by Susanne | Sep 9, 2017 | Soul searching, Writing craft, Writing life
Last time I participated in a workshop with Randy Susan Myers, I was struggling with the novel that is now awaiting its fate in the hands of a publisher. It was also only days before my father died. My phone rang in the middle of someone’s reading. I answered...
by Susanne | Sep 7, 2017 | Random thoughts, Writing craft, Writing life
They just. won’t. let me. alone. All those thoughts about writing that get translated into bizarre dreams. Last night I dreamt that I was in a house where I’d invited some very unlikely people to live with me. I discovered it was a bad idea, so I decided...
by Susanne | Sep 5, 2017 | Writing craft, Writing life
The idea of structure in a novel used to scare me. I had images of an ossified underpinning that hampered creativity, interrupted the flow of prose and character development. In the past few years, I’ve decided to overcome that fear. I realized that it’s...
by Susanne | Sep 3, 2017 | Writing craft, Writing life
I’ve discovered I can’t start writing a novel—even if I know how it should begin and end—until I find the narrative thread. Characters can develop on the page as I write, even plot to a certain extent, but I have to have a basic idea of what’s going...
by Susanne | Sep 2, 2017 | Random thoughts, Soul searching, Writing life
Why is the world the way it is? Why are people incapable of just letting each other live in peace? Why do good people sometimes do bad things? Those are some of the whys I’ve been pondering lately. But the biggest one, perhaps because it’s personal, is why...
by Susanne | Sep 1, 2017 | Writing life
OK, that’s kind of a nerdy thing to get excited about, but my historical novelist friends probably know the feeling. I’m digging around, reading, making a timeline, trying to connect the dots, looking for the story, and every time I stumble on another fact...
