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Diversity is a hot topic within the literary world. As a teacher of Gender and Post-Colonial Studies, the question of diversity and its representation within literature is at the forefront of everything I teach, read, and write. Even though the larger part of the canon is still made up of white heterosexual men who write about other white heterosexual men, things are gradually shifting. Self-publishing is doing a lot to alter the gender dynamic: more women are successfully self-published than men, and I have high hopes for self-publishing to open the way for non-white and non-heterosexual writers as well. Next to that, more writers are becoming increasingly aware of the necessity to include a more diverse array of characters in their work.

This last issue is the focus of my new blog series on Writing Diversity.

Each month, I will address the complexity behind the portraying of diverse characters in our work by diving deeply into a variety of topics, including essentialism, tokenism, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. In this first post, I will go a little deeper into the question of representation, the two steps representation is made up of, and the reason why it is important to consider both these steps when we bring diverse characters into our work.Read More →

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This last month has been somewhat crazy (I think I called my upcoming schedule ‘frightening’ in December’s overview). The crazy involved, amongst many other events, having to grade presentations, papers, and exams of 70 students, spending many hours caught up in hospitals in support of my family, the editing of a massive sci-fi novel, and figuring out the Introduction to Gender Studies course I will be coordinating from next week onward.

Luckily, I knew all these things were coming way back in November, so I went easy on this month’s to-do list. I did write down everything I wanted to get done, but I made sure to differentiate between what I absolutely had to do and what I could skip if necessary. Needless to say, halfway through the month I had crossed out all of the latter. If I learned anything last year, it’s knowing when to give in.

Projects done

Knowing what January was going to bring, I put a red cross through my planner in November already, vouching not to take on any more than the projects I had already planned. And I almost succeeded. Read More →

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First of all, happy 2017 to all of you! What a year it has been…

December was one productive month for me, and yet it felt like it was over in a matter of seconds. It remains something I can’t wrap my head around: the older I get and the more I do, the faster it goes. So what have I been up to?

Projects done

Since one of my clients needed a little more time finishing his manuscript, I had some room to update the website. I changed the colour scheme and updated the menu slightly. Some other changes will be made, but my schedule for January is outright frightening (so many books to edit, papers to grade, exams to check) that I’ll be happy to get any writing of my own done at all, let alone get the website running the way I want to.

The extra time also enabled me to try my hand at something I’d never considered doing: copywriting. One of my best friends is a gifted yoga teacher and the most intuitive person I’ve ever met. Selling herself and putting her thoughts into words aren’t her strong suits, however. Luckily, we’ve learned this month that putting her thoughts into words is something that comes natural to me, so I now write copy whenever she needs copy written. And it’s great fun, too! It isn’t a skill I’m considering adding to my services (yet), but it’s definitely something I want to play around with some more. I.e. if you are looking for someone to go over your book ads, your web content, anything, shoot me a message at marielle@mswordsmith.nl  and I’ll have a look in exchange for an ounce of gratitude or karma points.Read More →

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Being an introvert isn’t the embarrassing secret it once was—Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking did loads to unravel the ‘mystery’ surrounding introverts and demonstrate that the introvert’s way of going about things is something contemporary society is in dire need of. As such, it comes as no surprise that many a book on introversion and how to be an introvert in a world celebrating the extravert have reached the market in the past few years. Being a fan of her work, Joanna Penn’s Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives and other Introverts immediately comes to mind.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci’s The Introvert Writer: Being Your Creative Best By Being Your Truest Self is such a book. Focusing not on the introvert in general but on the introvert writer in particular, Arpin-Ricci tries to provide a view as broad as possible on what being an introvert writer entails. He doesn’t just focus on the introvert writer’s strengths, he also points out the pitfalls of being both an introvert and a writer and how we can overcome these while staying true to ourselves. And with success.

The changing face of publishing

One of the first things Arpin-Ricci acknowledges is that the market as it is today demands writers, especially the self-published ones, to get out there and promote their books by becoming a public figure. We might not like it—and Arpin-Ricci doesn’t argue we need to—but it is what it is. If we want to have a successful writing career Read More →

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As you can read in my review of Joanna Penn’s The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey, one of the practices the book made me want to pick up was that of setting intentions and reflecting on the results on a monthly basis. I’m officially starting tomorrow, but now I’ve caught the intention bug, I wanted to take a moment to consider the past month, and reflect on what November has brought me. So here goes.

Projects done

One of the projects I worked on last month was to reread a sci-fi novel that I edited last August. It was the first time I went over a novel again to check on how the writer had incorporated my comments and it was such a good experience in that it made it very tangible just how much my reading of a work helps writers to tell better stories. It was also quite flattering to see how much of my advice was taken into account. If you’re interested in this particular book, you can get it for free by joining the writer’s email list here.

I also worked on the outline of the second book in the fantasy series I’m writing. Read More →