Christina Baker Kline: Writing/Life

I now have a new home for my blog, next door to my website:  www.christinabakerkline.com/blog — and after today, I won’t post to my old ‘wordpress.com’ site anymore.  It looks a little ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/moving-day/

Justin Kramon didn’t think he was qualified to call himself a writer.  And then he thought about his favorite books, and had a change of heart: For some reason, I used to have the perception t...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/great-writing/

The writer Elizabeth Strout, explaining what it’s like to write from the point of view of an irascible retired schoolteacher in her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Olive Kitteridge: “I actu...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/how-do-you-become-someone-else/

Molly Lyons of the Joelle Delbourgo Literary Agency on the questions agents wish you’d ask yourself before you send a query or a manuscript: As an agent, I see proposals and manuscripts at all ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/stop-before-you-try-to-get-an-agent-%E2%80%A6/

This is the official release date for the paperback of my new novel, Bird in Hand. To celebrate, I wrote about writing, life, and the pursuit of happiness for Gretchen Rubin’s wonderful blog, T...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/oh-happy-day/

The novelist Gayle Brandeis wrote about a traumatic and terrible event.  And then it happened to her in real life. Several months ago, as I was proofreading my new novel, Delta Girls, a sentence...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/what-we-dont-know-we-know/

There’s a lot of advice for writers out there, and though most of it boils down to write – revise – revise again, somehow this instruction never gets old.  Most writers I know own at least...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/the-best-of-the-best-advice/

When novelist Laurie Albanese and art historian Laura Morowitz began collaborating on a novel about the 15th-century painter Fra Filippo Lippi, they discovered that their biggest challenge was to...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/inventing-characters-from-history/

In anticipation of the paperback release of my latest novel, Bird in Hand, my friend Gretchen Rubin invited me to answer some questions about happiness for her wonderful blog, The Happiness Proje...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/write-drunk-edit-sober/

“Someone once said, ‘If you go for the universal, you get nothing; if you go for the specific, you get the universal.’ “There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/samuel-beckett-on-the-obligation-to-express/

The Portuguese writer Clara Paulino thought she’d never find another language that could express the depth and nuance of her experience.  And then she did: A few months ago I made the momentou...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/lost-in-translation/

A small, bare room.  An old lamp, an upholstered chair, a wooden desk by the window.  Cows and trees beyond.  No papers to grade, no phone calls to return.  All the things that distract me, k...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/permission-to-write/

The writer Lisa Gornick revisits this vexing question — and digs a little deeper: A few weeks ago I posted on this site an account of writing — and ultimately deciding not to publish — an ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/can-we-write-about-our-kids-further-reflections/

Recently I shared some exercises I use with my students at Fordham for revising fiction and narrative nonfiction.  But a lot of us need inspiration at the other end of the process, too — right...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/get-inspired/

In which the intrepid C. M. Mayo (whose recent novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, is not-so-coincidentally out in paperback) explains why guest blogging is a flourishing new literary g...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/how-to-guest-blog-is-this-postmodern-or-what/

Sometimes when you’re revising it helps to have a specific assignment.   Last week in this space I listed some exercises that my fiction-writing students find useful.  Here are some revision...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/revising-nonfiction/

Novelist and clinical psychologist Lisa Gornick explores this question — and finds an answer she can live with: Last year, I wrote an essay about a dark patch in the otherwise largely luminous ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/can-we-write-about-our-kids/

This week I’m working on revising fiction with my undergraduate and grad students at Fordham. Below are some of the tips and ideas I’ve collected over the years that my students find most use...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/five-ways-to-jumpstart-a-revision/

Hooray and congratulations!  It’s pub day for Debra Galant, whose new novel, Cars from a Marriage, “delivers wit, charm and characters who feel like next-door neighbors,” according to Boo...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/tap-dancing-on-the-beach/

“The older we get, the more … you realize there’s a whole range of things you will never do, of things and people you will never be.  As life becomes more and more limiting, there is somet...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/getting-inside-the-skin/

Last summer, when I went to London for a month to teach creative writing, I brought only a few books with me. One of them was The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspiration for Writing, by Monica Wood, a s...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/from-the-department-of-having-to-take-your-own-advice/

A-list Hollywood screenwriter Kristen Buckley (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 102 Dalmations) tells you all you need to know about writing a successful screenplay: When people talk about fiction t...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/how-to-write-a-screenplay-in-10-days/

“Read, read, read.  Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.  Read!  You’ll absor...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/before-you-write-today/

This was never the way she planned — not her intention.  But journalist Cindy Schweich Handler wrote some fiction.  And she liked it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a wr...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/bi-curious-about-writing-fiction/

When I began this blog, ten months ago, I had recently finished a novel that was several months from publication, Bird in Hand, and was beginning a new one (working title Orphan Train).  I envi...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/looking-back-and-stepping-forward/

My friend Pamela Redmond Satran is a novelist, New York Times bestselling author, ninja web developer, and one-time magazine editor. Now she’s embarking on something entirely new: Two things in...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/reinventing-the-novel/

Write what you know?  On second thought … “Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words ‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor c...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/writing-tip-11-dont-listen-to-hackneyed-advice-2/

The novelist and creative-writing teacher Susan Breen offers consolation, hope, and advice for anyone trying to get published: I’ve come to think that publishing stories are like birth stories....

