Writing a Book is Thrilling and Challenging

If it's got a story behind it--yours or your characters'--there are ways to approach your writing that go beyond learning craft. Not that craft isn't important. It's essential and every writer is always learning to master it. How to end a chapter so the reader can't wait to turn the page--how to learn to hold back information so the reader is compelled to keep reading--how to cut your writing to reveal its shape, how to break your reader's heart.  These are skills that you can learn that will move your writing out of the amateur zone so your words make your reader feel.

 

But what is the moment you've just overlooked in your rush to get your character from point A to point B? What little paragraph really needs to be a chapter?  What are the experiences your character needs to have in order to grow to that last sentence where everything you've taken her through finally makes sense? (Oh, and how will you ever write that sentence?) These aren't so much craft as conversations--big ones, that you can only have with someone who knows enough about these things to ask you the right questions---and let you think and talk and try out on the page. These are some of my favorite conversations to have on earth. 

 

My favorite book about books is A. Scott Berg's Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius. And over the years I have had students who became serious writers with major publishers, big-time agents. A few have returned to the workshop to write their chapters in class. If you want to engage your work on this level contact me and we can see whether individual coaching or joining a group of writers in a Books in Progress class will make your writing life more productive and satisfying.

​

​