Ask the Author: Cynthia Robinson
Answered Questions (18)
Cynthia Robinson
I have not. But there are a lot of movies I have not seen. The majority, probably. Trying to divide my time between my academic day job and writing, as well as keeping up with the current trainwreck of a political dumpster fire (I feel like I should be in the know if a nuclear war is going to break out somewhere, so I can put myself and my dear bunnies somewhere reasonably safe or at least out of our collective misery if it comes to that...) doesn't leave me much time for movies. :))) I have, though, seen The Graduate, multiple times. Every semester some smart-arse among my students calls me Mrs. Robinson and giggles and of course no one else has ever done THAT before, how original. :)))
Cynthia Robinson
I have not. Spy novels aren't really my drug of choice as far as reading goes, tho' Fleming's are likely top-shelf in that genre. Saw the movie, tho'! Right now I am deep into a reread of Virginia Woolf, and lots nonfiction about the Bloomsbury group and their historical context, for novel-in-progress purposes. And a lot of poetry. Not that I know a lot about poetry (except medieval, goes with the day job), but I love to read it.
Cynthia Robinson
My head is where they start, and they are always in there somewhere, demanding my attention when I should really be focused on something else. I use note cards a lot before I ever write out a chapter or a scene or a story on the screen. I then type basic plot points out in a Word document, and add in any phrases or bits of dialogue that I absolutely want in there. Then I flesh out, read over, print up and start the process all over again to produce the next draft. I have found (for me... this might be horrible for someone else, every writer has to find her process and that takes some time and some mistakes and some trial and error) that this works for me at the macro level--i.e., plot of an entire novel--and for individual chapters, and even for individual scenes in chapters. And of course for short stories, and for individual scenes in those stories. Whenever I am stuck, I get out the note cards! (and of course I recycle...). Some of my stories are available in their entirety on my website, www.cynthiarobinsonbooks.com , and samples of others are there as well (under "Other Writings"; I post whatever word count the journal in question will allow). I also do weekly blog posts on the same site, usually late at night on Fridays (EST in the US). Currently, it's the Bad, Bad Love blog, and the accompanying pictures often feature stilettos. Love your screen name, btw: real queens definitely fix other queens' crowns.
Cynthia Robinson
Not sure what you mean. If you have a problem with using Goodreads, you should ask a Goodreads person, not an author! :)
Cynthia Robinson
Hi, Philip, You've asked a similar question to James, so I will partially repeat myself.
Time to start searching for an agent, figuring out which books are like yours so as to best describe your book in a query letter. There are some decent online resources for this. Or try googling around to find out who represents the author of the books you like. This is the second stage of climbing the novel mountain, and it's a hard one. Lots of fortitude is needed, best of luck! A writers' conference is not a bad idea, either -- Squaw Valley has a wonderful one, as does Slice Magazine - These are the ones I know but there are many others out there. Join a writers' group to get feedback from other writers, that's also helpful... most of these things are researchable onlinel Wish I had an easier answer, but this stuff is hard. best of luck!
Time to start searching for an agent, figuring out which books are like yours so as to best describe your book in a query letter. There are some decent online resources for this. Or try googling around to find out who represents the author of the books you like. This is the second stage of climbing the novel mountain, and it's a hard one. Lots of fortitude is needed, best of luck! A writers' conference is not a bad idea, either -- Squaw Valley has a wonderful one, as does Slice Magazine - These are the ones I know but there are many others out there. Join a writers' group to get feedback from other writers, that's also helpful... most of these things are researchable onlinel Wish I had an easier answer, but this stuff is hard. best of luck!
Cynthia Robinson
Hi, James,
Well, there is no easy answer to this. Time to start searching for an agent, figuring out which books are like yours so as to best describe your book in a query letter. There are some decent online resources for this. Or try googling around to find out who represents the author of the books you like. This is the second stage of climbing the novel mountain, and it's a hard one. Lots of fortitude is needed, best of luck! A writers' conference is not a bad idea, either -- Squaw Valley has a wonderful one, as does Slice Magazine - These are the ones I know but there are many others out there -- best of luck!
