woman-writing-poetry1  About a month ago, I agreed to participate in a blog hop focusing on the Writing Process. For those (few?) of you who haven’t participated in a blog hop, it goes something like this. One person writes a blog on a designated topic and, in the writing, links back to the original blogger as well as to one or more other bloggers, who then take up the baton and write on the same topic from their own perspective and for their own blog followers. This becomes a blog version of chain-mail; it’s way to promote blogs and books as well as friends’ blogs—and to increase internet interest in a specific topic or issue.

This particular blog- hop, started by Lynne Hinkey, was intended to promote the blogs and the books of Indie writers. So I agreed, having both a blog and a book I’d like to promote. Then I tried to line up a couple of author-bloggers to whom I could pass the baton, which became more problematical . Two writer-friends came quickly to mind; however, one has a blog  but her book is not yet in press, and the other has a book  but does not blog.

So I went further afield to a couple of writer-acquaintances, both of whom have blogs I follow  and books I’ve read. However, neither one had time to participate in a blog hop, which I understand, having passed through a harrowingly busy month of April, myself. And a couple other blog-acquaintances I thought of asking had been involved in recent blog hops, so I thought they were probably not up for another right now.

Since I try to keep my word (although sometimes belatedly), I feel compelled to continue this thread, but with no future promises. In this and the next post, I’ll be linking to several wonderful women writers; you can check out their sites and then pass them forward in your own blogs—or not, as you wish.

In the process of thinking about this topic and a way to frame it, I have also been mulling over women writers as a group—the ways we write, our major subject interests, the kinds of books we write, and why men seldom read books written by women whereas women often read books written by men.

So let me first fill in the blanks about the Writing Process.

WHAT AM I WORKING ON?

Currently, I have two major projects in the works. One is a self-help book on Caring for Your Body, which brings together information on the structure and function of the body with tips on how to communicate with health-care professionals. The other is a book of short stories set in scientific labs, tentatively titled “Laboratory Notebook.” It is neither science fiction, nor truly main-stream fiction (few love affairs or dead bodies and no extraterrestrial creatures nor gruesome battles). I’ve posted a few of those stories in another blog site.

HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE?

Both books I’ve published so far have been non-fiction. One is a travel memoir that takes a historical view of Korea, a country where I lived and traveled for two years. The book has a (mature) female perspective, as I compare my experiences with those of another female travel writer who visited Korea a century before I did, when she was the same age as I. The other is a book of meditations on the nature of spiritual experience, as viewed from a scientist’s perspective.

Neither book takes a traditional view of its subject matter: one is about the adventures of female travelers; the other is about spirituality from a scientist’s perspective.

WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?

I write about subjects viewed from a female scientist’s perspective, which means that I’m trained to think logically and linearly and yet can think with both sides of my brain. So I’m willing to intimate in writing the messy emotional under-story in a mesh-work of experiences described objectively. I write for others who might learn something interesting or valuable from the stories.

HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK?

Unlike more economically successful writers, I take a rather scatter-shot approach to writing. I’ve actually been writing since age thirteen, when I began a journal in which I write to this day–if only occasionally–more than sixty years later. This habit has promoted an approach of introspective observer, some of which comes out in short fiction, my chief writing activity (besides scientific papers) during the decades I worked as a practicing scientist. At the time, I worked on stories when I had snatches of “free” time–for example, in airplanes on the way to and from scientific meetings. And I revised them during many evenings as after-hours mood-adjustment in place of drinking alcohol. The patient reworking of written words was deeply soothing.

Nonfiction has become a writing focus since retirement.  I’ve culled journals, letters and emails for topics of books and blogs. There seems to be endless material available.

In terms of discipline, I’ve rarely been able to specify a time each day when I write. As a consequence, my output is spotty, my blogs often lag or become temporarily abandoned, and I feel perpetually guilty and backlogged. My main discipline involves writers groups. At any one time, I usually belong to two or three groups which meet once a month, and I feel compelled to produce something new or revised for those. So—as in my prior work life—deadlines, whether external or self-imposed, seem to inspire the writing.

Moreover, I almost always have more than one book project in the works – two and sometimes three or four. I work on whichever one captures my interest at the moment, but then I may let it lie fallow if it seems to flag. When a project nears completion, though, I usually focus on that to the exclusion of all else (including housework), spending hours each day trying to revise a chapter or word-check a reference list.

So this is the writers’ blog hop I promised to do. Please click on the links in the text above (preferably opening in a new window) and read about some very interesting women writers and their work. More on women and writing in the next blog post.