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How Pieces of You and People You Know End Up in Your Characters
*** Luckily, for some people I know, I don’t write a lot of villains into my novels. As I do in real life, I try to not let nasty, uncaring, judgmental, ridiculously competitive and fake people seep into my world too often. However, in the short stories I write, I let them in because I don’t have to deal with them for too long, as short stories are just that—short. However, writers have to allow what we learn about people to grace the pages of our stories and illuminate our characters; these sketches of folks should glide into our stories seamlessly. As well, the same is true with the goodness…
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Book Review: The Art of Fielding
Once again, I’ve crafted a review to share with my Feature Writing students as they prepare to write a creative critical review of their own. Here are my thoughts on “The Art of Fielding” as promised. The Art of Fielding: Book Review It is rare for me to be at a loss for words, to be left with the inability to articulate why I was left feeling blasé about a piece of work that The New York Times Book Review called the Best Book of the Year for 2011. And, it is even more rare for me to be overly critical of a writer, especially one who spent ten years…
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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…
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The New Thing: Writing About Baseball (And love. And death.)
It’s quite a combination, I know. Taking the subject of baseball and rolling it into a novel women will want to read. Women’s fiction…contemporary romance…and baseball? Who is she kidding? one might ask. Here’s the thing: I’m finally up for the challenge. At about 35,000 words already written for the novel (BENEATH THE MIMOSA TREE was 59,000 words), I am making some serious headway with the main character I like, but who has some issues to overcome. Incidentally, she works in professional baseball. And that’s about all I’ll say right now. It’s taken me years to write a novel with baseball as one of its “characters,” just as New York…
