Welcome to DonnaLevin.com
I'm a San Francisco
author and writing teacher here to provide resources for writers of
any level of experience. I am the author of the novels
Extraordinary Means (William Morrow) and
California Street (Simon & Schuster), as well as two books
on writing:
Get that Novel Started and
Get that Novel Written, both published by Writer's Digest Books. Visit
often for updates about newly released books and trends in publishing.
Send me a message--and be sure to read and add your comments on my new blog, below.
Posted by Donna Levin on
May 09, 2013
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I always
plan to go to museums. There’s a fine exhibit of Dutch masters
at the
de Young museum here in San Francisco now that everyone’s
kvelling about. I want to go see it, really I do, but I won’t.
(You should see it, if you live in the Bay Area: it’s here in until June
2
nd. I’m lazy – what’s your excuse?)
When
I’m out of town though, and looking for something to do, I will go to museums,
and even if the exhibit wasn’t that exciting, I feel smug, and smugness
is its own reward.
Posted by Donna Levin on
April 15, 2013
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I have
been struggling for a long time – about twice as long as it takes me to
get my fake nails redone – over whether or not to use a person’s real name
in this post. This person is, like the parrot of the famous
Monty Python sketch, dead, deceased, no more. Expired.
Gone to see its maker. Bereft of life, rung down the curtain and
joined the choir invisible.
I can
use his name (for it is, I mean, it
wasa he) without fear of repercussions, because not only is there
no jail time for
defaming a dead person, there is no cause of action. That is,
not only can he (somewhat obviously) not sue you, but his survivors can’t
either. This is why people make so many uncalled for remarks about
Herbert Hoover.
Posted by Donna Levin on
March 21, 2013
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I keep blogging about how miserably, masochistically and unjustly hard
writing is, blah blah, poor me, poor me. Well, as
Lesley Gore sang, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
But I had one of those miraculous moments today, one of those – dare I
say? – epiphanies, one of those times when it’s all worthwhile, and darn
it, I’m going to record it.
Posted by Donna Levin on
March 08, 2013
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I’m going to go away for the weekend. This is, like, a hugely decadent
experience in my world.
A couple
of weeks ago I was in the slough of despond – a resonant description that
I can’t take credit for. I first came across it in Dorothea Brande’s book,
Becoming a Writer,originally published in 1934. The style
is dated bu
t the content remains relevant and insightful. I first read
it over twenty years ago and I remember parts of it, which is high praise,
since I recently forgot the curtain time of a play I’d just bought tickets
for. (Didn’t get to see play; didn’t get refund.) After all,
we may have laptops now, but the words are basically the same, only you
put a lower-case “I” in front of a lot of them.
Posted by Donna Levin on
February 28, 2013
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I’m a veteran – or should I say survivor? – of a dozen writing groups,
some facilitated, and some even facilitated by
me, but mostly peer groups.
Now, for purposes of this post a “writing group” is any setting in which
one’s fiction is read and critiqued by others. So my first experience
with such was a writers’ conference in Berkeley 30 years ago. (Yes,
thirty years ago. It gives me no pleasure to contemplate how much
closer to death that puts me.)
