As I emerge from the holidays and sit down at my computer again, I find it takes a long time to even remember where I was when I left off. I had written the first few paragraphs of Chapter 7 but stalled out for some reason. As I reread those paragraphs I find I don’t… [Read More]
Work in Progress #13: Holidays and Writer’s Guilt
November 25, 2013 By
It never fails. Every year about mid-November, my writing grinds to a halt for about six weeks. Every year, I try not to let it happen and every year it does anyway. In my defense, Thanksgiving is when our children and their families try to make it home. And Christmas is the time when I… [Read More]
Work in Progress #12: Pesky Permissions Issues
November 12, 2013 By
When I wrote the first draft of The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton, I quoted with wild abandon from her autobiography, her letters, and her fiction. I wanted readers to hear as much of the story as possible in Edith’s own words. I also quoted (with equally wild abandon!) from letters written to Edith by… [Read More]
The Poison Lady
October 28, 2013 By
Writers keep strange company sometimes. This particular weekend, I was invited to join a yearly gathering of mystery writers called “Magna Cum Murder.” What could I, a writer of nonfiction for children, have to contribute to a conversation on mystery-writing? Did I do research? I was asked. Then I could participate on the “Research, Reality,… [Read More]
Work in Progress #11: Umbrella Research
October 8, 2013 By
There’s another aspect to research that I never realize the importance of until I stop doing it. I call it “Umbrella Research” because it covers everything I write from Esther Morris taking a stagecoach out to Wyoming in 1869 to Edith Wharton living in her two elegant homes in France just after World War I. … [Read More]
Letters vs. E-mails
September 23, 2013 By
I plan to stop writing biographies as soon as the necessary background research takes me from old letters stored in archives to e-mails stored goodness knows where. I get nightmares thinking about researching e-mails and, frankly, I just don’t think I’m cut out for it. So I’ll continue to write about people long-gone who tended… [Read More]
Work in Progress #10: Writing and Living
September 17, 2013 By
I finished chapter 6 at a week-long writer’s retreat where I was happily holed up in a cabin in Pennsylvania and had no distractions. There were no “real life” things to do like dishes and laundry and I was surrounded by thirteen other people, busily writing in their own cabins, which spurred me on. The… [Read More]
Work in Progress #9: Here to There
September 3, 2013 By
I finally finished my narrative outline for chapter 6 last week and sprinted through the actual writing of it. A confession: I cheated a bit! There were supposed to be two major “points of focus,” two major events, that were to form the basis for the chapter. When I actually did the writing, the first… [Read More]
Work in Progress #8: Through the Nitty Gritty to the Good Stuff
August 19, 2013 By
I’ve hit yet another “thin” place that I’ll have to thicken up with more research before I continue with my narrative outline of chapter 6. My subject took a “motor” trip from New York to San Francisco in 1915. It seemed like a bit of a lark that had nothing significant to do with the… [Read More]
Work in Progress #7: Writing Thin
August 5, 2013 By
As I was plugging ahead with the narrative outline for Chapter 6, I discovered I was “writing thin.” As thorough as I try to be with my research before sitting down to write, there are numerous spots along the way when my writing gets “thin” – it becomes hesitant, tentative, and starts to sound like… [Read More]