Caroline Leavitt's Blog

• Truth in Fiction

  October 28, 2009

  • A novelists, we struggle to put the truth on the page.  We hope to tunnel so deeply into our characters' lives that what is on the page feels absolutely and complete real-so real that we fully expect the characters to walk past us.  But we novelists also deal with some people thinking that what we have written is really about us personally, about our lives, that even though it is fiction, it is ...
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• Finding the story in everything

  October 21, 2009

  • I've been thinking a lot about how writers see the world. Recently on Facebook, a writer I really, really admire (the extraordinary Rhian Ellis, who wrote After Life, which I've written about here before) was telling me how she had been arrested for protesting some white supremacists in her neighborhood. I instantly peppered her with questions. What did it feel like to be in a cop car? Did she ...
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• Can I get a little respect, please?

  August 30, 2009

  • Recently a person approached me to help him with his manuscript. He needed editorial work and wanted to get his book in shape for a publisher. I explained what I do and how I work and how thorough I am, and the success I have had with clients. I love doing this work--love to help other writers, plus it helps me in my own work to figure out what is and isn't working in someone else's work, and ...
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