Alisa M. Libby's Blog, page 15

cambridge is for poets

A long overdue post: last weekend we wandered around Cambridge. We visited Grolier's Poetry Bookshop – poetry buffs reading this should go there RIGHT NOW. It's a small store packed with volumes, most of them arranged by author and others by region. And the display tables are very eye-catching. Tom is the poet, and came armed with a list of names to look for; I enjoyed browsing, reading little bits here and there.

And speaking of poets…if you love poetry and you're in Cambridge you really...

building a novel

I'm building a novel with paper and pen, and some sticks I found outside. And leaves turning brown at the edges, and pine needles.

It's difficult to know the right ingredients for your novel – like making up the recipe for a cake you've never baked, never tasted before.

All I can do is gather my sticks and my stones in a pile and rearrange them until they build something – supporting turrets and towers that hopefully won't collapse under harsh scrutiny.

Another ingredient: inspiration. (Bear...

book trailer – Nothing Like You

Watch this fantastic and funny book trailer from Lauren Strasnick – her debut novel, Nothing Like You, was just released in paperback!

Next Post

First, book giveaways! Courtesy of a fantastic book blog: http://orientaldesires.blogspot.com/2...

It's a rainy Wednesday and this week has already been a blur – needless to say, I haven't sat down with my revision since Sunday. I'm already feeling the distance, like a kink in my sustained concentration. It's difficult to get distracted from a revision (by a full time job or what have you) when it's at a stage that requires a lot of focus. However, ...

First, book giveaways! Courtesy of a fantastic book blog:...

First, book giveaways! Courtesy of a fantastic book blog: http://orientaldesires.blogspot.com/2...

It's a rainy Wednesday and this week has already been a blur – needless to say, I haven't sat down with my revision since Sunday. I'm already feeling the distance, like a kink in my sustained concentration. It's difficult to get distracted from a revision (by a full time job or what have you) when it's at a stage that requires a lot of focus. However, ...

more than one project at a time

As I write this, the oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies are baking in the oven. I needed a break from reading/revising my work-in-progress, and it is a gray and rainy day requiring cookies.

The cozying-up-with-my-new-outline plan hasn't really happened. Instead I was inspired to review my primary work in progress ("primary" because I've been working on it the longest and I think it's the farthest along) to submit to my writing group. They saw the opening pages recently and I've been encouraged...

plotting…fun, right?

I'm all a-bubble with excitement about cozying up with my notes for my newest project and trying to create an outline…and perhaps a special playlist (Beck, Soul Coughing, Green Day, something along those lines). But I worry that all this fluttering excitement will dissipate when I sit and realize the work involved – the terrible, horrible work and that no-good, very bad feeling of "I just don't know what's supposed to happen next." But that's why the art of baking cookies was invented...

point of view in fiction

My default point of view is first person. I think everyone has a default – a narrative they are most comfortable with as a starting point. I like the immediacy of first person, and the connection with the main character that it allows, both as writer and reader.

In college I wrote a lot of fiction with alternating points of view, all of them first person, but it's so hard to get it right and I often find it off-putting. The voices need to be so distinct in order to move from one to another...

it is a bit like this, sometimes…

The truth about being a writer, thanks to Little Britain:

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outlining a novel

I've long considered myself an outline-dependent writer. When I sit down to write, I generally have a bulleted list of things to cover in the first few chapters. Scenes I want to include, bits of dialogue, thoughts for the character to consider. If I'm deep into a historical novel I create extremely detailed outlines – but here I'm talking about the first stages of a new novel, a new draft.

However, lately I've been hearing about people who REALLY outline: an outline of every chapter...