Category: First 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

• My Writing Life: 6

  

  In 1977 Contemporary Books published my first novel, She’s on First. I’ve published a lot of books since, but you need not fear that I’m going to write a blog about each of them. That would take me to something like “My Writing Life: 147,” and I suspect I would lose many (if not all!)…

  Barbara Gregorich

  October 1, 2022

  Baseball, Books, First Novel, Literature, Marketing, Novel, Women, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

• My Writing Life: 2

  After that initial short story I wrote in high school, my next foray into fiction came about fifteen years later, when I decided to start writing novels. I had plenty of plots in mind and just needed to decide which one to start with. At the time I was working as a typesetter for the…

  Barbara Gregorich

  June 1, 2022

  Baseball, Books, First Novel, Memories, Story, Women, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

  Educational Workbooks, First Novel, She's on First, Writing Decisions

• 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

• Exposition through Appositives

  In fiction, exposition is the information the reader needs in order to understand the story: background information, for example, or descriptions of unusual things. Usually exposition is told in narrative: that is, not in dialogue.  It’s important for writers to understand that the information revealed by exposition is not the story. It’s merely necessary information…

  Barbara Gregorich

  December 15, 2019

  Appositive, Books, Expanding a Sentence, First Novel, Grammar, Novel, Rewriting, Sentence Structure, Sentences, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

  Appositives, Exposition

• Writing My First Novel: Part 2

  So after I overcame the grief of killing off a character and once again tackled the writing of She’s on First, I had four chapters to go. And I was still working full time. I finished the four chapters in five months. Voila! A completed manuscript! Finishing a manuscript is quite an accomplishment, but as…

  Barbara Gregorich

  June 15, 2016

  Baseball, Books, First Novel, Novel, Self-Publishing, Women, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

  baseball, Books, Fiction, Novel, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

• Writing My First Novel: Part 1

  Before I wrote She’s on First, I had only two college courses on writing: nothing like the richness of fiction writing courses offered today. I had no fiction-writing workshops, either. As I tell students when I teach novel-writing workshops, it’s possible to write a novel without having taken courses in novel-writing. But I was guided…

  Barbara Gregorich

  June 1, 2016

  Baseball, Books, First Novel, Novel, Research, Women, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions

  baseball, Books, Fiction, First Novel, Goals, Novel, Women in Baseball, Writing, Writing Decisions