Tag: women writers
Nevertheless, She Persisted
My novel The Mermaids of Lake Michigan was published earlier this year, but I completed the first draft of it almost twenty years ago. When it was finished, I printed out sample chapters, typed up cover letters, and began querying literary agents via airmail. I still have some of their replies, typed up back then […]
My Writing Process (or Lack of One!)
I always feel a bit guilty when people ask me about my writing ‘process’. It’s the same when people ask me about Game of Thrones. Confession: I don’t really have one and I’ve never watched a single episode (sorry GOT fans!). Basically, I just sit down somewhere – anywhere – and write. I don’t even […]
How Working with a Critique Group can Improve your Manuscripts
I wrote my first four novels without any outside input up to the point when I sent the second draft to a small group of pre-readers, made more changes and then on to my editor. Then I moved home from London to the English south coast and started work on novel number five, which became […]
Five Things you Should Never Say to Authors
Since my debut YA novel came out I’ve learned a lot about publishing, marketing, and the importance of writing the next book. Another thing I’ve learned is that as an author there are certain statements and questions I hate getting. In general, I think people mean well or they just aren’t thinking at all, but […]
Should You Write What You Know?
I’ve never written about what I really know. As a journalist, I didn’t know what it was like to be held hostage, or to be homeless, but I wrote about those subjects anyway. I wrote of happier things too – a woman who gave birth to twins after seven rounds of IVF, a weird form […]
Lena Manta and Her World of Storytelling
It was 2007 when my fourth novel, The House by the River, was published. No one, not even I, could have imagined how many thousands of readers this meandering river would touch, how many people it would wash away in its path, how many would come to love it and hold it so close in […]
Sex and Horror in Gothic fiction
A good ‘scare’ is a wonderful aphrodisiac. Horror prickles our skin, and works icy fingers through our blood. It demands a visceral reaction. How delicious is the sensation of fear: an echo of carnal delight. It’s hard to say where pain ends and pleasure begins in Gothic fiction, in those dangerous undercurrents, on the razor […]
Writing the Book You Want to Write – Without Barriers
You have had one of your brilliant ideas for a novel. It is shaking you by the tail and won’t let go. You’re excited, energised. ‘But is it commercial?’ you ask yourself. ‘Is it what agents and editors are looking for at the moment? Can you imagine the marketing? There are plenty of soul-searching questions […]
Rethinking Structure
In the light of the recent sexual misconduct cases, I have been questioning again the way that we tell story. The hero’s journey, taught on so many creative writing MFAs the world over, is still our go to method for structuring our story. It is either an inward journey or an outward one. We walk […]
Writing And Bad Habits
My Twitter biography reads “seriously trying to avoid caffeine and adverbs; succeeding in neither”. Over the years I’ve tried most tactics to motivate and fuel myself to write. Back in 2005, when I was writing the first draft of what became my coming-of-age novel What a Way to Go, I went on a one-week writing […]
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