Rosetta and friends circa 1926
Another Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta,” a yet to be publish memoir. By Morgan St. James and Phylllice Bradner
Our mother Rosetta Lachman, born Rose Schwartz, almost made it to ninety-seven—she missed it by three and a half months. When she was in her mid-eighties, [......]
Category > Write On
Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta” – Part 2
Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta” – Part 1
Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta,” a yet to be published memoir. By Morgan St. James and Phylllice Bradner
Rosetta Lachman left this world just short of her ninety-seventh birthday. She was encouraged to write the first section of this “still in work” memoir when she was in her mid-eighties.
Rosett[......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 3
How do you portray an eighty-year-old woman who isn’t your garden variety grandmother? With flat narrative, or through vivid descriptions and attitudes. I chose to use an excerpt from one of my own books to illustrate this. We are introduced to Flossie Silver, a former vaudeville magician, in “A Cor[......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 2
In this example, author Joan Del Monte takes the reader to a dim maze of rooms in a county office and a sleazy diner. She paints with her words as though she was putting brush to canvas. You not only feel it, but see it. This is the type of description to strive for if you want the reader to be imme[......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 1
Narrative can be flat and as boring as a laundry list, or use many pieces of the scene to draw a word picture. The technique of painting a picture with words involves making it dimensional by using sounds, aromas, climate, emotions. That way, rather than a cardboard cutout, it gives the reader a fu[......]
Write Tight – Even if it Means Cutting Parts You Love
One of the lines commonly heard at writing seminars, critique groups and workshops is “Sometimes you have to kill your babies.” Often that is met by a collective, “What? I could never do that.” Babies refers not to cuddly little munchkins, but the parts of your manuscript that you love. The words th[......]
Make Cardboard Scenes Spring to Life
There is nothing more boring to read than a scene with no oomph. Can you feel the surroundings, does your heartbeat skip right along with that of the victim or the woman in love? Or have you created a set of paper dolls in a cardboard house?
If you can’t feel the scene, it’s a sure bet that your [......]
How to Keep Your Creative Spark Alive
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, outside forces are at work draining your creative spirit. After all, how can you write a romance scene when the toilet is overflowing and the water is lapping at your ankles? Or the air conditioning is broken and the temperature outside passed one hundred hours[......]
Tips for Writing a Book Review
Whether you’re a reader posting a review on a site like Amazon, or an author reviewing someone else’s work, here are a few tips that will make it a lot easier to write an informative review.
Many of the book reviews written these days are for online blogs, websites or bookstores like Amazon, Barnes [......]
Creating a Short Story Collection That “Adds Up”
A short story collection is harder to sell than a novel. That is one of the sad facts of life. One of the problems many publishers cite is while each story might be a gem in its own right, generally with a single author collection, there isn’t a theme…something that marries the stories together.
The[......]
