Despite deriving its name from the most pugnacious god, March did not come in like a lion. In fact, in the panhandle of Idaho, the first week of my favorite month was surprisingly temperate, which was a gift to my MFA students who flew into town from all over. Since you asked, it’s my favorite because it contains my birthday and the first day of Spring and a volatile attitude that keeps everyone on their toes. The weather app is always wrong. It might rain one day, snow the next, and by the third day the emerging sun will prompt all the college students to unfold their lawn chairs and hold court on Greek Row. Never will you see so much skin, so blindingly pale, as that first sunny day in March.

As I’m writing this, the morning rain has switched to afternoon snow, so March is also choosing not to go out like a lamb. Typical March. Very endearing.

What I’m Working On:

The second residency of the 2024-2025 Camperdown MFA program was fantastic, and I’m very pleased with the progress the students are making and how much ground we were able to cover.

One of the most important aspects of the program is providing useful and specific feedback, but if you know (or are) a writer, then you may know that, at our worst, we’re egotistical, subjects to fits of despair or wrath when criticized, familiar with the best fainting couches in town, etc.

At our best, we know that feedback is a vital part of the writing life, and that if we’re not listening to our readers, then we’re failing them. A writer should never be hubristic, assuming that being misunderstood is a hallmark of greatness. We are in the service industry, after all. And I’m happy to report that, despite the intensity of some of the feedback, all of the Camperdown students are eager to receive criticism, which is exactly what we’re looking for in an applicant.

After MFA week, I took a long vacation to Mexico with my family and did very little work, other than writing a few more scenes for The Winter King 2. I’m really enjoying where this story is going while remaining utterly at a loss for a title. The Winter King was named that from the very beginning, and The Sinking City only made a small change from its original (The Sinking Kingdom). So far, The Second Greatest Thief in New York has only been shortened to The Second Greatest Thief, although that could always change. But I can’t, for the life of me, think of a good name for a sequel that doesn’t sound either strangely matchy-matchy (The Summer Queen!) or like one of the 95,000 fantasy titles out there (Court of X and X, anyone?). I do believe I’ve struggled more over book titles than children’s names.

The good news is that, if you’re traditionally published, naming a book isn’t a solitary affair. Your marketing team will know what title will perform well in search engines, and your editor will help you find a title that is equally true to the story and intriguing to the casual bookshop browser.

What I’m Reading:

This was a delightful month for reading, mainly because I did a lot of it in Mexico, and the weather there always puts me in the mood to enjoy a book. I started the month off with The Things of Earth by Joe Rigney which was a great reminder of the goodness of God in times of abundance and need. For fiction I read a fun bit of speculative fiction called The Underwood Tapes by Amanda DeWitt. I also read a coming-of-age novel, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, which was a quick, bittersweet, poignant read. After that I read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, and since I needed something happy after that, I picked up the delightful I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter Beagle.

For book group, I chose Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan which, despite being quite short, packed a major punch. If you’re looking for a study in excellent prose, Keegan’s your gal.

A Writing Tip:

One of the things I’m always working on in my own writing—as well as with my students—is the idea of controlled emotion. Cormac McCarthy does this very well, as does Susanna Clarke, particularly in Piranesi. I think of it like a musical score. You have all four families of instruments at your disposal, but how you choose to use them will determine when your audience feels something. Sometimes you may want to build up the emotion over the course of the scene (like In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg) or you may budget for punctuated moments that surprise and then pull back (Haydn’s Symphony no. 94). What you shouldn’t do is maintain one level of volume and intensity throughout an entire scene. Your reader will feel fatigued rather than surprised.

The tools you use to control emotion are many and varied, but they include dialogue tags, subtext instead of on-the-nose dialogue, and using action beats in unexpected ways. We all expect an angry person to slam their fist against a wall, but what does it do for the moment if they’re slowly shredding a piece of paper into tiny pieces instead?

Another tool at your disposal is surprise. One of the best moments in Small Things Like These by Keegan is when the narrator says that as a child, he used to write Santa a letter and he asked to receive “his daddy, or else a jigsaw puzzle of a farm in five hundred pieces.” The juxtaposition of something monumental and mundane is surprising, devastating, and very true.

That’s all for March, see you in April!

Christine