Holly Robinson, Author at Holly Robinson

The Incredible Weirdness of Being a Writer

February 5, 2018 By Holly Robinson 6 Comments

I went on a writing retreat recently. Nothing fancy; this wasn’t one of those places where you’re in a cabin in the mountains and people bring food to your door. This was a low-budget apartment rental with a friend, but it had everything I needed: a kitchen, a gorgeous harbor view, and absolute quiet.

The purpose of writing retreats for me is to tunnel into a project, usually when I’m trying to start something new or finish a book. Works like a charm. However, as I settle into these retreats, there is always this strangely terrifying moment where I think, “What the hell do I think I’m doing?”

It’s such a debutante activity, this whole writing thing. With so many activities vying for our attention, who needs another book in the world? What makes me think I’ll find readers, or even a publisher? Why aren’t I doing something more productive, like working for actual money or volunteering my time to do good in the world?

And yet, I stayed. I wrote. I edited. For forty-eight hours that weekend, I churned out new words and tossed out old ones. I came up with new plot points and emotions for my characters. I resisted, sometimes, the urge to Google various diseases or check Facebook. I came away from the retreat feeling like I’d failed, then read the pages when I got home and thought, “Huh. That’s not half bad. I bet I can revise this into something.”

If you decide to be a writer, there will be times in your life where you will have to commit to the writing. Over and over again, especially after rejections, you will have to commit to keep at it.

What does that writer’s life look like? The one where you commit to the process?

It looks weird to most people. For me, it has meant being a freelance writer instead of a full-time public relations executive (my previous life). That translates into driving an ancient car and being grateful that my husband has a steady salary and provides our family with health benefits.

It has meant staying in on Saturday nights and skipping that movie or party, and editing manuscripts even while technically watching my son’s gymnastic class or my daughter’s field hockey meet. It has meant that many days I never make it out of my sweat pants. And it means suffering a crisis of confidence every time I show a manuscript to critique partners or editors and they say, “This isn’t working.”

Committing to your writing means having the confidence in yourself to keep going, even when all of the signs point to the irrationality of your activity. It means believing that the written word is worth putting on the page, even if you’re the only one who will ever read it. It means believing that writing books is a valuable creative endeavor, even if those books never actually end up between covers.

Being a writer means that you actually write, a lot, and don’t just say you’re going to or you should have or you want to. Over and over again, you must commit to the act of writing instead of spending your time some other, more pleasurable, productive, or profitable way. It means reaching inside of yourself until sometimes you feel turned inside out, and that’s a good feeling, but it can feel awful, too, because you are exposed and vulnerable, especially if your writing does get published.

The decision to commit to your writing is a weird one, no matter how you look at it. But sometimes it’s the only decision that is worth making, because it’s who you are and what you want to be, not just when you are young and passionate and idealistic, but when you are a grown-ass person who has a mortgage and ought to know better.

Sometimes, being a writer is the only life worth living.

How to Revise a Novel: 5 Practical Strategies

January 9, 2018 By Holly Robinson 8 Comments

I sent the complete draft of my new novel to my agent in September. When I got her editorial notes some weeks later, there were more things to revise in the book than things to keep.

I thought about tabling the project. Or even trashing it. Sometimes fixing a book means turning the whole thing inside out. It can seem daunting, or even impossible. But, once you get going, it’s actually pretty fun.

Yup. I said “fun.” And all artists go through the same process. For instance, I recently saw a great Peabody Essex Museum exhibit that highlighted Georgia O’Keeffe’s fashion style as well as her artwork. In looking at the detailed shapes and stitching of her clothing choices, it’s easy to see O’Keeffe developing—and revising—her artistic vision. To her, the spaces between shapes on the canvas became as important as the shapes and colors themselves. Here’s what she said about her painting, “Pelvis with the Moon,” pictured above:

“I was most interested in the holes in the bones—what I saw through them—particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky…they were most wonderful against the Blue—that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.”

Think about “the holes in the bones.” That’s what we want to do when we revise a novel. We want to look at the structure, of course—the bones—to “see” the book’s shape. But we must also see through the holes between the bones to understand the meaning behind the scenes and characters we’ve created, if we’re going to build a compelling, 3D fictional world.

Here are four easy revision strategies to help you do that:

1. Write the Book Jacket Copy. You have probably already written an outline. (If you haven’t, now’s the time.) Now try writing some punchy book jacket copy. Wrestling with this will help you see the book’s essence more clearly (which will help readers, agents, and editors see it, too.) What is your book really about? Keep that short, punchy summary in mind as you rewrite.

