Jennifer R. Hubbard's Blog, page 122

The Golden Age of Reading, and starting a marathon

The digital age is moving us forward ever faster, and ways to read books on a screen are multiplying by the month. Yet I've been thinking that right now, on this thin wedge of time where we stand today, it is a Golden Age to be a reader. It used to be, if I wanted a book that was out of print, I had to browse hopefully through used bookstores or libraries; now, I can usually find it online within seconds and have it delivered to my door. I may be in the minority with respect to my appetite ...

Secrets and more

S.F. Robertson is doing a series on her Wastepaper prose blog in which authors answer questions such as, “What is the most difficult emotion for you to convey on the page, and why?” and, “What do you do when you hit a snag?” If you like behind-the-scenes writer craft stories, it’s worth checking out. When she asked us to reveal a secret about our most recent novel, I leaked some backstage info about one of the characters in THE SECRET YEAR.

Speaking of secrets, Little Willow at Bildungsroman i...

Novel milestones

When I made the transition from spending most of my writing time on short stories to spending most of it on novels, I had several adjustments to make. One of them was the simple concept of milestones.

Because a short story is short, one can reach milestones more quickly. It's possible to produce a highly polished short story in a month. But a novel takes much longer. Plodding away month after month, never knowing if this will be a trunk novel or something other people will actually pay to read...

Sea

Last year, I interviewed Heidi R. Kling about the formation of the Tenners debut writers' group, and I also asked her a few questions about her novel, SEA. Now it's more than a year later, and SEA is finally on the shelves, and I decided to reprise the portion of our interview that dealt with this novel.

If you follow my blog, it's no secret that Heidi and I are writer friends and Tenners. She had also read my novel and raved about it. And so I was a little nervous reading her book, as I am ab...

On not counting words

From time to time, I notice how writers often report their progress with word counts. I'm never sure whether they're talking about words first-drafted or words revised, but I don't count words myself.

Here's how my process works:
Day 1: Write a scene or two.
Day 2: Write a new paragraph.
Day 3:  Write 3 new scenes. Delete one, which was a false detour.
Day 4: Write 2 new scenes.
Day 5: It's a short story! Start revising. Rewrite first scene.
Day 6: Rewrite first scene again.
Day 7: Rewrite fourth sc...

Can writing be taught?

Sometimes people ask whether writing can be taught. I'm in the "yes" camp on that, although perhaps that is a qualified yes because I'm not sure everyone defines "teaching" the same way. I think there are three main ways in which I've been taught:

Reading taught me how to write. First and foremost, I learned to write from reading. This is generally how we learn to use language: by imitating others, then by absorbing the rules of our language, its idioms, its structures, its color and flavor...

Summer evening

Green glimmers in the grass;
Fireflies.

Grab the reader's collar, or beckon with a mysterious smile?

Michael Merriam has an interesting post on what it's like to go from the writer's side of the desk to the editor's. The good news: he's not jaded by slush--quite the opposite, in fact. (I must say, I have never personally received a "nasty" rejection or anything that was other than professional--but I have heard, more often than I'd like, of this happening to other writers.)

I also love this snippet from Cynthia Leitich Smith, inspired by a bumpy plane ride: "What stands out most in my memory ...

Trunk novels

While on a break between passes through a manuscript, I read through some old trunk novels/projects-in-suspension. A couple, for which I'd had high hopes, didn't do anything for me. But there was one, a project I'd almost forgotten about, that struck me right between the eyes.

It would need some work--not only the usual polishing, but a lot of plot work as well.  As it turns out, I've covered several of the same elements in my current project, and there's too much overlap there. But the voice ...

First drafts

Tabitha Olson at the Writer Musings blog is hosting a special series of guest posts on first drafts. When I was planning mine, I thought: Since there's no teacher like example, why not write the post as a first draft, and leave it uncorrected?

Which is exactly how I began. The first quarter of the post is still in its raw, unedited state, while the rest of the post is more polished and coherent.

I hope this proves useful, inspiring, and even somewhat amusing. :-)

Click on the link to see:

The...