Photo by Matthew Payne at Unsplash First drafts are supposed to be awful. That’s what they are for. You simply give yourself the permission necessary to write badly if you…Continue readingThe art of rewriting
Photo by Mike Wilson on Unsplash The difference I just spent an evening – together with several other women – trying desperately to explain to a man why #metoo matters…Continue readingIt’s a matter of consent
When I was a little girl, my home town library h?d only two sections – children’s, which I blew through in a spectacular fashion, and adult. We had no such…Continue reading‘Young Adult’, what’s that?
One of the contributors to my anthology, Children of A Different Sky, tells how she came to write her moving short story. They came by the thousands By Jacey Bedford…Continue readingThe Belgian Refugees of WW1
What is fiction for? Why on earth do we read fiction? One of my husband’s favorite “writer” stories concerns an author with a very Southern mother whom he called to…Continue readingLying for a living
I’m going to a writers’ retreat in a rustic and charming place on the shores of Lake Quinault in Washington. It’s March. The light is that earnest bright shade of…Continue readingThe writer and the storyteller
Lovereading.co.uk once wrote that they love epic books with swathes of characters creating a wonderfully complex plot, but asked rather plaintively: “Sometimes is it all too much?” They produced a…Continue readingToo many characters?
I wrote this piece nearly 20 years ago for the online journal Swans, talking about a different war, different refugees — my war, my refugees. So little has changed, nothing…Continue readingTHEY CHANGE THEIR SKY