I love Mary Higgins Clark
Poke fun if you wish, but Mary Higgins Clark is my hero.
Her writing isn’t critically acclaimed or earth shattering. She doesn’t strike a political nerve or fight for a cause. But her books are the ones I look for at the library or in airport kiosks. I picked up While My Pretty One Sleeps in 1991 and have checked-out, borrowed, or purchased all but four of her published works.
That means something.
I turn to MHC (you have to be pretty freaking cool to have your own fancy monogram on your books, right?) when I need brain candy, when I don’t want to think, when I want to immerse myself in a story and not have to look up a vocabulary word or rush to the end.
I don’t read her books to learn something. I read them to get lost.
And as 80 million copies of her suspense novels have been sold, I guess I’m not the only one.
Her bio is pretty freaking awesome too. She was a single mother of five (I think) and got up everyone morning at 5 a.m. to write. Then she put her typewriter away, got her kids ready for school and headed off to work. (For more details click here.)
I also blame MHC for encouraging me to write now. She said, “It’s the degree of yearning that separates the real writer from the “would-be’s.” Those who say “I’ll write when I have time, when the kids are grown up or when I have a quiet place to work,” will probably never do it. “
Do you have a “go-to” author? What is it about their writing that makes you come back time after time? Can you put that “thing” in your current manuscript? Would it make your work better?
Her writing isn’t critically acclaimed or earth shattering. She doesn’t strike a political nerve or fight for a cause. But her books are the ones I look for at the library or in airport kiosks. I picked up While My Pretty One Sleeps in 1991 and have checked-out, borrowed, or purchased all but four of her published works.
That means something.
I turn to MHC (you have to be pretty freaking cool to have your own fancy monogram on your books, right?) when I need brain candy, when I don’t want to think, when I want to immerse myself in a story and not have to look up a vocabulary word or rush to the end.
I don’t read her books to learn something. I read them to get lost.
And as 80 million copies of her suspense novels have been sold, I guess I’m not the only one.
Her bio is pretty freaking awesome too. She was a single mother of five (I think) and got up everyone morning at 5 a.m. to write. Then she put her typewriter away, got her kids ready for school and headed off to work. (For more details click here.)
I also blame MHC for encouraging me to write now. She said, “It’s the degree of yearning that separates the real writer from the “would-be’s.” Those who say “I’ll write when I have time, when the kids are grown up or when I have a quiet place to work,” will probably never do it. “
Do you have a “go-to” author? What is it about their writing that makes you come back time after time? Can you put that “thing” in your current manuscript? Would it make your work better?
