Tag: featured
Writing a Novel on Ballet in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
Historical fiction allows us to time travel; we step into the past with a sense of wonder and awe, and the famous names become more than a list of people we learned about in textbooks and school history classes. They become people. The idea for my historical fiction novel was sparked by a single sentence. […]
Giving Birth To A Book
How writing a book is the same as having a baby, but without the gas and air. As a mother and a writer, I’ve often thought that the process of becoming a writer is akin to having a baby. ‘Oh lovely! Is this your first book?’ they ask, or ‘When is this one due out?’ […]
Every Story Is A Survival Story
For as long as I can recall I’ve been trying to save things. I remember clearly the baby robin that fell out of its nest. My mother and I fed him and kept him in a birdcage, so a cat couldn’t get him, right under the cherry tree he fell from in our backyard. Every […]
From War Correspondent To Fiction Writer
WENDY HOLDEN, also known as TAYLOR HOLDEN explains what it’s like to be a war correspondent and how the legacy of her experiences unwittingly provided rich material for her first novel. THE IMAGES on our television screens or in our newspapers are frighteningly familiar – Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq – carnage, misery and bloodshed everywhere […]
Writing versus Not Writing
Most of us writers are plagued by bad habits: we repeat a pet phrase five times in a chapter and don’t even notice, we use too many adverbs, too many fancy dialogue tags. Some of us have even been known to hold ourselves hostage to our own perfectionism. But I think there is general agreement […]
Creativity Studies And Tricks For (Women) Writers
Do you love the creative process, but at times find it almost unbearably difficult? I can only answer with a solemn “I do.” Being an avid reader of Virginia Woolf, including her famous A Room of One’s Own, I started to suspect that writing, while difficult for everyone, can (given the mostly men-oriented system we […]
Exophonic Writers
What do you call an author who writes in a language that isn’t their mother tongue? Believe it or not, it does actually have an official name – an exophonic writer. Exophonic writers are an eccentric bunch, for it does take a peculiar mind to choose to express yourself in a language that isn’t really […]
Will I Ever Write Again? Surviving My Worst Fears As A Writer
Will I ever write again? Surviving my worst fears as a writer It was the morning of Thursday, September 20. I was in the train, headed back home to NYC from Maryland, after doing the introduction and in-author conversation at a friend’s book launch the night before. My heart was full for my friend; she had […]
The Case for Mentorship or Who’s Teaching Whom?
This year I have the great privilege of mentoring an intern from my high school alma mater – a talented student who is applying to college programs and developing her writing portfolio alongside her role as co-President of the high school’s Writing Club. We check in regularly to discuss writing – both the craft and […]
You Shall Not Pass! Writer’s Block And How To Un-Stick It
It’s a bit like ‘Macbeth’ for an actor – say ‘writer’s block’ to a novelist and they’re liable to go pale and break out in a cold sweat. And as for actually uttering those dreaded words yourself, well, that’s pretty much guaranteed to jinx anything you’re currently working on. But is writer’s block really a […]
Recent Comments