Category: Contemporary Women Writers
How Negative Things Influence Your Writing…
Nobody likes negativity. It may seem like some thrive on causing misery to everyone, including themselves, but it’s just not true, take it from me. I don’t like being unhappy. I don’t like it when people I love die, when people hurt me, when people bitch behind my back and I get to hear about […]
Covering Your Assets
When you browse around in a bookshop or on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever – what is the first thing you look for when choosing your next book? The author’s name? The amount of stars it has from reviewers? The book’s description? Or is it the book cover? I admit to often […]
Writing About Love
It wasn’t until I started writing fiction that I became aware of the widespread tendency to view men’s writing about love, family and relationships as a meaningful reflection on the human condition and women’s as frivolous and inconsequential. Increasingly there is a will to challenge and redress this prejudice and its consequences and that is […]
Let’s Talk About Cats and Dogs
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty; human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” Ernest Hemingway My debut novel The Astonishing Thing is about a woman with mental illness, seen through the eyes of her cat. It was refreshing to look at the world from a cat’s […]
Place Settings
I’ve often said that I could live in an airlock in outer space for the rest of my life and never miss fresh air. Fresh baked bread, I’d miss. But sunshine, a cool breeze, and the way the moonlight dances across the surface of the ocean? Meh. Suffice it to say, I am not what […]
Make Like a Nun and Get Your Writing Habit On
What habit might that be, you ask? Is it: The habit of sitting down to write at the same time in the same location each and every day even though Spring is here and your hands would rather be digging in the dirt than pounding on the keys? The habit of editing a draft over […]
Insults, Ordinary objects, and Empathy: A Doctor Discusses Empathy Through Writing
My first meeting with Neslihan Senoçak, an expert on medieval Italy, didn’t start well. I was in the early stages of writing my first novel, The Scribe of Siena, and I’d managed to get Nesli to meet with me. But she looked suspicious. After several minutes of introductory niceties, I realized why. She expected the […]
When Opportunity Knocks, Answer The Door
There’s only one secret to success, and it’s hardly a secret. When opportunity knocks, answer the door. You’d be surprised how many people don’t. They turn up the TV while glancing warily through the window, sighing in relief as opportunity moves on to another house. Here’s why it’s important not to do that. Every accomplishment, […]
Getting Past the Opening: Where to Start your Novel
We sit in front of the keyboard, poised, with an idea for a book spinning in our head, and find ourselves afraid to start. After all, we are aware we have one paragraph, or three at best, to capture the attention of the reader. What do we do? My friend and mentor, Elizabeth Searle, offered […]
5 Tips to Turn Ordinary Interactions into Book Sales
In the course of a day, even introverted writers (which I must admit, I’m not) have the opportunity to turn everyday interactions into book buzz. This week alone, I was talking to the Macy’s clerk and as she hung the cute new dress I was buying, I mentioned that I had a book coming out […]
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