Category: On Writing
Light Shines in the Darkness
Drenched with guilt, I raced to the altar to confess my sins. I was six years old. I was full of guilt and shame because I was being sexually abused by the hired man on our farm. Nine years later I was sexually abused by my brother-in-law, Edmond. I told my parents but they only […]
Every Story Is A Survival Story
For as long as I can recall I’ve been trying to save things. I remember clearly the baby robin that fell out of its nest. My mother and I fed him and kept him in a birdcage, so a cat couldn’t get him, right under the cherry tree he fell from in our backyard. Every […]
Writing versus Not Writing
Most of us writers are plagued by bad habits: we repeat a pet phrase five times in a chapter and don’t even notice, we use too many adverbs, too many fancy dialogue tags. Some of us have even been known to hold ourselves hostage to our own perfectionism. But I think there is general agreement […]
Exophonic Writers
What do you call an author who writes in a language that isn’t their mother tongue? Believe it or not, it does actually have an official name – an exophonic writer. Exophonic writers are an eccentric bunch, for it does take a peculiar mind to choose to express yourself in a language that isn’t really […]
Will I Ever Write Again? Surviving My Worst Fears As A Writer
Will I ever write again? Surviving my worst fears as a writer It was the morning of Thursday, September 20. I was in the train, headed back home to NYC from Maryland, after doing the introduction and in-author conversation at a friend’s book launch the night before. My heart was full for my friend; she had […]
Writing Indescribable
How do I begin to write the story of my childhood sexual abuse, how do I find the words to explain the indescribable situation my eight-year-old self-adapted to and compartmentalised at such a young age? Why was I compelled to write the ugliness of what happened to me? Shouldn’t I have left it silently awake […]
Coping: An Author’s Chat With A Character
Author Lynn Goodwin chats to her book character Sandee Mason. Dear Sandee Mason, I am so sorry our publisher gave up. I loved your story and I know you did too. You were always my favorite character. You let me know your opinions. Shared them without hesitation. Loved your streaks of maturity, your aspirations, and […]
From Prison Manager To Author
I wrote ‘The Handbook for Highly Sensitive People’ to help HSPs to thrive rather than just survive in this non-sensitive world. One in five or 1.4 billion people globally have the innate temperament trait of high sensitivity. I am one of them, but for the first thirty-two years of my life I didn’t know about […]
Writing the Hard Stuff: Seven Things You Need to Know
Tell me if you can relate to this: You’re deep into your writing and everyone else in the house is asleep, even the dog. You’re crying as you type, wiping at your face in order to see the computer screen, unwilling to leave your keyboard to get a tissue. In fact, you’re so completely in […]
Writing Putney
The inspiration for writing Putney began to take hold when my two daughters were teenagers. It was a time when the news brought apparently endless stories of men charged with child sexual abuse. Shocking numbers of these accusations dated back decades and especially to the 1970s – the era when I was growing up in […]
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