ARCHIVE FOR Katrin Schumann

When writing the fiction of violence, Katrin Schumann finds that there are no easy answers about how to get it right. This article first appeared in CrimeReads.

Years ago in a writing workshop in San Francisco, a lanky middle-aged student sitting next to me held his pages in trembling fingers. He began to read aloud a story about a body found in the trunk of a car. As he read, we all listened attentively, drawn in at first by the obvious questions: who was this woman and what had happened to her? We were trying to learn to become better writers

Building a supportive network takes time and courage. Novelist Katrin Schumann argues that it’s worth starting to cultivate community early on, even if your instinct or your preference is to work alone. This post first appeared on JaneFriedman.com.

I’ve always found people who make movies to be awe-inspiring—in order to evoke a world and a story on screen, they need to work together with dozens of other professionals, from front-end people like actors and directors, to back-end people like sound editors

Katrin Schumann explores what it's really like for authors in the months before launching a new book into the marketplace.

A book launch is a prolonged, and frankly rather strange, experience. You've already been working for what seems like ages (and sometimes is ages) on a manuscript. Eons pass as you prepare that manuscript for the reality of a commercial marketplace: editing, cover design, interior design, more editing, acknowledgements, nightmares about who you've forgotten to acknowledge, and diving into promotional activities. Your book--it's themes, characters, the whole point of it--seems far away now. It's become a product, one ...

Katrin Schumann asks, what happens when, after a long time writing and editing, you once again find yourself at the beginning of an entirely new project?

Some of you have been writing for a long time, and you likely have a manuscript or two going already. You may be astonished by how long it's taking to get your writing to where you want it to be—and perhaps you're learning about the utterly transformative power of deep editing.

Sometimes, as writers, we have to shake up our routines and our expectations. Katrin Schumann explores what makes writers productive and happy, and determines that change can be good.

I recently packed up the office where I'd been working for the past four and a half years