Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Learning How To Write

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  by Sybil Johnson  I’ve been making roman shades lately, replacing ones that are way too old and falling apart. I could have had a blinds ...
Monday, May 29, 2023

Relatable Characters? Not This Time

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  I did a workshop at our local community college last week about drawing upon real life to write fiction.  It’s a great subject because isn...
Saturday, May 27, 2023

Emotional Filters

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 While we humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, coolly rational beings, we are in fact, emotional creatures. Every decision w...
Wednesday, May 24, 2023

On being an Other

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 Goodness, what a lot of wonderful stuff happened since I accidentally missed my last post! So much to comment on. I love all the talk about...
Thursday, May 18, 2023

How Writing a Novel is Like Finding a Woolly Mammoth in Your Back Yard, or The Writer as Archeologist.

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I adore Sybil's entry, below, on the joys and fascinations of the research an author does. A few years ago I read about a soybean farmer...
Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Curious Me

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 by Sybil Johnson Writers are a curious bunch We see something we find interesting or we don’t understand, we look it up. I’m constantly fin...
Monday, May 15, 2023

Putting Novelists on a Leash?

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 There’s an excellent op-ed piece in Saturday’s Washington Post entitled “Limiting What Novelists Write About Won’t Help Readers”. The colu...
2 comments:
Tuesday, May 09, 2023

Poor Souls

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By Charlotte Hinger  I was moved by Donis's last post. She raised the question about the merits of a work of art when the artist is not ...
1 comment:
Thursday, May 04, 2023

Art and Outrage

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I (Donis) have been seeing some discussion on television about this year's Met Gala being a tribute to the late German fashion designer ...
4 comments:
Wednesday, May 03, 2023

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

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  by Sybil Johnson I spent part of the weekend of April 22nd at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFoB). It’s a huge book festival ...
Tuesday, May 02, 2023

Banking Woes

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By Charlotte Hinger Guess what! The historical novel I'm writing right now is timely. It's about that period in America's rura...
Monday, May 01, 2023

Cataloguing Things I See

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  This weekend, my wife and I are enjoying time spent in Southport, NC.  It’s a lovely, quaint little village right on the edge of the Cape ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, April 26, 2023

More thoughts on marketing

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 I'm always astonished when my day to post arrives and I'm delighted to read the posts by others. Charlotte's post on marketing ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Start Soon

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 A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a seminar sponsored by Sourcebooks, a powerhouse publisher whose sales are soaring. The house is frank...
Saturday, April 22, 2023

Slivers of History

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Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts is the book that most recently advanced from my TBR pile and into my eager hands. Like many other writer...
1 comment:
Friday, April 21, 2023

I'm Back

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Frankie here.  It's the end of the day and I'm finally getting a chance to post. I didn't want to miss another Friday, I want to...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 20, 2023

When the End is Not Near

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 I (Donis) have been fascinated by my blog mates' thoughts on ending a novel. (Sybil's fabulous information on the saggy middle is g...
Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Do You Have a Sagging Middle?

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  by Sybil Johnson We’ve talked about endings of stories on this blog. How about those sagging middles? Even if a writer has a clear picture...
Monday, April 17, 2023

Carteret Writers' Conference Was a Huge Success!!

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  This past Saturday, I was the master of ceremony for the first ever Quadrennial Carteret Writers Conference.   It was informational, frien...
1 comment:
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

More thoughts on endings

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 First of all, a note to Johnny, who recently posted his final blog. Thanks for the great job, you will be missed, and you are welcome back ...