• Fiction,  The Writing Life,  Writing,  writing tips

    Those Elusive Characters

    “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” Ernest Hemmingway If I had known how much fun it was going to be to write a rom-com with teens travelling across the country by train, I would have done this years ago. What a blast! But… as I was writing merrily along, I found I was running into more questions than I had answers. They were planning to stay in Quebec City overnight, which, the more I delved into the “situation” the more unrealistic the whole thing seemed, at least for a teen novel. It felt too “adult.” And, was the…

  • Creativity,  Fiction,  Reading,  Writing prompts,  Writing quotes

    READ, READ, READ

    “Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!” William Faulkner Great advice. There is something said for the process of osmosis. When I find myself in times of trauma or stress, and the words will not come, no matter how hard I try to make them appear, it is reading that saves me. Last fall, putting the keyboard aside, I decided to immerse myself in literature. I read for pleasure. I read books from my shelf that I had not gotten around to yet. I downloaded new novels on my e-reader and…