Tag: women writers
Speaking Up for Those Who Can’t Answer Back
Some of my most prominent memories of grammar school days relate to my sister, Lou, even though she attended the special school across the other side of town. After a swimming lesson in the early nineties, for example, an older boy referred to Lou as a ‘spaz’. I still remember the sudden strength I acquired when […]
How To Build A Character
If you type ‘how to build a’ into Google, you’ll be given the options of shed, fence, house, website. (I don’t think it will be too long before ‘girl’ is added to the list due to Caitlin Moran cornering this part of the literary market.) All of these options give guidance on construction and the […]
My Husband Doesn’t Read My Books: Ways to Support an Author Without Spending a Dime
I glance up from autographing a copy of my newest book to see my husband across the store. He has our mastiff Henry with him—a character in all of my novels—and is surrounded by women asking him questions. Then, the dreaded question, the one we both hope he won’t be asked, comes out of a […]
Women In Crime Fiction
Women in early crime fiction are often placed in the role of helpless ‘damsel in distress’. This is not inevitably the case. Apart from his nemesis Moriarty, the one person who succeeds in outwitting Sherlock Holmes through sheer strength of character and intelligence is a woman, Irene Adler. But she is perceived as outside the […]
Writing Fiction Based on Fact, or ‘How to Make Life Difficult for Yourself’
In December 1836, a bricklayer found a torso resting in a pool of frozen blood beneath a paving stone on the Edgware Road, London. Over the next few months, the remaining body pieces were found, and in May 1837 two people were tried: James Greenacre was convicted of murdering Hannah Brown; his lover, Sarah Gale, […]
How Collaging and Scrapbooking Helps Me Write Better
I first began collaging soon after I turned thirteen; I still have sketchbooks from those years, page after page filled with collage narratives that I had abstracted from paper pieces ripped from magazines and newspapers. These sketchbooks also contained my tentative forays into water-color painting: a fuchsia bougainvillea blooming beneath a cerulean blue sky, a […]
The New Thirst For Words
The rise of ‘text speak’ and ‘twitter talk’ appears to have triggered a desire for more challenging and imaginative vocabularies – something writers should welcome and embrace. In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a depleted language (Newspeak) is used by a totalitarian government as the ultimate means of control and repression. Each year the government reduces the […]
Q&A with Karma Brown
As if being a National Magazine Award winning freelance journalist, foodie columnist (check out these recipes. Yum! Blueberry clafoutis anyone? Sesame-ginger noodle salad?), all-around cool runner/sister/wife/mother, and cancer survivor weren’t enough, Karma Brown became an international bestselling author with her debut novel. COME AWAY WITH ME is a heartbreaking and emotional story of one woman’s […]
Paintings in Novels
Everyone knows the image of The Girl with a Pearl Earring. The woman’s face turned half towards the viewer, the blue and yellow turban over her hair, the golden robe, and, at the centre of the image, the outsized earring itself. The original hangs in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. But that original is […]
Historical Elements of Writing
I can see a cohesive thread appearing in my work, a pattern, if you will. Locations, upon which I wrote a recent post for Women Writers, was always clear, but the historical element is a part of my writing that crept up. A surprise even to me, the author. I can at least pinpoint where […]
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