NaNoWriMo #13: Perseverance and Patience

Today, I’m featuring two great writers of women’s fiction, Jael McHenry and Ann Hite. I met both these women through my publisher—we’re all published by the same imprint, Gallery Books at Simon and Schuster—and both have been wonderful friends ever since. (And there’s a mini-tip for you for down the road: it’s important to make friends in this business, just as in any business.)

Jael McHenry’s debut novel, The Kitchen Daughter, is about a woman who discovers she can call up ghosts by cooking from dead people’s recipes. Described as Julia & Julia meets Jodi Picoult, The Kitchen Daughter garnered rave reviews and was a book pick of O, the Oprah’s magazine. Jael has a blog which you can follow here, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.

“Don't expect a final product from your first draft. I often get discouraged in the early stages of writing because the book is completely perfect in my head, and then it doesn't turn out nearly as well when I start writing it down! But you can't get to a second draft if you never finish the first. Keep at it.”

Ann Hite’s Ghost on Black Mountain “twists folklore with the genres of Southern Gothic, paranormal and literary fiction like a fine, fat pretzel, a guilty pleasure after midnight,” says the Alabama Mobile Register. Ann also is the author of numerous short stories and book reviews, a self-professed “book junkie” and generous as all get-out. You can follow her blog here.

"Listen to your characters! I know it sounds crazy, but characters know so much more than the writers that created them. When you’re in the shower, walking, or just dropping off to sleep, a character will reach out to tell you something important or not so important about the book where he or she appears. Listen. And you just might learn something."