Ask the Author: Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
Answered Questions (6)
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
I love the fantastic landscape behind the portrait of Lisa I the Mona Lisa. And I've always thought Leonardo painted a portrait that appears to live. Those are two ideas that inspired me. The third came when I read that the Louvre Museum had measured the paint layers of the Mona Lisa with a Spectrographic Scanner. I thought what a great mystery it would make if the scanner set of a dreaded molecule-destroying syndrome that created chaos and possible entropy in the painting unless somebody stopped it.
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
I'm fascinated by science and physics. I read a lot of science magazines and articles. Sometimes, an idea for a story arises from this or sometimes I'll just see an image of Lucy wandering somewhere or a I'll think of something interesting in a painting and I'll just start writing and see where it takes me. It's odd, but sometimes when I'm writing, it doesn't even feel like me writing. The story writes itself. I guess this is inspiration.
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
I'm writing the third book in the Lucy Nightingale adventure series about Lucy and her brainy friend, Sam. The Crystal Navigator was book one in which Lucy finds her confidence by going back in time and talking to her favorite artists, sometimes wandering through their paintings. I am a professor of Art History stories about art are easy for me. Book two, Mona Lisa's Ghost, is a mystery about the reincarnation of the real Mona Lisa and the theft of the painting. Book Three begins as a story about a boy who falls out of a painting when it was stolen. Lucy wants to get him home, but it evolves into a story that concerns an evil mastermind who wants to annihilate the earth. Lucy and Sam have to stop him.
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
Forget the rules. When I first began writing for publication, I read a lot of advice other writers give to aspiring writers, such as never use adverbs, never write in the passive tense, adjectives are beastly, start writing at the end?? and never, ever begin with a dream, or make the whole book a dream. I do agree with that, as it cheats your readers.
Another author gave me the best advice I've ever got. Make sure all the threads of the story, every single thing you've mentioned throughout the books meets and is resolved at the end. Loose ends will irritate and lose readers. So, that means every word, every sentence must move the action along. No side tracking cute stories you might love, but are irrelevant. Chekov said, "Kill your darlings," and he was right. No matter how brilliant you think some sub story you've written to amuse yourself, and I've written hundreds, they must be cut in the end if they are not relevant to the resolution of the story.
Another author gave me the best advice I've ever got. Make sure all the threads of the story, every single thing you've mentioned throughout the books meets and is resolved at the end. Loose ends will irritate and lose readers. So, that means every word, every sentence must move the action along. No side tracking cute stories you might love, but are irrelevant. Chekov said, "Kill your darlings," and he was right. No matter how brilliant you think some sub story you've written to amuse yourself, and I've written hundreds, they must be cut in the end if they are not relevant to the resolution of the story.
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
There are a couple of best things for me. First, the feeling of accomplishment that comes when you finish something you truly believe has value. Equally important is the feedback I've gotten from the children who have read The Crystal Navigator and liked it enough to write me letters. Those letters are jewels.
Nancy Kunhardt Lodge
I have never had writer's block. Certainly, I've procrastinated, but I look upon procrastination as a time of mental codification, when you're writing in your head. Eventually, even if it's a hiatus of a few months, I begin writing again.
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