Barbara Gregorich's Blog, page 6

What to Write Next

After finishing a book (or article), every writer asks herself, “What should I write next?” I have certainly asked myself that question many, many times (because I’ve finished many, many books). And, usually, I have a lot of ideas to choose from. Some of the ideas are for fiction, some nonfiction. Some are for adult books, some for children’s books. I have what one might call a wealth of topics to choose from.

Right now, however, I have fewer than usual to choose from, and I think that’s beca...

Brief History of the Ballad

In a previous blog I mentioned that I decided to write a middle grades book in ballad form — and that I had never written in the ballad form before.

As a kid I was exposed to ballads because I loved all things cowboy (cattle drives, camping out, horses, ten-gallon hats, you name it.) I especially loved to sing songs such as “The Streets of Laredo”and “The Strawberry Roan.” They are ballads, but I didn’t know that back them.

What the ballads I loved had in common was that they were songs ab...

The Wisdom Within: Helping with a Book

Many writers enjoy helping other people learn how to write, and/or how to publish. I’m one of those. Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of people learn how to organize their thoughts, how to write better, and how to go about writing a book and submitting it for publication.

My help has been extended to hundreds of people because for thirty years or more I taught writing classes and publishing classes at various libraries throughout northern Illinois. One of my favorite of these classes was t...

Tightening a Manuscript

Part of being a professional writer is knowing how to shorten a manuscript, be it fiction or nonfiction, for children or adults.

There are two main reasons that manuscripts need to be shortened. One of these is the economics of publishing, in which paper, ink, and binding all cost money. Magazine editors and book editors all have limitations on space or size, which means that writers have to conform their manuscript to that space or size.

The second is that most writers “write long” rather...

The Long Haul

After I finish the first draft of a book, I know that I will be rewriting it. Some writers call these steps (because there are usually several rewrites) revisions instead of rewrites. I don’t think it matters what they’re called so much as it matters how thoroughly they’re done.

Many writers hate rewriting so much that they make their rewrites nothing more than a quick swipe at the surface. They put in what are called cosmetic changes: a word here, a punctuation mark there. All minor stuf...

The Pleasure of E-readers

E-readers have been around since 2004, when Sony introduced the
Sony Reader. That was followed in 2007 by the Kindle, released by Amazon, and then in 2009 by the Nook, released by Barnes and Noble.

I have been around a lot longer than that, and since I started reading books at the age of five, I have read far, far more books in “physical book” format than in digital format. In fact, because I love reading books so much, I have, up until this year, resisted e-readers of all kinds.

But then c...

Two First Novels

I love to read, fiction in particular, but also nonfiction. Lately I’ve taken to posting photos of my next “batch” of reading on social media. Each batch is either three, four, or five books, one of which is nonfiction, the rest fiction. There’s no particular pattern to how I create the batches. I just go over to the books-I-intend-to-read shelf and start choosing. 

I will say that sometimes nonfiction books get out of hand, IMHO, and weigh in at 600, 700, 800, or more pages. When that’s the ...

The F Words: Outtakes

The average person might not realize that sometimes writers have outtakes. 

Technically speaking, an outtake is a scene filmed for a movie but not included in the final version. When I wrote and produced educational filmstrips, I had many, many photo outtakes: photos that were shot but ended up not being used. 

It was only when writing Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, however, that I realized books also had outtakes. In Women at Play, I wrote many sidebars for which there was...

Assonance

Rhyme is a literary device that attracts reader and listener attention. Rhyme is particularly satisfying to children, but adults also like it. Words that rhyme share the same vowel sound and the same ending-consonant sound: boat/goat/coat. The rhyming of two unexpected words makes us sit up and take notice. The rhyming of two expected words might make us laugh because we anticipated the rhyme — or might make us cringe because the rhyme was predictable.

Assonance is more subtle than rhyme, cal...

The F Words: The Fear of F

In an earlier blog I wrote about The Power of F. But now I want to write about a subject that strikes me as very sad: the fear of F.

Back in 2020, after City of Light offered me a publishing contract for The F Words, my editor and I discussed the title. Our first and deepest reaction to the title was that it was perfect for the story. It tied into the drama of the first scene and it tied into the inciting incident. After that it reflected both the struggles and the joy that Cole Renner, the m...