“I start with one character, then another character comes along,” she says. “Each one has his or her own life, whether they’re on a stoop in Queens or in prison in upstate New York or in a school in Manhattan. I start writing those scenes, then put them together, which gets me moving toward something…. Read more

“What is a story? It is a form of authority. If I tell you a story, you are almost certain to listen. A story is easier to follow, and therefore to remember, than a chain of disconnected facts, because it has causality, one event leads to another. It is like swimming with the current —… Read more

“Sometimes it takes more courage to be the passenger than to be the driver.” – E. L. Konigsburg

Why Great Copywriters Make Great Novelists By Lisa Friedman Who used to be a copywriter? It’s a regular roll call of the literarily famous: Fay Weldon and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dorothy Sayers and Salman Rushdie. Don DeLillo and Joseph Heller. Amy Tan, William Gaddis, Elliott Holt—the list goes on. So, what did they learn in… Read more