Category: On Writing
Writing Team Spirit
Writing a book is a wonderful, yet often lonely business, especially when writing a book about togetherness and the power of camaraderie, like The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. After spending days laboring in front of a laptop in an empty room, I can quickly become fraught with plot-related anxieties, character qualms, voice worries, and that omnipresent […]
My Writing Space
It was cheaper than a divorce. This past summer I came face to face with a huge dilemma: My writing space had been invaded by an alien—the dreaded non-writer husband. As writers, we need our own space. It’s a right of passage. A given. An essential part of this crazy puzzle we call writing. You […]
Behind Every Great Man: The Forgotten Women Behind the World’s Famous and Infamous
“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Virginia Woolf The idea for Behind Every Great Man was the result of serendipity-and it arrived through the unlikely person of former First Lady Laura Bush. In a White House roast, she likened herself to a character from Desperate Housewives. “I am married to the president of […]
Historical Fiction: Making Research Invisible – And Ignoring The Aspidistra
Memory is a cruel thing. It lingers in dark trenches, whispering, or withholding, waiting to creep into the no-man’s-land of our dreams. It knows what we long to remember, and what we hope to forget. And it knows Hearsay and Imagination will cover any gaps… So begins my new novel, The Echo of Twilight. Set […]
The Year I Gave Up Submitting to Literary Magazines
At the end of every calendar year, I review my writing life to assess what I’ve accomplished and to see where my creative path is leading me. What’s working and what isn’t? What patterns are there, and what are they telling me? As 2015 drew to a close, I reviewed my submissions log and noted […]
Why Do We Choose The Stories We Write?
Under the Almond Tree is the story of an Afghan family fleeing the conflict and violence of Afghanistan in the 1990s during the rise of the Taliban, travelling back and forth on the Trans-Siberian Express in search of safety, as narrated by the middle daughter, storyteller Samar. Helped by Napoleon, the ticket collector, and […]
Finding the Pearl: Why I wrote Ghost Variations
Why do you start to write a book? Perhaps more than that, why do you finish it? There are enough books in the world already: why do you need to add yours? The reason I started Ghost Variations is not the same reason I finished it. I can’t count the number of times I nearly […]
A Book Is Born
Shortly after retiring, I decided that my children and grandchildren should know a bit more about my life, just in case they ever wondered how I came to make some of the choices that had affected it. I began by writing the love story I was still living with the man who had become my […]
Defending Chicklit
My name is Maxine Morrey and I write chicklit. There are those that may feel this should be stated whilst sat around in a circle with others who have the same words to utter, and upon each turn a welcome will be issued together with a polite round of applause for having the bravery to […]
Sick From Writing: The Side Effects Of Writing A Book
Author and journalist Carol Lee spent many years helping her god-daughter, Emma, in her battle with anorexia and bulimia. There’s much written about the effect of books on peoples’ lives, often inspirational, but these are the effects on readers. What about the effect on authors? When my god-daughter asked me to write about her struggle […]
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