Warrior Women - Empowering Women, Writers, and Dreamers

I apologize that I have been AWOL for so long. Had preparations for the holidays, there was a nasty flu bug that wiped one out for several weeks straight, had some health issues, and visited family over Christmas break. But, better late than never, Happy New Year and all that jazz, I am back! :) Today, let's talk about a writer's life. If you walk in any bookstore  or peruse the shelves at the library, you'll very quickly notice that most of the authors are older and mostly in their 40's-60's, with established lives and careers. You don't really see any younger, success authors out there in their 20's and 30's, those who are barely out of college or starting a family, or living on their own. Why is that? What happened to authors like, Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein when she was 17, or Helen Keller who wrote The Story of My Life at 22, or Charles Dickens who published his first novel of the Pickwick Papers when he was 24, or Ralph Waldo Emerson wh...

I recently finished an excellent book that was recommended to me by a friend, called "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear," by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of, "Eat, Pray, Love." In the book she talks a lot about how fear is a crippling demon that keeps us from becoming our best selves and achieving our dreams. Fear can keep us from a lot in our lives, and manifests itself in many different ways. It can keep us from writing, or creating art, or going after the dream job, try out for a competition, asking for a promotion, making a new friend, or taking a chance on a relationship. Basically, your fear is something that is always going to be a part of you.  Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL: He hasn’t slept in days, he’s all hopped up on Red Bull, and he’s liable to shoot at his own shadow in an absurd effort to keep everyone 'safe'.”  The thing we can do is to learn to live with the fear of rejecti...

I am obsessed with reading and being able to immerse myself in different worlds. My current favorite contemporary authors are John Green and Brandon Sanderson, with Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen forever holding a spot in my heart for authors from a different century. If given the choice between reading, or going out to do an activity, I will hands down always choose to sit curled up on the couch reading a good book, with some eggnog or apple juice, and a comfy blanket. The few things that can pull me away from my current book are ballroom dancing, and my wonderful husband, whom I have been married to for over a year. Along with reading, I absolutely love writing. Ever since I was little, I would imagine myself in the worlds that I was reading about and I would find such happiness, adventure, and fulfillment from that; a chance to escape and be whatever I wanted to be. I wanted to give that joy and thrill to others; to give them the chance to immerse themselves in other worlds and h...

I wrote and completed content editing, copyediting, and proofreading for my own Senior research project in college, on creativity in the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Attached is the final product.  Click here to view .

I wrote and completed content editing, copyediting, and proofreading for my own college research paper on, Charlotte Gilman’s, “The Yellow  Wall-Paper.” Attached is the final product. Click here to view .

In an editing class that I took, the teacher gave the class the opportunity to collaboratively copyedit the manuscript of her friend, the author River Ames, on her upcoming novel, “Gideon’s Justice.” Here is my twenty-two page section out of a two hundred and thirteen page novel that the class as a team copyedited. Click here to view . 

The client wanted me to do copyediting and proofreading for her essay on Margaret Atwood’s poem, “Siren Song,” before it was submitted to her Advanced Research and Literary Analysis class’s journal. In the class, they had an academic journal, entitled, “The Journal of Myth and Legends,” that they had to maintain throughout the semester. In the Formalist Approach section, her paper was the only one out of three to four applicants that got accepted and published in the journal. Click here to view .