Nancy Stancill's Blog: Saving Texas blog , page 3
May 4, 2016
June 27, 2014
Gie it laldy, D.G.
What a nice review of Saving Texas from D.G. Martin, longtime North Carolinian, book reviewer and guest columnist for the Herald-Sun in Durham. Texas may be nearly nine times the size of Scotland, but perhaps they have much in common. Gie it laldy; do something with gusto. D.G.’s review is at http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/x1625941879/-Saving-Texas-and-forgetting-about-Scotland or at my website.
June 26, 2014
Gie it laldy, D.G.
June 27, 2014
What a nice review of Saving Texas from D.G. Martin, longtime North Carolinian, book reviewer and guest columnist for the Herald-Sun in Durham. Texas may be nearly nine times the size of Scotland, but perhaps they have much in common. Gie it laldy; do something with gusto. D.G.’s review is here or here.
The post Gie it laldy, D.G. appeared first on Nancy Stancill.
June 2, 2014
Scribble scribble scribble…
Nancy’s blog is on hiatus for the summer.
June 1, 2014
Scribble scribble
June 2, 2014
Nancy’s blog is on hiatus for the summer.
The post Scribble scribble appeared first on Nancy Stancill.
May 26, 2014
Happy Memorial Day
May 25, 2014
Happy Memorial Day!
May 26, 2014
Nancy’s blog is on break for Memorial Day.
The post Happy Memorial Day! appeared first on Nancy Stancill.
May 19, 2014
When ‘Cut back the detail’ is the wrong advice
In a New York Times piece published last week, writer Pamela Erens gleefully recounted cutting stray words, sentences and even bigger chunks out of her novels. In a column entitled The Joys of Trimming, the writer boasted of her crowning achievement: slashing the second half of a book. Her novel went from a fat 105,000 words to a streamlined 60,000 words, more a novella than a novel. She said she barely missed the material she’d cut, though she worked on the book for years.
Her funny but wise column made me reflect on my own writing issues, which usually are just the opposite. As a journalist for thirty-plus years, I had honed my writing to austere sentences, unadorned paragraphs and stories that steadily shrank as papers became smaller and tighter. When I started writing my novel, Saving Texas, in 2010, I had to learn to write a whole new way. Instead of cutting out description and going light on scene setting, as journalists are admonished to do these days, I worked hard to put more color and detail in.
I’m still not good at this, perhaps because I fear that adding detail and length will lose readers. But I understand what my mentors mean when they say my first drafts are thin. It’s as though I’m writing an outline and I always need to go back and fill it in.
Most of the advice you read about revising your work focuses on cutting, not adding. Erens concludes that judicious cutting increases the vitality, precision and the emotional heart of most writing. She’s right. But I need to keep adding the seasoning and spice until I get just the right mix of ingredients for a tasty dish.
May 18, 2014
When ‘Cut back on the detail’ is the wrong advice
May 19, 2014
In a New York Times piece published last week, writer Pamela Erens gleefully recounted cutting stray words, sentences and even bigger chunks out of her novels. In a column entitled The Joys of Trimming, the writer boasted of her crowning achievement: slashing the second half of a book. Her novel went from a fat 105,000 words to a streamlined 60,000 words, more a novella than a novel. She said she barely missed the material she’d cut, though she worked on the book for years.
Her funny but wise column made me reflect on my own writing issues, which usually are just the opposite. As a journalist for thirty-plus years, I had honed my writing to austere sentences, unadorned paragraphs and stories that steadily shrank as papers became smaller and tighter. When I started writing my novel, Saving Texas, in 2010, I had to learn to write a whole new way. Instead of cutting out description and going light on scene setting, as journalists are admonished to do these days, I worked hard to put more color and detail in.
I’m still not good at this, perhaps because I fear that adding detail and length will lose readers. But I understand what my mentors mean when they say my first drafts are thin. It’s as though I’m writing an outline and I always need to go back and fill it in.
Most of the advice you read about revising your work focuses on cutting, not adding. Erens concludes that judicious cutting increases the vitality, precision and the emotional heart of most writing. She’s right. But I need to keep adding the seasoning and spice until I get just the right mix of ingredients for a tasty dish.
The post When ‘Cut back on the detail’ is the wrong advice appeared first on Nancy Stancill.
May 12, 2014
Writing deadlines: Don’t they ever get easier?
I woke up today with a familiar feeling of dread. My last and most difficult deadline of the spring looms in three days. I’ll have to hand over a significant chunk of work on my new novel to my mentor at a master’s program in creative writing. I’ll be writing, fretting, revising, worrying, staring into space and writing some more.
It’s not that the monthly deadlines in my program at the University of Tampa are impossibly onerous or that my wonderful mentor is a strict taskmaster. Writing is hard and lonely, and deadlines never wait for inspiration. Sometimes you just have to inch forward with clunky sentences, bad paragraphs and indigestible pages. Then you can make them better.
Deadlines shouldn’t be a problem for me after thirty-plus years in the newspaper business. Daily deadlines and weekly deadlines were a way of life and I can’t remember missing one, or at least an important one. But in my stress-filled dreams, I’m always busting deadlines and one of my toughest editors is shaking a finger and publicly shaming me.
This deadline is probably harder because it’s the last of the semester. I’ll get a short break afterwards and treat myself to a movie, or a book that’s not required reading. I’ll meet the deadline somehow and when it’s over, I’ll feel strung out and breathless, like I’ve run a long, hard race.
Saving Texas blog
Saving Texas, my first novel, was published in October 2013. I've learned a lot while writing it, getting it published and doing the things a first-time author does. I want to share highlights of thes ...more
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