One of the hardest tricks for a writer to get right: convincing the reader that time has passed while avoiding sluggish pacing. Here to help us think about this difficult topic are writers Sharissa Jones and Stacy Mattingly.
Mentioned in this episode: The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber. Find more of my fave books here: https://bookshop.org/shop/the7amnovelist
Sharissa Jones is the author of many, many ill-fated novels most of which are related to her childhood growing up on a farm in rural Nebraska. Sharissa graduated from the Grub Street Novel Incubator in 2015. Her essays have been published by Cognescenti and The Houston Chronicle. She also currently serves on the GrubStreet board of directors. She holds a B.A. in Ethics Politics and Economics from Yale College. In a previous life, Sharissa was a partner at a New York-based private equity firm. She has appeared in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Fortune Magazine, The Omaha World-Herald, and other publications. Sharissa once won fifty dollars in a barrel-racing jackpot and was named Miss Congeniality by a sorely misinformed Miss Southwest Nebraska Rodeo pageant judge.
Stacy Mattingly is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Unlikely Angel, an Atlanta hostage story now a feature film, Captive, starring David Oyelowo (Selma) and Kate Mara (House of Cards). Stacy’s work has appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Oxford American, Off Assignment, EuropeNow, and elsewhere. In 2012, she launched the Sarajevo Writers' Workshop in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later helped lead the first Narrative Witness exchange (Caracas-Sarajevo) for the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. An Atlanta native, Stacy teaches at Boston University, where she received an MFA in fiction, and she is an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music. Her recently completed first novel is set in the present-day Balkans.
Day 34: Time & Pacing with Sharissa Jones and Stacy Mattingly