Avi's Blog, page 28

Someone sent this story to me. I don’t know if it’s true (I hope it is) but in any case it’s a wonderful story about stories. At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she ... Read more

Word for the day: Mononymous, writers using one name. Goodreads ran a list of the most popular mononymous writers. Not sure why, but they did. But it was, as this mononymous writer can attest, impressive. Here’s the list in order of popularity. The Republic. Ethics. Candide. Confucius. Poppy. Now, that’s rather rare company for my ... Read more

The post Word for the Day: Mononymous first appeared on Word Craft.

The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary says the word “title” is “Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. French title. Originally classical Latin titulus.”  A title is a key part of any piece of writing, the handshake, if you will, by which you are introduced to a book. Whether you go beyond the handshake is another matter, ... Read more

The post Titles That Work first appeared on Word Craft.

When I was growing up in New York City, there was an area along Fourth Avenue which was called “Book Row.” It existed from the 1890s until the 1960’s. Over its six blocks stretch there were some thirty-six bookstores, mostly selling used books. As a teenager I used to wander about there, beguiled, looking at, ... Read more

The post Book Row first appeared on Word Craft.

My wife (Linda) and I are going to do something we have only talked about for years: A vacation.  Mind, we live in a log house high (9,000 feet up) in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, a place where many people come to have their vacations.  Medicine Bow National Forest, The Zirkel Wilderness, and Steamboat Springs ... Read more

The post A reading vacation first appeared on Word Craft.

I had just completed my first semester at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was time to go home in NYC for Christmas break (six hundred miles by the most direct route). My pals and I decided to hitchhike home. I cannot explain the reason for wanting to do this idiotic thing, save that ... Read more

The post The way fiction comes to life first appeared on Word Craft.

Every writer has his/her own process of writing a book. From start to finish it usually takes me, more or less, about a year to complete. I have crudely calculated that I read and reread that book some eighty times. This can be tedious, arduous, annoying but, trust me, necessary.   In the course of ... Read more

When I have hand in a new manuscript it is not uncommon for the editor to say to me—”Are you pleased by what you’ve written?” Often, the answer, you might be surprised to learn, is “No.” Consider, I have worked on the text for much of a year—if not longer. The truth is that the […]

When you are a public (i.e., published) author you are going to get public (published) criticism. In all the years of my publishing I have never gotten universal positive responses to any book I wrote. One review of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle indicated that if I had worked harder I would have written […]

I recently had printed a bookmark which displays the covers of all the books in the Poppy series. I’m happy to give a few to those that want them.  Please send a SASE to: Avi PO Box 900 Clark, CO 80428 Here’s a brief history of the bookmark plucked from the internet. “The History of […]