March is Women’s History Month and I’m also celebrating the fifth anniversary of the release of my book Wild Women, Wild Voices, Writing from Your Authentic Wildness.
I get all nostalgic when I remember the many groups of wild women who have joined me in meeting rooms and around tables throughout the years to write their stories and give voice to their lives.
Not long ago, after months of what it must feel like to push a river upstream, I determined (with the generous comments from members of my writing group), that the structure I had been writing to wasn’t working for the story I wanted to tell. Square peg/round hole and all that.
So I chucked what might have been the first third of my book to start over, writing to a new structure which seems to fit the story better. At least so far. Just a month or so into the revision, it feels better. More flow-y, to continue the river metaphor.
Last Saturday I spent the day with 20,000 other readers and writers at the Union-Tribune Book Festival—an all-day literary extravaganza at Liberty Station. There, in Authors Alley, I shared a table with my dear friend and sister writer, Jill G. Hall. Her half of our eight-foot table graced by her beautiful books and a pair of silver shoes, and my half littered with a couple of my books and a small replica of a typewriter.
