Cynthia Harrison

Novelist

Year: 2010

  • Smoothly With Ease

    A result of the revision letter, which is such a blessing but also in some ways depressing, I’m reading Happiness is an Inside Job by the American Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Boorstein. I love her metta prayer and am trying to memorize it so that I can say it whenever my mind goes someplace dark. Since we’ve got the lunar eclipse…

  • Conjuring Conflict

     The Paris Notebook is still in process. Another editor read it, liked it, and suggested revisions. She had a really good idea for how to fix the nagging problem of conflict. Or lack thereof. Creating conflict is an element of story I’ve struggled with since I began writing fiction. Lack of plausible interal conflict between the hero and heroine was the…

  • Keef & Things

    I’ve been writing every day, polishing Luke’s #1 Rule to a glossy shine. Not that I think I’m going to hear anything soon about it or the other manuscript I’ve got in submission. Still, I keep writing because it’s the way I ease myself into the day. I once said Luke’s #1 Rule was the…

  • Swiftly

    Have a final exam to write this weekend on Restoration lit. In the spirit of Jonathan Swift, I thought I’d write this memo to students everywhere: How to Get an Easy A in Every Class 1. Cheat as often as you can, because everyone knows cheaters go far in life. Look at Bernie Madoff. Well…

  • The Perfect Writing Environment

    This morning, I’m sitting at my dining room table writing this post, waiting for the Maytag repairman. When my husband told me he’d made these arrangements the first thing I thought was “damn another writing day wasted.” Because distractions tend to wrestle away my limited ability to concentrate. Like Jonathan Franzen, I have my routine. But that’s where…