Category: Novel

• The F Words: Following the F Words

  

  It stands to reason that, before I sat down to write a YA novel titled The F Words  — in which a teen who tags his high school wall with the F word is required to write two poems a week, each about a word that starts with the letter F — I would make […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  December 15, 2022

  Books, Character, Cinquain, Coming-of-Age, First Novel, Forms, Free Verse, Literature, Novel, Novel, Poetry, Social Justice, Story, The F Words, Words, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  Books, Character, Literature, Poetry, The F Words, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

• The F Words: October Rules

  

  In September of 2022 The F Words moved from a frontlist book to a backlist book. A publisher’s backlist consists of all the books it still carries that were published a year ago, or longer. Some books a publisher carries go out of print. Others stay in print forever, bringing in revenues to the publisher […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  November 15, 2022

  Books, Literature, Marketing, Novel, Novel, The F Words, Writing, YA Fiction

  awareness days, backlist, Canva, frontlist, International Education in Prisons Day, National Coachs Day, National Pumpkin Day, The F Words, YA Fiction

• The F Words: Bilingualism

  Not counting the US, approximately 65-75% of the world’s population is bilingual. In the US in 1980 only 10% of the population was bilingual. Today that number has risen to 20%, possibly to 25%, primarily through immigrants, largely Spanish-speaking. Many different cultures have positive proverbs about knowing more than one language. An old Persian proverb […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  June 15, 2022

  Bilingualism, Books, Literature, Novel, Novel, Social Justice, The F Words, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  Bilingualism, Monolingualism, The F Words, YA

• The F Words: The Writing

  For well over a year now I’ve been blogging about various aspects of The F Words, but one thing I haven’t talked about is the actual steps of writing the novel. Writers and readers are often interested in how writing takes place. So, for those who might want to know, I will try to recount […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  April 15, 2022

  Books, Literature, Novel, Novel, Rewriting, Social Justice, Story, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  Fiction, Manuscript Drafts, Rewriting, The F Words, YA Novel

• The F Words: Symbols

  Although I love literature and am avidly interested in many different parts of a story and the way a story works (as you can probably tell from reading my blogs about The F Words), I have, I confess, never been much interested in symbols in literature. In fact [embarrassing], I can sometimes read a novel […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  April 1, 2022

  Books, Literature, Novel, Symbols, The F Words, Writing, YA Fiction

  Symbols, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

• The F Words and She’s on First

  For the last year, as I’ve been marketing The F Words, I’ve often thought about She’s on First. I suppose that the immediate reason I think of the two books together is that they are, for me, both firsts. She’s on First is the first novel I published (1987.) And The F Words (2021) is […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  March 15, 2022

  Baseball, Books, Coming-of-Age, First Novel, Literature, Novel, Novel, The F Words, Women, Women in Baseball, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  #Baseball Fiction, Coming of Age, First Novel, The F Words, Women in Baseball, YA Fiction

• The F Words: Dialogue

  Most readers love dialogue, probably because it reveals something happening in “real time.” That is, the action is on the page, rather than being relayed by a narrator as having happened. Dialogue isn’t “having happened,” it’s happening. Right now, as the reader sees the words. Also, I suspect that some readers (I’m one of them) […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  March 1, 2022

  Books, Dialogue, Literature, Novel, Novel, Story, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  Dialogue, Fiction, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions

• The F Words: Italics

  Italics are a form of typography in which the letters usually slant to the right. In serif fonts such as Palatino, for example, there are slight changes in some of the letters. Notice that the italic lower-case a is different in the italic version. In sans serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial, the italic […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  February 15, 2022

  Books, Novel, Punctuation, Sentences, The F Words, Titles, Words, Writing Decisions

  Books, Italics, Letter Fonts, Punctuation, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions

• The F Words: The Hate U Give

  I love Angie Thomas’s YA novel, The Hate U Give. I read it when it was published and felt as if I  had been living in a stuffy room and now, at last, somebody opened the windows and let the light and the fresh air in — somebody was talking about the truths of racism, […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  February 1, 2022

  Books, Change, Literature, Novel, Novel, Poetry, Resistance, Social Justice, The F Words, YA Fiction

  Books, Literature, School Closings, Social Justice, The F Words, The Hate U Give, YA Fiction

• The F Words: Foreshadowing

  Foreshadowing can be delicious, as in anticipating a birthday present. Or it can be terrifying, as in anticipating a hurricane. In literature foreshadowing works to indicate or warn the reader that something may happen. It’s never as exact as the date of a birthday, nor as specific as “Hurricane winds exceed 160 mph.”   And […]

  Barbara Gregorich

  January 15, 2022

  Books, Foreshadowing, Literature, Novel, Novel, Story, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions, YA Fiction

  Foreshadowing, Teenlit, The F Words, Writing, Writing Decisions, YA, YA Fiction