Well, there is no easy answer to this. Time to start searching for an agent, figuring out which books are like yours so as to best describe your book in a query letter. There are some decent online resources for this. Or try googling around to find out who represents the author of the books you like. This is the second stage of climbing the novel mountain, and it's a hard one. Lots of fortitude is needed, best of luck! A writers' conference is not a bad idea, either -- Squaw Valley has a wonderful one, as does Slice Magazine - These are the ones I know but there are many others out there -- best of luck!
Cynthia Robinson
Much love and support to you! I grew up in Tennessee, granddaughter of two preachers, one Methodist and one Baptist, we had to alternate churches, which means... we were always in church. And I had a librarian aunt, also divorcee, which in the south in the 1950s and 60s (I was born in the latter) didn't play all that well. My mother, also a devoted Christian (not sure about my aunt, she was pretty rebellious and died young and very tragically), was a school teacher, and from my earliest memories, either she or my aunt was reading aloud to me. My mother didn't see a contradiction, I don't believe (she also died relatively young, and to my great sorrow it is no longer possible for me to ask her).
Jesus taught in parables, did he not? Which are a sort of fiction...
I ultimately left the church. It was too confining for me. I am not gay, but I have what might best be described as an alternative lifestyle (no kids, never wanted to subject a child to me and my weirdnesses, and am terrible at being married...) and I do not feel that most churches would welcome me. Nor, honestly, do I feel the need for a church in which to house my beliefs.
I sincerely hope you have, or find, the right place for yours, and if you feel the urge to read or to write, well, it's there for a reason--follow your heart!
Jesus taught in parables, did he not? Which are a sort of fiction...
I ultimately left the church. It was too confining for me. I am not gay, but I have what might best be described as an alternative lifestyle (no kids, never wanted to subject a child to me and my weirdnesses, and am terrible at being married...) and I do not feel that most churches would welcome me. Nor, honestly, do I feel the need for a church in which to house my beliefs.
I sincerely hope you have, or find, the right place for yours, and if you feel the urge to read or to write, well, it's there for a reason--follow your heart!
Cynthia Robinson
design's all done for this one! Most publishers have their own designers, in-house, and in the event I'm able to introduce my own for the next novel (still quite a way off at this point, I have to finish writing it first...), I have a dear friend in Madrid who is a designer and she would get any business I have to offer. thanks for asking, tho!
Cynthia Robinson
Really good question!! It helps to be a hermit -- ;) -- I don't have kids, my guy lives on another continent, so I am able to be both a scholar and a writer of fiction. It does take some careful (obsessive...?) scheduling. And sometimes I lie to people and say I have plans and stay home and write. My two pet bunnies are fairly forgiving in their Human is deep in her computer, long as they get to go outside (safely fenced patio). My favorite is summer: a few hours of scholarship and then I use the patio garden (it's pretty elaborate for such a tiny thing) as a 'hinge' --a place where my brain can roam freely, always with a pen and post-its near--or 'bridge' to a few hours of fiction writing. And I am definitely finding that the novel I'm (hopefully) close to finishing now has a lot more of the 'scholarly' me in it, in terms of characters and material. And the one I am planning next is set partly in 14th century Granada, my academic stomping ground. I know for sure that writing fiction has made me a better academic writer. A lot of academic writing is pretty deadly boring, and that is an avoidable sin!
Cynthia Robinson
I think I would have to say Kate Atkinson...
Cynthia Robinson
I'm Cynthia, not Lara (are you writing to me?...), but there are a lot of novels and memoirs out there with a lot of pain in them that readers love. It's all in how you tell it!
