Exercising that 'writing muscle'

“Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.” – Jane Green

A cancer survivor who now lives in Connecticut, Green was born in London on this date in 1968 and has become one of the world's leading authors in commercial women's fiction, with millions of books in print and translations in over 25 languages.

A journalist by training, she worked as a feature writer for several London-based newspapers, including The Daily Mail, before writing her first novel, Straight Talking, which went right to bestseller lists in 1995.  Since then she’s had 15 additional bestsellers.

Frequent themes in her books include cooking, class wars, children, infidelity, and female friendship. She says she does not necessarily write about her own life, but is inspired by the themes of her life.   She made the move from journalistic writing to creative writing with a unique writing regimen that sounds like a great plan to an old journalist like myself.  “I treated my books as a very long journalistic exercise.  I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished (on a deadline).”                       

Her journalism training also taught her that writing is a job, and that you must write, whether you are inspired or not.  “The only way to unlock creativity," she said,  "is to write through it.”

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