Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Ten Things I Learned as a New Author
While long-published authors put my meager knowledge to shame, there are some important lessons I learned as a new author. Needless to say, getting attention for a novel with all the competition in the publishing world is a tough assignment. Here are the most important things I learned during the process of publishing first novel. […]
Dialogue – It’s Not A Conversation
Dialogue charts a middle path between authenticity and art in writing. It reveals personality, and in this way it is closely linked to character. It advances the story, and in this way it is closely linked with plot. It adds a layer of verisimilitude, and in this way it is closely linked with setting. Excellent […]
On Writing: Barbara Sissel
My children were born in a hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, but their first home was a state-issued, singlewide trailer on prison grounds some 70 miles east of Lexington in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I was expecting my first son when I moved there with my then husband who had been promoted from prison […]
On Writing a Series – Practical Hints and Tips
Everybody loves a series, especially readers – and publishers! – in the crime genre. I’m currently working on the fourth novel in my Lotte Meerman series and for those of you working on a series yourselves, I would like to share some practical tips from my personal experience. Tip 1: Readers will read your books […]
Sounds: Bringing Back the Often-Forgotten Sense
Arguably, the most common advice to new writers may be “show, don’t tell,” and “use sensory details.” Most of us do well using the sense of sight—after all, we must describe what’s going on for the story to make sense. When we’re trying, we may add a taste a smell, but all too often, the […]
Always Recycle
“Always Recycle” The best piece of writing advice I ever got came from Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott. It had to do with accepting the idea of “ shitty first drafts.” The second best piece of advice came from a professor whose teaching assistant I had been in English graduate school in the 1960s. […]
Writing It Out
Any writer will tell you that the main components of fiction are experience, observation and imagination. But sometimes, particularly when the impetus to write comes from powerful personal experience, experience that, it seems, must be honoured, imagination can have a hard time freeing itself from the shackles of ‘what was’. For me, the question that […]
The Possibilities are Limitless
Being an author to me is more than just getting published and hitting the bestseller list. For me, it is about reaching people through my stories, either fiction or non-fiction; knowing that somewhere, someone is touched by my words as they come to life and spark another’s imagination. The struggle for many authors to make […]
The “Lazy Way” To Write a Humorous Self-Help Book (Hint: There Really Isn’t One)
It’s either perfect or ironic that I ended up writing a humorous self-help guide about being lazy. Perfect, because I happen to be one of the laziest people I know, and therefore speak from experience. Ironic, because writing a book isn’t really the kind of project where laziness comes in handy. Probably it’s a little […]
Cover Girl By Andrea Thome
It’s hard to say why I was so intent on using one of my own photographs for the cover of my first book, Walland. Maybe it was because the setting is a place my husband and I have traveled to often over the last decade, and the boathouse that I used on the cover is […]
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