Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Losing Room #2
From the time Martha’s Vineyard Writer’s Residency showed up in my Google search for writing residencies, I knew we were meant to go the distance. I applied in the summer of 2009, and a few weeks later, I got an acceptance note from the director at the residency: Justen Ahren. I used to be a […]
Winning The Waiting Game
One thing I never expected when I embarked upon my writing journey was how much time I would spend waiting. Waiting for word on literary submissions; for agents’ responses to queries; for editors’ feedback on manuscripts; for magnificent covers to announce my novels to the world; for reviews to catapult said novels to the top […]
Real Writers Write in Coffee Shops
Natalie Goldberg states in her book, Writing Down the Bones, that it is essential for a writer to have a relationship with a coffee shop. The picture of the writer sitting in a coffee shop penning the next bestseller is ubiquitous. In fact, sitting here in a coffee shop, I can see at least two […]
The Unexpected Twist, and Other Delights, of Writing Mystery
Writing mystery, I find, is nearly as suspenseful as reading it, though I obviously know who the killer is way before the reader. Some mystery authors, however, have confessed to being as surprised by who comes forward as the killer as the reader eventually is! Personally, I can’t abide that level of anguish, so I plot […]
The First Page: Inspiration and Perspiration
When I decided to write a novel, I hadn’t written so much as a short story since high school. I took no English classes in college, and I’d never taken a single writing class. But I loved reading, and I’d read thousands of books in my 44 years. I’d also been a lawyer, so I […]
Rejection vs. Failure
“You do your best work after your biggest disasters.” Tim Robbins, as quoted in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp Finding neither a publisher, nor an agent, for my memoir after three years of looking does not constitute my life’s biggest disaster, but in terms of my writing it did. There’s no creative project into which I […]
On Swearing In Writing
I have a potty-mouth. It’s not a bad thing. For a long time, though, I was ashamed of what came out of my bazoo. Why couldn’t I be demure—ladylike, like the fairy-tale damsel? It’s not as if I didn’t try to make nice. We bobby-socked baby-boomers were groomed to. Still, I just couldn’t ‘do’ pink […]
The Curse of the Writer’s Muse
A little secret about my writing. I have a muse. I won’t tell you who he is though you can imagine. He is the opposite of me, my alter ego you could say. Extraordinary to my ordinary, or so my writer’s mind imagines. For what is a muse but someone to alight fantasies within you. […]
A Writer’s Tale
29 years. 36 books. Hardcover, trade, mass market and audio. eBook. Manga. Large print. Published around the globe. Bestseller lists, international bestseller lists. And a soap opera—in Japan. When I look at all those accomplishments, the one that jumps out as truly my accomplishment is how long I’ve been writing and selling books. Happily, I […]
Writing – and Parenting – In the Dark
I didn’t start writing seriously until 2013. Not because I was trying to develop my craft, or because I wanted to collect more life experiences, but because that was the year my youngest turned four, and up until then I hadn’t strung together three consecutive hours of sleep since 2005. As a single mother of […]
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