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About Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places, and The Fifth Petal, chosen #1 of Strand Magazine’s Top 25 Books of 2017. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has been an Amazon Best of the Month and a People Magazine Pick. Barry was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post. Brunonia served as chairperson of the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee, as Executive Director of the Salem Literary Festival, and as a member of Grub Street’s Development Committee. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts with her husband, Gary Ward, and their dog, Angel.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • The Morning After
  • Writing What Scares Us: Awakening the Monster Inside
  • Creating Your Book Talk
  • Writing for Love or Money
  • Writing Truth in Reverse
  • Happy Halloween! Love, Salem
  • 10 Tips about Process
  • Why Do You Write?
  • When It Absolutely, Positively Isn’t Ready
  • Hearing Voices
  • Keeping Lit Alive – The Salem Literature Festival
  • The First Rewrite

    • The Morning After

    By

    Photo by Antonio Guillem

    Whether you’ve been working on your WIP for one year or ten, there comes a day when you know it’s ready to submit. Whether it’s fifty pages and an outline or the full manuscript, today’s the day. You’ve done your work. It’s time to let go.

    You go over your cover letter again and again, reviewing each sentence, obsessing and rewriting until you can’t put it off any longer. You take a deep breath. You hit send.

    After the initial feeling of euphoria fades, you glance up at the wall, at the framed sign you pinned there months ago with some of the best writing advice you’ve received: Stay in the chair. You stand up, noticing the stiffness in your legs, the lower back ache you’ve been ignoring for the last few months. Step by step, you slowly move away from your writing nook, forcing yourself not to look back.

    And then you celebrate the best way you know how. Maybe with a glass of champagne or a nice lunch at that restaurant you’ve been longing to try. A stroll through the park, a massage, perhaps a visit with an old friend, one who’ll forgive your long absence.

    For the first time in months, you sleep through the night: no characters whispering in your ears, no jolting awake with that great idea that just can’t wait.

    And then, inevitably, it arrives: The Morning After.

    You wake up early and happily realize that you have nothing on your agenda, nothing but the life you guiltily put aside for far too long. It’s time to get back to it. You climb out of bed with a bit more vigor than you’ve had in these final days of rewriting. You stand there wondering what to do first.

    You’ve faced The Morning After at least once before. You know enough to avoid the piles of laundry that have collected on the bedroom floor, the sweats or yoga pants or pajamas you’ve been living in for the last few weeks. You’ve learned to avoid mirrors.

    At this point, if you’re smart, you’ve already considered that short vacation, ignoring housework, bills, yard-work, the half-painted den. You can’t wait to reward your hard work with a change of venue, but it doesn’t work out that way. Since you couldn’t gauge exactly when you’d be finished, and your preferred travel companions have real world schedules, they can’t just drop everything the day you’re finally ready. Even your writer friends, the ones who would gladly celebrate with you, are busy wrestling with their own WIPs. The vacation will have to wait.

    With nothing pressing, and against your better judgement, you wander into your writing nook, sit down at the computer, and check your emails. Maybe someone is already reading. Maybe your manuscript was so compelling that the minute they received it, they put everything aside and stayed up all night, unable to stop turning pages until they finished that final brilliant chapter.

    Instead, there’s not even an acknowledgement of receipt. [Read more…]

    Writing What Scares Us: Awakening the Monster Inside

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    A few months before The Fifth Petal came out, my agent remarked that she hadn’t been able to read the manuscript before bed because of the nightmares it invariably provoked. Her statement shocked me, as I didn’t consider it a very scary book. It was definitely dark, but all my novels are dark. Part history, part mystery, each has been set in Salem, MA, and there’s no way the dark history of place hasn’t informed every narrative.  But my home city doesn’t scare me, rather it takes on a … [Read more...]

    Creating Your Book Talk

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    With my third book, The Fifth Petal, coming out tomorrow, I’ve finally put the finishing touches on my  elevator pitch. I come from a marketing background, so you’d think it would have been the first thing I’d do, but, for each of my books, there could have been at least 5 different quick pitches: some seemingly contradicting others, some so vastly different that you wouldn’t have thought they were for the same book. The one I settled on was this: With modern Salem now home to thousands of … [Read more...]

