Get a momentary thrill, sure. Question the decision process, yes. But a day or two later, the discussion ends. The Tournament of Books is not like that--not at all.

Stuck in the Middle? Getting Past the Middle: A Novel Project, Step 2

If you recall, way back before Christmas I challenged myself and you to finish writing the second half of the first draft of a novel by the end of January. I said I was going to check in a couple times a week.

I did not check in.

The first exercise I gave you worked really well for me, and I was busy working on my book. But now we have about a week left and I want to continue with the plan, because I think it’s quite good.

Too busy to blog! (Image: Chris Brown "Work" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by zoonabar.)

This next exercise actually comes from Caroline Leavitt, author of at least 10 novels—so it seems like she

Four Chambers Press is looking for eight local authors...

Four Chambers Press is looking for eight local authors to respond to featured art installations at this year's Canal Convergence Water + Art + Light in partnership with Scottsdale Public Art February 24 - 26, 2017 at the Scottsdale Waterfront. Open to all literary genres, performance styles, and forms. Authors will receive a $100 stipend (and a $20 gift card from Changing Hands). Interested individuals can learn more and apply online at http://fourchamberspress.com/canal-convergence­. The deadline for

Stuck in the Middle? Getting Past the Middle: A Novel Project, Step 1

Stuck in the middle of your novel? Start again here.

When the path through your novel becomes obscured... (Image courtesy of Dianne Lacourciere "When Life Is Foggy" (Public Domain) by Artistic-touches)

Remind yourself of your novel's story question. Don’t go looking up your notes from the past to see what you wrote way back when you first started this project. Write what you see the moral question as

Getting Past the Middle: An Invitation to a Novel Project

I can start novels all day. I’m full of ideas, full of intriguing starts, lines, scenes, dialogue. I started writing my first book when I was 12. I also started writing my second book when I was 12. The problem has always been getting through the second half to the end.

Words. (sigh.) Image: Jim Pennucci "Words" (CC BY 2.0) by pennuja

I did finish one novel. It didn’t make much sense, in terms of traditional storytelling, but I was young (like 30), full of myself, and not really sure how to revise this tangle of words and scenes and