Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Making a Strong Body to Support a Lively Brain
A little over four years ago, I approached my husband with an idea. It was the spring before my youngest daughter would be heading off to kindergarten and rather than following through with our plan for me to return to teaching full-time, I announced I wanted a year to try writing a novel. My husband […]
What Makes a Beautiful Sentence?
What is it that makes a sentence beautiful? Why does a phrase stay with us, make us pause, make us smile, make us feel? As writers, we’re in the business of words. According to our unique voices, we choose the exact right words in the exact right order. We evaluate, test, and try out words […]
Why It’s People Over Plot Every Time
Every author has been there. You have a new idea for a book and the first thing anyone asks is, ‘What’s it about?’ No one ever says, “Who are the characters?’ As we all know, no one wants to read a book that’s about nothing. Books have to have a story that keeps pulling you […]
Seduced by Landscape
A sense of place. What first truly evoked this for me was the nineteenth-century English countryside of Jane Eyre, with its heather knolls and stone halls set against wild, thorny wood. Then came Wuthering Heights, and its ominous, misty moors. These dreamy, gothic landscapes not only stirred my imagination, but fueled my desire to write […]
Switching From Querying Agents to Querying Publishers
After completing a final polish on Is That The Shirt You’re Wearing? my collection of humorous essays, I diligently researched and targeted literary agents, and sent personalized query letters. Then I eagerly waited for their replies. Then I waited some more . . . and waited some more after that. I even sent myself test […]
Why Is It So Hard For ‘Strong’ Women To Ask For Help?
Asking for support, even when offering something in return, teaches you much, not least about yourself. Having been fiercely independent ever since flying the nest, having been diligent in every job from waitressing to building my own PR business (from unfunded scratch), nothing came harder than to ask others to help finance a venture about which […]
My Writing Process
Books have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember: I have a precious copy of AA Milne’s The World of Pooh which was awarded to me as a Sunday School prize in the year I turned three. The characters in books were my friends, and the worlds I […]
From Newspaper Column to Novel
Back in the day when I left school (far too many years ago to tell you how long ago!) I dreamed of being a journalist but for a variety of reasons my first job was as deputy secretary to the librarian at Bristol University. But I continued to devour all the ‘how to’ writing and […]
Fictional Facts
Maybe because I started off as a journalist, the 4 W’s – Who, Where, What, Why – also frame my fictions. So who are my characters? Where do they come from? What is their story? Why should anyone give up any of her precious time to read about these folks I made up? In the […]
The Inspiration for The Chalky Sea
I live in Eastbourne, on the English Sussex coast. My family lived here when I was a schoolgirl and I decided to move back recently after twenty years in London. I have always had a hankering to move back to the sea. What I hadn’t expected was that the town had a secret wartime history. […]
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