Rebecca Kanner's Blog

I’m teaching Quiet the Inner Critic Saturday March 14th from 9 a.m. to noon! Here you can read a student testimonial and description of one of the exercises we do in class. https://loft.org/classes/quiet-inner-critic

Bane of Your Resistance

Susan, a student in my Entering the Flow class this summer, mentioned a great exercise she’d done in Rebecca Kanner’s single-session Loft class, Silencing the Inner Critic. I thought the exercise sounded like a brilliant way to see the Saboteur from a different perspective and asked Rebecca to write a guest post about it. Here is her gracious reply.

If you’ve spent any amount of time staring at a blank piece of paper, hiding or destroying your writing, or cringing at even the thought of writing, you know your inner critic is your own worst enemy. Could your inner critic also be someone else’s worst enemy?

In my Silencing the Inner Critic course, I have each writer pass her critic’s list of demands to the person on her right. “But don’t get too…

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via Quiet the Inner Critic

I’m honored that SINNERS AND THE SEA has made this list! You can learn more about my novel (3:22 – 3:53) and the other novels in this video:

9 Commanding Historical Novels about the Distant Past

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I come to writing with the romantic idea that we must tell our stories as truly as possible at whatever cost. Disapproval, criticism, and any sort of backlash are a small price to pay for the chance to share the realities of our characters’ lives. And yet, since my first novel was published in April, I’ve had trouble heeding the advice I’ve received from other novelists: Do not read the customer reviews of your book on Amazon and Goodreads. Sometimes I manage not to look for a few days, but then, after so many years of toiling in obscurity, I want to make sure that yes, I do have a novel in the world. The positive reviews are varied in what they like about Sinners and the Sea: The Untold Story of Noah’s Wife. Among my critics there is one universal complaint: the novel is dark. full article

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My advice: If you want to write, don’t ask for anyone’s permission. Listen to the inner voice that’s telling you that you have something to say and no one but you can say it. If that voice is loud enough, it will drown out all the others.

Source: NaNoPubMo Day #22 – Rebecca Kanner

Consider for a moment that your story is an important one and that you’re the only one who can tell it.

Only you know how you continue to struggle or how you’ve overcome your struggles, or both. Your story will help someone else find their way, or get through something they think is unbearable, or simply escape from real life for a little while.

Full Post

A Day-Making Note from Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster

I talk about research and why I switched from the 3rd to the 1st person: “It’s nice to leave a character a lot of room for growth at the beginning of a novel, but not if she ends up turning off readers.”

Danger and Opportunity in the Esther Narrative full article in Lilith

“Kanner explores the wine-and blood-soaked politics of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and sneaks around a palace where no one gets a good night’s sleep, because just about everyone wants someone dead.”

Full MinnPost Article

What had seemed like weakness and indecision, may in fact have been disguising the thoughtful strategizing going on behind the scenes.