Becoming a writer later in life
Welcome!
I write women's fiction and what I've heard called "issue-drive" fiction. My fiction is informed by my life experience, my previous career as an academic social worker, and what's happening in the world.
Like virtually all writers, I've always been an avid reader. Although I don't remember being read to as a toddler (that was a loooong time ago), one of my earliest childhood memories is getting my first library card. Another early memory is being sick and having my mother go to the library to take out some books for me to read that I loved and devoured. And she got annoyed when I had read them all in a couple days, and I begged her to go back for more.
INSPIRATIONAL writing quotesWriting is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.
---Ann Patchett 
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“The business of writing, and the responsibility of the writer [is] to disentangle the significant—in character, incident, setting, mood, everything—from the random and meaningless and irrelevant that in real life surround and beset it. It is a matter of his [the writer] selecting and, by all that implies, of changing ‘real’ life as he goes.” Eudora Welty, in her 1955 essay, "Place in Fiction"
My progress & successes
By the end of 2018, I had completed my novel, Radical Acceptance, sent it out to loads of beta readers, and had it professionally edited. I decided not to try to get an agent (long story) and began to submit to indie publishers and in December, 2018, it was accepted by Adelaide Books in New York. It will appear in January, 2020.
During the lengthy process of finishing the novel, I continued to write and submit short stories. To date, I've had 30 stories published in lit mags (and hundreds of rejections). I dipped my toe into creative nonfiction and have published two brief pieces.
I recently learned that Adelaide Books will publish my short story collection, No Strangers to Pain. And I've just sent out a draft of my second novel, Unexpected Turbulence, to beta readers, eager to hear their feedback. Hard work, patience, and persistence have paid off.
During the lengthy process of finishing the novel, I continued to write and submit short stories. To date, I've had 30 stories published in lit mags (and hundreds of rejections). I dipped my toe into creative nonfiction and have published two brief pieces.
I recently learned that Adelaide Books will publish my short story collection, No Strangers to Pain. And I've just sent out a draft of my second novel, Unexpected Turbulence, to beta readers, eager to hear their feedback. Hard work, patience, and persistence have paid off.
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