1-12 of 528 results
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Creating Strong Female Characters
By Jennifer Lawler • September 5, 2025Lois Peterson, the older woman protagonist of The Mage of Motor Avenue series, is one of my favorite characters. She’s snarky and doesn’t take shit from anyone but she’s also kind, and those are my personal favorite type of people. Lucinda (the younger woman protagonist of The Wanderer series) has a dry sense of humor… -
Being a Foreigner
By Jennifer Lawler • September 2, 2025In the original draft of the first novel in my epic fantasy series (The Wanderer), Lucinda, the female protagonist, considered herself part of the culture she lives in. But in later revisions, I found it useful to use her perspective to explain the culture she lives in and to do that, it helped to make… -
The Promise of Back-to-School
By Jennifer Lawler • August 29, 2025I have a fondness for back-to-school time because I always enjoyed school. It was a bastion of peace and tranquility where the rules were fairly straightforward and the teachers usually liked you if you weren’t disruptive. School was also where I could read without my mother nagging me to go outside and play, although admittedly… -
Rages versus Tantrums
By Jennifer Lawler • July 2, 2025When I was researching ancient mythology in order to construct a believable pantheon for the world of the Stone Island (The Wanderer series), I was struck by how Odin is always described by writers as having “rages,” whereas Freya is always described as having “tantrums.” Interpreting Mythology It’s easy to take these judgments at face… -
The Faucet
By Jennifer Lawler • July 4, 2024The faucet is dripping. The drip is loud in the quiet room: Splat! Like a children’s book: Splat! Splat! Goes the water. “Mom?” Jessica is watching me. She says something else, a thing I can’t hear because the drip is so loud. I jump to my feet to wrench the handles shut but it’s a… -
Trying on shoes
By Jennifer Lawler • May 7, 2024I’m shopping for shoes with my daughter Jessica, who is now twenty-six and tall and thin. Sometimes I can’t get over how beautiful she is. I’m not talking about her physical appearance, though of course being her mother I think she’s the fairest in all the land. But what I’m actually talking about is the… -
What real promise is
By Jennifer Lawler • May 7, 2024I see these memes going around: “At age 30, JK Rowling was depressed and wanted to give up, but she didn’t and now she’s worth 15 kajillion dollars, so you shouldn’t give up either!” And I just . . . think that’s bullshit. It’s not helpful. In fact, I think it’s discouraging. You’re more likely… -
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A personal Independence Day
By Jennifer Lawler • July 4, 2023In the U.S., today is Independence Day. I took the day off from work not because I wanted to celebrate the country (I’m actually quite alarmed at what is happening here) but because it is always a day where I reflect on my own Independence Day, which happened in a November more than twenty years… -
Career advice
By Jennifer Lawler • July 3, 2023Today as I struggle to get The Dreamer prepped for publication, I wonder, as I sometimes do, if it was particularly wise to structure my entire life and career around something I decided to do when I was five years old. -
Who’s the hero?
By Jennifer Lawler • June 30, 2023An acquaintance refers to her husband on social media as “MC” and she’ll recount how “MC and I went to the movies.” I can’t help but read that as “Main Character” and I keep wanting to take her aside and say, “Don’t be a sidekick in your own life! You be the MC!” Fortunately I… -
The trials of being a writer
By Jennifer Lawler • June 29, 2023“Follow up with Miranda,” the note on my schedule says. Miranda is the main character in a novel I’m writing and I’m staring at this note, trying to figure out why I’m following up with her. Did I mean “Revise Chapter 9” or something? So I open the mansucript, and I start exploring what kind…