Playing the Writing Life Like a Game of UNO
What I love about the game UNO is just when you think you’ve lost, the momentum changes and things start to look up. The same could be said of the writing life. Just when you’re about to give up, you can’t because you never know what’s about to happen. Take my summer. It was a weird one. After spending the spring querying and entering contests and submitting to publications, I had meager results. I had a few manuscript requests from agents, but ultimately, no takers. It was disappointing. Heartbreaking really.…
Why I Welcome Feedback From Agents
I’ve been searching for representation for about a month now. Recently, one agent requested my full manuscript but passed on it. In her comments she mentioned the first chapters were slower than she preferred for the books on her list. (She represented grittier, faster paced novels than mine.) And she said her comments were, of course, “subjective.” I felt sad that she thought she needed to include that caveat. But I knew the underlying subtext. She was worried I’d defend myself immediately. But I don’t do that. I’ve worked as…
The Secret to Writing Good Sentences
Lately, I’ve been judging my sentences as too clunky. They get to the point but there’s no inspiration. So I thought about what books in the past inspired me to write interesting sentences. European greats like Tolstoy, Hugo, Balzac, Dickens, James. And then contemporary writers like Anthony Doerr, Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Don DeLillo, Richard Yates, E.L. Doctorow, Ta Nahesi Coates. Why did I just list all men? There are plenty of women: Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver, Tracy Chevalier, Ann Patchett, Alice Munro, Sarah Waters, hell, even…
A Hectic Vacation
Whether I like it or not, I’m inundated right now with work and visitors. August is always a month of visitors for us because two of my children were born in August and relatives like to come for their birthdays — which for me means cleaning and guests and cake and touring around the region. Writing is out the window (unless you count a bit of revising in bed at night). Here are a few Seattle sites worth visiting and where we’ve spent our days.
Being Married to a Beta Reader Can Be the Best Blessing
Last month I finished my to-do list of edits on my novel. The next step? It’s what it always is: ask my husband to read it. He’s my most trusted beta reader and best editor. I’ve come to realize how precious getting his feedback is. So we do what we always do. I send the chapters in email. He reads them on screen. Then we sit together and go through them one by one. “These paragraphs on page one need to be longer. It’s difficult to picture what the protagonist…