2. Change the Point of View. Maybe your book is in third person. If so, maybe you’re too emotionally distant from the characters. Try changing the book to first person. (If nothing else, this will help you weed out all of the “she thought” and “he wondered” sorts of static phrases.) Or, if your book is in first person, maybe there aren’t enough tactile descriptions or suitable action. Rewrite the book in third person and see how it changes things. Finally, try rewriting your book from a totally different character’s point of view.

3. Read It Aloud. This takes a while. But reading a book aloud will help you catch all sorts of “puffy” phrases, as Stephen King calls them, and will show you how to revise the dialogue so that it sounds more true to character—and to the reader.

4. Start Your Book in a Different Chapter. Like most writers, when I begin a novel, it’s almost always too soon in the action. There is probably a better scene to start with, one with more emotion, and impact. You can catch up on the earlier part of the book with a few flashbacks—or you may find you don’t need that stuff at all, because the pertinent information will be expressed by your character’s actions or dialogue later on, after the reader is hooked.

5. Keep Only Key Scenes. Examine each individual scene. Is it really necessary? If it doesn’t advance the plot, create a “fatty file” on your computer and stash those unnecessary bits of the book there. Maybe you’ll need them, maybe not. But trust your reader to infer and understand lots of what’s going on with fewer scenes.

That’s it! Now get revising, and let me know how it goes.

Buying Books as Holiday Gifts? 5 Quickie Reviews for Last-Minute Shoppers

December 19, 2017 By Holly Robinson 2 Comments

As a fiction writer, I’m normally reluctant to review other people’s novels. I know how hard the whole process of getting published is, from confronting that first blank page through editing, publication, and marketing. So basically I want to pop a bottle of fizzy for ANY writer who makes it to the finish line. But if you’re buying books as gifts or getaways for yourself and need ideas, here are 5 quickie reviews to inspire you:

News of the World, by Paulette Jiles

Category: historical fiction, literary fiction

By far the best book I’ve read this past year, News of the World is, on the surface, a simple adventure story along the lines of True Grit: a cranky ex-Civil War soldier is charged with bringing a young orphan girl from Witchita Falls to San Antonio after the girl has spent most of her young life as a captive of Native Americans. The journey is rife with all sorts of juicy difficulties, from bandits to suspicious townspeople in the places they stop. But what I loved most about this book, besides the beautifully understated writing that somehow amplifies the action, was the relationship that developed between the reluctant captive and Captain Kidd. I won’t lie: I cried buckets at the end of this book. People who love adventure stories, gorgeous writing, and historical fiction will be fans.

Bring Her Home, by David Bell

Category: thriller

David Bell is clearly inspired by Harlan Coben, that juggernaut of a thriller-maker. Like Coben, Bell writes about everyday characters caught up in situations beyond their control who generally make things worse by getting involved where they shouldn’t. (It’s the adult version of those horror movies where you scream at the kids, “Don’t go down in the basement alone, for Pete’s sake. What are you, an idiot?”) In this case, Bell’s hero is Bill Price, whose wife died of a fall a year before. When the book opens, Price’s teen daughter has gone missing and everyone is searching for her. Naturally, dark secrets emerge about what the girl might—or might not—have been doing, and about Price’s own marriage. The problem I have with this particular book is that the coincidences mount up until again you’re yelling, “Oh, come on!” and the main characters themselves are downright thick in the head. I mean, really, we’re supposed to believe that Bell doesn’t recognize the girl in the hospital? (I won’t say more to avoid spoiling the plot.). However, there is a certain propulsive energy to Bell’s writing—he has that Dan Brown knack for creating deliberate cliff-hanger endings to chapters–that kept me turning the pages. This is a perfect gift for people who like to read in bathtubs, on airplanes, or on the beach: not too taxing, but pretty entertaining.

Woman No. 17, by Edan Lepucki

Category: literary fiction

The writing in this novel absolutely sings. The images are creative, the characters are unique, and the Los Angeles setting is very Raymond Chandler-noirish. The plot, too, is arresting: a young artist, S, is hired as a nanny for a woman in the Hollywood Hills named Lady Daniels. There are, of course, secrets in the pasts of both women, and those emerge as the women become entwined in various creepy ass ways, especially after S becomes involved with Lady S’s older (and mute) teenage son. Some readers might take exception to the fact that all of the characters in this novel are, to some degree, unlikable and self-absorbed. This didn’t bother me. I love a good flawed character. But give this book only to people who are ready to read about characters who are probably far out of their comfort zones.

