History, Real Life and Faith
100 years ago on June 28 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was murdered in Sarajevo, launching into motion events that led to The Great War. Everything about our modern world can, perhaps, be tied back to the assassination of both Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his beloved morganic wife Sophia. Did it have to happen? Does it matter? It happened, the Great…
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I’m nearing the end of my novel rewrite and I’m spending a lot of time pruning words from my text. It’s made me consider how often I, among others, use too many words–whether in writing or speaking. My husband occasionally complains that I feel compelled to explain everything. “It’s not enough you tell the children to do something, you then…
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Seven summers ago, I stopped in to visit my friend Jane for a lovely afternoon in her charming screened-in Connecticut porch. We discussed genocide. That had not been the plan when I arranged to visit, but when I walked into the porch, I stopped beside a stack of books. I knew the titles, books like these: Left to Tell: Discovering…
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Seven summers ago, I stopped in to visit my friend Jane for a lovely afternoon in her charming screened-in Connecticut porch. We discussed genocide. That had not been the plan when I arranged to visit, but when I walked into the porch, I stopped beside a stack of books. I knew the titles, books like these: Left to Tell: Discovering…
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I’m in the middle of rewriting a novel and have come to the hardest part–I’m recasting the middle. Traditionally, novels have to work extra hard in their center sections. The beginning sets the story line, gets the hero into trouble and starts the hero on the road to fulfillment, or at least an ending. The ending of the novel, of course,…
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Killing my darlings is the order of the day. The term, “killing my darlings,” has been attributed to a number of writers from William Faulkner to Allen Ginsburg, but it boils down to writers need to be ruthless in their personal editing. They need to really think about lines they love and consider getting rid of them for the sake…
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