On Writing: Seven Tips from Writers Smarter Than Me

-->       This past weekend, I attended the 49^th annual Boskone, a sci-fi con with heavy literary leanings.  The event draws some heavy hitters from the genre. Last year’s guest of honor was Charles Stross with Charlaine Harris as a “special guest.” This year the top card was John Scalzi.

     On Sunday, I hit up a panel called “My Top Ten Tips for the Prospective Author.” At the table in the front of the room were Scalzi, his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, agent Joshua Bilmes, Baen editor Toni Weisskopf, and David G. Hartwell.

     The conversation evolved into war stories, but I eked out a few tidbits of wisdom. Added to a few more I collected, here’s my “Top Seven Tips for Writers Offered by People Smarter Than Me.”

Books for Writers: "The Art of Subtext"

    Charles Baxter, author of the 2007 self-help book The Art of Subtext, and I got off to an unnecessarily bad start on page seven. On that page, the opener to an otherwise fine chapter on staging, Baxter name-dropped Bernardo Atxaga's Okabakoak, a book that not only have I not read but, by Baxter's admission, would likely not be able to find.

“Written originally in the Basque language and published in 1988, then translated into Spanish by the author and subsequently translated from its Spanish version into English by Margaret Jull Acosta and published in this country by Pantheon in 1992, it was yanked out of print a few years later.” (Baxter, The Art of Subtext, pages 7-8)

Books for Writers: Setting Up "Housekeeping"

Since July 2010 I've been trying to get into the heads of two teenage girls, both characters in my would-be novel, Leaving Home. Thus, it was a relief to get some guidance from someone who'd already been there.

Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is a story of two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, and how they fare under the haphazard stewardship of their family. When the girls' mother, Helen, commits suicide, they are taken under the wing of their grandmother, Sylvia. When the grandmother dies, two bumbling great-aunts, Lily and Nona, step in. Finally, the great-aunts turn the kids over to Sylvie, the girls' mysterious and possibly insane aunt.