Linda K. Sienkiewicz's Blog, page 44
June 20, 2016
Why Rush to Publish?
You wrote a book!
You want it published! Now!
Congratulations!I’ve felt that same excitement. However, I urge you to resist that impulse to self-publishright away.
I know you’re excited and, trust me, I know time is the downsideoftraditional publishing. It can take years. First you have toqueryagents. That can take a year or more of submitting your manuscript and waiting for responses. Then, when you get an agent, shemay requestedits before she queries publishers and editors. Then you both w...
June 16, 2016
What, Why, How: Novelist Lisa Peers
WHAT?
I’m editing the second draft of my second novel, currently titled Desired Effect. The working log line is, “When a San Francisco actress lands her first film role as the often naked love interest of a flawlessly handsome momma’s boy, it sparks a romance of mythic proportions.” While I’m grateful to be this far along after a long (really long) writing process, working on this draft should be a lot more fun than it is right now.
WHY?
I greatly prefer editing to writing. Filling bla...
June 14, 2016
Illustrated Reading from In the Context of Love
A new reading / video from IN THE CONTEXT OF LOVE! In this illustrated video reading, Angelica imagineswhat her birthfather is doing and what he looks like.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the award-winning author ofIn the Context of Love: a new contemporary fiction about love, lust, and family secrets.
Angelica Schirrick had always suspected there was something deeply disturbing about her family, but the truth was more than she bargained for.
“Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s powerful and richly detail...
June 9, 2016
What, Why, How: Non-fiction Writer Melissa Grunow
WHAT?
I write personal essays and memoir. My essays have won prizes, such as two years in a row from Detroit Working Writers, and I was nominated for a Pushcart in 2015.
My first book, Realizing River City, is an exploration of love, compassion, loss, and ultimately redemption, as it mimics the ebbs and flows of a river to navigate the impact of past relationships on the development of one’s sense of self. It’s been described by Amina Cain, author of I Go to Some Hollow, as “A deeply rich me...
June 6, 2016
Dialogue Tags – Don’t Get Crazy
I’ll never forget the time I read a line of dialogue of in a Nancy Drew book that ended…Nancypontificated.I laughed out loud. Everyone knows Nancy Drew has strongopinions. She’s always pontificating. Why would the author need to interject herself into the dialogue with such a dialogue tag as pontificated?! Said would have easily done the job, and I could have continued reading without smirking.
I’ve seen a fewlong lists of dialogue tags on Pinterest being circulated on boards for writers, su...
June 2, 2016
What, Why, How: Writer Laura Rueckert
WHAT?
I write young adult science fiction and fantasy, sometimes paranormal. Basically, something in my story has to be weird. I’m still celebrating getting an agent this year for my YA Fantasy with Vietnamese and Maori-inspired elements, in which a princess agrees to marry a foreign king in order to search for her sister’s assassin. Sound interesting? You can find more details here.
Right now, I’m working (incredibly slowly, see “HOW”) on a YA sci-fi manuscript about a pastor-in-training an...
May 30, 2016
Why We Write
“Fiction is supposed to be, forgive me, less shitty than life. Better than life. It is supposed to make more sense than life. That’s one of the reasons we read, one of the reasons we write. We want tofeel we are forgiven and that there is hope…. Redemption is and always has been a staple of American fiction.” ~Author Molly Giles, in Odds on Ends, “The Writer’s Chronicle”
When I posed the question “Why do you write” on Twitter, Facebook and this blog, reasons similar to the one above showed u...
May 26, 2016
What, Why, How: Nancy Owen Nelson
WHAT?
For years I wrote poetry here and there, publishing one or two in journals and anthologies. My main focus was academic writing, so I spent much of my time in research.
In 1995, I was asked to edit a collection of essays by women in the personal voice, called “feminist literary criticism.” The resulting book, Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life (UNT Press, 1996) was such a freeing experience for me and, I believe, for the women who submitted essays. We were...
May 23, 2016
What To See in Singapore Beyond Big Spiders
First of all, let me say the spiders in Singapore are big. Really big. I spottedthis one along the path at the Botanical Gardens. I suggestedDon put his hand behind it as a size reference — he declined. The spider’s body was nearly2 inches.
The flowers are really big, too. These gorgeous orchids are from the Botanical Garden.
The architecture in Singapore is stunning and innovative, especially the integration of plants andbuildings in the form ofgreen roofs, vertical greenery and garde...
May 20, 2016
2016 Eric Hoffer Finalist – In the Context of Love
In the Context of Love is a Finalist in the 2016 Eric Hoffer Awards for Commercial Fiction!
Naturally, the first thing the husband asks me, after saying congratulations, is “Who’s Eric Hoffer?”
“Um… He’s a writer. A philosopher.” I was too busy dancing aroundto remember details.
He was actually a fascinating guy, an anti-intellectual, the kind you could sit and chew the fat with, but who would blow your mind away with his insights.
“Hoffer practiced what one might call ‘outsider philosophy.’...
