Category: How To and Tips
Running to the Muse
I once attended a ThrillerFest conference featuring author John Sandford, who offered some basic advice: “Write. Just write.” I’m paraphrasing here but essentially he said, “When you treat writing as a job, there’s no time for writer’s block.” The prolific novelist is 74, has won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, and produces an average of […]
Writing At Ninety Six
It’s never too late to create and publish. At age 96, I wake up every morning and look forward to sitting down at the computer and producing. I grew up in Boston, MA and New Haven, CT. Studied at Sarah Lawrence College, worked briefly at Harper’s Bazaar, then married a dashing fighter pilot in the […]
Slow Writing
We live in a fast-paced world. Technology is changing at an exponential rate, our satellite phone calls bounce into space and back again in a heartbeat, and a Japanese bullet train can take you from Tokyo to Osaka in 150 minutes. Sometimes I feel hopelessly behind, because unlike virtually everything else around me, I am […]
The Outspoken Artist: Let Candor Be Your Brand
“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times… How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That, to me, is the definition of an artist.” ~ Nina Simone “Aren’t you worried that stating your political opinions so freely might alienate potential readers?” ~ unknown female on Twitter […]
Appearances: Fictionalizing Life
What do you do when your sister, who never smoked, gets diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer? And on top of that, what do you do when the people you love most this world, your husband and your family, can’t stand to be in the same room together? Appearances is a fictionalized version of […]
How a 70-Year-Old Poet Strayed into Fiction
Diane Wald has been writing and publishing poetry since she was 15 years old. She turned 70 this year. She has published three poetry collections (most recently Wonderbender with 1913 Press), five chapbooks, and more than 250 poems in literary magazines. She has won prizes and fellowships. She has taught poetry in colleges and universities. […]
Making The Cut
Ever wondered why you didn’t make the cut and weren’t a finalist in a contest? There could be lots of reasons. You have no control over the quality of other people’s submissions. All you can do is make yours as strong, professional, and accessible as possible. I wanted to share some things that help me […]
Collecting and Editing Our Short Works for a Book-Length Manuscript
Collecting and Editing Our Short Works for a Book-Length Manuscript When I decided to pitch and publish a book-length collection of personal essays, I thought that it would be an extended word processing project. I would go to my digital essay folder, download all my previously published essays—including the one published here in When Women Waken. Then, […]
The Importance of Writing as a Mother
I wrote in the beginning of Mama, Mama, Only Mama, Memoir is a hard beast for family to live with; just ask my mother. At the very beginning of my writing career I sat in a memoir workshop and listened to writers argue about the ethics of writing about children. Yet, raising children has been […]
The No-Process Process
Ah, the writing process. It’s one of those things shrouded in mystery, like the meaning of life or whether we’re supposed to tuck our pant legs into our boots. It’s also one of the questions I’m most frequently asked by readers at signing events, right after “Where do you get your ideas?” and “Didn’t you […]
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