Tag: women writers
Writing in Community: You Don’t Have To Do It Alone
Laura Munson is the author of the New York Times and international bestselling memoir “This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness” She tells us why writing in community can bring out people’s voice. “I write in a solitude born out of community”—Terry Tempest Williams I am home from […]
Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You
Okay, ladies: It’s almost springtime. You’ve spent the winter tightening up that manuscript, writing the (gulp!) first 30 drafts of your query letter, and you’re ready to hit “send.” It’s Agent Time. And you, fellow writer, are on your way to getting published. No, no, wait. Not yet. DO NOT SEND THAT LETTER. Read this […]
Finding Your Writer’s Voice
A writer’s voice is a tricky thing. Every writer knows that they should have it, every publisher is certain that they want it, and every reader needs to trust it in order to be able to enjoy the reading experience. And yet it is also a nebulous thing, a curious thing, and an instinctive thing. […]
Love Letter
Dear Writing, It’s Valentine’s Day. Or almost. So now it’s time to tell you what you’ve meant to me and how you’ve changed my heart and life. Good love letters reminisce and remind of those first sightings, those early flirtations and that heady free fall into real love. So here goes. I first spotted you […]
Life After Switching Genres; Don’t Be Afraid!
A friend surprised me recently when she said “You write best when you write Creative Non-Fiction.” That is not who I started out to be and that is not what I started out to write. Writers have been taught that best practice involves writing what you know. Why didn’t I think that applied to me? […]
In Defense of Head-Hopping
In writing, head hopping is defined as using an omniscient third-person narrator to hop from the head of one character right into another. This is thought to cause confusion for the reader and leave them wondering whose thoughts they’re supposed to follow now. I understand that the idea of keeping a sharp line between the […]
How to write good, realistic dialogue
Best-selling novelist Isabel Wolff offers her tips on how to write good, realistic dialogue. Dialogue is what happens when two or more characters talk to each other. We’ve all read novels in which that conversation is conveyed very awkwardly and this clumsiness pulls us out of the book. Good dialogue, on the other hand, is […]
The Power of Dark Stories, and Why we Are Not Always What we Write
Where do you get your ideas from? It’s the question nearly all artists dread. We try to get round it in various ways, by making jokes (my standard response tends to be; “Goblins bring them during the night”), but actually the answer is simply this: They come from my brain. Okay. But what if one […]
Quick Guide to Self-Publishing
The stigma around self-publishing is still strong. ‘If it’s a good enough manuscript it will find a publisher,’ is an oft repeated phrase (particularly by those who have found a publisher). After thirty years of writing, honing my crafting and, yes, on occasion being traditionally published, I no longer believe this to be true. Yet […]
Writing Through Difficult Times
A seed of salvation exists inside each of us. I had to find mine early. My father’s undiagnosed, untreated schizophrenia and violent outbursts were often directed towards me. He lived in a black and white world, and saw me as the enemy, so he did everything he could to destroy my self-esteem and keep me […]
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