Writing

Your Success as a Female Author of SF & F

Lynette M Burrows

Your Success as a female author has challenges. One of them is to find mentors who inspire you no matter where you are in your career path. In my last two Monday posts, I shared the names of many women writers who have been very successful writing fiction. (If you missed them read “Who Does Your Greatest Success Look Like” and “Are You Aiming for Their Writing Success?”) The field of science fiction and fantasy novels has been dominated by men for a very long time. Being a female author of SF & F (science fiction and fantasy) increases the difficulty of reaching success. Yet, more and more women authors are entering the field. And many of them are flourishing. Let’s take a brief look and see if you can find a mentor or two. Perhaps you’ll find some inspiration to carry you through NANOWRIMO and the rest of your career. The Best-Selling Science Fiction by Women The best-selling books by female author of SF & F is difficult to determine. Methods of collecting that information are so variable as to make the data useless. Turning to Ranker again, I looked up the 100 best science fiction authors. The complete list is here. […]

The Final Perfect Line

Lynette M Burrows

November is coming! November is coming! Writers are frantically preparing for the month of NANOWRIMO. In case you’ve been living under a rock, NANOWRIMO stands for National Novel Writing Month. Since 1999, a simple challenge to write 50,000 words in thirty days has grown to be a non-profit organization supporting and cheering on hundreds of thousands of writers. The push is to finish no matter how unpolished the words. Because until you write the first draft, the perfect phrases, you cannot craft the perfect final line. Prepare for NANOWRIMO Many participants spend October planning the novel they’ll write in November. In the race to prepare, the writers create outlines and character bios and lists of complications and setting details.  That means that advice for the participants fills many October blogs. This blog is not a lot different. In past years, I’ve written advice on how to revise their NANOWRIMO novels. In reverse you can use that advice to build a novel. Read my Re-visioning Your Story posts if you want that kind of writing advice. This year, instead of advice, I share a few last lines as inspiration. The Perfect Final Line He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness […]

Are You Aiming for Their Writing Success?

Lynette M Burrows

These five women authors are the top five of the Best Female Novelists of All Time (adapted from Ranker)  On your road to success, you may wish to follow the path of someone who has been there. In this series of blog posts, we’ll briefly review the writing lives of these authors. When you are aiming for writing success, understanding what others’ success looked like helps.  Virginia Woolf 1882-1941 British author, Virginia Woolf, produced at least ten novels, many short stories, plays, essays, and reviews. Virginia started writing in 1900 at eight years old. Her first published piece appeared in 1915. This home schooled author wrote about artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and the politics of power. Her novels fall into the women’s literary fiction category.  Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. Virginia Woolf While working on her first novel, she asked friends and relatives for advice. Thereafter, she allowed no one to see her manuscripts.  She wrote standing for a while because, like a painter, she wanted to step back from her canvas to get a better view. And she experimented with different […]