Tag Archives: Junot Diaz

Jumping Genres

A charming story: A Pulitzer Prize-winning author is in a car in Miami when a little girl riding with him becomes restless and asks for a story. The writer obliges, weaving a cute tale that entrances the girl and spurs … Continue reading

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Coffee, Chaos

“Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, he must look foolish to the crowd.”    The I Ching The I Ching has given us many gems of wisdom: The symbol for … Continue reading

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Reading Well

“I believe very, very deeply in books. I think they’re the only thing we have that can get us to radically re-understand our society. I don’t think movies can. I don’t think a song can. But a book can.” Sebastian … Continue reading

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Compassionate Critiquing

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” Jean-Jacques Rousseau Just the other day a friend of mine asked me to help her fine-tune some comments she was planning to give a fellow writer during a critique session. … Continue reading

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Reframing Rocks

Reframing — what a helpful tool! Whether you are struggling with a tough writing patch or feeling helpless and defeated about submitting your novel or story to agents and editors, reframing can set you on the path to success. Reframing … Continue reading

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Place Power

“Fiction depends on its life for place.” “Fiction is properly at work in the here and now.” Eudora Welty “The work of a novelist is making fake biography.” Philip Roth “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know … Continue reading

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Something Borrowed

“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” When Daniel James Brown began his book about the 1936 U.S. Olympic rowing team, he took as his model Laura Hillenbrand, author of the wonderful bestsellers, Unbroken and Seabiscuit: “When I first … Continue reading

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Book Mates

Amazing, isn’t it, where inspiration can come from? Just recently, I read a book in a completely different time period and genre from the YA novel that I’m writing — in many ways they couldn’t have been more different. And … Continue reading

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Generous Gifts

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Have you ever noticed the sometimes, when you’re really involved with a piece of writing and you put it aside for a bit and pick up something totally … Continue reading

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Slow Going

Junot Diaz author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, just published a new short-story collection called This Is How You Lose Her. It took Junot eleven years to write Oscar Wao and this new … Continue reading

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