In my last column (“A ‘know-it-all’ approach to writing,” June 27), I wrote about Colm Toibin’s advice that a writer should know the whole story before writing his or her novel. Since I’ve always discovered the story by writing it, this for me would be a new way of working — but one I’m willing...Read More

June 27, 2014 For two years now, we’ve been writing about crafting your first novel and I have insisted that you don’t need to know your whole story in order to begin.  This has worked for me through the process of writing a dozen novels, but recently I heard Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn, The Testament of...Read More

April 25, 2014 One of the comforts of being a writer is getting to write. But as soon as you publish those carefully chosen words, you’re suddenly expected to become a speaker. Lawyers have the advantage in this regard of having developed their presentation skills, but courtroom drama and negotiating-table dramatics are slightly different arts...Read More

Happy 2014, the year in which you will write that novel — or short story, or essay, or memoir, or poem, or all of the above. Amicus Scriptor will appear in even-numbered months in 2014, and I’ll be responding to “questions from the audience” as well as continuing to support you in your creative writing...Read More

  What to give the attorney who has everything? ‘Tis the season for that challenging question. Perhaps Scott Turow’s newest, “Identical” (Grand Central Publishing), Chicago attorney Thomas R. Leavens’ “Music Law for the General Practitioner (ABA) or, hey, even my own “Courting Kathleen Hannigan” (Ampersand) or “Warming Up” (She Writes Press)? That would be so...Read More

      Amicus Script or sidebar to my Law Bulletin October column, published Nov. 1. HOW TO WRITE A LOT OF WORDS FAST. 1. Set a timer for 50 minutes. Start writing. 2. Inhabit a scene. See, hear and write everything. 3. Dissect an action — write it out in excruciating, step-by-step detail. 4. Examine...Read More

Amicus Scriptor September 27, 2013       Last month, I encouraged you to submit your story or self-contained novel excerpt to a magazine, journal or contest. And today, you may be all ready to go — story polished, guidelines followed, deadline still pending in the future. But perhaps you haven’t yet worked up the...Read More

    In last month’s pontification, I declared that writers do writerly things — join, learn, explore, write, share. And then, of course, the dreaded “submit.”I’m not sure which is more frightening, not knowing how and where to submit, or getting back the dreaded rejection. Lawyers don’t win all their cases, and yet they keep...Read More

    July 26 AMICUS SCRIPTOR column: In the past few months, I’ve done some bookstore readings for my new novel, Warming Up, and at a couple of them, there have been people there I didn’t know!  Not friends.  Not friends of friends.  Not fellow alumni.  Generic members of the public. Why?  Why were they...Read More

Carving a story from blank marble June 28, 2013 By Mary Hutchings Reed In my new novel, ʺWarming Upʺ (SheWritesPress, 2013), amateur sculptor Dr. Haverill Richardson, therapist to the main character, is unable to take the first swing at a hunk of marble because he doesnʹt know what itʹs going to be when he is...Read More