Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Waiting for Inspiration
People who are interested in writing sometimes ask: how do you get inspiration? Do you have to sit and wait? No — I give the standard answer: you just sit at your desk or computer and don’t move until you’ve written a thousand words, or whatever you set out to do. As William Faulkner once […]
10 Writing Tips
I say, ‘Me? Oh, I write anything.’ It’s true. If I am writing, I am happy. If people like what I have written, I am happier. It was an honour to be asked to write for Women Writers, so I put together these 10 things about writing. Watch the video 10 WRITING TIPS There’s possibly many […]
The Truth as I Know It
One of the pitfalls of writing fiction is that people think you are writing about yourself. To some degree, we all are, of course. We weave facts and experiences from our own lives into our stories, and we write about issues and situations we care about. But we are still creating stories, not writing memoir. […]
Five Things I’ve Learned from Attending a Writer’s Conference
I’m always so inspired after spending time with authors, and I strive to hone my craft with each book I create. A writer’s conference is a great way to combine these activities. This is why I designated 2018: The Year of the Writer’s Conference. The first conference of the year was in April—The Muse and […]
The Beginning Of Everything
About a month before I finished The Beginning of Everything—which was about three weeks after the book was technically due to my editor—my roof started leaking in a place where it had previously been patched. I was right then in the process of writing about my slow and ongoing recovery from a spontaneous spinal CSF leak […]
Woman Writer Finds Her Voice — And It’s a Bark
Harvard Summer Workshop. Advanced Novel Writing Class. Professor Haviaras raises his bushy eyebrows and surveys his classroom of future authors with a withering stare. He says in his Greek accent, “The most important thing to do before beginning your first novel? To find your voice.” That advice helped me polish my first manuscript, the one […]
Crafting Resonance: Music and Writing
My feet are tired. I’ve been standing in front of a whiteboard most of the day, trying to tease apart strands of story in the novel I’m working on. Working like this is new to me, but I really like mapping out the book in this tactile way. It reminds me of playing music. I […]
Psychoanalysis and Memoir
I am a psychologist, psychoanalyst, former patient and a writer. I have recently completed my memoir, The Tell. In thinking over these different roles I’ve come to see how much they have in common and how one naturally embraced another. It was my mother’s suicide that gave me the impetus to begin college. I was […]
Why I Love to Be Alone
Do you like to be alone? I know it’s not true that all writers are introverts, that there are those who like to write in teams, or who do their writing in busy cafés or at the kitchen table, enjoying the background chatter of family life. For me, though, being alone is one of the […]
Writing Insights
So, you want to be a published author? There are so many websites and magazines out there that give advice on the Dos and Don’ts of writing. For anyone just starting out it can be daunting especially with so much conflicting information. First and foremost, I’m not claiming to be an expert. Far from it. […]
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