Category: Contemporary Women Writers
What If I Can’t Write Anymore?
While shepherding a new book through a launch, I experience what can only be described as separation anxiety from writing, but then, when it’s time to get back to it, the all too familiar crash of confidence and nagging question re-emerges. What if I can’t write anymore? I’m told this fear is not uncommon with […]
The Unlikely Gift Of Breast Cancer
Four years ago, I was preparing to turn 50, anxious but confidently optimistic I would turn the page to life’s next chapter and finally slow down. Relax. Stop whining and gradually embrace middle age. Then, I abruptly got “the call.” My primary care doctor’s nurse told me I had late Stage III breast cancer. For […]
Writing The Long Game
When I was twelve years old I read Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a novel about the internal world of a girl navigating the complicated relationships of her family, a girl who believed “The world was hers for the reading.” Francie’s story touched me deeply and for the first time I related to […]
Writing Innamorata
After a certain birthday, I was feeling extra appreciative of my life, realizing I was in a very happy place and couldn’t ask for anything more. I began to reflect a bit, thinking about all the roads that led to getting here. So much of the journey wasn’t pretty; many hurdles and stumbling blocks presented […]
Writing the Western Romance: a Short Tutorial with Some Methodology
Since I was a young girl, I had a fascination with Westerns and Native American cultures. When I was about five years-old my father took me to Jones Beach in the summer. There was a teepee set up with a beautiful Indian girl with long black braids in a white buckskin beaded and fringed dress. […]
AND THEN SHE SAID…I’M NOT ENOUGH
This may be a cliché, but clichés come from somewhere…usually reality. A male individual contributor was promoted to manager, even though he wasn’t entirely ready for the position. Let’s call him Scott. Scott is being promoted because the hiring manager believes he has potential. Remember, “men are often promoted based on their potential to be […]
Why Write about Trauma? By Lisa Braver Moss
I have a nice life. I’m blessed with wonderful work, I’m in good health, I’m comfortable, I’ve been married for 36 years, and I have two delightful grown sons. Besides, I’m a positive person. I don’t like to focus on misery for its own sake. So why would I want to write about my violent, […]
Mother and Daughter: On the Page and In Real Life
I held the signed book contract in my hands, had video-taped my happy dance for Facebook, and was already dreaming of book store signings and podcast interviews. Only then did I realize my mistake. I’d neglected something important, and now, more than just my debut novel was in peril. Through the years of revisions and […]
The Importance of Obsession by Wendy Trimboli
Every few years I get on a reading kick about extreme mountaineering. The annual assault on Everest by climbers from around the world fills my Twitter feed each May, prompting me to cram more books with titles like Into the Silence and Dark Summit onto my already cluttered bookshelves. While I have zero interest in […]
A Perfect Explanation (Salt Books)
My father was sold by his mother to his aunt for £500. This shocking truth, which came to form the backbone of A Perfect Explanation, was something I’d known all my life. I don’t remember learning it – so casually was it known in the family that its existence was not something of drama. It […]
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