Tag: featured
A Lost Literary Foremother: Constance Fenimore Woolson
About the time I was trying to decide if I could be a writer I started to wonder, when did women first have the nerve to commit themselves to careers as serious authors and to say, despite few female role models to follow, I can succeed at this as well as men? I wondered because, […]
Why I Decided To Write About Mental Health
I decided to write a memoir about my own experience of debilitating depression because I felt that I had something to say that might help someone. Although I was desperately ill, had suffered two major depressive episodes and been hospitalised, I did recover. I now consider myself well, and wanted to share what I had […]
How To Create Tension
It’s all a bit tense… You might think of tension in a novel as being obvious ‘edge of your seat action’: the FBI agent running down the rabid serial killer, the guy dangling by his fingernails off a window ledge. In fact, all great novels are powered by tension of some kind or another. It […]
Writing Through Grief
Two weeks ago, my wonderful mother died. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she passed away in my arms. One final slow exhalation and she was limp. Gone. Grief has bowled me over, set me totally off course. It was the week of publication for THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER and I was bouleversée, as the French say. Devastated. Nevertheless, I […]
Call Yourself A Writer – Right Away!
When is it the right time to call yourself a writer? Anyone can call themselves a writer, but let’s say you’re serious in that you try to write regularly, and possibly submit work. You’re probably unpublished. So now’s the time to practice telling people when they ask what you do, that you’re a writer. Or […]
How Reality TV Makes Me A Better Writer
I spend my days sitting in coffee shops, craning my neck to clearly hear the conversation happening at the table beside me. Out of the corner of my eye I watch people on the subway and wonder what they’re thinking, and in restaurants I take note of how people move and eat. This might all […]
An Inherited Obsession
My debut novel, Vintage, revolves around friendships between women of different generations. The shared interest that binds them is a love for vintage clothes. The idea for the book grew out of my own obsession for fashion, which I inherited in large part from my mother and grandmother. I grew up in a distinctly ordinary town […]
Living The Dream – A Tantalising Taste of Being a Full-Time Author
For a short time a few years ago, I lived the dream of being a full-time author. Not in the traditional sense – there were no agents or publishers nipping at my heels expecting me to meet a deadline. But, nevertheless, living the dream it was. I was made redundant from my job in Dubai […]
Four Essential Writing Tips
I finished a draft of my forth novel today, fifth if you count the one that’s been abandoned in a computer folder somewhere, a botched attempt at a book that will never be. This draft has much work ahead of it still. It’s a skeleton of the book it will one day become, and yet […]
Are You a Writing-Conference Junkie?
As writers, we’re constantly (desperately?) looking for ways to improve our skills so we can write awe-inspiring sentences and create kick-ass plots with impossible-to-ignore characters. There are myriad ways to get to that end game—read a lot (a whole lot); pore over craft books, highlighting the best passages as you go; join critique groups and […]
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