Posts Tagged ‘writing inspiration’
Recycle! What authors can learn from artists
Last weekend, I was in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France. It was a small but interesting collection, with a few artworks by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) I’d only seen in textbooks, but never in person. The most well known in the collection was La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi (1826), depicting the attempted…
Read MoreSame writing, new views
One of the lovely things about writing is that, when you travel, you can take it with you. When I come back to New York most summers, I like to take my writing with me. I’m lucky to have a shared condominium terrace, and I love to get up there for the views and writing…
Read MoreA garden of one’s own
With a nod to Virginia Woolf, a woman who writes may need a room of her own … but a lovely English garden will also do quite nicely… I coveted this garden daily during my time in Durham, England. While there for the Historic Novel Society meeting this past September, I was staying in a…
Read MoreAuthor interview and new book launch for Gabi Coatsworth
I’m so pleased to be able to welcome to my blog fellow Women’s Fiction Writer Association author Gabi Coatsworth. Gabi is a Connecticut-based author, who made her way to New England by way of the United Kingdom. She came to work, stayed for love, and has been trying to figure the country out ever since.…
Read MoreTrying to practice monogamy … in my writing!
Had you there, didn’t I? But I’m definitely speaking about writing. I always jump from project to project, so I decided to go ahead and try something new. Actually sticking with one project start to finish without looking around for the new, shiny object – and setting a timeframe for completing it. Although I do…
Read MoreWishing you a spectacular reading & writing 2023!
New Year, New reading and writing goals. I always love looking ahead to an exciting new year in books. Every year, I set up a Goodreads challenge, and – as that year ends – I love to look back over the books I read during the course of the year. For 2023, I’ve set a…
Read MoreThe stories behind my new release, In The Shadow of The Apennines
I am so excited my new novel, In The Shadow of The Apennines, releases one week from today. I’ve explained a bit in my acknowledgements section what inspired me to write the novel. But – even if, as an author, it pains me to say it- if a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps…
Read MoreTalented writers make it look easy
Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne Perhaps best known to every American school child for his novel The Scarlet Letter, American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was a prolific novelist, short story writer and essayist who certainly could speak with authority on the craft of writing. His observation back in the nineteenth…
Read MoreWriters take heart – even John Steinbeck was intimidated by the blank page
“After many years, to start a story still scares me to death.” —John Steinbeck If it can happen to John Steinbeck, it can happen to anyone. Who can believe that the famed American author (1902 – 1968) of such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden and The Pearl…
Read MoreReviewing your own writing – except the bad bits
“I like reading my own work, and often do it. I go gently over the bits I think are bad.” —E. M. Forster I’m a big fan of E.M. Forster’s work. The British novelist ( 1879 – 1970) of masterpieces such as A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Passage to India…
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