Writing Archives - Mary Ellen Bellusci

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16 hours ago Writing Comments Off on Stories that Liberate 10

Stonewall Inn – Jun 21, 2019. Photo by John J Kelley Fifty years ago, when I was but a toddler in a bayou town along the Florida Panhandle, an uprising at a nondescript Manhattan bar changed my life. On Jun 28, 1969, patrons of Stonewall Inn, a hangout for some …

2 days ago Writing Comments Off on The Power of Words (and History) 13

tribality.com I’ve just returned from the Historical Novel Society conference, a place where nerds unite! And I am one. A big giant nerd. I get to hang out with people who know minutiae about which poisons were used in Renaissance Italy to off the powerful, or info about the first …

3 days ago Writing Comments Off on Writing the Next Book 11

As a career writer with many books under my belt, one of the eternal struggles is letting go of the book that’s finished to move on to the one that isn’t. It’s a challenge every single time—going from working on a book that’s now been through untold numbers of drafts, …

4 days ago Writing Comments Off on My Garden Summer: Books to Blooms 11

Flickr Creative Commons: Judy Gallagher This is my garden summer. If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, you will quickly see that my posts have become progressively more vegetable and flower filled. In fact, that’s where I was just before sitting down to write this column: out in my garden, …

5 days ago Writing Comments Off on Creation Is Messy–And That’s Okay 14

Late last summer I ran down to the basement to throw on a load of laundry before meeting a friend for coffee…and stepped, ankle-deep, into my own private paddling pool. I jumped back up onto the bottom step and tried to absorb everything at once: the odd, reflected light in …

7 days ago Writing Comments Off on Are You a Student? 20

A few months ago, my husband and I attended a tour of architecturally significant homes in Sarasota, Florida. Inside the residences, we were left to explore and discover their treasures for ourselves. The experience was heightened by the presence of local artisans at work. For people who love real estate …

1 week ago Writing Comments Off on Writing Characters with Personality 15

Last week, I turned in my new book to my editor, and immediately answered the siren song of the next one—the so-called affair book, unsullied by the drudgery and frustration of actual writing. Sadly, the affair book is now my WIP, so it won’t be long before it sports the …

1 week ago Writing Comments Off on Be Careful, or You’ll End Up in My Novel 22

Flickr Creative Commons: Theo Crazzolara So here’s my dirty little secret about writing fiction: Most of my characters begin with a real person. And before friends and acquaintances start thumbing through my novels, wondering if they should be outraged, let me emphasize that the key word here is “begin.” And …

2 weeks ago Writing Comments Off on The Editor’s Clinic: Problem Child 20

Child narrators can be a problem. Children don’t yet have the experience or self-awareness to understand what’s going on around them. So if you write intimately from their point of view, using only language and concepts that they would have available to them, it’s sometimes hard to convey what’s …

2 weeks ago Writing Comments Off on A Father’s Legacy 24

“Chow time!” The author’s father is on the far left. The past few weeks have been the perfect storm. It started with Memorial Day. Then came the D-Day commemorations, and a slew of articles and remembrances. Then came Fathers’ Day. My father didn’t participate in the D-Day invasion, but his …

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