It was time. She’d fought against it for so long. She hadn’t thought that this day would ever come. She’d dreaded it, longed for it, prayed against it, prayed for it, wept over it, laughed about it, and yet here it was. Everything she knew was about to change. Everything
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A Writer's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: It Was Time
She’d fought against it for so long. She hadn’t thought that this day would ever come. She’d dreaded it, longed for it, prayed against it, prayed for it, wept over it, laughed about it, and yet here it was. Everything she knew was about to change. Everything unfamiliar for which
Continue readingA Writer's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Rough Cut
Here’s a little something I wrote for fun today as a timed exercise: The King Edward Hotel was not specifically fitted out for aliens, especially water breathing aliens, but fortunately, the Gnasticollas were used to the terrestriocentrism of many provincial planets, and arrived with their water helmets on and other
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: 7 Habits According to Tolstoy
1. Keep an open mind 2. Practise empathy 3. Make a difference 4. Master the art of simple living 5. Beware your contradictions 6. Become a craftsman 7. Expand your social circle Via BBC News Filed under: Literary, purpose Tagged: Tolstoy philosophy
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Russian Letters
After ten years of research, and doing back and forth translations using google translate while scrutinizing its Russian/English dictionary, I am learning Cyrillic letters. I have to hope that this is keeping my brain agile! And for another meaning of Russian letters, I’m reading a wonderful collection of short stories
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Two Jews
J and The Betrayers are both novels about antisemitism and social violence, both powerful. And yet who would talk about them in the same breath, one a dystopia, the other hyper-realism? The authors, Howard Jacobson (J) and David Bezmozgis, are a generation and an ocean apart though united by their
Continue readingA Novelist's Eye: Lilian Nattel Online: Review: Little Failure
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a memoir about life as an immigrant child from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, a subject that I’ve become very interested in because of this memoir. I rated this a four (though I am
Continue readingA Novelist's Eye: Lilian Nattel Online: Review: Tenth of December
Tenth of December by George Saunders My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brilliant stories. My favourite was only two pages and in that compact space told the story of a father’s rage and pathos through the vehicle of an unusual scarecrow. A book I want to own. View all my
Continue readingA Novelist's Eye: Lilian Nattel Online: Review: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson My rating: 5 of 5 stars A book people seem to love or hate. I did laugh out loud. It’s a tall tale, not my favorite genre usually: the hundred year old man runs away from
Continue readingA Novelist's Eye: Lilian Nattel Online: Archie and Thanks for the Books
I use Grammarly for proofreading because I want Veronica to love me. – Archie We’ve been having an Archie issue in this house. Archie and his pals (my fave is Jughead) hide under pillows and on top of bathroom shelves. Now, I have nothing against those folks. When I was
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Writers’ stimulants
I still think most of these would be whiskey, not coffee. (h/t to Mark Victor Young.) Alltop is a stiff drink of humor.
Continue readingA Writer's Playground: Lilian Nattel Online: Postcard Story
After finishing Web of Angels, I did some writing exercises to get used to facing the blank page again so I could start something new. Recently, I re-read what I wrote then. This small piece of fiction surprised me, and I want to share it with you today. Sunday My
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Joyce Carol Oates on 1st Draft
Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. Filed under: Fun, Literary Tagged: Writing Life
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: What I Learned from Figure Skating
The figure skaters at the World Championship competition, held this past week in London, Ontario, are the top skaters in the world. And they fall. They fall on their bums in front of a packed stadium, eyes upon them, and in front of TV cameras that represent the millions watching
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Alice Munro’s Brilliance
I am reading Alice Munro because she is brilliant. In the mid 1990s, I studied her stories for “weather,” ie the external details that make a story come alive. In the margins of a book of her short stories, I wrote “clothing,” “smell”, “rain.” Then I added weather to the
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Looking Deeper
I was walking and saw a slight indentation in the sidewalk. It was the shape of an inverted V. I stood over it with my camera and took a series of pictures. As I bent closer, I noticed a crevice at the tip. Bending closer still, I crouched over it.
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Literature Trumps Erotica
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler is #8 in the top 100 books on amazon.ca, surpassing all three Shades of Grey. I’ve loved The Imposter Bride since it came out last year. It’s a finely written novel about the relationship between an enigmatic mother and her daughter. A holocaust survivor,
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: The Process: 10 Years Ago
As you’ll know if you follow my blog, I sent off the first draft of a fun new book to my agent. He is a dear as well as smart, but not the fastest responder. So while waiting, I had in mind to return to embark (again) on another the
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Albert Nobbs
Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs and Janet McTeer as Hubert Page via Gallery for Albert Nobbs Throughout history, there have been women who have lived as men either because of gender identification and/or for safety and opportunity as soldiers, pirates and doctors, for example. (This includes James Barry, an 18th
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Bravery: the Writer
I want to tell you about a writer who looked old in his mid-30s. He walked with a cane. He was overweight, lethargic, pasty-faced and depressed. It was no wonder. He was a writer trying to write vividly, truthfully and with compassion under a totalitarian regime. He believed in the
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