Category: Contemporary Women Writers
What Running a Bookshop Taught Me About Writing
What Running a Bookshop Taught Me About Writing By Natalie Jenner Four years ago, I realized my lifelong dream of opening a small bookshop near the shore of Lake Ontario, in an idyllic and vibrant downtown community. For someone who had long ago given up trying to get published, yet still craved a way to […]
Seven Things I’ve Learned In My First Six Months Of Being A Full-Time Writer
I’ve been a writer for a long time. I tried to write novels on and off in my twenties, and returned to it when I discovered the joys of writing historical fiction in my forties. I was fortunate to have six historical novels published by the big 5 from 2005-2012. When my publishing career went […]
Writing While Mother
I am writing this sitting at the dining room table. Just a few yards away my two oldest kids, aged seven and four, are watching a movie in the living room. Even though the volume is down relatively low, the superhero sound effects keep distracting me; even more distracting is my son, who keeps padding […]
Why Coaching Helps my Writing Life
I’ve always loved the process of coaching – how quickly clients can see the benefits, how action-focused it is, and how certain results are surprising. I trained as a Life Coach fifteen years ago, and for the last few years have been working solely with writers as a writing coach and tutor. Being a life-long […]
Writing And Researching: On Wilder Seas
Nikki Marmery is the author of On Wilder Seas, a historical novel inspired by the true story of Maria, the woman who sailed on the Golden Hind during Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage in 1579. I first read about Maria in a popular history book, seven years ago. Though details about her life are scarce, she […]
The Stories That Make Us: Finding Your Voice by Virginia Kantra
I’ve been thinking a lot about retellings. What we remember about beloved classics isn’t only the original text, but how we felt the first time we fell into the story. I will always hear Huckleberry Finn read aloud in my mother’s voice from the summer shadows. The Last Unicorn is scented with dust and Lysol […]
Creating an Audible Book
A few years ago, I created an Audible book for my debut novel, Walking with Elephants. I had a few reasons to embark on that project as an author/narrator. Foremost, I thought it would be fun, and secondly it was a legacy for my grandchildren after I’ve passed—to be able to hear my voice. I undertook […]
The Longest Legs in Literature? Thirty Years to a Debut Novel
by Linda Hurcombe I cannot claim with candour that writing was my one and only childhood aspiration, and a school incident when I was six might well have discouraged a less persistent child. Miss Petrie, my first grade teacher, asked us to write a poem about our favourite animal; mine is a sharply etched memory: […]
First Person Novels – Love or Hate?
Alice Jolly looks at the risks and rewards of novels written in extraordinary first person voices. I know people who never read a novel written in the first person. I do see their point. First person novels can be like finding yourself wedged on a train next to someone who is chatty, over sharing, mendacious […]
What Success Means to a Writer
What success means to a writer by Ashley Dyer Success is easily quantifiable if it’s equated with sales and earnings. But is it right to measure writing success in those terms? Is writing success quantifiable at all? In a writing career of twenty-three years, my novels have been published in the UK, the USA and […]
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