writing retreat

The monks made an altar near one of the walls and the relief of the stone resembled a holy image. Later, local masters painted an icon upon it, but the paint inexplicably vanished within a matter of days. And it vanished every time the image was painted.

Florence likes to trick herself. She does it with a blue pen, writing what she calls little “self dares of truth”, reassuring herself that she won’t show them to anyone. “Shh, it’s OK, it’s just us...”

The "realism" of the dialogue is an illusion created by the artist-writer, just as Michelangelo's beautiful and imposing David is not a precise duplication of the human figure: the statue's hands and head are overly large, exaggerated in size in order to appear proportionate when viewed from below. In fiction writing, perspective is controlled by... See more

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer a more practical strategy for getting the job done than just imagining I could get to the end by putting numbers on blank pages. My own experience with writing novels tells me that the first steps onto the page begin to lay out a trail I can follow as I go. I'm convinced we can learn to let our novels write... See more

So much of writing a novel is a matter of arousing your own curiosity and then paying attention to the cues you yourself set down as you write. Isak Dinensen said, "I write a little every day without hope, without despair." If you can do that, and if you can let your own desire to know propel you into narrative, you can fill those numbered pages of... See more

In the case of my novel, The Bright Forever , I wanted to propel the reader and myself along a trail of mystery, so I opened by having a character say this, "I'm not saying I didn't do it. I don't know." Hmm...what's the it , and why wouldn't he know whether he was the responsible party? And if he didn't do it, who might have? All these questions... See more