How do you write a great ghost story?

October 24, 2011
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What kind of ghost story do you like? If you want to write a great ghost story, you need to understand the answer to this question. I know what I like: stories that fall into a sub-genre of ghost fiction often referred to as psychological ghost stories. In this kind of fiction, emphasis is on [...]

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Fiction is Good For You

October 3, 2011
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I teach a course called How to Read Like a Writer, and one of the first things I bring up in the class is that whether or not you’re a writer, if you learn to read like one you’ll enrich your reading experience. I compare this to art: I know nothing about the visual arts [...]

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Will e-readers end bookshelves?

September 6, 2011
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Packing for a flight to northern B.C. recently, I dithered over which books to put in the limited space of my carry-on luggage. I would need a few; it’s a seven-hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert to Haida Gwaii. Someone pointed out that what I needed was an e-reader. Hadn’t even thought of that but, [...]

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How To Be a Better Writer

July 29, 2011
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In Report on Business today, there’s a review of . I blog on “all things literary” so perhaps you’re surprised I’d comment here on a book published by Harvard Business Review Press. But I’ve added this book to my very long to-read list because I think the creativity of great business minds has relevance to [...]

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How To Write a Sex Scene – Part Two

July 8, 2011
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As a follow-up to my earlier post on What We Write About When We Write About Sex, I’m adding a few more points to consider: There are various awards for bad writing that’s funny and one of the most entertaining is the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Here’s a line from , by [...]

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What Do We Write About When We Write About Sex?

June 16, 2011
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Your characters want to have sex and you’re quaking at the thought. But fear not: At a recent writers conference, I sat in on a panel discussing the scenes that can give anyone severe writers block, and I took notes for you. Bloody Words 2011 panelists Mallory Wilkins, Tess Gerritsen, Denise Dietz and Caro Soles came [...]

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Writers Conferences: Should You Try a New Genre?

May 31, 2011
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When I’m trying to teach people how to read like a writer — a worthwhile skill for both writers and dedicated readers — I often suggest they read a book or ten outside their usual genre. Let’s say your bedside table is usually piled high with blue books; if you try a few pink or [...]

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Book Club Blunders

May 11, 2011
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Have you ever squirmed through an awkward moment in your book club? There’s an excellent example of such a moment in the movie. And while on the surface the book club scene shows the bad side of literary sharing, it also demonstrates one of the best things about reading. Phil (Steve Carell) sits in a [...]

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10 Novels With Notable Mothers

May 6, 2011

In honor of Mother’s Day, I browsed my bookshelf looking for novels with mothers of note. Here, listed in no particular order, are ten books I’ve enjoyed: , Margaret Laurence , Carol Shields , Toni Morrison , Sue Miller , Lionel Shriver , D.H. Lawrence , Sue Kaufman , Allison Pearson , Betty Jane Hegerat [...]

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A “Wilder” Version of Dorian Gray

April 27, 2011

Not so long ago, the literary world was in a tizzy over the censoring of new editions of Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. (For more on how a writer might view such literary cleansing, read this post.) Now, Harvard University Press is publishing a “new” version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian [...]

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