The 7am Novelist

Writers Steve Almond and Kate Racculia discuss observer vs. participant characters, being too nice to your character, the role of the narrator, and the dreaded Author/Narrator/Character merge.

Steve Almond of a dozen books, including “Candyfreak” and “Against Football,” which were NYT Bestsellers for about four seconds. His new novel, All the Secrets of the World, has been optioned by 20th Century Fox. He’s the recipient of an NEA grant for 2022 and teaches at Harvard and Wesleyan. His work has been published in the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the New York Times Magazine.

Kate Racculia is a novelist living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her third novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2019. She is currently a communications writer in the development office at Lehigh University and sings in the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, the oldest Bach choir in America.

Here is Steve Almond’s essay on narrators: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/magazine/once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-person-who-said-once-upon-a-time.html

And Frederick Reiken’s essay “The Author-Narrator-Character Merge: Why Many First-Time Novelists Wind up with Flat, Uninteresting Protagonists” can be found here if you’re an AWP member (sorry if not!): https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_chronicle_issues/february_2005

Reiken’s essay is also part of this excellent collection of craft essays: https://bookshop.org/books/a-kite-in-the-wind-fiction-writers-on-their-craft/9781595340726

Novel’s mentioned during our discussion: The Great Gatsby, James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, and The Royal Physician’s Visit by Per Olov Enqvist

And check out Brandon Taylor’s amazing SubStack Channel sweater weather where he discusses the narrator voice musings about his characters internal world (something that Taylor always resisted): https://blgtylr.substack.com/p/the-underdark-a-modified-craftalk

Ilan Mochari is the author of the acclaimed debut novel Zinsky the Obscure which earned rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. Boston’s NPR station named it one of 10 “Good Reads for the Summer.” Ilan’s short stories, poems, and essays have been widely published, appearing or forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Salamander, Solstice, Hobart, Juked, J Journal, Slate, Valparaiso Fiction Review and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes as well as the Derringer Award, and he is the recipient of a Literature Artist Fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council.

Marjan Kamali is the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop , a national bestseller, and Together Tea , a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. Kamali’s novels are published in translation in more than 20 languages. Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kamali holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from New York University. She currently teaches creative writing at GrubStreet. She is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.

Author and educator Dariel Suarez talks about the larger social and publishing concerns that could be holding you back, while trying to refocus yourself on the work in front of you.

And apparently the great Jami Attenberg was writing about the exact same idea today! Here’s Jami’s take:

Dariel Suarez is the Cuban-born author of the novel The Playwright’s House and the story collection A Kind of Solitude, winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Collection of Short Stories. He is an inaugural City of Boston Artist Fellow and the Education Director at GrubStreet. Dariel’s writing has received the First Lady Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize and has appeared in Best American Essays, The Threepenny Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Caribbean Writer, among others. He resides in the Boston area with his wife and daughter.  

Today we hear from writers Tracey Palmer and Belle Brett about how they keep writing, keep their love for their projects, and how “work” is more than just generating pages

Tracey Palmer is professional writer and editor, and founder of Palmer Communications. She completed Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program in 2016 and serves as co-editor and writer for the group’s blog, Dead Darlings. She’s won residencies at the Salty Quill Writers’ Retreat in Maine and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The Texas League of Writers named her first, unpublished novel a finalist in its manuscript competition. Her second novel, ALIVE DAY, is a character-driven, literary drama that gives voice to the often-untold story of female veterans in America. 

Belle Brett is a graduate of Grub Street’s first Novel Incubator class. Her first book Gina in the Floating World, a gritty, and sexy coming-of-age novel set in 1981 Tokyo, was called by Kirkus reviews “a sharply observed and unforgettable debut.” It was chosen as a Sarton Book Awards finalist in contemporary fiction and a Benjamin Franklin Awards silver medalist in best new voice in fiction. When not writing or making art, Belle can be found working on her blog, “Our Slow Downsizing Story: Savoring the Journey Bit by Bit.” 

How to get yourself in the right place to write, and how to use what you already have on the page to find your way forward, with authors Grace Talusan and Jessica Keener.

Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. Her writing has been supported by the NEA, the Fulbright, US Artists, the Brother Thomas Fund, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.  

