Category: How To and Tips
When Facts Become Fiction: From Journalist in Rwanda to Novelist
Novels usually draw, to some degree, on personal experiences and historical research, and memoirs have come a long way since the scandal of James Frey’s personal revelations being more fiction than fact. The blurring of lines between the real world and the imagined has been an interesting process for me during the eleven years I […]
Setting as a Character
I loved writing The Paradise Cookery School – Sunshine & Secrets. Set on the tropical island of St Lucia, it meant I got to spend every day immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the Caribbean – a veritable feast for the senses. The setting was so central to the story that it became […]
Where Characters Live
Like most authors, I use pictures as inspiration when I’m working on a story. I create a Pinterest board for each work in progress that helps ground me in the details of the story: setting for different scenes, objects that have significance to the characters, animals, etc. The one thing I stay away from though: […]
I Tanked When Producing My Memoir into an Audiobook. Here’s What I Learned
Last spring, months after my debut memoir Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters was published, I was determined to contract with a narrator and production studio to record it as an audiobook. Couldn’t you record it yourself, you ask? Absolutely. If I had the right voice training, a personal studio for recording, and skills to edit audio recordings, it’d […]
My Road to Publication
I’ve always wanted to write, and even as a child I loved making up stories, and telling them to my younger sister. She would often ask if I could tell her one at night, to help her get off to sleep. Unfortunately, although, according to my English teacher, I had a good imagination, I was […]
Writing As A Field Biologist
Biological field work and writing are two professions at odds with one another. The former has long, hard hours of physical labor and does not generally pay well enough to offer time and space for the latter. For the good part of a decade I tried to make it work with my two loves. I […]
The Artistic Coma and The Arrogant Intellect
I’m a writer and a reader. I love all kinds of books. But I’m instinctively repelled by arm-achingly thick, academic-looking tomes that claim to be about the craft of writing. Those ones that include pie charts and Venn diagrams. I prefer to read words about words, am an admirer of the slender and concise, and […]
Recharging Your Creativity Between Books
Finishing a manuscript is never quite how I expect it to be. Elation wars with exhaustion; I always think I’ll want to shout to the world that I finished my book (for now at least, knowing inevitable revisions are coming) but I usually end up just going to sleep. During the final push of getting […]
No, I Haven’t Quit My Day Job
Now that I’ve been published for almost a year, a question I’m hearing more and more is, “Have you quit your day job yet?” When I finish wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, I always explain that, no, I’m still working. The next question, of course is, “Wow! How do you do it?” […]
Writers: Empower Yourself With Self-Care
It’s Women’s History Month. Social media is ablaze with quotes and pictures of women’s empowerment. It’s that time of the year when we start to look at impossible as the “new” possible. We remind each other that we aren’t alone. And that a supportive community exists—online and offline—that holds us in our weaknesses and strengths […]
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