Category: How To and Tips
Secrets in the Suitcase: Five Lessons from Writing my Memoir
Visiting my mother at her home in Richmond, Virginia involves equal parts big hugs and, frequently, big worries. When, a year ago, I stepped out of the airport taxi, my first thought – usually, I hope she’s doing well – was of the draft manuscript of my memoir in my bag. Rather than set it […]
How Reviews Helped Strengthen My Future Novels
By Jennifer S. Alderson “What are your novels about?” I imagine this is the question writers are asked most often. I write mysteries and thrillers so until recently my standard reply was a quick description of the puzzle that must be solved and the quest my series’ main character must undergo to save those she […]
The Peripatetic Muse: Writing in Multiple Genres
My latest book is just aborning this spring, To the Bones, a satirical genre-fluid novel that draws on Appalachian tales, horror, and romance in its story of three interlocked mysteries in one small mountain town. It follows a poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse (Press 53, 2018) and precedes a work-in-progress, a haibun […]
10 Things Writing About a 1970s Commune Taught Me about World-Building
“Write what you know.” Every writer has heard this advice more times than we can count. My debut novel This I Know is steeped in my upbringing as a preacher’s daughter in the 1960s Midwest. I understood my characters because they were in my DNA. I was familiar with the rural West Michigan setting because […]
Writing Plays Tuned Me Into My Creative Inner Being – Lessons Learned Along the Way
I didn’t expect to write a book in my life-time. It clearly wasn’t on my bucket list. As a kid, I don’t remember more than 2-3 books in our house. A dictionary, the Bible, and the phone book—slim, as I grew up in a small town of only 1,000 people. But, I was always interested […]
The Emotional Portfolio
The Emotional Portfolio Many of us are familiar with the term “Emotional Baggage” a label often used in a negative context to describe how some people allow the past to cloud their present and future. However, as a writer, I prefer to call this collection of emotions and experiences the “Emotional Portfolio.” A portfolio is […]
Take Me Seriously??
A friend suggested recently I write an essay about how one went about being taken seriously as a female writer over fifty. My first reaction to this suggestion was actually surprise, and my second was wonder …. maybe she didn’t take me seriously? I sat back in my chair and regarded her more closely. No, […]
Writing Through Despair
One night, around the midpoint of writing my novel, I hit rock bottom. I’d wrestled all day with a plot problem I couldn’t solve. There had been no days off for months, my back was agony, my eyesight was blurred. Some awful compulsion was forcing me to continue doing the one thing I had proved […]
What helped and Hindered My Writing
What has helped and hindered my writing? I spent a few weeks thinking about this and watching myself to see what items applied to me and what reasons I was using as an excuse not to write. The main reasons that I found myself using this last year has been my health. I suffered from […]
When A Story Just Won’t Let Go Of You
Or how I claimed a place for a story no one thought would ever sell I’m not entirely certain where the stories I write come from. I know they’re often inspired by research I’ve done long ago or more recently—something I’ve read, a historical figure I’ve never known about, a chance encounter with an image […]
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