Cynthia Harrison

Novelist

Year: 2005

  • Grit, Part Two

    Thinking over the congratulatory tone of yesterday’s entry, I have a few more things to add. Balancing the karma and all that. It’s true that I have grit. It’s also true that grit is a better indicator of future success than talent or intelligence. Which is good because I’m not all that talented OR intelligent.…

  • Grit

    Yesterday I researched the agents–luckily both authors thanked their agents by name in their acknowledgements, which made it easier. I drafted a letter, too. Then I took more notes on my Problematic Essential Character. I think I figured out how to work him in and to what degree. Now I just have to write the…

  • Thinking & Planning

    I still haven’t found the time to sit down and read through my novel. I’m not surprised by this. It’s the busiest time of year. But what I have been doing is thinking about things I need to fix. The way I concluded the conflict never felt exactly right. As a reader, it’s an ending…

  • Comfort & Joy

    Eudora Welty wrote her last piece of fiction, The Optimist’s Daughter, in 1972. She died in 2001, and in between, she started many things, but the words just wouldn’t come. What she did instead, and what many people thought hindered her fiction writing, was travel. Welty was a writer-at-large in the grandest sense of the…

  • Happy Holidays