By Taylor Jasmine | On February 13, 2015 | Updated September 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
Excerpted from an interview with Edna Ferber in 1924 — early in her career. Originally published in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle; by Ruth Brindze – Sun, Nov 9, 1924. Edna Ferber started writing during a vacation seventeen years ago — and the vacation still lasts!
Like a fairy godmother, she touches her typewriter with her wand and creates cities and people just as she wants them. “I find writing so difficult that I wonder how I ever can do it. And when I finish a novel I try to console myself and say, ‘No one can really write a novel.’”
That is what Edna Ferber thinks of her profession and herself. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 9, 2015 | Updated May 8, 2026 | Comments (2)
L.M. Montgomery (1874 – 1972), the prolific Canadian author best known for the Anne of Green Gables series, wove personal experiences with marriage and motherhood into her work.
Fiction became a buffer against resentment at the roles she maintained, first as a dutiful granddaughter, then as an upstanding minister’s wife and devoted mother. Though these weren’t entirely facades, her spirited female characters hint at rebellion against limited roles and opportunities.
Montgomery had two sons in whose early childhoods she reveled. Parallel to the standard descriptions of her own mental state that forever peppered her journals (“sleeplessness,” “utter nervous prostration,” “dreadful weariness of spirit,” “restlessness,” ad nauseum), she cooed over her children. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 8, 2015 | Updated September 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
From all outward appearances, Edith Wharton, an heiress from one of late-19th century’s wealthiest families, seemed to be a woman in charge of her life.
But just beneath the surface, she was deeply insecure, especially about her writing abilities. Her family disapproved of her taking up the pen, and her society friends just didn’t care — or understand.
Wharton described how she overcame her obstacles with a great deal of humility. The following passages are from her memoir, A Backward Glance (1934). Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On February 8, 2015 | Updated September 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
An excerpt from The Early Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Volume II. From an entry dated November 1921, when the author was 18 years of age:
“I have been made to write. I have been to sit by my desk day after day, pouring into a million pages the contents of my mind and heart, the results of my observations, the thing I conceive, the things that are revealed to me, the things I must speak.
How else can I explain this flow of ideas to which my words are attached almost miraculously? It comes from within me, something stronger than my will, at the times I least expect it. I am led, I am carried way by a thing which is beyond my self, beyond control and discipline.” Read More→
By Robert van Gelder | On January 26, 2015 | Updated August 22, 2026 | Comments (6)
An interview with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, who discusses her way of life and methods of work. This interview was conducted on November 30, 1941, excerpted from Writers and Writing by Robert van Gelder, 1946:
“Writing,” said Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, “is agony. I stay at my typewriter for eight hours every day when I’m working and keep as free as possible from all distractions for the rest of the day. I aim to do six pages a day but I’m satisfied with three. Often there are only a few lines to show.” Read More→
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