Two Tense
Hmmm. . .this happened when I was writing Before the Storm, and it’s happening again. As I wrote Before the Storm, the story unveiled itself to me in present tense. I ended up changing it all to past tense (with the exception of…
Read MoreA Name for Every Day of the Year
Time to talk about names again! I mentioned a while back that my assistant was going through my books, creating a spreadsheet of all the names I’ve used so that I can exercise caution when naming new characters. She’s finished, just in time for me to start naming a new crop of folks for my…
Read MoreAudio Books in Bed
I bought my first iPod about a year ago and I’m an addict. I love listening to my favorite soundtracks as I write, so I’ve loaded all of them on the iPod, along with some Springsteen, some meditation music, and chants by Krishna Das. But most of all, I love listening to books. The iPod is…
Read MoreInsides and Outsides
Take a look at this picture. What do you see (besides some fabulous jewelry)? My guess is you see a happy couple, probably passionately in love, planning a long future together. Yeah, that’s what I see, too. I’m thinking about my Work-in-Progress. One of my characters, miserable in her own marriage, sees a happy-looking couple on…
Read MoreCooking Up an Idea
All weekend, I’ve been puzzling over a “what happened then” element in my new proposal. It’s been making me crazy because no matter how many notes I jotted down, how many creative naps I took, how many brainstorming sessions I had with John, it wasn’t coming to me. Then I decided to make some quick and easy marinara…
Read MoreSome Pictures from the Beach
I returned from a wild week of writing and plotting last night and thought I’d share a few pictures. Bren took all of these (except the one of her, of course). These were taken from our back deck (we had a great view of the snowy egrets!) and Bren captured the storm fence on…
Read MoreWe Could be Anywhere. . .
Bren and I are still at the beach. We’ve been out of the house exactly once, and probably won’t leave it again until we’re ready to take off for home on Thursday. That’s because we’ve been working up a storm! I came up with my brand new idea. I have loads and loads of details…
Read MoreThe Burial
Well, there’s killing your babies, as I discussed a couple of posts ago. Then there’s burying them, and that’s what I’m doing with my Work-in-Progress. Some of you voted on titles for it (I was, for the time being, calling it The Glimmer Child), and you know how excited I was about it as I…
Read MoreIs Your First your Fave?
I’ve noticed something. When I hear from readers who’ve read many of my books, very often their favorite is the first one they read. It doesn’t matter what the book is. A quick glance at my email in the last few months illustrates this fact. The following books were all claimed as a favorite by…
Read MoreKilling Your Babies
Oh, it hurts. I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who coined the title to this post. He was referring to those wonderful turns of phrase a writer comes up with that, in the final analysis, simply don’t belong in the story and must go. It’s painful to chop a few beautiful lines from what you’ve written,…
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