b “’Optimism,’ said Candide, ‘is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly.’” -Voltaire, Candide Optimism, quite frankly, suffers from a bad name. This has been going on for quite some time. All the nasty people, it seems, go down in history: Benito Mussolini, the Marquis DeSade, Atilla the Hun, Donald J. Trump. All the cheerful ones repose in obscurity. This is a...
Compassionate Marketing: One Simple Tip for Helping Yourself and Other Writers Compassionate Marketing: It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Right up there with those jumbo shrimp and original copies? Although we are currently in a time of turmoil in which everything about writing is changing for everyone, there was never anything compassionate about publishing and its handmaiden, marketing...
Some may consider it a dubious honor, but I consider it a great privilege that my first novel, Spite Fences, has been banned in many schools. In fact, on a list compiled by the National Council of Teachers of English, it is sandwiched between Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (my very favorite among her books) and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (my all-time favorite book ever written in the...
Coming to a Website Near You! The Book Trailer Hits the Marketplace Ahhhh, the good old days. Once upon a time, writers like me were treated royally by their publishers. My children and I were once swept off to California to receive the International Reading Association prize (Spite Fences). We were feted at an American Library Association Award event at the Rainbow Room in New York City...
Thank you, Nancy Pinard, for the invitation to participate in MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR. MY WRITING PROCESS I am currently working on the final proof pages of my very first biography,Fanny Seward: A Life. It will be published in December 2014 by Syracuse University Press. It differs from other biographies in the genre in that Fanny Seward is a little-known historical figure. Most...
I was recently at a writers’ conference at which Lin Oliver, the “founding mother” of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, offered some tips from successful writers. One of those tips that resonated with me was advice from Susan Patron, a former librarian and winner of the Newbery award in 2007 for The Higher Power of Lucky. Her advice to struggling writers was to...
Here’s a piece of counter-intuitive advice for beginning fiction writers: practice with poetry! Fiction writers understand the need to show, not tell. They just don’t always know how to pull it off. Telling, of course, robs the reader of the joy of experience. A beginner might write, “I was devastated by my mother’s death.” A more practiced...
Having just finished Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, I am reminded of what was once said about poet John Berryman: “All poet’s wives have rotten lives.” Messud’s novel confirms that the same might be said about an artist’s friends and family members as well. Messud’s Nora wishes nothing more than to be a successful artist, and when she is pulled into the life of renowned artist Serina Shahid...
One of the hardest things for a writer is to keep going. There are time pressures. Skill deficits. Frustrations in the writing process itself. No wonder that most aspiring writers struggle with one huge hurdle: finishing. Worst of all is that nagging inner critic, that inside-your-head voice that says this isn’t any good. As a corrective, try to remember that even the very best writers have...
