Category: On Writing
Things I Finally Know About My Writing
I’m 72. When I was eight years old, I wrote my first story. It was a miniature comic book starring a budgie bird. Now, this was no accident, since we actually did have a budgie named Billy. However, my story’s budgie was different, since I turned him into a her. Yes: I wrote a feminist […]
Behind the Scenes of Daughters of the Night Sky
I begin the author’s note of Daughters of the Night Sky by admitting I am not a pilot, am not an expert on Russia, and had never really had more than the passing interest in World War Two than most history buffs share. Even with these challenges, it was a story I was compelled to […]
Inspiration Behind The Lydiard Chronicles
My first inspiration for writing The Lydiard Chronicles — a best-selling family saga — was Lucy Hutchinson. She was an extraordinary 17th Century woman; one of the first to be recognized as a writer and intellectual. Lucy was also my ancestress, and thus even more intriguing. After reading the book she wrote to clear her […]
Writing For Young Adults – What Preparing A Masterclass Has Taught Me
When the Irish Arts Center in New York asked me to hold a masterclass on writing young adult fiction, I thought: sure, no problem. I regularly run story workshops in schools. They’re interactive, fun and hugely educational. For me, too. Because kids are kids. And teenagers are teenagers. They give so much of themselves. There […]
Let’s Talk About Rape
If anybody told me a few years ago that one day I would be sharing my story, giving TV and radio interviews and writing a book I would never have believed it. But on 22nd September 2014, I decided to share my story publicly and it was posted on the website of The Forgiveness Project […]
The Tape on the Cutting Room Floor
I never intended to write a memoir. I didn’t even like memoirs—novels have been my drug of choice since I was a kid, and my trade, as well, as a professor of literature. I was a bit of a snob about memoirs, to tell the truth. I’d read reviews and think, oh no, not another […]
Writing Killer Suspense
The thrill that mystery fans crave derives from a writer’s ability to create tension, on the page and in a reader’s mind. Knowing how to apply tension in any genre can be useful. With a mystery, it’s an essential ingredient in keeping readers hooked from the first page to the last. Tension can arise from […]
Where Do You Write?
Being an estate agent for decades before I took my writing seriously, I have come across a variety of spaces that the owners have turned into offices. Sometimes they’ve squeezed a desk and computer into the cramped space under the stairs, or spread out in an enormous artificially-lit basement or high up in an attic; […]
Why I Wrote Grief Works
Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death, and Surviving (Scribner; January 16, 2018; https://griefworks.co.uk) – is a warm, compassionate guide to grief and grieving by prominent UK bereavement expert Julia Samuel. Samuel – close friend to the late Princess Diana and godmother to Prince George – has spent 25 years working with the bereaved as a […]
Let Writing Be the Cure
Writing is my passion, my therapy, and the way I process the world. Even as a child, I lived in my own headspace with stories that allowed me to imagine a bright future with alternating happy endings—depending on whether I wanted to marry Donny Osmond or become the next Charlotte Bronte. After my young son […]
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