Jessica Keener's latest novel, Strangers in Budapest, was an Indie Next pick, a "best new book” selection by Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Review of Books, January Magazine, Real Simple, and a Southern Independent Bookstore Association (SIBA) bestseller. Her debut novel, Night Swim, was a national bestseller, followed by Women in Bed, her collection of award-winning stories. She has taught writing at Brown University, Boston University, Grub Street, and the Story Summit, and is currently completing a new novel. An anniversary edition of Night Swim is forthcoming in February 2023. 

And here are some of the things we talked about.

First, Nancy Krusoe’s method of “burrowing” which she discusses in her contributor’s notes for her story “Landscape and Dream” in The Best American Short Stories 1994:

Secondly, Douglas Bauer’s The Stuff of Fiction: Advice on Craft

Also the idea from Virginia Woolf of “gathering in,” most helpful for revision.

And finally, one of our marvelous webinar participants (Allison Grinberg-Funes) shared a writing software tool called “focusmate”: “It's a software where you can schedule 25 or 50 minute sessions and be on video with someone. At the beginning, you say what you're working on, then you get to work! You stay in the seat. At the end of the time period, you tell the person how much you accomplished. It's free for 3 sessions a week. More than that is $5/mo and it's honestly worth it in my opinion!”

Join us as we explore other ways to get writing on the page, plan only what you need, and keep you creative.

Jane Roper

Jane Roper is the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins, and a novel, Eden Lake. Her new novel, The Society of Shame, will be published by Anchor Books in April, 2023. Jane’s writing has appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti, Writers’ Digest and elsewhere. She is also the producer and on-air host of “The Zeitgeist,” on A Mighty Blaze, where she interviews authors whose books tackle of-the-moment topics like gender, race, class, culture, ability, technology and health. 

Books mentioned: From Where You Dream by Robert Olin Butler, particularly the chapter “A Writer Prepares”

Today our guests discuss why they consider themselves “plotters,” how they go about plotting their books, how they try to keep it loose and easy and discover new material and insight as they go, and methods for making the process visual and physical.

Anjali Mitter Duva

Anjali Mitter Duva is an Indian American writer, editor, and dancer who was raised in France. She is he author of FAINT PROMISE OF RAIN, an historical novel set in 16th century India and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Anjali has been a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship finalist, and is an instructor at Grub Street. She co-founded the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly literary reading series, and serves as Fiction Co-Editor for Solstice Literary Magazine. She is also a longtime student of kathak, the classical storytelling dance featured in her books, and is the co-founder and former executive director of a non-profit organization dedicated to this art form. 

Virginia Pye

Virginia Pye’s story collection Shelf Life of Happiness won the 2019 IPPY Gold Medal for Short Fiction and her two historical novels set in China, Dreams of the Red Phoenix and River of Dust, also received literary awards. She is Fiction Editor of Pangyrus and a board member of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter. She has taught writing at NYU, UPenn, and GrubStreet. Virginia is the mother of two grown children and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their miniature poodle, Honey. She has a new novel coming out in 2023, tentatively titled The Book Lovers, from Regal House.

Other mentions:

Scrivener, the manuscript planning software

And Lisa Cron’s Story Genius

Today’s guests talk about writing by the seat of your pants (ie., how to float on pure creativity and still come up with a book)

Lissa Franz

Lissa Franz holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University and is a graduate of the Grub Street Novel Incubator program. She is the 2015 recipient of the PEN New England Discovery award for fiction. Her latest novel, A SHORT HISTORY OF THE AMERICANS, is out with her agent while she pants her way through a contemporary novel about her favorite topic: women who thrive on extraordinary risk.

Bessie Heitkamp

Bessie is a recent graduate of the Novel Incubator program and cofounder of Readerly, a new Goodreads alternative. She’s published essays in The Chattahoochee Review and 1966 Journal among others, and is currently pantsing her way through her first novel.

Also noted during episode:

Scrivener, to help you organize your writing.

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

And organizations to help you find community:

Grubstreet.org in Boston

And Londonwriterssalon.com

Kelly J. Ford is the author of Real Bad Things and Cottonmouths, named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” from the Los Angeles Times. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley. She lives in Vermont with her wife, cat, and dog.

Also mentioned on podcast: https://Pacemaker.Press for setting goals and scheduling and https://bookshop.org/shop/the7amnovelist for my fave craft books and the most recent books by our guest.