Cynthia Robinson
When I was five years old, my cousin--15 at the time--shot my favorite aunt and killed her. Ruled an accident, he was supposedly cleaning his gun, but after the afternoon of her funeral--I remember my mother crying as she looked in the mirror, pinning her veiled black hat in place with hat pins--it was never discussed. Ever. No pictures of my aunt anywhere to be found. She was a librarian, she introduced me to books; she was divorced (not something women readily did in the South in the '60s), beautiful, she wore red lipstick and dyed her hair and she smoked. She fascinated me. The truth is I already wrote a novel about this, my first, but it's lost somewhere on a floppy disk, floating in the mists of time... Possibly a good thing: I think all writers should probably 'lose' their first novels. Maybe I'll write it again; I'm sure it would be better the second time around.
Cynthia Robinson
I still consider myself to be very much an "aspiring writer," and my advice to myself (and to anyone else who wants it...) is:
1. Write. Every. Day.
2. Do. Not. Give. Up.
1. Write. Every. Day.
2. Do. Not. Give. Up.
Cynthia Robinson
TATIANA'S WEDDING (Publerati, 2014) was inspired by the rather disturbing story of one of my roommates from back in my East Village days. We shared a railroad apartment, and she was an insomniac, so whenever she was awake, so was I. We both liked red wine a lot (we were Concha y Toro magnum kinda gurlz), she talked a blue streak, and I have a very good memory. And I changed all the names.
Cynthia Robinson
Everything inspires me - my past, my friends' pasts; my present, my friends' present... history, conversations I overhear on the bus, in the airport, at the supermarket...
I have Post-its and note cards in my bag and all over my house, and I scribble everything down. Then comes the separating of the wheat from the chaff (and there is quite a lot of the latter).
I have Post-its and note cards in my bag and all over my house, and I scribble everything down. Then comes the separating of the wheat from the chaff (and there is quite a lot of the latter).
Cynthia Robinson
I'm always working on parallel projects, academic and fiction. On the academic side, I've just been offered a contract for a book on images and devotional life in the Nasrid kingdom of Spain, which I'll be working on over the next two years and a a bit. On the fiction side, I'm on a final (hopefully!) round of revisions to a novel, BIRDS OF WONDER, that will be coming out with Standing Stone Books in early 2018 -- more on that as the date draws near; a new novel, which I hope to deliver to my agent by the end of the current calendar year, is entering its third draft (set in an area of London that I know very intimately and personally; it has a strong supernatural component, and I'll just leave it at that, so as not to jinx things...). Another novel, which will be set in 14th-century Granada and thus bring together the two halves of my writing life for the first time, is in the "ideas" phase of development, the "scribble it down on a note card and stick it in the pile" phase, which is an important phase, I think!
Cynthia Robinson
Being able to sit down at this desk every day and create. Even if it's going badly, even if what's showing up on the screen needs to be deleted immediately, I'm still writing! I held back on it for a very long time while I had an entire career in academe (which I still maintain...), and now that I've gone back to writing fiction, I can't imagine letting a day go by without engaging in that practice, even if only for ten minutes. I need daily contact with what I'm working on--a must have!
Cynthia Robinson
Write through it! I also have a fairly elaborate "pre-writing" process involving large note cards and whiteboards--entire plots are often worked out in this format before I ever put fingers to keys. It's a lot less intimidating scribbling something down on a note card than typing it onto a blank screen. Also, I tend to write out ideas first in Spanish. Even drafts. If I start putting something into English, that's a message to myself from me that "this is for real now...".
If I'm working on a draft and things suddenly grind to a halt, I reach for the note cards!
If I'm working on a draft and things suddenly grind to a halt, I reach for the note cards!
Cynthia A. Robinson
Tatiana's Wedding was inspired by the disturbing story of an old roommate of mine. We shared a 'railroad' apartment in the East Village, there was only one bathroom, and she was an insomniac. So when she was up so was I. We both liked red wine, she talked a blue streak, and I have a good memory. I did change all the names.
Cynthia A. Robinson
Everything inspires me. My house is littered with Post-it stations so things can get scribbled down before they disappear from my over-cluttered brain. The task then is to wade through the millions of ideas and toss the meh ones and hope to find a pearl or two...! At the core of most things I write, whether stories or novels, is something--often something very tiny--from my own past (or even present), but once I begin to fictionalize it, it very quickly takes on a life of its own, far beyond mine.
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