Today we’d like to introduce you to Louise Hurd.
Hi Louise, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I am a writer of literary fiction and I am so excited about my craft. I sold my first short story to Teen Magazine when I was 26 years old. I wrote seriously while raising three, then four, then five babies. I sold many short stories and poems but I always wanted to be a novelist. I also won numerous awards, mostly from The League of Utah Writers, of which i also served one year as president. Circumstances of life took me away from my writing for several years, but at age 75, I am back! My first published book, The Secret of Surviving In The Sea, is now available online at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble in both paperback and ebook form. It is also available at many brick and mortar stores.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As I mentioned, my life got complicated and I quit writing for a while. It was not just the fact of raising children and having a home and husband. As we all know, life has its ups and downs and it is not always a season for pursuing our heart’s desires. But as I lived those years without writing, my life was certainly not a desert, but a vivid landscape with more and more life experience being added to my storehouse. When my husband died 51/2 yers ago i slowly became aware that this is the perfect time of my life to brush off those dreams and start again.
My first novel, The Secret of Surviving in the Sea formed fully in my mind for probably a year. It took me three months to write it, approximately another year working with an editor on it, then almost a year to get it published and available to the public. I don’t know if I ever thought this day would finally come, but here it is and I am thrilled.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Like many people I loved reading all my life. Being carried away in a story was sometimes the best part of life. I began to believe that I could create those wonderful stories myself. I settled into writing mostly literary fiction, as my stories are more character based than plot based. By the time I put my characters on the page I dearly love them myself and I believe that that is what makes others love them and care what happens to them. They tell their own story. This is how I create fiction.
That said, the thing that I am most proud of in my life is not my literary work, but my family: home, children and husband. That has been a more momentous accomplishment than anything else. Raising a family certainly has all the same aspects of a good story: love, hope, tragedy, loss, grief and healing.
It may be my belief in the goodness of all people that sets me apart, in any case, it does have a lot to do with my best traits as a mother, and my gift of writing.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If you want to be a writer, start writing. Then you have to learn what kinds of help you need such as education-online or traditional, writers groups, writers conferences, workshops, etc. what’s good for one person may not be good for you. Try everything till you find your niche. Read a lot—probably mostly in the genre that you want to write. But start writing first, and keep writing throughout all of your learning, never stop writing. Write.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://louisehurdwords.com
- Instagram: louisehurdwords
- Facebook: louisehurdwords
