Category: On Writing
How Writing a Book Taught Me the Pleasures of Cooking
For the first 27 years of my life I didn’t cook much. Once I got married, Søren, my husband, did most of the cooking at home. I could follow a recipe if I needed to, but I couldn’t just look in the fridge as my husband could and put a meal together. I was never […]
Finding Myself At A Writing Residency
It’s a warm day in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard where I am attending a two-week writing residency at Noepe Literary Arts Center. It’s an intelligent and generous group of writers and visual artists, and I am grateful to be around them in this creative space sharing disappointments and contentment. We share a bond that most people […]
Writing From The Heart, Not For The Market
When I was in my early twenties, I started writing vignettes and short stories as a creative conduit for emotion, situations and affairs of the heart that I could not understand as I lived them in the moment. Writing them down helped me reflect on what I saw and allowed me to distance myself from […]
The Goodbye Year: A Conversation with Kaira Rouda
It’s only fitting that Kaira Rouda’s latest novel, The Goodbye Year, (http://www.kairarouda.com/) takes place on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. All of the characters in the novel stand on an edge—the divide between who they were and what they can become as they face graduation, divorce, and even the prospects of staying together. As […]
This Much I Know Is True (About Writing Fiction. And Me.)
I didn’t always know these things. I discovered them like fossils. Some are elements of craft: I now know that every protagonist needs a secret that will eventually be discovered or confessed. That secret should evoke deep feelings in her, such as shame, guilt, and the like. Some are about publishing: I now know what […]
Finding Where You Fit In The Writing World
I’m still waiting for A Great Voice to come from Above and say “You are official now. You can call yourself a writer.” In spite of 36 years worth of writing and publishing I cringe when somebody introduces me as a writer. But being someone who writes is no different than being someone who canoes. […]
Q&A with Nancy Cleary, Founder, Designer, Chief Hand-Holder and Cheerleader at Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing is an award-winning independent press nestled on the Oregon coast in a tiny town called Deadwood. Nancy Cleary has spent over twenty-five years as a professional graphic designer and author branding expert. Wyatt-MacKenzie has published hundreds of products over the last 18 years with a special focus on mom writers. They traditionally publish […]
Judge a Book By Its Cover
Never judge a book by a cover. It’s great advice – except when it’s applied to a book. We all judge books by their covers, and people who write, design and market books know this. We make decisions in an instant based on the look of a book; whether or not we’ll even pick the […]
Blindness, Art Theft And Creation Of A Story
A few months ago, I received a letter from an old acquaintance. While reading about the masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum, she recalled another art theft near Boston, in the 1970s and googled my ex husband. Finding nothing, she googled me and discovered the novel I’d written about our relationship. I called him Angus, […]
When Historical Fiction Meets Political Turmoil… A Ladies’ Tearoom And The Road To Downing Street.
It has been a very strange experience these last few weeks, putting the final touches to a novel about women’s long, hard struggle to achieve the vote, while watching the political rollercoaster here in the UK – one that has led to a female Prime Minister, and Home Secretary, something almost unthinkable not so long […]
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