I read all book reviews, always grateful for any reader who takes the trouble to comment. I might not like all the comments, but I find it incredibly inspiring and often concretely helpful to see what readers find appealing or what doesn't work in my writing. I learn from these reviews. So to all of you who review books, please know how much it means to authors to get such feedback.
I often draw on bits and pieces of persons I have known when I build my characters. I also have incorporated some of the real life stories I have heard from my mother and other relatives into my writing. I draw on my own experiences in filling out story lines and emotions.
A genre that in my opinion should be incorporated far more often is historical fiction. Appealing historical fiction can provide a marvelous door into history, providing the immediate and real-life immersion into a particular era or place in history that textbooks cannot offer. Furthermore, historical fiction written for middle school students as well as young adults that deals with some of the more horrific events in our history can introduce some of these challenging and complex subjects in such a way that young readers can learn about them without being overwhelmed.
Only three? Well, if I must choose, I would invite Ursula LeGuin, Gillian Bradshaw, and Barack Obama. LeGuin's writing has bewitched me for many years. It is timeless and profoundly moving. She manages to combine an anthropological background with forward thinking and insightful visions of human possibilities and stunning lyrical writing. Gillian Bradshaw is one of the best writers of historical fiction bar none; her book The Sand Reckoner is one that I would recommend to anyone who likes a ripping good story and at the same time wants to learn more about Archimedes. Barack Obama is one of those rare individuals who is able to converse intelligently about any given subject, with balance, insight, and perspective. To sit across from him at my dinner table would be a profound honor.
Writer's block is inevitable. Meanwhile, I think that moment when you sit in front of a blank page, paralyzed and terrified, is also a glorious opportunity. The world is still open. Your story is not yet locked into place. Possibilities abound. I have three recommendations.
One is to work with an outline. That is, start with a very rough one, perhaps just an idea or a one-liner of a story, and then start filling it in more and more, adding as many details as you can, organizing your material. Eventually you will find that you already have the bare bones of a book right in front of you and just need to fill it in to bring it to life.
My second recommendation is to start with writing up detailed portraits of your main characters, their looks, their mannerism, what they like, how they think, and anything else. These portraits are a wonderful way to warm up and move on into the story that you are creating. You don't even need to end up using them, but they provide you with background material that you can draw on as you work.
And finally, I would recommend that you end each day of writing with something left undone, a paragraph that needs to be completed or a sentence you started. The next time you sit down to write that unfinished bit helps you to move back into your writing. Sometimes when I get stuck, I go back to editing something I wrote earlier and find that it opens up new pathways into the next chapter or the next section of your book.
