Category: How To and Tips
The Adventure Indeed Continues
Two years ago, I had written http://booksbywomen.org/the-adventure-continues/ and the adventure indeed continues, but with a different emphasis. When a non-writing friend tried to pigeonhole what I was doing as a “hobby” I started pondering why I was so into writing. It was not to make money, or even a living – the day jobs had […]
Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Publishing By: Jenna Podjasek, MD
Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Publishing By: Jenna Podjasek, MD I’m a busy Allergist/Immunologist, wife, mom, and voracious reader, but the release of my debut medical thriller, Particles in the Air, thrust me (unprepared) into the publishing world. Read on for some high-value, practical advice I learned the hard way. You CANNOT take […]
On Writing Beautiful Trauma By Rebecca Fogg
On Writing Beautiful Trauma By Rebecca Fogg In 2006, my right hand was partially amputated when the toilet exploded in my Brooklyn apartment, as I stood brushing my teeth before bed. With great difficulty I stopped the bleeding and called an ambulance, and surgeons at Bellevue Hospital “replanted” my hand the next day. On the […]
Exploding Family Land-Mines
Exploding family land-mines Czeslaw Milosz, the great poet, said, “When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” Gary Shteyngart added, “If the family isn’t finished, then the writer is.” When I set out to write Our Lying Kin, it was intended specifically to be the second book in what is becoming […]
If You Don’t Write It, Who Will?
There is terror in the proverb, “If you don’t tell the story, who will?” and it haunted me. I had done something very few people had done. In 1980 I left a full college ride to join the circus and become a trapeze artist. The stories had become a staple at dinner parties and chamber […]
“Denuding” Myself: A Path to Authenticity as a Woman
“Denuding” Myself A Path to Authenticity as a Woman You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore. —William Faulkner I have been involved in writing/editing/publishing all my life. Also, I love a wide scope, being a dual national, US/Belgian. To write my memoir about my New York City days, I got the strong […]
The Real Inspiration for my Fictitious Setting by Kristin Harper
One of my favorite compliments I’ve received about setting came from a reader who told me she’d added Dune Island—the location for my women’s fiction series—to the top of her list of must-see vacation destinations. Although I regretted having to tell her the island doesn’t actually exist, I was delighted and flattered that she was […]
My Creative Process: Julianna Baggott
My creative process doesn’t have edges. I am writing all the time. I experience the world as me but simultaneously as an artist looking for moments when the story world and the actual world bounce light off of each other. I am constantly running a story in my head, sometimes a few of them. I […]
Feeling Fraudulent: A Brown Woman Writes From a White Man’s Point of View
Feeling Fraudulent: A Brown Woman Writes From a White Man’s Point of View I’m a big fan of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher and others. I’m also a big fan of Copenhagen, my adopted city where I lived for eleven years. So, I knew […]
IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WAY TO TELL A STORY? THOUGHTS ON NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
Is there more than one way to tell a story? Thoughts on narrative structure I have a friend who I met online through a TV show fandom (Bones) and while the fandom and later fanfiction brought us together, we later became fast friends. Because we live in different parts of the country and because we […]
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