Hybrids: When You're Writing a Book That Straddles Two Genres

A reader from Virginia wrote me:  "I’m either writing a very boring memoir which is filled with the ME in memoir, or I’m writing some sort of self-help book which has stories filling in to illustrate my points. 

"I’m still writing 'islands' so I don’t have a clear structure yet. I just know

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Enough, Already! Is It Time to Start Revising Your Manuscript?

The relationship of writer with book-in-progress can be likened to a marriage as opposed to a date.  Poems, articles, columns, and short stories are all creative commitments, to be sure, but even if they linger unfinished for a while, they are short relationships compared to 350 pages of manuscript.  With a book, you regularly re-evaluate your progress, your purpose, and your plans.  You recommit again and again.

 But is it ever done? When is enough, enough?  These questions come up at two particular stages,

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Three Writers on Writing and Creativity

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate this week.  In honor of the holiday, when maybe we all can get a tiny bit more leisure time (ROFL), I'm sharing three videos and articles on writing.  So look, listen, and read . . .and enjoy!

I'll be back next week with a new discussion on revision--how to know when you're ready for it.

A video presentation by writer Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA&feature=related.

Vivian Gornick, author of The Situation and The Story, on the writing life:  http://therumpus.net/2010/08/conversations-with-writers-braver-than-me-1-vivian-gornick/

 Jill Bolte Taylor on the brain and creativity:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
PS  Do you have favorite videos, podcasts, or online articles on writing that you'd like to share with me?  Send them along.

Preparing for Hibernation--Building a Winter Writing Rhythm

Where I live in northern New England, it's getting toward winter.  The trees have lost most of their leaves, and it got so chilly last night, we almost didn't open the window in the bedroom.  The change of weather is bringing to mind vast snowy landscapes, the uncluttered look of deep winter.  My best writing time of the year.

As a painter and a writer, I've

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National Novel Writers' Month--A Crazy but Effective Approach to Making a Book

Right now, as you read this, hundreds of thousands of writers from around the world are focused on one thing, a  crazy but effective approach to making a book.  It's a kind of competition without prizes called National Novel Writers' Month, or "nanowrimo."

Starting November 1 each year, these writers pledge to write 50,000 words in thirty days.  The goal is

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How High Are the Stakes? Building Better Conflict and Dilemma into Your Book

Dilemma is the problem your book solves, whether it is how to plant a bonsai garden or who killed the victim in a murder mystery. Dilemma, also known as the dramatic arc, forms the path of your reader’s journey through your book. Without strong dilemma, there’s no story.

One of my students, Chris, was writing the story of her grandmother’s life, but she wasn’t happy

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Acceptance and Rejection--Balance in the Creative Life

One spring, I was wallowing in the discontent of rejection letters. I’d sent my first novel to agent after agent, publisher after publisher. No one wanted it. This new novel crossed genres—it was written from the point of view of a young woman but it was meant for adult readers.

I believed in the book and wanted to see it in the hands of potential readers. But my disappointment was so great that

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Finding Theme in Your Book: An Exercise in Searching for Repeating Patterns

After months of revising my novel-in-progress, I was still stumped as to its theme. My chapters hung together pretty well but the manuscript lacked that wonderful sense of wholeness that a theme-rich book delivers.

One evening I was reading a scene to my writers’ group. When I finished we talked about the characters, especially the main character, a search-and-rescue pilot. One of the writers, bless her, asked me that pivotal question that opens huge doors inside.

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Feeling the Fear and Writing Anyway--Facing the Inner Critic

In each stage of writing your book, chances are you’ll meet a most unsavory part of yourself: the Inner Critic. It’s a negative self that delivers negative self-talk.  It casts its own particular light or shadow on your writing life, and it can stop you completely.

Many writers have different names for their critics. Sue Grafton, the mystery writer, calls hers ego. “Ego is the piece of me that’s going, How am I doing, champ?,” she says. “Is this good? Do you like this? Do you think the critics will like this?

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Creating the Page-Turner: Tricks to Great Pacing in Your Books

For twelve years, I wrote a syndicated weekly newspaper column. I only had six hundred words each week, so I learned to wrap the column neatly. The ending was always tied up with a clever image, like a bright bow on a tidy package.

When I went back to college for my MFA in fiction and began my first novel, this search for closure no longer suited my writing.  Novels explore, they expand, they lead to deeper secrets and more adventurous events.  When one of my teachers noticed this tendency to neaten up my chapter endings, she decided to broaden my understanding of pacing.  How it differs in books--as opposed to short pieces

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