Category: On Writing
Writing Shadows Over the Spanish Sun
Research plays a large part in my novels, and in ‘Shadows Over the Spanish Sun,’ a love story, set in the controversial and tragic era of the Spanish Civil War, it was more important than ever to read copiously before attempting to start the first draft. I am not a historian and would never try […]
Prohibition Wine: A True Story of One Woman’s Daring in Twentieth-Century America
Marian Leah Knapp, Author, Prohibition Wine: A True Story of One Woman’s Daring in Twentieth-Century America, Interviews her grandmother, Rebecca Wernick Goldberg, circa 1935. …………… I never knew my grandmother – only heard her children’s memories. Rebecca was my dad’s mother who died when I was eighteen months old. As a teenage immigrant from the […]
Silent Witnesses: Writing About Medieval Women
– ‘Name Six English Queens.’ – Faced with this question at a Pub Quiz Night, most teams would make a fairly accurate stab at it. Elizabeth I. Bloody Mary. Queen Victoria. Elizabeth II. A guess at the wives of Henry VIII, beginning with Anne Boleyn. Not one of them a medieval English queen. Why is […]
Julie Corbin: Novel Writing Tips
For me, novel writing is a process of decision-making. I begin with an idea, and from that idea, the characters and plot slowly emerge. What I’ve learned along the way – Love your idea. If you love your idea you’ll want to spend time with it, and through spending time with it, you’ll see a […]
The New Native Renaissance’s Resistance through Literature
The New Native Renaissance’s Resistance through Literature It always amazes me how many different things the act of writing can become. It began of course simply as a method of communication. However, now, putting pen to paper, or rather passing fingers over keyboard as is more common today, is hardly ever just uncomplicated, straightforward communication. […]
Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, Joan Steinau Lester
If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, “I know my life would be a bestseller!” I’d be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. “My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself.” Well, not really. Books do not write […]
Heeding the Call of a Mentor From the Past
By Robin Clifford Wood In 2008 when I began working on Rachel Field’s biography, I was 47 years old, just the age Rachel had reached when she died suddenly in 1942. I didn’t recognize the confluence of our ages back then, but now I believe the timing was no coincidence. Rachel Field was a renowned […]
ISABEL COSTELLO – (Writing) Each Book Is A Different Story
ISABEL COSTELLO – (Writing) each book is a different story I have written three novels over twelve years: one which got me an agent (as yet unpublished); my debut Paris Mon Amour (2016) and my new novel, Scent. Each has been a unique experience and part of a learning curve which will never end. I […]
Authors Interviewing Characters : Loren Stephens
Loren Stephens is a published essayist, short story writer and president of two ghostwriting companies, Write Wisdom and Bright Star Memoirs, which she founded to help her client/authors write their memoirs, self-help books and novels. ALL SORROWS CAN BE BORNE published on May 11, 2021 by Rare Bird Books will be her first novel penned under her own name. […]
Art For the Ladylike: An Autobiography Through Other Lives
By Whitney Otto I always knew that I would never write a traditional memoir or autobiography. I felt my life wasn’t eventful enough in any sort of significant way, which can be good in the real world, but can be something of a liability in the memoir world. Also, my favorite memoirs/autobiographies run along less […]
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