Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Get A Real Job!
Imagine asking a best-selling author for advice on your writing career and being told to get a real job first? Well, that’s essentially what happened on Twitter last week when Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, started a bit of a controversy with this tweet: ‘English Major = Want Fries With That? Pick something […]
Transitioning From Freelance to Full-Time Writer
How I Found Freelance Writing Jobs In fall 2015, I started researching how to build a freelance writing business to make money. I signed up on Upwork.com and was able to search for assignments. I also began researching start-ups in my home city, Chicago. Blogs are all the rage for companies these days. They drive […]
From Private Investigator to Author
I knew I wanted to be a singer at age nine, and so I practiced singing every day. At age 13, I learned to play guitar and began writing songs. My mission: write a song of love, peace, hope that would heal the world. A grand dream that led me on a journey of frustration […]
Novelist Or Poet?
When I was thirteen years old, I announced that I was going to be a poet when I grew up. I had already been writing poetry for years – since the age of 10 – and both my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Alexander, and my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Melchior, had encouraged me. Mrs. Melchior, […]
Dialogue: Say, Say, Say What You Want, Although …
Most writers would agree they love interacting with other writers. After all, who understands the trials, tribulations, crippling self-doubt and (at times elusive) euphoria better than a fellow author? But ask us scribblers how we feel about writing dialogue and it seems the group is split clean down the middle. Half of us love to […]
Back to Square One: A Celebration
It happened, like most things in my writing life were wont to do, at 11pm. I opened the laptop, looked at the ghostwriting project I was working on, and realised that I was done with my itinerant writing life. It was time to go back to my true love: fiction. Of course, I’ll write whatever […]
The Challenges and Joys of Writing Historical Fiction for Teenagers
Flying through Clouds is my new historical novel for young adults, and follows on from my first novel, Racing the Moon, which was published in Australia in 2014. Although both novels share the same main character and are set mostly in Sydney in the 1930s, the stories are quite different, and so were my […]
My Birth Father’s Double Life
Growing up adopted, I often fantasised about my back story. The scant information the social worker gave my parents, shortly before they took six-week old me home, provided only the barest of bones: My birth mother was ‘creative’; her mother, my biological grandmother, was uncommonly supportive. My birth parents wanted to marry and keep me […]
Five Things I Did Wrong In My (First) Novel
Like many writers, my debut novel, Everything But The Truth,is not really my debut. I always feel like a fraud admitting that, but I am sure I’m not alone. The truth is, however latent your talent, however strong your drive, writing is a skill, and knowing how to write a book needs to be learnt, […]
Writing The Dreaded Synopsis
Some authors say that writing a whole novel is easier than writing a synopsis. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I agree it sure as hell ain’t easy! Why is it so hard? There are a number of factors, I think. First, it seems so unfair that, having spent months or even years […]
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