• How to Write a Novel

    You’re going to need an idea. It can be a clever plot. Something about uncontrollable magic or unpredictable mayhem or unconventional love. Or maybe your idea is a character. Someone who stands out. Someone who blends in. Someone who lives in a coffee house attic. Someone whose feet never touch the ground. Okay, now the hardest part: You must write a sentence. Any sentence will do (yes, even a sentence fragment) because you’ll probably change it a hundred times anyway. Here, I wrote some for you: The monkey never saw it coming. Halfway between the sky and the sidewalk, she realized she had forgotten how to fly. His favorite sound and his favorite activity were defined by the same two…

  • Acknowledgments

    According to Degree of Difficulty, it’s right up there with the first sentence of your novel, the query/love letter to your agent-crush, and the recommendation letter for that former employee who slept with your husband but really is a damn good accountant and shouldn’t be denied a job just because she’s a horrible waste of skin. I’m talking about the dreaded Acknowledgments page. I’m here to save you some pain. Because that’s what the courts tell me I have to do in order to compensate for all the damage I do as editor. (It was either this, or work at a morgue. But I’m afraid of…wait for it…Lindsay Lohan.) The…

  • The Buoyancy of Words

    Fair warning: I’m going to stretch a swimming metaphor well beyond my non-metaphorical comfort level. Feel free to believe that this discomfort serves some greater meta-metaphorical purpose. Then let me know what it is so I can say “yeah, I meant to do that.” Writers spend a lot of time going nowhere. We start out strong enough, with a perfect swan dive into the ocean of ideas. [Already the metaphor is causing me gastric distress.] But after a few weeks or days or hours of swimming in a Direction We’re Absolutely Sure Of (Until Suddenly We’re Not), we find ourselves far from the dock and nowhere near the distant shore.…

  • Exception Al

    So there’s this unpublished writer. Let’s call him “Al.” (Stop rolling your eyes. It’s my blog. I can be as precious and quasi-clever as I want.) Al recently completed his third novel. His first, The Monkey on Her Back (which he never actually finished), wasn’t particularly amazing. Despite the clever title (the protagonist is a celebrated zoologist who loses her faith in evolution), the plot was predictable and the characters, plastic. The writing, however, wasn’t bad. Al had a natural gift. Al didn’t know much about publishing when he decided he was meant to be a writer, so he was universally rejected when querying his unfinished novel to several well-known…

  • You

    Sit down. No, you’re not in trouble. This isn’t about dangling too many participles or ending sentences with prepositions. It’s not about your premise or your plot. It’s not about your characters (they’re all really very lovely). And it’s not about your craft. You want what? A drink? Sure. What would you like? I have tea and coffee and… Really? This early? How about just the orange juice without the vodka? Okay, where was I? Oh, right. You’re a good writer. Your novel is competent, smart and entertaining. You’ve obviously read lots of books on how to write. I bet you read all the really popular agent and editor blogs, too.…

  • Let It Die

    Is it time let your novel die? That’s a question every writer faces at least once in his or her writing life. The decision to pull life support is difficult at best, debilitatingly impossible at worst. You’ve worked on this novel for, what, months? years? How many hours have you invested? Even a poorly-written novel takes a long time to write. Then there’s the emotional cost. Whether you love your characters or hate them, they’ve most likely become real to you. (I’m 99 percent certain I’ve seen some of mine hanging out at the local Starbucks.) Giving up on their story can feel like signing a bundle of death warrants.…

  • A Little Editing

    Remember that writing contest I had a few weeks ago? Well, as part of that fun, I asked if I could use some of your entries as editing examples right here in front of everybody. With Jana’s permission, I’m going to show you a couple of ways I might approach the editing of her creative entry. First, I’ll show you the original work. The fire cast mirthless shadows over the face of a stranger. He was encircled by four armed men. A fifth man curiously appraised the unusual items that had been confiscated. One object was like a ring of red light reflecting the flames. Fascinated, the man reached out…