Category: On Writing
BEING AGENTED IRL – Part One
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ONE Why did you choose the traditional publishing track? Abha: Because I […]
In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules
When I began writing In Praise of Difficult Women in 2014, I had no idea that it would publish during a time when women, by and large, had had enough. Writing and publishing books continues to be the occupation of the tortoise living in the era of hares on speed. Who knew time would be […]
Tapping the Experts: How to Enrich Your Research and Your Writing
Books are great, the Internet can’t be beat for looking up and verifying facts quickly, and libraries are awesome. When I’m researching a novel, one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon is in the dusty, musty, bookish-smelling stacks of a university library. With my list of sources arranged in alphabetical order by call […]
The Search for Shadow Ranch
I blame my lust for the lawless West on Nancy Drew and The Secret of Shadow Ranch by the magnificent author Carolyn Keene. When exotic Nancy took off for a vacation at the Arizona ranch with her pals Bess and George a young Kris Radish, growing up across the street from a Wisconsin cornfield, all […]
Writing Fiction based on Family History
My novel, When It’s Over, set in Europe during WWII, is based on a true story: the story of my mother’s experience as a refugee from the Holocaust. She was a young woman, an anti-fascist activist from a secular Jewish family, when she fled Czechoslovakia and then Paris, and spent the war years in the […]
Darkest Moment In My Writing Career
The second darkest moment in my writing career was when I reached that awful juncture with my then-agent: she asked me if I had anything else to show her because my novel didn’t sell. Editors had overwhelmingly praised it, but they wanted the next bestseller, not a solid mid-list novel. It was a crushing disappointment, […]
The Needle and the Pen
When asked to write about how acupuncture affects my writing, I had to think long and hard on the matter. The two seem like strange bedfellows, and yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how they go hand in hand. Both are such a part of me, that they seep into […]
Boekenweek in The UK: Interview with Esther Gerritsen
In the countdown to the forthcoming Boekenweek – a week-long celebration of books and literary culture held in the Netherlands each March – the independent publisher World Editions is celebrating the best of Dutch literature in translation by way of a blog tour profiling three of their authors. Today, on the very first day of the tour, Books By Women is […]
Possessed By The Word
If anyone tells you it’s easy to sit down and write a novel feel free to start laughing and call him or her a big fat liar. Inspiration might be easy, finding great story lines might be easy, thinking up fifteen ways to end each chapter might be easy, but writing the whole damn thing […]
An American Marriage: Interview with Tayari Jones
Real. Real is the best word to describe Tayari Jones’ novel, An American Marriage, which was just named Oprah’s latest book club pick. Roy and Celestial know love, and they struggled to be love amidst the swirling chaos that unfolded on fateful even in their new marriage. This novel captivates readers with the depths Jones explores […]
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