Unfortunately, Kingsolver’s admonition came back to me after I had drafted a key scene in my novel, Bear Woman Rising.
As was my habit, I had shot the scene looking through the lens of my imaginary camera, a ploy I used to envision new scenes and make them come to life. For me, the camera brings me into the scene but at the same time keeps me at a necessary writer’s distance.
In this particular scene, my heroine, Jesse, has decided to visit the Albert Einstein Memorial on her first morning in Washington, D.C. She had arrived after catching the first flight out of Barrow to Fa...