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The Way to a Character’s Heart
Confession: When I’m diving into characters and trying to get at the heart of them, I sometimes write poetry as my characters to get inside their heads. For example, if a character faces heartbreak or loss or a hardship, along with character sketches, I may write a little poem or two from various characters’ perspectives. It would be as if they would write the poem themselves. I’ve always written poetry for fun, and I enjoy writing poems that uncover emotion. And while I’ve only published one small collection of poems to date in The Postcard, I continue to write them and keep them to myself…just for these purposes. Today, I’m…
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Melding Real Life Stories Into Fiction
I believe everything we write comes from a place of experience or another person’s experience. We take what we know and we allow it to form our fictional writing. The most frequently asked question I get besides “When do you find time to write?” is this one: “How much of you is in your character(s)?” The honest answer would be a lot. There’s a lot of me in everything I write. And if it’s not me, it’s someone I know or it’s from a story I’ve read or heard about. Or, it could be a storyline that makes me wonder or wish I’d done something differently. When this happens, I…
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Writing About Places in Fiction – Maryland’s Eastern Shore in Inn Significant
As a writer, it’s important to research the places you may feature in your writing. I spent a ton of time walking around Annapolis, Maryland, for my first novel, Beneath the Mimosa Tree, and I did the same with the novel I launched yesterday, Inn Significant. It’s part of the fun, really. As my students in travel writing class can attest from last semester, it’s envigorating to write about a place, but there’s a trick. You have to allow yourself to be completely immersed in the place. Your writing won’t be as vibrant if you’re just a spectator. You have to become one with the place…become a local while you…
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Crazy Names in Fiction
Hello, Readers. I’m back from vacation, but only 3/4 of the way through “The Art of Fielding,” which I had hoped to finish on my trip. I guess that’s a good sign—we had a lot of fun on vacation, and only a limited amount of reading time. Ironically, I had started it pre-move and during the end of the semester like a dummy. I can’t get anything done during those busy and hectic times, so I tabled the novel. I am now making my way through the final pages. The jury’s out on how I feel about this particular piece of work by Chad Harbach. I like it, I don’t…
