Novel Writing on Edge - Development Notes From Algonkian Writer Conferences

Reprinted with permission from The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block  by Hillary Rettig A poll of writers regarding whether or not a writer should attend an MFA Program The question is often asked: are MFA programs worth it? Are they worth the tremendous outlay of dollars and time? Perhaps some more than others (see our note below) ... The following is what popular writer Hillary Rettig has to say on the issue. Meanwhile, the debate rages on. Need we say more? Yes, we need to say much more. _______ MFA programs promise training and mentoring that will improve your writing, but often don’t deliver. Tim Tomlinson, in the introduction to The Portable MFA in Creative Writing , writes, “Many people find it hard to believe that I passed through two years of an MFA program, four separate workshops, and received not so much as a comma back on a manuscript. But it’s true, and my case was not excep...

I see these lists all over Facebookon a regular basis so, just for fun, and hopefully to help you, I compiled my own list. I swore I wouldn’t, but a respectable period has passed, about three years, since that vow, so I think I can break it now.    Think less of me if you will. These are going to annoy you because most of them are deceptively simple. But, admit it, we often make life more complicated than it has to be so – trust me. You’re doing a lot of crap you shouldn’t and it’s unbelievably easy to fix in some cases. When someone doesn’t write well, I find it’s for two reasons: ego and ignorance. People who think they are amazing writers usually are not. Whenever someone tells me they’ve written an amazing story and they think the writing is really good, best seller material, I know eight times out of ten that I’m in for it as an editor. Ego. The ones who come from ignorance (untrained, unskilled) usually write stilted, often nonsensical (due to their use of a dictio...

C onversation With Author Pam Binder   Pam Binder is an Award Winning and New York Times Best Selling author. Pocket Books has published five of Pam's Fantasy Romance novels, including the New York Times best selling anthology, A SEASON IN THE HIGHLANDS. Pam is the President of Pacific Northwest Writers Association, an advisory board member for the Writer's Program at the University of Washington and an instructor in the University of Washington's Popular Fiction extension program. ______________ Under guided sessions, we learned how to make sure our pitches hit all the right notes. Our workshop leader was dedicated to not only helping us perfect our pitch, but acting as our mentor when we met with editors. - Pam Binder ______________ A New York Pitch Conference Review   NYC: How would you compare New York Pitch Conference to other writer conferences?   PB: This conference exceeded my expectations. It is a no-nonsense, no frills c...

In doing a clear out of books (always painful, but in a tiny house like mine, necessary), I came across Narrative Design by the fabulous Madison Smartt Bell . I studied with Madison at Goucher and still count him as mentor and friend (his wife, Elizabeth Spires , is a tremendous poet). They have both always been very supportive of me and their work has always inspired. So I took the appearance of this book as a kind of message to me from him, an answer to the question I'd been asking myself lately about the structure of a novel I'm almost finished writing. I'd even go so far as to say he was giving me instructions. Tucked between its pages I found a handout given to students in Madison's English 315 class. I can't remember exactly What English 315 was, surely a fiction workshop. The handout is called "Four Coordinates" and he describes it as "a set of measurements for evaluating technique in a work already composed. Even as such, it is too limit...

Classic and humorous portrayal of the ultimate ignorant narcissist who one day decided he's going to be a best selling author overnight. If necessary, he'll max out his credit cards!

By Christine Stewart Eighteen years ago, when I lived in LA, my best friend and roommate took a new kind of defense class for women. The kind with the man padded so thickly that he looked like the Michelin Man with a PacMan head. Or, as I thought of the men, an inflated Gort head (for the The Day The Earth Stood Still enthusiast). Julie would come home and alternately practice on me and show me some of the moves (after we lay down some pillows of course!). The first night, the instructor had taught them a mantra to keep the women focused on the process they were learning. It was: "Stop! Assess! 911!" You can imagine how often we leaped out from around corners and behind doors, yelling this and scaring the crap out of each other. Months. A few years ago, I created a handout that I started requiring my students to fill out, one that gave them an opportunity to similarly engage with their writing before it and they fell victim to ambivalence, inertia, or fear. Too ofte...

By Chris Stewart Part 1 Part 2 So now you've found the group that meets the criteria we've discussed, or started one, and you're ready to go. How do you run it? What are its rules of conduct? How do you convey your comments and suggestions to your fellow writers and poets in a respectful and helpful way so they don’t rip your head off? Running the Group It’s fairly simple. You: a) Agree to meet at one neutral, easily accessed location for each meeting OR rotate houses so everyone in the group hosts. b) Each week a different person in the group facilitates (the host if you are rotating houses). This means keeping time, keeping people on task, and keeping the peace. The latter means asking someone to be clearer and offer examples that illustrate their comment, or rephrasing what they’ve said in a nicer way and asking them if that’s what they mean. It usually doesn't mean breaking up a fight or trying to coax a crying writer out of the bathroom, but I've seen both. Br...

By Chris Stewart It seems every time I read someone's bio for whatever reason they are working on a novel. Everyone and their brother, mother, ex-boyfriend, homeopath, babysitter, work crush, realtor, and massage therapist are writers. It's enough to make you give up and go to law school. We all like to think we have original ideas that will catch an agent's or editor's attention, but do we really? (And how much originality is a good thing? Too much and you're not marketable. Not enough and your ms ends up in the trash. Perhaps that's a subject for another post....) To find out where you fit in, I encourage you to take a field trip to your local bookstore or library and check out the offerings in your genre. This is also a good exercise for those of you out there working on pitches for agents and editors for an upcoming conference (or to use in your query letters). Make sure you bring change for the copier (if you go to the library). You're going to copy som...

By Anthony S. Policastro If you think you spend too much time researching your novel, take a look at NY Times Bestselling author of fourteen novels, Jodi Picoult , who says she spends as much or more time researching a book than writing it. She even went to a remote Eskimo village with no running water in January, the coldest month, to research Eskimo culture for one of her characters. She shares her humorous and enlightening stories on how she came up with the ideas and how she researched three of her favorite novels in the free Writer’s Digest video webcast at the 2007 BookExpo America/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference. She is a great spe aker who talks rapidly and gets right to the point so make sure you have 49 minutes to do nothing because you will find that you cannot stop listening. Her best advice is to “write what you’re willing to learn” rather than write what you know. Definitely a must see. Jodi Picoult's latest novel