by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 13, 2008 | poetry |
I’m a writer. A writer who hasn’t yet published her novel. And I had a dream. Not I have a dream–which of course I do, to publish a novel. But I had a dream. In my dream, a literary agent told me my writing wasn’t good because it was...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 12, 2008 | craft of writing, stories |
If you want to see a writer move seamlessly from one scene to the next without any extra words, take a look at this passage from the “Big Bertha Stories” in Bobbie Ann Mason’s collection, Midnight Magic: Jeannette wanted to stop for ice cream. She...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 11, 2008 | memory, reading, the day |
“He said, ‘It still looks like an accident, the first one. Even from this distance, way outside the thing, how many days later, I’m standing here thinking it’s an accident.’ ‘Because it has to be.’ ‘It has to be,’...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 10, 2008 | first novels |
The short list for the Booker Prize was announced yesterday. Six novels were chosen from the long list of thirteen. Of the six, two are first novels! Only one was written by a woman. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet read any of these. The short list is as...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 9, 2008 | catching moments |
“A story,” Graham Greene wrote, “has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” The End of the Affair. The first sentence. Of course, then there was the...
