Work in Progress: the Title Search

Here we go again! Last year I asked you to put on your thinking caps to help me title my work-in-progress. Frequent commenter Denise came up with Secrets She Left Behind, which my publisher, agent and I all agreed was a winner. (Look for it in your bookstores on May 26th). Now it’s time to give the…

Read More

Using Real Disasters in Fiction

My current work-in-progress requires a disaster. Hurricane Katrina would work. So would 9-11. But I can’t bring myself to use those tragic events. I’m even uncomfortable using this image from Katrina. It simply feels too soon, with too many of the hurricane’s victims still in pain. I recently finished reading Wally Lamb’s wonderful new book, The Hour…

Read More

Beginning with the End

I started writing as a hobby when I was a hospital social worker a looong time ago (think typewriter and carbon paper. ugh). I thought that working on a novel, the idea for which I’d had in my mind from the time I was twelve years old, would be a fun pastime. After about six…

Read More

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 More

Insides 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 More

Killing 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,…

Read More

Coming up with Book Titles

Naming a character is one thing. Naming an entire book is quite another. This is much on my mind as I toy with titles for my new, fledgling work-in-progress. I jot them down in the dark as I’m falling asleep, and they seem so brilliant then. In the light of day, though, they often lose their sparkle.  I…

Read More