The Birdwatcher, by William Shaw

Category: literary mystery

Okay, I won’t lie: this book has a few flaws, but I absolutely adored it, simply because I am a huge fan of those British mystery series set in foggy coastal places, like Hinterland and Shetland. In this novel, the main character, William South, is a detective and avid birder. When one of his neighbors is knocked off, it turns out that South has some connections to that guy from his past—and those connections might tie South to a crime he may or may not have committed as a troubled youth. The mystery is finely paced by British standards, which means it is not that rip-roaring pace we’re used to in American mysteries, but the character development is so much deeper that your patience will be well rewarded. This book is perfect for people on your list who love mystery novels with lots of atmosphere.

The Captain’s Daughter, by Meg Mitchell Moore

Category: women’s fiction, literary fiction

If you have women on your gift list who are fans of Elin Hilderbrand, they’re going to love Meg Mitchell Moore. In The Captain’s Daughter, Moore has written a lovely, and emotional story of Eliza, who grows up in a small town in Maine, the daughter of a lobsterman, who ends up making it into an Ivy League college and marrying well enough to be living the posh country club life. When her father falls ill, she travels back to Maine to take care of him and figure out how she got to where she is at this moment in life, as a mother and wife whose marriage is suffering. This may sound like a typical women’s fiction plot, but Moore is a gifted writer whose characters always surprise you. She even has a soft spot for the usual rich bitches that populate novels like these, and nobody writes better about parenting. If you don’t want to spring for a hardcover, buy that person on your list one of Moore’s other novels, now in paperback—I loved The Arrivals and The Admissions. All of her novels have that same exquisite writing, generously optimistic spirit, and spots of high humor that make you feel like maybe the world isn’t going to hell after all.

Getting Unstuck and Finding Your Fiction Portal

November 20, 2017 By Holly Robinson 5 Comments

I am no fiction virgin. I have published six novels to date—one on my own, and five with Penguin Random House. Yet, until recently, I have never felt more stuck as a writer.

What happened? I really don’t have a clue. Yes, my agent has been hanging onto my latest book for a while. But I’ve always been a writing workhorse, so I decided to start another manuscript while I was waiting. I mean, what better excuse is there for starting a new novel than National Novel Writing Month?

Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get unstuck. It was like my brain had frozen or overheated or, I don’t know, locked some secret door, preventing me from accessing whatever neurons I need to write. Every day I’d sit at my desk, but the words refused to come.

I didn’t panic at first. But then, as the days and weeks went by, I became grumpy. Then angry. Then desperately sad, to the point where I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into that hellhole of despair, the one familiar to many writers who become convinced that our time is up and we’ve written our last books.

This is the sort of despair that feels as if you’re wading through a muddy pit of writhing snakes. You are trapped in a cloying sort of darkness, entangled and bitten by every mean thing anyone has ever said to you about your writing.

It took me a while to realize that the source of my despair wasn’t just a new crisis of confidence, but the fact that I had NO FICTION PORTAL at all.

For me, a fiction portal is any story or novel in progress. This portal is nearly as essential to my existence as oxygen. If I’m writing, well, I can handle almost anything else in my “real” life better. The fiction portal gives me a place to escape to, one where I control everything from the weather to why people fall in love with each other (or not).

Clearly, I needed to find a new fiction portal. But how, when it felt like every avenue was closed off to me?

I did find one in the end. I’m writing again, and much saner. Here are some strategies that worked for me, not in any particular order:

Read three books in a row without writing anything new. Doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or nonfiction. One of the best ways to be an inspired writer is to be an inspired reader.
Look at another manuscript you tried to write, anything that failed and has been put in a drawer or stashed in an attic box. Pick three paragraphs you like out of that abandoned book and use them to start something new.
Clean out your office and closets. Sometimes, a clearer physical space will help unclutter your mind, too.
Sign up for a writing workshop. Having a new audience will give you a fresh perspective on your work, and workshops are often free if you find one through your library or local bookstore.
Try writing in a completely different genre.
Read quotes by famous writers. Here’s one of my favorite sites for quotes by writers about motivation and rejection: http://writersrelief.com/quotes-for-writers/#Rejection
Finally, get plenty of sleep and exercise. It’s impossible to feel like your head is on straight without getting plenty of sleep. And who knows? You might just dream your next plot line.

I found my new fiction portal this time around by starting something completely different: a YA science fiction novel. I haven’t read science fiction since college, so it’s fun to just let my mind roam in that direction without any pressure. Who knows where this book will take me? Maybe nowhere, but at least I have a new portal beckoning me out of my everyday life.

How to Write Historical Fiction: It Will Take More Time than You Ever Dreamed Possible

October 26, 2017 By Holly Robinson 8 Comments

I hated history class in high school. All of those boring dates and dead people, blah blah blah. I memorized what I needed to, then took the tests and promptly forgot everything. Who cared? I was alive in the vivid present!