    Writing for Love or Money

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    Many of these posts are dedicated to writing and publishing a first novel, and I have to say there is nothing better. It is magic when you receive that first ARC, hold it in your hands, and see your name on the cover. But what happens after that is something we don’t often talk about. Especially when what happens isn’t magic. I don’t often discuss my route to publication, partly because I was asked not to by my first publisher, who had never before bought a previously self-published book … [Read more...]

    Writing Truth in Reverse

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    Writing the truth has always been a challenge for me. In college, I started out as a journalism major, but it was strongly suggested that I transfer into the fiction department as quickly as possible. Let’s just say I have a tendency to embellish that wiser minds quickly realized would make journalism a poor career choice. So I became a fiction writer, and I've never been happier. But recently I was asked by friends to write a nonfiction piece describing an incident that reflects the … [Read more...]

    Happy Halloween! Love, Salem

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    Since many of you will be joining us for the WU Un-conference in Salem this next week, and because I’ll be co-teaching a seminar called “Place as Character” with Liz Michalski, I thought I’d share the character chart for Salem that I created for my upcoming novel. Salem, where I’m fortunate enough to live, has been a major character in all three of my novels, but the city’s character chart has changed from book to book. The first chart bears little resemblance to this new one. Either I’ve … [Read more...]

    10 Tips about Process

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    So recently, when guest speaking at a college creative writing class, I was asked for ten writing tips I’d like to pass along to students. My first impulse was to run screaming from the building, but, when I thought more about it, I realized that the one sure thing I’ve gained in knowledge is an understanding of my own writing process, something I didn’t have a clue about while working on my first two novels. Today, I thought I’d pass those tips along. I’m not suggesting you adopt them, just … [Read more...]

    Why Do You Write?

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    I turned in my third novel on April 12th after a six-month extension that required nights, weekends, and workdays that often began at 4AM. To say I was burned out would be putting it mildly. Fried, torched, or incinerated were better words for my condition. This one got me, on every level and to my core. The morning after I turned in the manuscript, I stood at the mirror brushing my teeth and barely recognizing the exhausted woman who stared back at me. And two questions came to mind: Do you … [Read more...]

    When It Absolutely, Positively Isn’t Ready

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    Posted on the file cabinet next to my desk is a refrigerator magnet someone bought me with a quote from Douglas Adams that reads: “I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.” I only wish that sentiment was mine. The fact is, I hate deadlines. Though I understand the benefits, they weigh upon my soul. The thought of NaNoWriMo fills me with dread. I wish the best of luck to all of you who are working so hard this month. I see the benefits, but I will probably never … [Read more...]

    Hearing Voices

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    The first time I had to speak in public was for the American Association of  University Women’s annual Breakfast with the Authors at theGeorgetown,MAlibrary. I was the warm-up act for André Dubus III, who is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard. I, on the other hand, was less than stellar. I’d avoided public speaking all my life. When I finally became a writer, I was amazed and intimidated by the amount of speaking the job requires. But hey, you want something badly enough, you do it, … [Read more...]

    Keeping Lit Alive – The Salem Literature Festival

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    In an earlier post, you may have read my lamentation on the closing of Cornerstone, Salem’s local independent bookstore, which shut its doors last January. Though many of us got together to try to save the store, we lost the battle, leaving Salem dependent on neighboring community bookstores for our literary chats and recommendations. They tried hard to fill the gap left in a city that prides itself on being literary, even to the point of claiming to be the birthplace of the great American … [Read more...]

    The First Rewrite

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    Last week, I finished the first draft of a novel that is due next April. This week, I began my first rewrite, a process I enjoy far more. I know that for many of you, rewriting is less exciting than writing that first draft. For you, there is nothing more thrilling than creating something from nothing.  I don’t feel that way. I adore rewriting. It is not accompanied by the anxiety and uncertainty of the blank page. The basic story is already down on paper. The characters have grown and … [Read more...]