Category: How To and Tips
The Women Who Go into the Woods By Cynthia Johnstone
Instagram. Television. Text messages. Doorbells announcing Amazon deliveries. Podcasts filling the silence as we cook dinner. We are surrounded by manufactured clutter: sounds, images, alerts, reminders, all competing for some small piece of our attention. Even silence has become something we hurry to fill. So, what happens when we step away from it all and […]
On Writing Pole Dancers at the Red Barn by Susan L. Katz
Many people have asked me why I’d write a collection of stories about pole dancers. Was I ever a pole dancer? The answer is no. I’ve never danced on a pole, yet my first story about a pole dancer simply came to me. I then had to ask myself, “Why?” I thought back to my […]
The Evolution of a Memoir by Rosanne Annoni
We were sitting in our usual places on Mike’s L-shaped sofa in the brightest room in the house. I was leaning against the arm of the sofa, my feet stretched out to touch Jack, a black and white cat who was glued to Mike’s hip. Mike sat on the chaise of the sofa facing Trout […]
How I Became a Serial Memoirist by Lisa Cheek
I didn’t know much about memoirs when I decided to write one. But what I did know – I was a serial storyteller. Being a film editor for twenty-five years, I told hundreds of stories through film. Most were only thirty seconds while some were full ninety minute features. Many of them comedies, my favorite […]
From Damsel to Warrior: How Disney Princesses Shaped My Memoir by Deb Miller
Once upon a time, women were taught to wait. Wait for Prince Charming, for the shoe to fit, for the happily ever after. But what happens when you realize life doesn’t come with a fairy godmother to wave her wand and grant your dreams? You grab a sword, get on a white horse, and get […]
The Romance of Ruins by Louisa Morgan
I happened to be touring the beautiful Middle Rhine area of Germany at the same moment that my newest Arthurian novel (The Faerie Handmaid) was being released in the United States. Many travelers, myself included, visit that romantic region because of the numerous castles, particularly on the Middle Rhine. They are best seen from the […]
Write What You Know … or Don’t by Liz Flaherty
As writers, we hear it from everyone—from other writers, from people who teach writing, from readers, and from people who are tired of hearing us groan and whine about writing. (Little do they know how much fun groaning and whining is if you’re sharing it with sympathetic listeners.) Write what you know, they say. It’s […]
Why I Filled My Novel with Unlikely Friendships and Eccentric Characters by Linda K. Sienkiewicz
You Can Be a Disaster and Still Get Invited to the Fish Fry: At the beginning of Love and Other Incurable Ailments, Serenity Tomczyk doesn’t emerge from loss with newfound wisdom or enviable resilience. She nurses a cat. She attends group therapy. She catastrophizes every headache with a late-night Google search. Years after losing her […]
The Unlearning Project by M.D. Roblyer
In her memoir-how-to book The Memoir Project, author Marion Roach Smith archly observes that “the #1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book—about themselves.” She’s sold a lot of copies being right about that. I joined that white-haired throng after retiring from a long career in higher education and, […]
Second-Chance Books: the Why, the How, and the How Much of Rights Reversion by Sharon Maas
Last month, my six-year-old novel The Violin Maker’s Daughter woke up to new life, with a brand-new cover and brand-new energy. It’s been updated, edited, polished. It’s as if a whole book’s out there: except this time, I didn’t spend hours, weeks, and months writing 100,000 words from scratch. Getting here was a long-winded learning-by-doing […]
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