Poets & Writers Theater

“There comes a point where you’ve gotten so deep into the novel that the words don’t really make sense anymore,” says Laura Lippman as she describes the need for a tactile writing process involving visual and colorful outlines. Lippman’s latest novel, Lady in the Lake (William Morrow, 2019), is set in 1960s Baltimore and follows a housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

“I adopted the six days for creation and a seventh for rest model. I figured, if it worked for building this world, it should work for fictional ones as well.” Novelist Nathan Englander, author of kaddish.com (Knopf, 2019), shares how his religious upbringing has influenced his writing rituals in this PBS NewsHour video.

"National Novel Writing Month, I think, fits in beautifully with writing practice," says Natalie Goldberg in this video from Open Road Media. "Go for one month. Go mad." NaNoWriMo challenges writers to start a fifty-thousand-word novel in the month of November and has expanded to include programs for young writers.