O my friends, as some of you know, I have written a book, Like Light from Stars. “Obsessive love, a nightmare journey, musical genius, a chain of abandonment…” The book follows seven generations of the same family in San Francisco, from 1849 to the present. I am prouder of this book than almost anything I’ve […]
Bar Mitzvah
Hi, friends. I’m back! Sorry for not posting for so long. This is the transcript of a spoken-word story I told at a Voices for Change concert last year, posted here now by request. The characters are Lily and Ezra of Like Light From Stars, and the story is from a teenaged Lily’s point of […]
The Conference
The AWP conference is the biggest writers’ conference in North America. It happens in a different city every year and this year it was in Portland, so I went. I asked my favorite fashion-maven Liz Smith for shopping help so that I wouldn’t show up at the conference in my jammies. I am fashion-impaired and […]
Magic
My mother, Marguerite, was very bright, absurdly literate, pathologically insecure, and a poet. As a young mother she gradually became aware that her first and most loved child was a psychopath, and believed that recognition of his defect would destroy her life. She could lose everything she loved most, both her son and her husband. […]
Mrs. Schultz’s
I was disappointed when I didn’t get to go to the writing conference in San Francisco last weekend, but it’s possible that I was even more disappointed that we didn’t drive down Highway 101. We were planning to do that to avoid the snow on the pass. I was so looking forward to visiting the […]
A Little Valentine: San Francisco, 2004
This is a little valentine for my wife, Martha Shelley—a memory of the third time we got married. Looking for something else, I found an article I wrote back then for a magazine, and decided to rewrite it and post it here for Martha to see. Martha—remember this day? I heard about the San Francisco […]
A First Draft of the Pitch
By Sylvia Allen on February 5, 2019 in Getting published, Like Light From Stars, Sylvia Allen, Writer
At the writers’ conference next week, I’ll have to pitch my novel to as many suitable agents as I can manage. I will have only, like, three minutes to say what the book is about in such a way that the agent is interested in hearing (or reading) more. I just wrote a first draft […]
Going to the San Francisco Writers Conference
By Sylvia Allen on January 28, 2019 in Getting published, Like Light From Stars, Sylvia Allen, Writer
I’m going to the San Francisco Writers Conference! It’s February 12-17. I’m going to this particular conference because the novel that I’m trying to publish is very definitely set in San Francisco. I went in 2016 and had a wonderful time but did not use the contacts I made in any kind of useful way. […]
Why Won’t They Talk to Me?
I thought it would be easy. Don’t we old people love to talk about our memories of the past? You generally can’t get us to shut up. Yet so far I have not managed to interview anyone at all. Why won’t they talk to me? I asked respectfully and carefully. “Nancy, I’ve so enjoyed your […]
Interview Questions: St. Johns Memories
These are the interview questions for when I ask people for their St. Johns memories. What year were you born? Were you born in St. Johns? Or when did you arrive here? Have you lived here all your life? Or where else have you lived, and at what ages? Where are your parents from? When […]
The Interview Strategy
For that perfect day job that I recently quit, I became adept at interviewing people. I learned how to prepare a detailed, thorough list of questions in advance. I learned how to keep the interviewee happy about talking to me, and how to control the conversation so the person doesn’t wander off into long stories […]