Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 144

Learning to live with discomfort

Ah, here it is again. 2000 words today and I feel as if I've lost control of my novel. I have no idea anymore what it is I want to say and it feels derivative, as if I am rewriting Pictures of You. The plot seems a shambles and there seems way too much work to do and not enough time to do it. What kind of a novel is this? Why doesn't it get easier with each new book?
I've written about this life-saving John Irving quote before (and no matter what you think of Irving, you'll love the quote, I ...

Happy 2010

Happy 2010.
Well, almost.
Instead of making resolutions, I think everyone should watch this remarkable trailer for Dani Shapiro's new memoir, DEVOTION (coming in Feb, along with a Question and Answer here on my blog.) Dani's book, about her search for spiritual meaning, is really everyone's search, and most appropriate right around now. What do we believe and why? How do we live and connect to others and to the universe around us? What really is our truth?
I carried this book around with m...

Very merry

The holidays are always sort of strange to me. I'm Jewish, so we never celebrated Xmas, though Hanukkah was a very big deal growing up, complete with eight (count 'em! 8!) gifts. The first Christmas I really adored was my first year in Manhattan. My friend Beth, who lived across the hall, came to my tiny apartment and we made a sea bass with black bean sauce (I wasn't a full-out vegetarian then), which we promptly burned, then we went out all day to movies, crashed a party, and came back ho...

Fighting fear

Writing a new novel is an often hallucinatory process. It always starts out, for me, anyway, with a bang. I have an obsession, an image in my head of something pulling me forward. The first chapter nearly always writes itself, and it's a good thing, too, because the rest of the chapters are always terrifically tough to get out on paper, and in the months and years that follow, that first chapter is the thing I cling to, the reason why I can't just toss everything in the wastebasket and thin...

Read This Book: What I Thought I Knew

I admit I'm drawn to books about medical mysteries. Maybe it's because for one terrifying year, I had one of my own (but that's another story altogether). Alice Eve Cohen's What I thought I Knew isn't so much a mystery as it is a journey about everything going wildly wrong. Her memoir is as funny as it is shocking, and I'm thrilled she agreed to answer my questions. (Thank you, Alice.)
The book begins with a shocker. You've been told you have a tumor, given all kinds of tests, only to...

Great new blog

Gina Sorell, a great friend and a truly terrific writer with a novel-in-progress that is one of the best I have read in years, has a new blog I'm going to be running some author interviews on her blog (as well as here), and guess who has the honor to be up there first? (Ah hem...)

Kirkus Reviews closing

It's tragic and I'm stunned.
Kirkus Reviews, which has been one of the most important prepub reviews to get, is closing. Notorious for being snarky (they gave me one review for my third novel that was so terrible, I still remember every syllable of it, and no, don't ask me to repeat it, but yes it did include the phrase, "Leavitt has no one else but herself to blame.."), their praise could jumpstart a book and a star from them was cause for celebration. (Most of my Kirkus reviews were...

Celebrating a forgotten woman writer

Know the name Margaret Woodward Boyd? I didn't, either. It's actually the pen name of Margaret Woodward Smith Shane, who was discovered by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald took her novel, The Love Legend to his famed editor, Maxwell Perkins, who promptly published it. In 1922, The Love Legend rocketed to the bestseller list and was praised by The New York Times as "a lively colorful tale."
Finding lost literary talents like Boyd is the work of the fabulous David Wilk and Rvive Press, whose...

Read This Book: Perfectiion

Perfection by Julie Metz is both shocking, disturbing and thoroughly wonderful. Metz's "perfect" life shattered when her handsome young husband died suddenly and she subsequently discovered his web of infidelity. How she unravelled all the secrets of his life and began to build a new life helped her redefine just what perfection really means.

What sparked the writing of this book?

When my husband died suddenly in January 2003, I was living in a small town north of New York City. My family and...

Ah yes, my odd voice

In the beginning, I could sing. No, really, I mean it. Not just carrying a tune, but being good enough to be in my schools "special chorus," standing on a stage in a special navy blazer and little white skirt. I had the same high, sweet soprano my mother and sister did, and then I hit sixteen and rebellion took over. I didn't want to be like either of them, not in sound or looks or desires. I wanted to be something different. Something more dramatic.
I changed my name from Carolyn to...