In The Beginning

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Not to brag or anything, but we rarely have trouble beginning a new novel (we are cursed in that we get bogged down in the middle and end). Our process is generally to collect a bunch of unconnected things (many of which grow up to become full-fledged scenes; an equal number become exercise for the delete key), and then wait until the perfect first line or scene pops into our head. Once this happens, we are writing. We like to think we are good at this. That’s not to say we stick with our original concept come hell or high […]

Tools and Craft

When Words Come Rushing, Why Do We Build Dams?

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While it’s rare that we point to the same article twice (except when it’s not rare), Elissa Schappell’s review of the new Nora Roberts book raises a question in our mind: what’s so bad about being prolific? Schappell’s review starts with: More than 150 novels by Nora Roberts have been published in the last 23 years. In 2004 alone, this one-woman romantic-suspense-novel mill will crank out half a dozen…All this is enough to make Anthony Trollope, with a paltry 47 novels, and Joyce Carol Oates, still plugging away with over 50 works of fiction, seem like mere plodders. If we

Tools and Craft

Hearts, Flowers, Hunks

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Jill thought it would be fun to attend the Romantic Times convention and drag us along. Apparently she can’t get enough of our sarcasm in real life. We suspect, without any real evidence, that said convention would bring out the worst of our cynicsm. Jill has a warped sense of humor; we suspect she hasn’t given up the idea as much as she’s waiting for the next perfect moment to spring her plan. For years, we’ve read about this convention. It sounds, frankly, awful. Perhaps you have to be there, but the descriptions make the whole experience sound like every

Books/Mags/Blogs

It Is Our Biggest Fear

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When one leads a rich and full fantasy life, it is inevitable that you imagine yourself in all sorts of dire situations. Or rather you imagine you, the character, in those dire situations. You wonder what would happen if you suddenly became very ill, getting lost in the grand detail, the feeling, the scent of antiseptic. We can imagine just about anything, have imagined just abouto anything — except blindness. That, to us, is the no-go zone. We cannot imagine life without reading. We cannot imagine life without writing, yet we don’t seem to panic over the loss of our

Square Pegs

We Honestly Don’t Know

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Kitty Burns Florey (Solos) has scared us. Now, don’t get us wrong, we can obsess over just about anything. We adore structure and logic (please, snickering in the back row is rude). We are the type to look down on a maze and see the path clearly. We get misplaced, but we don’t get lost. But, dammit, we never did get diagramming sentences. We were too busy racing forward writing them to ever want to go back and dissect them, except to take out entire swaths of words and replace them with more words. Diagramming the poor things? Would you

Square Pegs

It’s So Hard Sometimes. No, Really.

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It’s like you’re handed cheesecake the day you start South Beach. You wanna, you wanna, you wanna…and yet you’re still believing you can lose weight. Sure, an offer of sugar and cream cheese and crushed graham crackers (actually, we have no clue) after four weeks of no carbs can destroy the most dedicated of dieters, but on that first day? No. You still believe you can be the svelte person of your imagination (we would suggest eating the cheesecake remains the best option, but suspect it might weaken our argument, such as it is). The news* has been rife with

Square Pegs

Never Mind Slipping Quietly Into The Room

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A cranky old soul left the blogworld. A bitchy new soul entered the blogworld. Somewhere there’s a song about this. Or there will be. We have faith in the collective unconscious. Bitch Novelist has followed up on her initial promise by taking on the idea of emotional honesty and how maybe it might be, uh, not quite so prevalent in books declared emotionally honest. She takes a hard look at Tobias Wolf’s Old School: As odd as it sounds for a book so often praised as “profound,” the primary emotion evoked from Old School is Mr. Chip’s style nostalgia. Many

Tools and Craft

Almost A Quote of the Week Candidate

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But not quite. We know, we know. Making fun of other people is mean. But it’s healthier than smoking. And, frankly, when we’re pitched one right over the plate, even we can hit it. So, when Sara Nelson says: If there’s a lesson to be learned from the international publishing 101 course that is the Frankfurt book fair, it is that what sells here does not necessarily sell there. … what are we supposed to do? Pretend we didn’t read it? Pretend it’s profound or surprising? Pretend this is something we didn’t know? Barring that, perhaps we could beg for

Books/Mags/Blogs

Personally, We Blame Standardized Tests

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Maud Newton takes a look at the (purported) death of fiction, and all of our favorite suspects are in the room. Was it Ms. Reviewer in the Book Section? Professor Editor with the style guide? Major Marketing and Admiral Acquisition working together? Is it possible that all of supposed best friends of books are quietly poisoning them with publishing arsenic? Yeah, there’s a lot of evidence that novels are suffering at the hands of the professionals. Same for music and movies. Probably computer games, too, but we don’t follow that particular industry. Once art becomes a commercial enterprise, there tends

Square Pegs

In Which the Perfectly Clear is As Muddy As We Suspected

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One of our flaws is our inability to target things (hence winning the most improved player in softball nine years running — if we actually threw to our cut-off person, it was considered a major victory). We cannot sit down and write with a line or, even, a market in mind. Sometimes we get lucky and things naturally fit in a particular area, but mostly, we’re punting. This is pretty much why we finally accepted that we’ll never write for Harlequin. Or not. We never know what will come out of our fingers next. We hear about so many writers

Publishers and Editors
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