Tools and Craft

If you want to make people crazy, just mention that you attend school for the sheer joy of learning. But, they say, what about a job? A career? A resume padder? No, you insist, it is the learning I desire. Nothing more. Though we’ve taken formal writing classes, we’ve never really thought about entering a MFA program. It seems, to us, to be a plastic bubble sort of writing experience (though we know graduates of some programs, and they are not plastic bubble sort of people…but we know that you know what we mean). We read an article today that,

We’re not sure what prompted the thought (and we’re too terrified to explore deeply), but the other day we were thinking about the sense of smell. You know, when you write, you’re supposed to evoke all five senses (more if you can manage it, but aim for at least the five). Ah, now we remember, we were thinking about a particular scene; we were working with a live critique group for a while, and one member felt everything about the scene was out of character — which we puzzled over as we were still working out that character on paper…everything

The WGA has reached as settlement with the studios after being without a contract for several months. Interestingly, the deal does not address the hot button issue of DVD/video royalities. We can only say that the studios didn’t so much dodge a bullet as much as sidestep the first shot. Interestingly, the WGA chose to focus on increased health care contributions — all things considered, this is not a bad idea. For those who care, reality television remains an unresolved issue. Writers Guild of America Reaches Tentative Agreement with the Major Studios and Networks

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

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

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

We’re starting to think we don’t have any secrets left. This because we’re about to scrape the bottom of the Booksquare-secret barrel. Yes, we once had a (intellectual) crush on Robert X. Cringely. We think the infatuation was with the original Cringely, but we cannot be sure. All we know is we used to snatch copies of InfoWorld from the husband’s hands…oh no, the husband is currently lecturing, he’s waving his hands and acting all emphatic. We fell in love with the imposter. Damn. Something about personas and stealing and such… Which means we had a great lead and now

A Booksquare operative read this story on Robert McKee and immediately thought of us. We’re not sure what this says about her. Nor are we sure what it says about us. Unless it’s that his rants so closely mirror ours: He was also not happy with the state of screenwriting — or fiction writing in general. “It’s a worldwide, cross-media crisis,” he said. He went off on politically correct language, sloppy structure, shallow characters and lazy work habits (and, over the course of the weekend, President Bush, the British Empire, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, “American self-deception,” car pools, Wonder