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Successful Fiction Writers Are Storytellers.
We journey into the imagination to meet strange, exciting, scary, beautiful, heroic and ugly characters. Our best stories flow from our unexpected encounters in our personal Wonderland when we, like Alice, follow the White Rabbit and fall willy-nilly into unexpected landscapes that delight, confound, and terrify us into writing the stories we are meant, finally, to write. Are you looking for the White Rabbit? Do you need a guide in your personal Wonderland? |
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After years of writing successful fiction and coaching hundreds of writers, I know how to guide you in and out of Wonderland, teach you how to make sense of the characters, plots, and landscapes swirling around in your imagination and get them down on paper. I do this in all the programs that I offer: Private Coaching, Mentoring Programs, Weekly Writing Workshops, and my annual Writing and Creative Retreat for Women in Bar Harbor, Maine.
I Understand The Creative Personality One of my desires as your writing coach is to teach you how to smash the distorting mirror that leaves you afraid to take the risks that writing demands. I understand the quirkiness, sensitivities, challenges, and fears inherent in the creative person — they're mine, too. It took me years to appreciate myself as a creative person but finally, I do. It wasn't always easy. I know how to do this for you, too. |
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My own story begins when I was little. I didn't speak until I was three-years-old and, even then, I stuttered badly. My mother told me that she thought I was retarded. What she didn't understand was my imagination was my greatest companion. I was happy making up stories and acting them out for my own enjoyment. (I actually remember doing this!)
As soon as I learned to write, I put my stories, mostly about a bunny rabbit family, down on paper. To Mom, however, I was flighty, a daydreamer, introverted, too emotional and too sensitive. And horrors, when she read to me, unlike my sister, I couldn't sit still. I had to get up and dance. |
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My father was my savior. An inspiring math teacher, he was also a fiction writer. His dedication to and joy his writing gave him my escapes into imaginary worlds acceptable. He loved my stories and as I grew older, he talked to me about writing. He was keen on fiction writing techniques and often stressed the importance of dialogue and developing strong characters.
All through my growing up years, I watched him writing on Saturday and Sunday mornings after a long week of teaching and tutoring. He relentlessly sent out his short stories, only to compile a stack of rejection slips. But he never gave up. Eventually, he sold two short stories to Esquire Magazine. And years later when his mind was ravaged by Alzheimer's, he talked often about Michael Oliver O'Toole, his hero in the series of Detective novels he wrote. In the end, his imagination was, thankfully, his reality.
Writing became my passion as it was his. When I graduated from college, I began sending out stories and collecting rejection slips. Finally, my children’s books began selling. I went on to write middle school, YA novels, and then adult novels. Throughout it all, I always looked back at what my father taught me and remembered the joy he brought to my writing.
All through my growing up years, I watched him writing on Saturday and Sunday mornings after a long week of teaching and tutoring. He relentlessly sent out his short stories, only to compile a stack of rejection slips. But he never gave up. Eventually, he sold two short stories to Esquire Magazine. And years later when his mind was ravaged by Alzheimer's, he talked often about Michael Oliver O'Toole, his hero in the series of Detective novels he wrote. In the end, his imagination was, thankfully, his reality.
Writing became my passion as it was his. When I graduated from college, I began sending out stories and collecting rejection slips. Finally, my children’s books began selling. I went on to write middle school, YA novels, and then adult novels. Throughout it all, I always looked back at what my father taught me and remembered the joy he brought to my writing.
As I moved from writing children's books to novels, I was extremely fortunate to work with two exceptional editors. Thanks to them, I discovered there is a language of creativity in which I am fluent. To my delight, this language is neither academic nor word-conscious. It wasn’t about being a wordsmith. Logic wasn’t the point. The development of character and story through the lens of the imagination was supreme. In retrospect, these editors and my father were my guides into Wonderland, and each was a different face of the White Rabbit!
The Wonderland of my imagination is filled with wildly unexpected landscapes and inhabited by characters who have given me the rides of my life! This journey sometimes bemuses, sometimes delights, and sometimes terrifies, but the joy of not knowing and not plotting, watching characters and their journeys come to life is the sweetest addiction, one that has allowed me to write and sell seven works of fiction from children's and YA books to adult fiction.
The Wonderland of my imagination is filled with wildly unexpected landscapes and inhabited by characters who have given me the rides of my life! This journey sometimes bemuses, sometimes delights, and sometimes terrifies, but the joy of not knowing and not plotting, watching characters and their journeys come to life is the sweetest addiction, one that has allowed me to write and sell seven works of fiction from children's and YA books to adult fiction.
When you work with me as your fiction writing coach and mentor or join one of my workshops or retreats, I show you the way in and out of your Wonderland and teach you everything you need to know to develop into a fiction writer that is beyond your dream's horizons... Wonderland awaits!
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If you're interested in working with me, please call or email me at 914.962.4432. (I'm in eastern time.) Email me at emily@emilyhanlon.com. 
"Emily's peculiar genius is helping fiction writers to find, feed, wrestle and live with their demons or muses. Where do my stories and characters come from, how do they take shape in me, how can I allow and at the same times manage, their release onto the unfriendly, staring page?" ~ Kurt Blankmeyer |
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