Will Weaver's Blog

Reader-Oriented Writing

Clumsy title for a late career epiphany! But it has taken me a dozen novels with big and small publishers to truly understand a simple matter. Fiction must be written with the reader foremost in mind. Not the characters. Not the market. Not even one’s self. It’s the reader whose needs must always be front […]

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Power & Light (newspaper article)

BEMIDJI PIONEER NOVEMBER 18, 2023 WILL WEAVER’S NEW NOVEL IS A DEEPLY PERSONAL STORY By Dennis Doeden Will Weaver’s great aunt went to her grave with no justice from an assault that shattered her life. In his newly published novel, “Power & Light,” Weaver attempts to right that wrong.“I don’t know if justice can be […]

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Writing Your Artist Statement

If you’re applying for writing grants and prizes, you’re often required to write an Artist Statement. It’s usually accompanied by your Bio and and a Work Sample. The latter two are easy. The first one can be agonizing. Essentially it asks you to explain who you are in relation to your art. Why your particular […]

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The Test of Good Writing

“I have always believed in the kindness of strangers,” Tennessee Williams wrote. Me? I have always believed that really good writing will out. Will find its way to publication. We know that cream rises to the top of the jar. So does really good prose. Whatever your level–beginner, emerging, or a veteran writing making a […]

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To Blurb or Not To Blurb

Actually, there’s no question. At least not to me. If a book-to-be comes at me from someone I know, or via the friend-of-friend, or the infinite interconnections of the writing and reading community, and it has at least some promise, I’ll try to help . Why wouldn’t I? Sad to say, I might be an […]

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Purposeful Viewing/Reading

If you wanna be a writer you gotta be a reader. We likely all agree on that. But what kind of reader? It’s fun when a novel totally engages us. We get lost in it. It becomes, as John Champlin Gardner described, a “vivid and continuous and dream.’  We float along on the story. Let […]

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Books for (Lost) Boys

Several authors use the title “Lost Boys,”  including Orson Scott Card and crime writer Faye Kellerman. But I want to talk about real lost boys–male tweens and teens in America who don’t read. Many grew up in book-free homes where the habit of reading was missing entirely. Others “hate” reading, though that’s often from fear […]

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Tolkien, Kerouac, and You

I wrote a full draft of my my most successful novel in three weeks.  However, every  novel is its own puzzle to solve, and it’s usually a mistake to hark back to the previous book (in this case, Memory Boy) when writing a new one. There are two very general approaches to writing a novel: […]

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Another Good Question About Your Novel

I often get letters from former writing students, or friends of friends who are working on a novel, or complete strangers who have read one of my books and are working on one of their own. Usually they have a central question about their writing project that they’re hung up on. I try to say […]

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Minding the (Reading) Gap

(Glasshouse Images/Alamy Photos) I recently kicked the hornet’s nest on Twitter.  A Minnesota author I know posted a cover photo of her forthcoming young adult novel. I tweeted back, “Excellent!” Meaning, “Congrats. I hope it does well,” etc. All the stuff there’s no space to explain on Twitter. I also added, “But how can we […]

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