Category: On Writing
Interview with Kimberly Collins
Kimberly Collin’s Blood Creek gives voice to the women who fought during the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars of the early 1900s. Collins dives into the lesser-known coal mine wars and tells the untold story of the women of Appalachia. Ellie Cline arrives in West Virginia the talk – and envy – of the town, […]
Fear Provides Us With the Opportunity to Slay Dragons
By Laurie Buchanan, PhD Everyone has fears. Fear of spiders. Fear of heights. Fear of confined spaces. If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance that you’re a writer—a female writer. There’s an even higher chance that at some point, fear has kept you from writing. Here are a few common writing-related fears: Am […]
What Breed is Your Writer?
Dogs come in many different shapes and sizes, and they have very different characteristics. While training my puppy, a Labrador retriever named Capone, I spent a lot of time around other puppies, and realized something astonishing. Different breeds of dogs are like different types of writers. This seemed like such an extraordinary idea, but when […]
Authors Interviewing Their Characters: Susy Norman interviews Marcus
In the novel, The Ground is Full of Holes, Marcus, a consultant anaesthetist in a busy London hospital, is trying to cope with the demands of the operating theatre and the dying days of an extra-marital affair. The author, Suzy Norman, interviews Marcus. What is the most important thing we need to know about you? […]
Out of the File Drawer and Onto the Page: My Journey from Writer to Author
I didn’t set out to write a memoir, or a book, or even a story. The scraps of memory that eventually became Waking in Havana began to surface as I sat at my small formica kitchen table, placed a cassette in the ancient tape recorder I had unearthed from a jumble of give-away items in […]
Writers – Do Your Job and Stop Worrying About Reviews
Standing before my fourth grade class, reading aloud a story I’d written, it never occurred to me they wouldn’t like it. The teacher, Mrs. Nungazer liked it. Mrs. Nungazer loved it. I can’t even remember what the story was about. Probably a girl figuring out how to get what she made her happy, and put […]
Longing for Treasure
By Sandra A. Miller Sometimes I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. There were always brown bag lunches to prepare and a pile of papers to grade, kids to drive to music lessons and weekends crammed with soccer games—so many soccer games. I couldn’t even tell where my own needs began and ended. I read Eat Pray […]
The Purpose of Writing a Book About a Woman Without a Purpose Or: How to Turn a Problem to Advantage
In November three years ago I sat down to attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month. I had heard of the National Novel Writing Month before but dismissed it as a gimmick. In the event, it turned out to be a surprisingly positive experience, especially for a writer […]
Hands-On Research: How a Story of Hidden Loss Became The Trumpet Lesson
It started with Pamela Fischer, a candid and confident young black woman who came to me one morning during a free write. From the moment Pamela appeared, I knew she would be the perfect foil to my protagonist, shy and quiet Callie Quinn, who hides the loss of the bi-racial baby she gave up for […]
Channelling Marilynne: Translation as Possession, Envy and Belonging
By Gwen Davies, translator of The Jeweller by Caryl Lewis ‘I get it!’ my author announced. ‘You may not be on my side but you definitely want the best for my work.’ She’d just been at the brutal end of my red pen as we came towards the end of several proofs with me as […]
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