Seeds of book love

True confessions: as a kid, I was a bit of a rebel when it came to reading. I come from a family of anti-sports book lovers. Our coffee table was always piled high with magazines....

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The cat's pajamas: slinging slang

Slang: do you love it? Hate it? Find you can't avoid it?Using lots of slang can date your work, or at least your characters. That can be a slippery proposition in some genres....

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Trauma, courage and antagonist insights

Sunday morning. I made my coffee palatable with ice cream, because we ran out of milk Saturday. A milk run was not top priority after a tiring day helping prep an apartment for...

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Review round-up: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy!

Occasionally my library runs will open up some fantastic new world, or in this case, a new continent. My penchant for titles with religious resonances (in the off chance I’ll...

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Bellows of the imagination

"I am a great surmiser, a bellows, blowing life into people and things, though they already have lives of their own."--John Hazard. "Signage." South Dakota Review 46.4 (Winter...

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Recharging...and a review

Yesterday, I hit a point revising when I felt I'm losing the love for the story. Does this ever happen to you? It was time to recharge. Nothing does it for me like a library run...

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Frankensteining severed scenes

I'm in the process of cutting 14,000 words out of my manuscript, which obviously requires more than simple line edits. Big, honking chunks must go: characters, subplots, dragging...

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Plot thought: random reality

Sometime this morning, after I'd squeezed in a shower and a couple loads of wash, we realized the water heater had sprung a huge leak. While my hubby shop-vacc'ed up 40 gallons...

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Revising for scene variety

"Write what you know" sometimes spills into our approach to scene writing. We stick to the scene format that feels most comfortable to write, whether that's action, dialogue,...

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Child voice

I'm a bit burned out on revisions after several days of long slog, so I thought for fun I'd dig out something completely different to blog about. A poem. An old poem written during...

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Revising for emotion

In writing early drafts, even plodders tend to skim the emotional surface of their scenes. One's initial focus is on pushing the plot forward and grasping the first burst of emotional...

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Heads up: YA query contest

Literary agent Anna Webman of Curtis Brown Ltd. will be judging a contest on the Query Tracker Blog this coming week. She wants to see the first five pages plus a synopsis of...

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Magic moment, brought to you by networking

Last night, we took our small person to meet some favorite authors at kid lit event in Haverford. This place was so packed, we could barely squeeze in the door. This is the sort...

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Author/ Illustrator night

Thanks to the SEPTA strike, my hubby and I will not be taking a group of his college students via subway to First Friday in Philly's Old City gallery district tonight. Instead,...

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Drafting neuroses

Revision is my thing. I work as an editor, after all. Give me a stack of pages and a pen and I'm happy as a clam. But put me in front of a blank screen? Ai-yi-yi.As a result of...

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