Tag: women writers
Second Careers and my Supposed Retirement
SECOND CAREERS AND MY SUPPOSED RETIREMENT “Retirement” is not something I ever aspired to, even when I took a buyout after more than two decades as the theater critic of The Baltimore Sun. I’m not particularly good at semi-retirement, either. I am an expert on second careers, however. I’ve had at least five. The most important of […]
Humanizing Your Protagonist: a Crash Course in Character Development
Humanizing Your Protagonist: a Crash Course in Character Development by Nikki Stern Sam Tate, the anchor of a four-book mystery/thriller series, is a complicated woman. Resilient and resourceful, she is nevertheless plagued by nightmares. She’s known heartbreak as a child and as an adult and has a habit of sublimating her feelings. She’s at times […]
It Could Never Happen To Me
It Could Never Happen To Me Have you ever watched the news and seen one of those horrible stories about some stranger who killed their whole family and then killed themself? I have, I watched in horror, asking myself, “What kind of person does that?” I was thankful that I had a loving husband who […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Helen Hawkins
A Concert for Christmas Unwrap a story of festive song, good cheer and – just maybe – a sprinkling of love … Schoolteacher Sophie Lawson has fled to the Cotswold countryside after a tragic break-up and is throwing herself into dating and organising Cranswell’s annual Christmas concert. The festive fun is marred by the arrival […]
Unmasking the Imposter: Directing Your Authentic Life Story By Coline Monsarrat
Unmasking the Imposter: Directing Your Authentic Life Story By Coline Monsarrat Imposter syndrome causes that annoying little voice to whisper in your head, “You’re not as brilliant as they think you are.” It has probably played a role in the theater of most of our minds at one point or another. Let’s face it — […]
Crossing Categories
Crossing Categories Of the two main protagonists in my novel, Everybody Here is Kin, one is thirteen. Lucille is marooned on a barrier island while her mother leaves her minding her two step-siblings, seven and five. The other is a misanthropic veteran of thirty. Will has marooned himself, and, alone, he manages the only motel […]
Five Things I Learned Writing My Debut Novel
In 2014 I experienced a writer crisis. Not the kind of crisis where you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and hang out in your pajamas for days on end. It was more of a stop-what-you’re-doing-and-contemplate-your-future kind of event. At that time I was busy parenting a precocious daughter and writing for the local […]
On Writing Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown
Annie Dawid PARADISE UNDONE: A NOVEL OF JONESTOWN: a chronology Spring 2004, Portland, Oregon In the “C” aisle of Powell’s Bookstore, the largest independent bookshop in my city, I finger the spines of various non-fiction books about communes, in preparation for my upcoming sabbatical, during which I plan to write my next novel. In Southern […]
The Physical Decomposition of Writing a Memoir
The Physical Decomposition of Writing a Memoir I aim my nipple draped in tissue paper at the line on the white plastic. The sensitive nerves in my breast respond to the cold against my skin with a tightening. I smell the woody scent of musk as I raise my arm. I forgot to put on […]
Nana the Great Communicator
Nana the Great Communicator If there is an inheritable gene for story-telling, mine came from my mother’s mother. My nana should have been a writer. No one could tell a story like her. She was the eldest of six children of a modest immigrant family from Eastern Europe that settled in Boston at the turn […]
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