Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Writing Fiction based on Family History
My novel, When It’s Over, set in Europe during WWII, is based on a true story: the story of my mother’s experience as a refugee from the Holocaust. She was a young woman, an anti-fascist activist from a secular Jewish family, when she fled Czechoslovakia and then Paris, and spent the war years in the […]
Writing With Readers On The Mind
To write stories is always to be alone in a room, with only our characters for company. But what about readers? To write presupposes their eventual existence. Yet for a writer just setting out, doubtful of success, the reader is as fictional as the rest of it. We write for various reasons. To understand ourselves […]
How To Find Writing Time
Some days, I feel like a circus act, juggling a set of knives as I walk the tightrope, praying I don’t come crashing to the floor. But the truth is, I’m not employed by the Ringling Brothers. That job may be easier, to be honest. I am the wearer of many hats, the jack of […]
Darkest Moment In My Writing Career
The second darkest moment in my writing career was when I reached that awful juncture with my then-agent: she asked me if I had anything else to show her because my novel didn’t sell. Editors had overwhelmingly praised it, but they wanted the next bestseller, not a solid mid-list novel. It was a crushing disappointment, […]
Healthy Heart, Healthy…Writing?
We all have busy lives, whether we are juggling careers, doing the school run or running errands. It can be a struggle to get up in the morning, or find the motivation after a full day of work, to get our blood pumping. Yet, don’t we all feel a sense of achievement after we’ve worked […]
How the Goddess Writes
As a writer, my writing is an extension of my life, my heart and my identity. Most writers can agree with the statement that writing isn’t something we do because we must. It’s something we do because we simply can’t not write. It’s an outpouring of our heart-mind onto paper, flowing in ways that are […]
Do Other Memoir Writers Have This Experience?
I’ll be briskly writing away at my desk, feeling like I’m in the zone, and the words are sliding out onto the page from that sweet spot inside. A scene from that time of my life will come to me. It’s a flash of memory that’s crystal clear. I see myself there, in that setting, […]
Sexuality in Writing
If I recall how I first learned about sex, I would have to credit a variety of sources. For starters, it was my mother who taught me that sex led to pregnancy and periods were the start of the process. The period would happen soon, the pregnancy, God willing, not until I was married. Sex […]
The Needle and the Pen
When asked to write about how acupuncture affects my writing, I had to think long and hard on the matter. The two seem like strange bedfellows, and yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how they go hand in hand. Both are such a part of me, that they seep into […]
Goals, Dreams And Why You Should Be Writing Right Now
I have always been a planner. I love to do lists, goals, dreams, timelines – anything I can write into a cute notebook and tick off in green pen, I’m there. I planned my way into being an author. It had always been the end goal, and in every way, I prepared. I made lists […]
Recent Comments