I grew up in Darien, a suburban town on the Connecticut coast. When I was young I was always writing short stories and poems, and my teachers encouraged me to write – especially my ninth grade English teacher, who was one of two people to whom I dedicated my second novel. By the time I started college, I decided I’d better take up a practical career, as I didn’t think I could ever make a living writing fiction or poetry. I decided to major in journalism because at least that way I’d still be writing, although doing a very different kind of writing.  I spent a couple of years after college working for a small trade magazine in Connecticut (fortunately, an interesting one that covered the field of magazine publishing), and then ended up going back to school to get a law degree. I worked for a law firm and then spent fifteen years working in the legal department of a large corporation in

TIP NO. 1
I thought I’d share a few thoughts about writing, from my own experience. So many people tell me they have a story they want to write. It can be done – I promise you. I started by writing short stories. For me, it was a less intimidating way to get back into fiction writing after a long hiatus than to try to attack a novel. Working on a short story trains you to come up with a beginning, middle, and end, develop characters, create dialog, and do it all within twenty or thirty pages. The chapters in a typical novel are like short stories, held together under the umbrella of a larger tale. So starting small is a great foundation for eventually writing that novel.

TIP NO. 2
Join a class of writing group. It worked for me! I took a fiction writing class at night at Fairfield