My mind being on the how-to of writing at present, I thought I’d post some reflections on various aspects of the craft. I’ll try to put them up Wednesdays, so as to add some structure to all our busy lives, as well as to give myself the deadline I seem to require to get anything…
I’m headed up to San Francisco today to talk to the great folks at the 826 Valencia writing project. The goal of the 826 project (they’re also in New York, DC, etc etc) is to build the writing skills of kids ages 6 to 18. I’l pause for a minute while you pop over and…
With the upsurge of e-readers, there has been an accompanying growth in the impulse to self-publish. I really have no problems with self-publishing. If I had any out-of-print titles, I’d probably put them for sale online. A lot of people love their direct, author-to-reader book sales. J. A. Konrath is one of the more fervent…
As of today, I no longer own a house in England. And I’m surprised to find how disturbing that is. This was my husband’s house, which he and his first wife bought in 1967 when he got a job in California, and she wanted a place in England for when their children were on holiday…
Yesterday morning, news reached me that the woman who had picked me from a pile of obscurity had died. 92 year-old Ruth Cavin, the legendary Ruth, who started her career at the age of sixty and overnight seized the heart of the publishing industry; whose eye went to the essence of a book’s strengths—and weaknesses;…
Well, that’s about done and dusted for 2010: anyone ready for a new year? I’ve never been much for New Year’s Resolutions—who needs to start a clean slate with a cloud of threat and incipient guilt over her head? But taking down a heavily marked-up calendar whose dozen images you know by heart and replacing…
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. When I was new at this business of writing novels, I was also a young mother. Which meant that if I had free time, I wrote. If it was a school day, I wrote. If it was a weekend and my…
A study at Columbia and Harvard, reported in TIME, suggests that acting powerful makes a person powerful in fact. When tested before and after spending fifteen minutes in aggressive, macho, top-dog postures (the two on the left)— —the (male) reporter’s testosterone level doubled. Doubled! I can believe this. I am by nature an introverted, even…
This is my favorite time of year. One of the pleasures of late fall is the view out my window, of a single tree, probably a liquidamber, that becomes scarlet as soon as the frost hits it: To my amusement, I realized a couple of years ago that the people on that side of the…
I’ve been quiet here on Mutterings for several months, I know. I didn’t realize that I needed a sabbatical from posting until I took a break, and it went on. And on. After five years here, I was feeling that I’d said it all before. A sensation that’s bad enough when it’s connected with a…