Tag: women writers
Sex In Women’s Fiction, Part 3: Advice From The Experts
Part 3 of our Sex In Women’s Fiction Series, Read part 2 HERE It’s surprisingly easy to write bad sex. In fact, cringeworthy sex scenes are so ubiquitous that the UK magazine, Literary Review, hands out an annual award to distinguish the somewhat awful from the truly terrible. According to their website, the purpose of […]
How Motherhood Influences My Writing
When I first told people that I had a book being published, the number one question people would ask me was, “Where did you find the time?” What I don’t even bother telling them is that I’ve got a computer filled with several other completed manuscripts that I hope will someday find a published home. […]
Sex In Women’s Fiction, Part 2: Sex Sells (Sometimes)
Part two of our Sex in Women’s Fiction series: Read Part One HERE Before we went out on submission with The Wild Woman’s Guide to Traveling the World, my agent, Jennifer Johnson-Blalock, asked me to make a few revisions. The goal was to make the book stronger and more saleable to readers and publishers alike. […]
Why I No Longer Read My Book Reviews
Reviews cause writers angst. We need them, we fear them, and, in my opinion, too often, we take the time to read them. I LIKED MY LIFE came out with two starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, and kind words from Kirkus, but Publisher’s Weekly was decidedly unimpressed. That same pattern followed me on Goodreads and Amazon. Over a four […]
Q&A with Lydia Kang
Lydia Kang is an author of adult and young adult fiction, poetry, and narrative non-fiction. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine, completing her residency and chief residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She is a practicing physician who has gained a reputation for helping fellow writers achieve […]
The Arduous Search for An Agent
First thing to remember, it doesn’t start with sending out query letters. It starts before that. You finally finish your manuscript, then you re-write it, and you edit it, and you craft it probably more than once. But even before that, if you’re writing a novel or memoir as I have, you have also spent […]
In Defense of Unlikeable Characters- Five Tips to Keep Readers Engaged
It’s a well-known writing tip- your main character should be likeable. Readers enjoy being able to identify with a character, to cheer her on toward her goal. This can be hard to do when they’re unlikable. It’s good advice. However, I keep doing the opposite- I write complicated, messy, often seriously flawed characters. Books like […]
Are Two Heads Better Than One?
Writing is a solitary and very personal process. Alone at our writing desks, we struggle with word count and plot, accompanied only by our self-doubt and bull-headed determination. No wonder the prospect of sharing some of that isolation with another writer is so appealing, and yet collaboration is a relatively rare, and slightly mythical form. […]
Busting the Myth! You’re Never Alone in the Writing Community
This is a little embarrassing. But it also is a reminder to me of how quickly time flies by. In 2011 … I know! … that’s just ridiculous … and I apologize … I wrote this post about women’s friendship for Women Writers, Women’s Books. At the time I had recently published my first novel, […]
Walking my Way to Writing
I have scribbled and strode my way through more than half a century of life, from the various neglects and insults of my childhood, through the frustrations and intimacies of relationships, marriages, and separations, to the frantic helplessness of health setbacks, the hard-won lessons gifted to me by my dogs, the slack-jawed joys of watching […]
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