Category: Writing
Is It Vanity? The Decision to Self-Publish
In the spring of 2013, after more than a year of sending out my manuscript to agents and the few publishers who accept un-agented work, I began to get weary. I want my book to be available to readers while I am still around to feel the satisfaction of a job completed. All around me…
Thanks to my 3 D’s – The Value of a Writing Group
The journey to turn my earlier nonfiction manuscript into a novel was long and sometimes difficult. As I wrote new sections, added dialogue, and struggled with what bits to delete, my writers’ group, women I met years ago through the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), remained staunchly behind my efforts. They have…
Nonfiction Morphs into Fiction
When I began talking with Herman about his experiences, I had already enjoyed some small success as a writer of stories and articles for the youth market. Naturally, my first thought was to turn his adventures into a nonfiction book for middle-grade readers. However, because during most of the story Herman is in his early…
Joy at the National Archives – Research and Primary Documents
As I worked on my manuscript, I continued to immerse myself in movies, novels, and all kinds of nonfiction about WWII—from books to online articles, from the German documentary titled The Ritchie Boys to Lucky Forward by Robert Allen—but I still felt inadequate to write the chapters about Herman’s time at Camp Ritchie and his wartime activities in Europe.…