Writing and Reading Links
“What was I thinking? How had I not noticed that I’d gone past the ending? I’d written enough books to know the general shape of a story, so why was I unable to see this very obvious error? The short answer? I was treating my outline like law.”
Knowing when to type ‘The End’ :: Erin Bowman
“Your protagonist doesn’t need to be powerful. They don’t need to save the world. They don’t need to be smart or clever or determined or any other personality trait under the sun. They do need to try to get what they want.”
It’s hard to engage with a character who isn’t trying :: Nathan Bransford
Author Sarah McCraw Crow runs a series of midlife author interviews. This one is with Sharon Kurtzman who says, “If there’s a story burning inside you, there’s no time like the present, and it’s never too late. I am sixty-two years old, and my first book came out two months ago. Work on my new book is steadily progressing, and I already have an idea for the book after that one. I feel like I’m just getting started, and I’m excited about it.”
“I always kept writing”: A Midlife Author interview with Sharon Kurtzman :: An Unfinished Story
Love this!
Raising Readers: Educators Share Strategies to Help Reward Voracious Readers :: Publishers Weekly
“Montgomery had a knack for writing about love, in all its many forms. Love for family, even the members who are hardest to like. Love that fuels the pursuit of a passion, or keeps a secret dream alive. The intense kind of love you feel for a girlhood best friend (sworn through eternal oaths in a garden, of course). Or the hard-won self-love forged through every moment of failure and loneliness. Her heroines don’t just fall in love with men. They fall in love with life, with the world, with themselves in a new light.”
A Definitive Ranking of L.M. Montgomery Men :: Goodnight, Dear Void
These quick weekly posts from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, are always meaty, this time around I especially like the quote from Virginia Woolf.
3-2-1: How to gain a competitive edge, cultivating small productive habits, and a call to self-acceptance :: James Clear
Nice to see The Burning Season included in this Horn Book verse novel round up.
The Versatility of Verse Novels :: The Horn Book