My Words Fly Up

Contribution

My mother asked me a few weeks ago if I would make a contribution to her newest book. She was writing a piece about wind for it, and she remembered that I had once fictionalized an experience my family had with a tornado. I sent her what I had written—it’s actually the prologue of my book Lost Mothers. I hadn’t read the book for years and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the prologue, impressed with how well-written ...

The End

I did not type those actual words, The End, to the final page of my manuscript, but I did finish the book. And rather abruptly, as it turns out. Last week, the morning I left for my annual visit to my mother’s summer place in Maine, I spent an hour or so adding necessary information my friend Rob, a carpenter, had given me about a half-finished building in the book. But then I had to go, leaving a few things ...

So Close

When I last wrote about my current novel in progress, Time Passages, I was taking a pause before the final round of revisions. I am now so close to finishing. Not that it has been easy. Well, some of it was easy. Obvious spots where I got too wordy, scenes where a character acted, um, out of character. Sections that were so redundant, I’m embarrassed I even wrote them. But there was that big rock to be dealt with, the ...
Building character while on tour

Building Characters

I was reminded in class the other day of a writing exercise that I call Building Characters. The idea came to me from a chapter in a student’s memoir, about a bus trip her family took in Great Britain and Western Europe in the early 1960s. The group was an intriguing collection of characters—starting with the tour guide, the wonderfully named Mr. Pinchback—and it occurred to me that students could use a grouping like this as an ongoing challenge to ...

“I’m Doing the Best I Can”

For my birthday last year, a friend gave me a book, one that I probably would not have bought for myself because it’s a memoir. I don’t tend to read memoirs. But I loved the title: All the Way to the Tigers. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? And the author’s name rang a bell—Mary Morris. I checked to see what else she had written and recalled that many years ago, I had read one or two of her novels. So, I ...
Another Pause

Another Pause

I am between revisions of my novel, Time Passages. Round three is done—all of the revising and cutting and adding I did, and a two-hour critique session with my terrific readers, Margaret and Ginny, filled with great suggestions (and praise!). Before I begin the fourth, and hopefully final, round, I am taking another pause. It is always best to let a piece of work lie quietly for a short while, allow its energy to regather. During round three, I cut ...
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