A Writer's Moment: 'It's a process of discovery'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's a process of discovery': “For me, writing is more a process of ‘discovering’ the book than planning it.” – Lois McMaster Bujold   Born in Columbus, Ohio on Nov. ...

'It's a process of discovery'

“For me, writing is more a process of ‘discovering’ the book than planning it.” – Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Born in Columbus, Ohio on Nov. 2, 1949 the prolific McMaster Bujold has written nearly 200 novels, collections and shorter works, won Science Fiction's Hugo Award four times for Best Novel and twice for her series, and been honored as a Grand Master by The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

 

Bujold's novel Paladin of Souls and novella The Mountains of Mourning “doubled,” winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and in the fantasy genre, her Curse of Chalion won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best novel.  

 

A longtime resident of Ohio and graduate of Ohio State, she now makes her home in Minnesota where she continues to work on what she terms “escapist literature” while also writing a weekly blog.  

 

“If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration,” Bujold said, “choose learning.  It works most of the time.”

 

A Writer's Moment: A 'fly on the wall' point of view

A Writer's Moment: A 'fly on the wall' point of view:   “I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about.  Read ...

A 'fly on the wall' point of view

 

“I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about.  Read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.” – Thomas Mallon

 

Born in Glen Cove, NY on this date in 1951, Mallon is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and critic, known for historical novels providing great attention to detail and context for readers, sort of a “fly on the wall" view of events swirling around them.  

 

Mallon has authored 11 novels – including the multiple award-winning Henry and Clara and Watergate – and 8 nonfiction books, including one of the “definitive” works on plagiarism, Stolen Words.  His most recent book is 2025’s The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994.   Also the author of hundreds of news and feature stories, he points out newspapers as great research sources for “historical” fiction.

 

“For almost every novel I've written, I've read the daily newspaper of the time almost as if it were my current subscription. For Two Moons, which was set in 1877, I think I read just about every day of the Washington Evening Star for that year. For Henry and Clara, I read the Albany Evening Journal of the time.”