American Novelist
In the first installment of this piece, I described the first half of my writing process: Writing the first draft in longhand or on a typewriter Storing the completed draft in a drawer Editing the hand- or type-written manuscript with a blue pen Retyping the manuscript into a word processor Now, hold on to your … Read more
I’m writing this blog entry on my latest piece of low-tech equipment, an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. All told, I now have six typewriters: • The Lettera 32 • A Royal Quiet Deluxe • An Olympia SM9 Deluxe • An … Read more
Back in December, after having completed the first draft of a 550,000-word, 1,600-page novel, I took a nearly month-long vacation (my first in years). For one week of the vacation, my wife and I explored Quebec, stayed at at a ski resort, and went cross-country skiing, swimming and hot-tubbing every day. One afternoon in the … Read more
I love writing. I love sitting down with half a dozen fresh Blackwing 602 pencils, sharpening them to a razor edge and filling up pages of a notebook with the words of a new novel. I love sitting in front of my Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter and banging out pages. I love typing those pages … Read more
“At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.” — Virginia Woolf, diary, 3/22/1928 I stumbled upon this quotation earlier this week. What struck me most about it was that it expressed a thought I had back in February, when I turned 46 myself, although my version of the thought at the … Read more
When Henry David Thoreau went to the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. in 1845, he had his own, somewhat convoluted, reasons for doing so: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had … Read more
This is the very short story of a man and his pen. Around 1988, when I went to college to study philosophy, my forward-thinking uncle, Deal Waters, and my aunt, Laverne, knew that I wanted to become a writer and bought me a beautiful pen to encourage me. The pen was (and still is) a Montblanc … Read more
Today my interview on the Murders, Mysteries and Mayhem program (part of the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network) aired, and it was a terrific success. The show is hosted by the friendly, knowledgeable and engaging Stephen Campbell, and as I mentioned a few days ago, I was taken aback by how well-prepared he … Read more
I’d like to share some thoughts about index cards. My new writing, with the exception of blog entries of course, is happening on index cards. The fact that this is how my hero, Vladimir Nabokov, wrote all of his first drafts is purely coincidental. Over the years, I’ve used index cards as ways of encapsulating scenes … Read more