Busy Women on Writing Books

This is the ninth instalment in an interview series on writing, profiling women writers who’ve written and published books while also working, parenting, volunteering, caring for family, attending school, and ALL OF THE THINGS.

This month, I'm pleased to introduce you to a friend of mine, Barbara Sibbald. Barbara and I know each other because we're in the same writing group: lucky me! She is an award-winning journalist and author, avid cyclist and relentless reader.

Mostly though, Barbara is a writer whose books include, most recently, The Museum of Possibilities, an award-winning collection of short fiction. She has also published three novels: Regarding Wanda (shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Awards), The Book of Love: Guidance in Affairs of the Heart, and the online serial Kitchen Chronicles. 

I know how amazing you are, but please let everyone else know a bit about yourself and the books you’ve...

If you’ve been having trouble writing lately, here's a gratitude practice for writers that works for me Every.Single.Time.

Grab a pen and paper: ready?

I want you to ask yourself: which writers am I most grateful for?

Over the years as a reader, you’ve read books that excited and thrilled you, and books that made you feel you were not alone.

This came up for me again this week when a colleague asked for some “pandemic reading recommendations” and I responded to her with what became quite a loooong list and could have been even longer. 

I started with the book I’m reading right now (the last in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy) and I was so excited to share it, because I love knowing that other people might love it as much as I do. And it’s such a great escape right now.

When I was younger, I used to think that a book had to be “literary” or somehow “worthy” for me to enjoy it, and certainly to recommend...

Beta readers refer to the initial readers of your manuscript. They’re people you ask to give you feedback on what's working and what isn't, and they're often doing this for you as a favor, perhaps with you swapping work and giving them feedback as well.

Make sure you have a completed first draft of your book before you ask your beta readers for feedback. You don't want to waste their time, and you want to make sure you're not making your revision that much more difficult by asking for input too soon in the process.

Qualities of Good Beta Readers

You’ll want to think carefully about who your best beta readers might be. What are the qualities of a great first reader? I've thought about this a lot because I've had different beta readers over the years for different pieces of my work in different books.

1. They read books!

I think the first quality of a great first reader is that they actually read books! They enjoy reading and ideally they enjoy reading in the genre you're...

Imagine the following scenario... 

You’ve got an idea for a novel, and you think it’s a good idea, too. It feels like the right next step for your writing practice—an ambitious step, sure, but not an insurmountable one. You’re ready to take on a new challenge. 

But you’ve never written this kind of long-form project before. 

Maybe you tried in the past, but you spent more time fussing with the outline than you did writing. You kept losing track of where your characters were “supposed” to be according to your initial plan. Eventually, it killed your narrative momentum, and you lost interest. 

Or, maybe you didn’t use an outline at all, and then you couldn’t figure out what to focus on for each chapter. You gave up before you finished. 

Maybe you’ve never even attempted anything like a novel at all. 

Whatever your background may be, now you’re trying to figure out a path forward. Your head...

Why is writer’s block such a widespread problem? Why do so many writers struggle with it? What makes writer’s block happen in the first place, and can it be prevented?

And most importantly: how the heck can you overcome writer’s block when it does hit?

Keep reading for an overview of writer’s block, including how to recognize it, how to deal with it, and how to prevent it from cropping up again and again! 

SPOT WRITER’S BLOCK

What is writer’s block?

Before I can tell you how to combat writer’s block, it’s important to know what exactly writer's block actually is.  

When you picture writer’s block, what pops into your head is probably the image we’ve all seen in countless films or movies: writer sits at desk, scowling at a laptop open to a blank text document. Cursor blinks menacingly. Writer groans, slams the laptop closed, and storms away.

It feels like hitting a brick wall.

This all makes for a great visual...

Are your stories all true? Or are they just comforting?

Sometimes I think that we get ourselves into trouble as writers because the stories we’re telling ourselves about our writing and our writing lives aren’t actually true.

They seem true -- the voices are very convincing -- but if you start asking questions, you’ll often find the logic disintegrates like the thin foam on an almond milk cappuccino.

I *might* be the only woman writer on the planet whose perfectionist tendencies result in fully formed stories that when questioned turn out to be little more than the symptoms of my deepest fears… Okay, am I though?

From my own personal experience as well as that of my clients and students over the years, if you’re telling yourself any of the following stories, you might be wrestling with the kind of stubborn mental blocks that will only result in you never actually realizing your writing dreams.

So if you’ll let me, I’d like to gently poke...