“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ~ Anna Quindlen
Thought for the Day: "The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of… Continue reading INCREDIBLY PENELOPE — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: “Imagine tension like holding a reader’s feet under water; you don’t want to pull them down until they drown. You have to let them come up for air.”~ Lauren Magaziner ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: Sarah (Sally) Hamer has a wonderful post HERE on Writers in the Storm about How… Continue reading THE BLOSSOMING SUMMER — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: “Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be lovable, or they can be evil, but they'd better be compelling.”~ Po Bronson ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: I posted an article by Jan Fields… Continue reading QUEENIE IN SEVEN MOVES — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: “The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” ~Thomas Hardy ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: Every once in a while, I struggle through reading a book that has an unlikeable character at the center… Continue reading THE ACCIDENTAL STOWAWAY — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of." ~ Kurt Vonnegut ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: I think we all tend to focus on plot, but HERE… Continue reading CLARICE BEAN, SMILE — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing. ~ Richard North Patterson ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: Good posts… Continue reading ORRIS AND TIMBLE LOST AND FOUND & MERCY WATSON IS MISSING! — Reviews
Thought for the Day: "Writing is… being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page." ~ Mary Gaitskill ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: Getting… Continue reading THE LONG WAY AROUND — Review
Thought for the Day: "For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control… I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go." ~ Margaret Atwood ~… Continue reading FERRIS — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” ~ Octavia E. Butler ~ Gifts for My Writer Friends: Dialogue is hard to write… Continue reading THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN — Review & Giveaway
Thought for the Day: "'I don't know where to start,' one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the… Continue reading THE PUPPETS OF SPELHORST — Review
Rosi Hollinbeck 