Tag: women writers
Exploring All Forms of Writing
I was offered my first professional writing contract in the 1980s – a two novel deal writing ‘bonkbusters’ for a major publishing house. It was in the days when vanity publishing was frowned upon and only traditional publishing gave an author credibility. This was long before Amazon invented Kindle. I thought I was made for […]
My Twisty Turny Road to Publication – Susan Crawford
I have always written. When I was a child, I had diaries jam-packed with angst and secrets, and, later, notebooks filled with fairly random thoughts, short-story parts, poetry. Writing was my escape as was reading. It was my therapy, my emotional purging, my joy. When my family exasperated me, an unhappily common occurrence, I would […]
Five Lessons on Writing and Motherhood
When people see me with three young children, they assume I’m a full-time housewife. On the other hand, writer friends are often surprised when I tell them I have three kids. On March 6th, 2018, my debut novel, RAINBIRDS, came out. I first wrote it for NaNoWriMo in 2013. At that time, I already had […]
On Genre Hopping
In a recent fellowship application, I described myself as a “multidisciplinary” writer. (I feel like could devise a better term, but until then, this one is as good as any.) Here’s a rough synopsis of what I do: I’ve been writing plays for fifteen years now, currently I have a musical in the works; I […]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PLOT OR CHARACTER HITS TOO CLOSE TO HOME?
My father and I have had a tenuous relationship at times so when my first novel captured the painful feelings of my protagonist losing her father at the age of four, my own father immediately went on a tirade: “You killed me off on page 3?” And when my ex-boyfriend from high school’s mother cornered […]
The Beauty of Dirty Skin by Dr. Whitney Bowe
My path to writing The Beauty of Dirty Skin began in a very unlikely place – the hospital. When I was ten years old, I became very sick due to a bad bug, a parasite, which found its way to my intestines. My doctors, unable to identify the source of my chronic pain, gave me […]
Hold the Lecture and Keep Book Pages Turning
There are few things worse than being lectured by a novelist when you want to be entertained. That’s not to say entertaining fiction can only be happy and inconsequential. Both of my historical novels address weighty events in U.S. history – slavery and environmental ruin, discrimination and economic disaster. When weaving a tale with subject […]
Music, Writing, And Novel Soundtracks
The most frequent question that people ask me when I tell them I’m a writer is, ‘Where do you get your inspiration from?’ It’s a valid query, given that writing a novel requires discipline and imagination. To be honest, inspiration can come from anywhere and at any time, and, being a writer, nothing is wasted. […]
What I’ve Learned Since Getting a Publishing Contract
There are many things I didn’t know before I had a publishing contract. Like publicity is largely self-generated, that social media would rise as it has, I didn’t anticipate how the second book would be so much easier and enjoyable and… I didn’t know they would be so little time to write. I imagined a publishing contract […]
The Great Eight – Writing Tips
As Somerset Maugham said, ‘There are three rules for the writing of a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ While we’re waiting for someone to discover those golden rules, here are eight tips I’ve learned while sweating over my writing for the past ten years. 1. READ – Keep a note of the […]
Recent Comments