Paige Hawthorne: Blog

My editor, thornfoote, in a rare moment of lucidity, came up with an idea for an additional slogan for the obscene tees worn by my character, Winter Jennings.

(The schtick is that a girlfriend gave Winter's son, Walker, a set of tees for his 10th birthday. 'My Mom Sucks Cock' and 'I Love My Clit' would be a couple of examples. Worn respectively by Walker and Winter.)

Thorny's contribution, obviously made shortly after he awakened and before uncapping the bottle, was 'I'm a Good Girl.' On the back, 'Good Girls Swallow.'

Your opportunity, limited to only those of you who can read and write, is to send me your suggestions for more Winter tees.

I'll be starting my third Winter story soon, take that as a threat or not, and I plan to incorporate the most creative obscenities, the ones I like anyway, into the narrative.

Those winning entries will not only be immortalized for a portion of eternity, but the winning entrants will be able to read all of my SOL Winter stories for free. And, yes, I'm making this up as I type, I'll feature the hallowed slogans in a blog. Which means that four or five more readers may see them.

Paige

When someone as talented as Annie Proulx shares her approach to writing, I (as Archy McNally does on occasion) snap my heels together, stand at attention, and salute smartly.

However, what works for one girl doesn't necessarily work for another. This newspaper article spells out her writing discipline:

Annie Proulx writes literary fiction brilliant enough to win major accolades (Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc.) and accessible enough to win a wide audience. She specializes in short stories, including "Brokeback Mountain," though her masterpiece may be the novel The Shipping News. She didn't begin writing until in her 50s and, as you'll see, she doesn't believe in rushing things.

5 Techniques for Good Craftsmanship

1 Proceed slowly and take care.
2 To ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand.
3 Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you.
4 Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.
5 Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.

From an article in The Guardian.

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# 1, yes.
# 2, no.
# 3, yes, no, and yes.
# 4, absolutely yes.
# 5, yes, just wish it were that easy.

Paige

You know how rare it is for a writer to be included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year. Take fiction. Half of the Notable list is fiction and poetry. So fewer than 50 non-poetry fiction books. Per year.

Obviously 99.9% of the world's authors won't have even a dream of breathing that rarified Times oxygen. A few, Joyce Carol Oates comes to mind, have made the list more than once.

But here's a guy - - Daniel Woodrell - - whose spare novels have graced the Notable index five times.

Excuse me? Five times?

Mr. Woodrell writes country noir. Sort of like the esteemed Joe R. Lansdale. And, like Mr. Lansdale, some of his work has made it to the screen. Winter's Bone, for example.

Five times?

Who are your hidden gems?

Paige

Which authors do you guys revisit the most?

Here's a (probably partial) list of the ones I reread regularly:

> Robert B. Parker
> Robert Crais
> Thomas Perry
> Lee Child
> Michael Connelly (especially the Lincoln Lawyer)
> Lawrence Sanders (especially Archy McNally)
> Lawrence Block
> Elmore Leonard
> Thomas Harris
> Ross Thomas
> Donald Westlake
> P. G. Wodehouse (mostly Jeeves)
> Geoffrey Norman
> T. Jefferson Parker (although the latest ones got mystical)
> Don Winslow

Mostly mysteries. Nothing intellectual. All for fun.

Paige

I'm a rapid, rabid typist. Never have been tested competitively, but I bet I top out at close to 100 words a minute. Unfortunately, this includes dozens of errors which would lower my score considerably.

But in here I'm not looking to win a gold medal. If there's such a term, I type phonetically. Example: 1, 2, 3, might come out won, two, three.

'Write' might appear as 'right.'

What are your writing quirks?

Oh, here's another one. When I write certain Walker (Winter's son) passages, I sometimes include a certain coded signal to my real-life son. Who gets such a kick out of reading about his fictional counterpoint.

Paige