I know I’m not the only one who does this, but when I do it I feel as guilty as if I were the only one who does. I call it Revenge Writing. You know, when you dislike certain people to the point where all of their barf-green shades of blech seep into your brain and come out on the page in a scene in your book while you’re trying to write something else.

Read more!

When writing daily is like eating healthy

I don't do New Years resolutions, but as it happened I made one that pretty much coincided with the new year. I was walking around New York Monday thinking how hard it was to go back there. It's where I grew up partly, and I lived there later, but I have few friends and roots left there. I find in psychologically difficult to go in anymore. Still, I knew it was the right thing to do, and so I forced myself to go in and meet a friend for lunch. I had had the whole week off, but was still stressed from work, even dreaming about it at night.

Anyway, as I was walking down Eighth toward my friend's office, it occurred to me that if I focused on only TWO things this coming year besides parenting--that is, two things concerning me and only me--that I could keep myself sane and moderately content. The first thing was about food, the second about writing the novel. It occurred to me that if I regarded the writing like the food, I'd do well.

Read more!

They Come to Me for Nonfiction Now

At our meeting last month, a topic that came up was the issue of using a nonfiction author's note with a fiction text. As Gale noted, it's possible that her offer to include map skills with a fiction submission helped get it accepted, but the her short tale retelling was a pleasure to read, so we really don't know. Anyway, I offered to post my two cents, for whatever it's worth, here, on how I see Common Core affecting publishing and the use of nonfiction texts in schools. I don't purport to be an expert on this, but I have about ten years of recommending, and selecting children's books and this is what I have come up with:

Read more!

Comic strips as inspiration

If you ever have trouble following a teen's train of thought, or what he worries about, or what occurs to her that might not occur to the rest of us….try…comic strips? 

Read more!

Taking my character far, far away to develop him - as in Jersey boy goes to British beach

Even though we've never met, Robin Constantine and I have been on the same page, so to speak, at the beach. We have been imagining characters from our respective novels (hers about to be published, mine a work in progress) on vacation at the beach. Since my novel also takes place in New Jersey, one would think that my main and secondary characters would also have familiarity with it. They don't. The absence of the Jersey shore experience among my New Jersey characters is, in itself, telling: Neither of them go for reasons related to their backgrounds.

However, while I was traveling through southern England last month and periodically writing, where did my second-most important character wind up? At another beach: Teignmouth, in the Devon region of England.

Read more!

Writing on vacation, English-style

As a child, when my parents took us places, sightseeing was nonstop. We weren't those "It's Tuesday, it must be Belgium," type people--they didn't rush us through places--but the whole day we were expected to be somewhere, on the move. I thought all people traveled like this.

And then, in my mid-20s, I made British friends..and traveled with them. They took longer hikes "walks" than my parents...but they would also stop for tea. Often. They didn't have to "be somewhere" every moment, or every day. They knew how to take breaks. I was amazed. And ever since then, I have traveled half like my parents, half like my British friends.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

Read more!

Commitment and the GASP

Commitment to writing is a sticky issue for me. The old mantra “find a fixed time every day or several days a week to write” has not worked for me, but I believe that it is necessary to success and it’s something I am aiming for now that I'm back to working on my novel. Key to the idea of 'commitment' is participating in this writing group, to which I am new (this is my first blog post!). I live farther away than the other active members—about a 50-minute drive north each way—so that commitment is particularly challenging and yet sweeter because I do it.

Still, when I realized that one of the June meetings coincided with my annual pilgrimage to the Scholastic warehouse sale, I said, I’m sorry, I can’t make it that night.

Read more!