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/if-two-books-dont-sell-write-a-third/

Last week I posted James Cameron’s answer to the question “What’s the most important thing you know about storytelling?” Discussing Cameron’s ideas with the writer Bonnie Friedman – w...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/%E2%80%9Cyou-have-to-make-it-excruciating-somehow%E2%80%9D-more-on-james-cameron/

Jill Smolowe hasn’t been writing much lately. She has a pretty good excuse: Lately I’ve been thinking about writing. And therein lies the problem. Thinking about writing is one thing; writing...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/writer-interrupted/

Last month I received an early copy of Dawn Raffel’s new story collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, which officially debuts this week.  Reading it — a slim, spare set of ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/let%E2%80%99s-talk-about-dialogue/

The other night, flipping through channels, I came across a Charlie Rose interview with James Cameron.  Say what you will about the director of Avatar and Titanic (and Aliens) — he knows how t...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-essential-elements-of-storytelling-according-to-james-cameron/

Katharine Davis just finished writing a novel.  Now comes the hard part: Writing a novel is a long journey.  From the simple physical endurance of turning out all those pages to the emotional u...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/letting-go/

Waiting to pick up my son after his play rehearsal, I sit in the car and grade student essays. I listen to podcasts as I drive over the George Washington Bridge to work. When the phone rings at h...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/the-curse-of-multitasking/

With a challenging, fulfilling job and a satisfying personal life, Anne Burt questions her desire to write a novel – and finds the answer in an unexpected place: Motivation has always been as c...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/why-do-i-even-want-to-write-a-novel/

“It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and pass it on.  It is the way all storytellers learn about life.” — Grace Paley

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/why-gossip/

Reading Roxana Robinson’s latest novel, Cost, I was struck by how beautifully and naturally she writes about place, from the coast of Maine to the streets of New York.  Consider this, for exam...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/roxana-robinson-on-writing-about-place/

As a project for school, my 13-year-old son, Will, spent several days carrying an egg around. His task was simple: all he had to do was keep the egg from breaking. The experiment was intended to ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/the-egg-in-my-pocket/

Last week Bonnie Friedman found out something big … As soon as I finished writing my guest post for this blog last week about how “people don’t do such things,” I put the computer in “...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/why-do-we-write-to-find-out/

Dani Shapiro explains why fiction writers shouldn’t think too much: Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend about a particular writer who shall remain unnamed here for reasons which will ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/on-being-smart-2/

Several days ago I received an email from a woman who’d recently read my latest novel, Bird in Hand.  She mentioned that she appreciated my “honesty” – she liked that my characters had...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/the-problem-of-the-unsympathetic-character/

Sheila Kohler, author of the new novel Becoming Jane Eyre, offers a nuanced answer to this perennial question: Shortly after the publication of my first novel, The Perfect Place, my husband and I...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/how-much-of-the-book-is-true/

Writer Julie Metz offers some hard-won advice: Like many of you, I am working on a new writing project, a novel. What made me think I could do this, anyway? But here I am, too far in to let go, c...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/three-ways-to-push-through-when-youre-stuck/

The writer Bonnie Friedman considers what it means to create ‘realistic’ fictional characters: “People don’t do such things!” is the last line of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler — words cried ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/people-dont-do-such-things/

Three great writers consider the concept of “truth” as it relates to the creative process: “The hero of my tale – whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray i...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/to-tell-the-truth/

How do you come up with an idea that’s big enough to sustain a novel or memoir?  And how do you know when you’ve got it? As a teacher of creative writing, I get asked this question a lot –...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/whats-the-big-idea/

Bonnie Friedman writes about the lure of (and cure for) the endless novel: I just finished my first novel.  This isn’t the first novel I tried to write.  Before publishing a book of essays an...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/the-novel-terminable-and-interminable/

Lorrie Moore is one of my favorite authors (Like Life and Birds of America, her story collections, are on my shelf of prized books), but I did not love her new novel, The Gate at the Stairs.  I ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/what-a-story-intends-for-itself/

Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project, talks about the thrill and the perils of trying something new: There’s a common occupational hazard that affects writ...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/a-little-known-occupational-hazard-affecting-writers/

Beginning a story or a novel, Alice Munro says, is the easy part … “Endings are another matter.  When I’ve shaped the story in my head, before starting to put it on paper, it has, of cours...

https://christinabakerkline.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/on-pushing-through-to-greatness/