I never took another history class. Not in college, because I didn’t need history to get a biology degree and become a doctor. And not in grad school, because by then I’d switched gears, earning an MFA in creative writing and trying to write a novel.

Fast forward thirty years. I am among the lucky few living the dream of so many aspiring writers: I have published six novels, all contemporary fiction, five of them with Penguin Random House. I have also ghosted many books for celebrities. The writing always came, if not easily, then steadily.

And then, somehow, I met the poet who wouldn’t leave, and discovered I knew nothing at all about writing historical fiction.

This poet, Celia Thaxter, was one of the best known female poets of the late 19^th century, and I met her in a painting first. Well, in a print of a painting by American Impressionist Childe Hassam. He had painted Celia standing in her garden, surrounded by tall flowers, the sea behind her. I asked the docent who she was, and discovered that Celia had grown up on the Isles of Shoals—a collection of small islands off the New England coast—where her family built the first grand resort hotel, Appledore House.

On the day I saw that picture, Celia climbed right out of it and came home with me, begging me to tell her story. Her story was intriguing, I had to admit, if only because she kept a salon that drew popular writers, musicians, and painters of the day. She knew Hawthorne and Emerson, Charles Dickinson and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

But that wasn’t what drew me to her. No, the thing that got me was this: Celia, like me, had a posse of women writer friends who traded manuscripts and wrote each other letters about their lives. I went to the Boston Public Library and began reading through one collection of letters—over 250 of them to her best friend, Annie Fields—and realized that Celia had her own doubts about the value of her work, the health of her marriage, and parenting her children, one of whom had serious disabilities.

She was, in a word, human. I suddenly wanted to tell her story. Because I’m a novelist, that meant putting Celia in a novel. But how do you write historical fiction? I had no idea.

And so I began searching out her letters in other libraries. I also read botany and gardening books, because Celia was a famous gardener, and biographies about other writers in Celia’s life, like Lucy Larom and Harriet Beecher Stowe, plus Emerson’s works and Thoreau’s, too, just because.

In addition, I began visiting all of the places Celia had ever been or lived, including the house in Newtonville where she was so unhappy, struggling to raise three small boys with no money and a husband who was allergic to work. That’s the house where Celia wrote her first published poem, and I managed to talk my way into it when the owner caught me loitering in her driveway.

All of this research took over a year. Finally I drafted a hundred pages of a novel and fired it off to my agent, who said, in a word, “No.”

But I couldn’t let Celia go. So I read some more, spent some nights out on the Isles of Shoals, and started gardening, trying to see why gardening was so damn important to this woman. I grew hollyhocks because she did, and showboat Dahlias the size of dinner plates. Digging in the dirt, it seemed, was something that freed Celia’s mind, and it began to free mine, too.

I decided the book should have dual plot lines, one with Celia in the 1800’s, at her grand resort hotel on the Isles of Shoals, and the other set now, with a woman struggling with similar issues: a troubled marriage, a problem child, the hard work of balancing a career with motherhood. Now all I needed was a way to connect my two characters. Yeah, a plot would be nice.

And so I was off. Five hundred, six hundred, a thousand pages came and went in my various drafts, until finally I sent the finished book to my agent a month ago. Last week, she emailed to say that the book still needs work.

She is making notes on the manuscript to help me, and I am grateful. At the same time, I can’t help wondering why I decided to hit my head on this particular brick wall. Why didn’t I just write another contemporary novel? What if I spend two, three, four years on this book, but it ends up in a drawer? What will I do then?

The answers to these questions are the same ones I’ve given to aspiring writers in my university classes and author signings in the past: We write fiction because there is nothing else we love to do more. We write a particular book because it haunts us and won’t let go.

I also remind myself–as I hope I’m reminding you—that writing any fiction is a lot harder than it seems, when you’re holding a neatly bound book in your hands that you’ve just picked up in a bookstore. And writing historical fiction (as I should have guessed) takes months, or even years, of research, if you’re going to breathe life into a time and place around a character. You’d better love the research itself. (I do, it turns out.)

The payoff? I don’t know. I wish I could tell you that this is all worth it, that of course you (and I) will publish our novels and see the books we’ve slaved over for so long on the shelves of our local bookstores. But I can’t promise that.

Instead, the payoff for me has been much bigger than just a publishing deal. Writing historical fiction has led me down all sorts of fascinating rabbit holes, and now I see connections everywhere: in the Gilded Age exhibit I recently saw at the Met, in the new Henry James exhibit at the Gardner Museum, in the 19^th century houses in my own neighborhood.

This is something I should have learned in high school, but didn’t: those people we read about in history class lived, loved, fought, cried, and laughed together, just as we do. We are all connected. And isn’t that the most important lesson a human can learn?