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Writing in a World on Fire

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Photo by id-iom.

 

There is a meme, started by Matt Jones (@tinyarmoredone), that goes as follows:

me: *opens mouth to scream into the void*
the void: sorry, man we’re full up
me: what?
the void: there’s no more room, we’re teeming with screams
me: but –
the void: We. Are. At. Full. Capacity. Sir. Try a pillow.

It’s been feeling like the teeming void for a long time, and 2020 has only amplified it. The void’s at full capacity, but the screams just keep on coming.

I write romances. To be even more specific, I write geeky romantic comedies. All my agents have characterized my voice as incorporating humor: it’s a selling point, it’s my shtick, it’s my brand.

Needless to say, I have not been feeling inspired.

It’s been hard for me to be motivated to write about love, no matter how much I believe in it, and laughs have been thin on the ground. Rather than story ideas, I have been hit with a powerful and inchoate rage, so immeasurable and overwhelming that I feel like I could spontaneously combust.

Putting my writer’s coach cap on, I keep trying to think of what I would say, if I were faced with a writer who was struggling with depression and despair in the face of a world on fire. This is the best I can come up with: [Read more…]

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5 Creative Nonfiction Skills for Novelists

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We pulled up to the gate at Utah’s Arches National Park in an imprudent touring vehicle: a loaded U-Haul van. This would be our only sightseeing detour on the trek that would take my sister from her home in California to a new job on the East Coast. She paid the entrance fee and passed me a map. That one action would enrich our memory of the experience for years to come: the map was wrapped in a magnificent essay, “Rethinking Wall Arch.” As our engine strained to take us up the final 1600 … [Read more...]

Creating Living Breathing Dialog

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Today’s guest is Sally Wiener Grotta, an author and journalist whose books include Jo Joe and just-released The Winter Boy. Sally's a consummate storyteller, reflecting her deep humanism and appreciation for the poignancy of life; and she's also an award-winning journalist who has authored hundreds of articles, columns, and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and online publications. Sally gives occasional writing workshops and speaks frequently on the business of writing, and she has co-authored … [Read more...]

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

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Thanks to Stephanie Perkins and Paula McLain, I can visit Paris anytime I want. Shilpi Somaya Gowda has taken me to Mumbai. My tour guide in Maine is Elizabeth Strout. And I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with Cheryl Strayed. Good books take us on a journey, both literally and figuratively. As a writer, I’ve started to think more carefully about the literal part. Because when it’s done well, setting impacts pretty much every facet of a story -- plot, voice, character, theme, etc. This is … [Read more...]

Frog Marching the Muse: Eighteen Tips to Get Words on the Page

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Two days ago, I turned in a manuscript that I truly feared I would never finish. That has never happened to me before, and to have it happen when the final installment in a trilogy was DUE NOW, was as potentially disastrous as it was unacceptable. Keep in mind that I am one of those people who does not subscribe to the belief that you must write every day; for me, forced writing does not always equal useable writing and can often times derail the story. I also believe that sometimes fallow … [Read more...]

3 Keys to Storytelling

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Back in 2009, I attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. It was a fabulous, fun experience that truly helped me grow. A few months later, reflecting on that time and the specific lessons I learned there, I wrote this post for my website. I'm re-blogging it here because of Lisa Cron's post last month about how we writers are often taught how to craft prose, but not story. I tend to agree with her, which is why I found the KRWW so valuable: for once, someone was teaching me about storytelling! … [Read more...]