Tag: inspiration
What Inspired Me To Write The Perfect Dress
Auspicious maybe, but a comment I remember from my childhood was: ‘Louisa has very interesting dress sense’. According to my mother, I used to rock-up to primary school wearing jewellery made from tin foil, homemade shoes, and my favourite vest over the top of everything – very ahead of the underwear-as-outerwear trend. I can remember […]
How To Deal With Non-Constructive Criticism
If you have been on the agent querying treadmill long enough to receive a request for a full manuscript, then you know the feeling: the simultaneous swell of pride and the utter fear of not measuring up. Your query letter worked, hooray! An actual expert from the publishing industry, with a slush pile as high […]
Writing About Love
It wasn’t until I started writing fiction that I became aware of the widespread tendency to view men’s writing about love, family and relationships as a meaningful reflection on the human condition and women’s as frivolous and inconsequential. Increasingly there is a will to challenge and redress this prejudice and its consequences and that is […]
Catharsis
Over the years, my reading tastes have run the gamut from bodice rippers to serious literary works. I’ve devoured spy novels and biographies alike; lapped up women’s fiction and mysteries of all kinds. As a rule, if a story can elicit strong emotion, I’m all over it. Although lately, all I want to do is […]
What College Math Taught Me About Writing
I remember the first time I cried in the shower. It wasn’t over a boy. And it didn’t involve a falling out with a friend. It was about numbers—and one big, fat letter. I had just finished my first semester at college and received my grades in the mail. This was, as you’ve already imagined, […]
If Not Now, Then When? If Not You, Then Who?
Let’s face it. No matter which stage of life we’re at, there never seems a good time to do that one thing that we know we want to do: the right time to have children, change jobs, go back to school, or…write that novel we’ve been wanting to write for the last twenty-three years. Why […]
Writing The Happy Kitchen
Ever since my last major depressive episode just over a decade ago, I’ve sought to embrace a holistic attitude to my own mental health. For me it’s been a case of both ‘push’ and ‘pull’. ‘Push’, in the sense that, like many others, I’ve experienced some of the debilitating side-effects of antidepressant medication. These include […]
Sending the Elevator Back Down
Several years ago, I heard an author say that when a writer “makes it,” it becomes his or her job to send the elevator back down for those waiting their turn. It was a great way to encourage authors who’ve made it to the other side—who got the publishing deal or who’ve seen their book […]
Pieces Of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters
“You should be glad you didn’t get your girls back yet,” a friend told me while we were in line at a coffee shop. “Your book will be that much better.” It was 1995, and I had just returned to Alaska from Greece after my first failed attempt to rescue my kidnapped daughters, taken by […]
When the Words Come Naturally: How Nature Influences One Author’s Writing
When I set out to write my first novel, I knew the setting before I had fully mapped out my storyline. It was a given that FAMILY TREES would take place in Bayfield, Wis., a picturesque town on the shore of Lake Superior. My family had fallen in love with the area long before I […]
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