TimTibbitts | 2014 January
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January 2014

Revising a Novel 101: Day 1

16 Jan 2014, Posted by Tim Tibbitts in Read My Story

Today is the day I begin a thorough revision of the messy but complete first draft of my current novel, But Also the Brave. My goal is to have this second draft completed by June 12, 2014. One of my practices as a writer, which I have employed since I started my first novel years ago, is to check it at the beginning and end of each writing session in a little document I call “Process Notes.” Here’s my entry for the first day of NaNoWriMo 2012, the day I began work on But Also : Th 11/01/12 10:51 a.m. Well,…

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Book Club to Read My Collection

13 Jan 2014, Posted by Tim Tibbitts in Read My Story

In her wonderful book of instructions for writing and life, Bird By Bird, Anne LaMott says “Publication isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—but writing is.” I’ve published enough freelance feature articles in my career to relate to what I think she means: eventually, the thrill of seeing one’s own name in the byline fades over time; by the time a piece comes out, the writer is usually sick of it and couldn’t bring him or herself to read it again for love nor money, etc. In the end, the work itself has to be satisfying. No one would put…

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How a Short Story Happens

07 Jan 2014, Posted by Tim Tibbitts in Read My Story

  For me writing fiction is as close to being able to use magic as I’ll ever get. Here’s how my most recent story was born:   1) Create a Patsy Cline station on Pandora. 2) Hear Charley Pride’s “I’ll Be Leaving Alone” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JylwiX9h1us while walking the dog in the snow. 3) Draft a ho-hum story about a guy tempted to cheat while on an overnight truck-driving run to New England. 4) Share story with writing buddy. 5) Listen to his advice–let it sink in–about how to develop a complication in the middle to give the story a second layer of…

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My “Best Books of 2013” Part I

07 Jan 2014, Posted by Tim Tibbitts in Read My Story

  As a book nerd, I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read since the summer before 10th grade. (The first book I remember recording was Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (required summer reading), from which I learned the words “reticent” and “taciturn”—which in fact may say a lot about that novel). One of the pleasures of my compulsive habit is looking back over a year’s worth of reading at the end of a year. This year was fairly representative of my reading life of late, both in volume and range: 13 novels, 5 story collections, 4 works of non-fiction,…

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