Tag

Writers’ League of Texas

What Makes A Memoir Stand Out?

  As I have been doing for decades, I attended the Writers' League of Texas annual Agents & Editors Conference. If you're a writer who is eager to learn more about the craft and business of the publishing industry, this conference is one of the best thanks to its top-tier agents, editors, and authors who give talks, participate in panel discussions, and listen to book pitches.  This year, I
Read More
Creative Nonfiction

On Writing Narrative Nonfiction

It can be easier to write about mother-daughter dynamics in a novel than it is to write about one’s own mother-daughter dynamics in a memoir … or … in a book about sex. For that matter, I think it’s easier to write about sex and religion in a novel than it is in nonfiction. In a novel, one can always say that those thoughts, feelings, actions are those of the character, not the author – the character just took the au
Read More

Fasten Your Seat Belts: It’s Still Crazy ‘Round Here!

Secret Sex Lives is racing toward its October 2, 2012, publication date and life seems to be getting crazier and crazier and bumpier and bumpier. In my head, I keep hearing the Bette Davis quote from All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Okay, more accurately, I keep hearing the revised version of that quote, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” B
Read More

Crazy ‘Round Here

I’m speeding down the road. I’m about to hit something. What? Hell if I know. I can’t see it. All I know is that I’ve got to hit the brakes NOW. I try. I can’t. My foot is stuck under the floormat. I can’t edge my foot forward. I can’t slip it backwards. I can’t turn it left. I can’t turn it right. Then, I wake. That’s been one of my recurring dreams lately. Maybe I dreamed it this past weekend because I was at the T
Read More

The Big News

As many of you know, the making of the sex book has been a long and trying process.  I started the book in December 2004.  For the next year and a half, I researched, reported, wrote, rewrote, rewrote, and rewrote the book’s proposal.  The research continued through 2007.  During those years, I traveled from Texas to New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey to California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico to Florida, Jama
Read More

Working Through the Struggle, Part 2, aka Why Suzy Likes John Pipkin

I love to talk to John because I can get him to blush so easily, especially when sex is mentioned. Since we were standing in a sex-oriented art exhibit and since I’m writing a book about sex, needless to say, John blushed often.
Read More

Writer's Terror

Some people suffer writer’s block. I suffer writer’s terror. That’s when I’m so terrified of being judged or so terrified of repeating past mistakes, so terrified that I can’t live up to that talent that I know I have but fear I’ve lost, that I ...
Read More

New Year’s Eve Confession

I just watched my postman unload the neighborhood’s mail from the back of a silver, C-class Mercedes Benz. ... That postman used to deliver the mail in a beat-up, dark green station wagon.
Read More

On Writing Memoir

I first met Brooke Warner years ago at the Writers' League of Texas annual agents and editors conference. Brooke's a senior editor at Seal Press. Seal is known for its cutting edge women's books (read that as meaning lots of sex) ...
Read More