Advice from Joy Fielding

I love this line that I wrote down from a workshop with Joy Fielding:

"Get to the interesting part of the story. Bring on the three bears!!!"

First Meetings

Thanks for your help around how to get two characters to meet for the first time. I have changed the first meeting between my two main characters so that one of them hurts himself and the other helps him. This gives the two boys a reason to talk, something to talk about, and a shared experience. It also allows me to take the two boys from a central location to one of the boy’s houses.
My lesson here was to take up the tensions. Why have two people just meet, when they can have a dramatic moment right?

The Writing Life

Annie Dillard wrote this passage in her book, The Writing Life:

You climb a long ladder until you can see over the roof, or over the clouds. You are writing a book. You watch your shod feet step on each round rung, one at a time; you do not hurry and do not rest. Your feet feel the steep ladder's balance; the long muscles in your thighs check its sway. you climb steadily, doing your job in the dark. When you reach the end, there is nothing more to climb. The sun hits you. The bright wideness surprises you: you had forgotten there was an end. You look back at the ladder's two feet on the distant grass, astonished.

Writing a Novel: Totems

Over the months, people have given me things to hold onto while I write my way into a novel. A skull of a small animal, smooth and white. A book about survival. A red tulip. A ticket to the ballet. A chai tea. A hand-knit shawl, blue. A Mickey Mouse watch. A spiral shell.