I was an only child in Chicago in the 1970s. At age eleven, I lost my mother to cancer, an isolating and then emboldening — (maybe not quite empowering!) — experience that I mine in my writing. My memoir, Girl Next Door: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Early Loss, traces the bleak changes to my life and, later, my reliance on my inner compass and the strength instilled by my mom. I’ve finished revising it and am ready to send copies to six beta readers for their feedback. I wrote this book to share with other motherless daughters and those who…
Margaret Verble’s Stealing will stand in my bookshelf among the books it reminds me of: To Kill a Mockingbird, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Harriet the Spy. Stealing needs to be a classic equal to the most important of these other books — whichever one you deem that to be. It’s a story of a motherless daughter who shows the self sufficiency of a skilled and extraordinary child, contributing to her family and loved by them, until a cascade of awful events beyond her ability to manage. It reminds me of the above-mentioned books in its voice and its…
One way to build your writing community is to share and boost the work of other writers and artists. Panelists at AWP23 agreed this is one of the most rewarding activities.
First draft completed, I’m reading through it, marking it up, and using Scrivener to outline and lay out the rewrite. It’s compelling and is the only thing I want to do these days.