At Maureen Carson’s book club, talking about WARMING UP.
Delay. Delay. Delay. Some say it’s the essence of dramatic writing. Unlike expository writing, where the first sentence of each paragraph pretty much sums up the point to be made, each sentence in dramatic writing leads the reader to the next sentence so that the reader is forced to read on — […]
At the Chicago Writers Conference last weekend, author and teacher Eric Charles May gave a talk about causality in fiction. He said that we all tolerate accidents in real life, and while we may ask “Why?” or “Why me?” at various crises in our lives, we inevitably must accept that at times there are no […]
A good writing conference energizes and inspires as well as providing new information, or at least old information in a fresh way. Chicago Writers Conference, which wrapped up today, was a great writing conference. Speakers were candid, generous and actually concerned, it seemed, with sharing information rather than gratifying their own egos. While shattering dreams […]
With Maureen Collins and filmmaker Michael Moore at JMLS “Law and Art” conference, October 24, 2014
I have been nominated as one of the Illinois Library Association’s Soon to be Famous Authors!Pictured above with my nominator, Larry D’Urso, Mount Prospect Public Library, at the Soon to be Famous Author Project Announcement Ceremony. Thank you, Larry, and the MPPL! Here’s the link to my remarks at the Illinois Library Association’s Soon to be […]
In my last column (“A ‘know-it-all’ approach to writing,” June 27), I wrote about Colm Toibin’s advice that a writer should know the whole story before writing his or her novel. Since I’ve always discovered the story by writing it, this for me would be a new way of working — but one I’m willing […]
June 27, 2014 For two years now, we’ve been writing about crafting your first novel and I have insisted that you don’t need to know your whole story in order to begin. This has worked for me through the process of writing a dozen novels, but recently I heard Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn, The Testament of […]
David Vinjamuri gives indie published books a boost in his Forbes article, mentioning Warming Up and the other ILA Soon to be Famous Author finalists. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidvinjamuri/2014/06/06/with-ebooks-still-pricey-illinois-libraries-flex-their-marketing-muscle/
Dear Friends: Thank you for being with us today, and thank you especially for welcoming Roi so warmly over the past few years. He looked forward to bridge club, playing golf with you at CCE, occasional fish fries and Lake Geneva Symphony galas, “the best Easter dinner ever” at Helen’s just […]