NOVEL WRITING ; Chapter and verse on novels: [Chicago Final Edition]

Abstract

[Tina Jens] is a novelist and short-story writer, an author of "really twisted" scary stuff. Her partner for the night was Jay Bonansinga, a novelist and screenwriter. Together they performed a solid show of tips on how to get off your duff and finally, finally write.

Let's start with the voodoo dish. That's what Tina Jens uses at home and it's one of the writing tricks that the audience of 11 adults had come to learn one Tuesday night at Francis W. Parker School.

We had paid $30 for a 90-minute, one-night session on "Write the Great American Novel--How to Begin," part of Parker's adult education series.

And we needed the help. Not one among us had had a novel published, the excuses were weighing heavy and we could use, well, a little voodoo.

Jens nodded and held up her dish filled with stuff: trolls, pennies, a plastic green alligator, and in the middle, a candle.

"When my candle is lit, I must write," she said. "Because writing is play."

Jens is a novelist and short-story writer, an author of "really twisted" scary stuff. Her partner for the night was Jay Bonansinga, a novelist and screenwriter. Together they performed a solid show of tips on how to get off your duff and finally, finally write.

When the advertised hours were up, few people left. The magazine editor, the advertising copy editor, the real estate agent stayed as Jens and Bonansinga continued their two-writer act into the evening.

It was invigorating, inspirational and a slew of other adjectives that should be considered and then edited out in the final draft. It was also, in my case, yet another good form of procrastination to that first novel.

Some highlights:

- The mystery-suspense genre is booming. Go for it.

- The key to fiction, as well as nonfiction, is to write in a narrative form. Tell a story.

- Finish a first draft. (There is no writer's block, Bonansinga says. People stop because they are afraid to be bad writers.)

- Write what you read.

- Never end a writing session at the end of a scene. Instead, end in the middle of an argument, in the middle of a . . . .

----------

Parker for Adults: Day and Evening Courses: Held at the school, 330 W. Webster Ave., 773-797-5530, www.parkereveningcourses.org.

Illustration

PHOTO; Caption: PHOTO (color): (Typewriter.) (Friday section, Page 1.)