Category: On Writing
Shakespeare’s Sisters—The Bard’s most accomplished female literary contemporaries
April 23, 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with worldwide celebrations to mark his legacy. But what about the women? In her iconic essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines the life of Shakespeare’s brilliant sister Judith, barred from the grammar school because of her sex and forced to hide her […]
Writing It Forward
I remember standing on the corner of a dirt road as a child of eight or nine. I was shielding my eyes from the blistering sun of a South Carolina summer and bouncing on my toes as I strained to hear the engine of the approaching book mobile. Likely I would have been clutching a […]
How I Came To Write The Bones Of You
During the summer of 2013, as far as writing was concerned, I reached a crossroads. I’d written and submitted to agents three commercial women’s fiction titles, the last of which was Wildflowers. I’d had enough positive feedback from some of the agents to keep me writing and Wildflowers had caught the attention of six, all […]
How Outside Influences Affect My Writing
Okay, this post is gonna make some people feel queasy. It’s gonna make you angry. It’s gonna make you doubt my sanity. Writers and would-be writers, for instance – the write-what-you-know, follow-your-passion, what-does-your-gut-tell-you people out there, especially the unpublished ones, I’m going to make you absolutely nuts right now, and I apologize. Readers? Publishing pros? […]
From Screenwriter to Novelist
I first wanted to become a novelist because I wanted to find out how it was done. I remember as a teenager being gobsmacked when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel, Tender Is The Night, in an edition that explained how two different versions had been published, the second re-arranging the chronology of the […]
Writing The Book That Accompanies a Television Show, or What It’s Like to Be the Toy in the Happy Meal
There are two questions I can count on being asked after someone sees my writing resume: “Did you get to interview Matt Damon?” and “What’s it like to write a book that’s tied to a television show?” The answer to the first question is simple–no. (Though if you catch me on a good day, I […]
Confessions of a Book Buzz Builder
When I first signed with my agent to represent my memoir, she reviewed my book proposal. I’d included this tidbit: “as a former book publicist of ten years at several major publishing houses, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and Doubleday, I have the skills to promote my book extensively.” She scribbled in the margin, […]
Born in China, Writing in English
When I told my friends in China that I wrote two novels about Empress Wu, their favorite empress, the first thing they asked was, “Is it in Chinese?” It’s a legitimate question, I understand, since I was born and grew up in China. I went to school in China, too, and learned the basics of […]
Reality Bits: Fact in Family Fiction
One week after my debut novel was published, one of my father’s cousins called me. I hadn’t spoken to her for almost a decade, but she had seen my book in the new fiction section of her local bookstore. We talked for a while, and she asked whether the story was about some of our […]
From Journalist to Novelist
I’m often asked how my real-life experience as a journalist influenced my career as a writer. Though I didn’t know it at the time, my work as a reporter and anchor became incredibly valuable as I began writing novels. After being in TV news for six years, I learned to work quickly and efficiently. After […]
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