Barbara Gregorich's Blog, page 25

Sentences and Train Wrecks

It’s true that we can communicate through grunts, gestures, and a mere word here and there — but it’s the sentence that’s the basic unit of communication. Not the word. Not the paragraph. Not the chapter. Occasionally readers will marvel over a writer’s word choices. Rarely will readers think, “What a magnificent paragraph!” They will, however, be struck by the power, grace, beauty, or wit of individual sentences.

If you want to write well — to have readers enjoy the content and cadence of wh...

Coming Up Tails: The 99-Cent Ebook

I did not venture into self-publishing in order to sell my ebooks for 99 cents. Which does not mean that I sell my ebooks for $14.95, or even for $9.99. Instead, I price them between $2.99 and $4.99, which I consider a low cost for the reader and a fair income for the writer.

I do not churn out novels, I do not churn out nonfiction. (I used to churn butter on my aunt and uncle’s farm, but that’s another story.) My books are researched, written and rewritten, critiqued by peers, and rewritten....

Saving the Best for Last

In 2009 I became interested in self-publishing, and after exploring the options, I reprinted She’s on First as a self-published book in February 2010.

I was so pleased with the results (a new cover design [by Robin Koontz, who also designed the cover above] plus I restored a small scene that my editor had cut back in 1987) that I realized I would self-publish more books. My best-known book, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (Harcourt, 1993) proved undoable because in order to repr...

The Golden Age of Mystery: British Influence

Mysteries written during the Golden Age of Mystery, roughly 1920-1940, influenced all mystery readers and writers who lived then. And even now. I’m sure it influenced me, mainly because at one time I read hundreds of mysteries from that period, and these stories helped shape my idea of what constituted a satisfying mystery. (And perhaps even what didn’t.)

Agatha Christie epitomizes the Golden Age of mystery. Such is her influence (particularly in plotting, her forte) that she is still the bes...

Cinquains: Five Beats More

In a previous blog, Haiku: Five Syllables Too Few, I wrote about my mild frustrations trying to write haiku, which is so sparse, and I mentioned that I would continue the story of syllables and me at a later date. This is that date, or part of it (because the syllables go on).

When I was in college and first learned about haiku, I also learned that a cinquain was a five-line poem, or five-line stanza. So? I thought. Cinquains, sestets, septets, what’s with all the line counting? What I didn’...

Character Names: Associations

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey names his main antagonist Nurse Ratched. With its overtones of “wretched” and “ratchet,” the name has only negative connotations. The homonym “ratchet” is especially powerful when you realize that a ratchet, through ever-increasing tension or locking-in, allows motion in only one direction. This name gives me bad shivers!

Another great character name is Flem Snopes, the antagonist of Faulkner’s Hamlet trilogy (The Hamlet; The Town; The Mansion). T...

Jack Graney and the Broadcasting Dawn Era

In September of this year a research team of the National Baseball Hall of Fame will release a list of candidates for the 2016 Ford C. Frick Award, to be given to a broadcaster who worked during the Broadcasting Dawn Era (roughly 1930-55). The award is given for “major contributions to baseball.” During the month of September fans will get to vote for their favorite candidate on the Hall of Fame’s Facebook Page; in October a final list of ten will be given to the Ford Frick Award Committee, w...

Predicting the Future . . . Maybe

Writing a novel requires many decisions regarding subject matter, plot, character, motivation, scene, conflict, rising action, and more. Once I decided to write my first novel, back in the early ‘80s, I chose as my subject matter the first woman to play major league baseball. This is fiction.

I won’t bore you with all the decisions I had to make regarding plot, character and the like, but I will say that of all the decisions, there were two I felt had to be absolutely right — both in order f...

The House Without a Key: Four and Counting

The first time I read Earl Derr Biggers’ The House Without a Key, I was sixteen years old. Having just received my drivers license, I drove to the Warren Public Library, where my brother and I browsed through mystery novels. That was where we discovered six mystery novels by Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan. The books were in the “Local Authors” section because Biggers was born in Warren, Ohio, in 1884. We borrowed the first of the six books, each of them a well-worn hardback . . ....

Here a Bear, There a Bear, Everywhere a Bear: Part 2

Painting from the Chauvet Cave, France

My experience with bears in literature was not and is not limited to children’s literature. When I was in my teens I read Faulkner’s short story, “The Bear” part of the collection titled Go Down, Moses. Old Ben, the bear, is hunted by many of the white characters in Yoknapatawpha County. Isaac McCaslin, the hero of the story, doesn’t kill the bear when he has a chance: instead, he saves the dog that the bear would have killed. The bear is finally killed b...