You can travel the world on the internet, but you can only go so far. About nine months into writing the first draft of my WWI novel, including a 20,000-word false start, I realized that I needed to see and feel the landscapes that existed only in my imagination. Books and online research were my […]
Eighteen Minutes
Chances are, you’ve heard of the Titanic. On April 15, 1912, the great British transatlantic steamer struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. More than 1,500 souls lost their lives in that calamity, which has been memorialized in popular culture ever since. There are books, […]
A Pigeon Waddles into a Scene
One of my favorite pieces of writing advice comes from Ann Lamott in Bird by Bird. First drafts are incredibly hard to write and often lousy. She is more blunt: For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at […]
Why Write About World War I?
Inspiration comes when you least expect it. Seven years ago, when I decided to write a novel, I had no idea what it would be about. After a decade of wrestling with short stories, I finally realized that I prefer to read long fiction. So why struggle to write a form that doesn’t really engage […]