PUBLISHED GRAD

What is the name of your book (or books)? Who is the publisher?
The Wild Ones – self published with Summer Bay Press owner Wendy D. Hughes

White Medicine Woman – self published with Knowonder Press owner Philip Chipping

I’ve contributed stories to Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul and Crossing the Rainbow Bridge.

Tell us a bit about your path to publishing, from idea to submission to published book.
The idea for The Wild Ones came from a picture and a short story I wrote in school.

White Medicine Woman came from a first line prompt.

My Chicken Soup story was real and happened to me when I was nursing.

Crossing the Rainbow Bridge was from the death of pets.

How long have you been writing?
I’ve been writing since before 2004 when I took the first ICL course. I had a beginning, middle, and end to a prompt in a biweekly paper and my partner said there is a computer down stairs go and write it. I did and haven’t stopped.

What’s your favorite genre to write and why?
Fiction, animals

Which ICL courses have your taken?
Writing for Children and Teenagers

Revise to Publish

Beyond the Basics

How has taking our course helped your writing and/or career?
Taking the courses taught me about sentence composition. A story has to have a beginning, middle, and an end. From the climax to the end has to be just a few pages.

Have any of your class assignments been published?
No, I have sent them to publishers but no takers.  

Do you have a favorite writing tip you’d like to share?
Don’t let anyone tell you something is too good for you to have written alone. Believe in yourself.

If you could travel back in time and give yourself one piece of writing advice, how far back would you go, and what would you tell yourself?
I would go to Grade 8 when a teacher told what I had written was too good for me to have written without help. I did do it alone but she wouldn’t believe it. Keep on writing don’t quit.

Tell us about your favorite place to write and what time of day you are most productive in your writing.
Dining room table in the sunshine

Please tell us the best or most valuable thing you learned from your experience with ICL.

• Belief in my ability.
• Research is an important part of writing.
• Write what you know.
• Question your characters, find out their age, likes, dislikes, color of eyes, color of hair.

What will you do to get your next book, Angel of Mercy, published by a traditional publisher?

By sending it to as many publishers as I have to.

Gladys Swedak is a senior living in Vancouver with her partner and 2 cats. She likes writing fiction, reading and hand crafts. She has self published two books and stories in Chicken Soup for the Nurses Soul and Crossing the Rainbow Bridge. She is now looking for a traditional publisher for Angel of Mercy about Calamity Jane from about 4 years of age to the time of the Small Pox epidemic in Deadwood.