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About Anna Elliott

Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, the Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen's classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. Anna lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Let it Go
  • Write Faster (and Better, Too)
  • Your Inner Reader Knows What to Skip
  • Open Mode
  • The School of Happy Endings
  • Where Do You Go From Here?
  • Helping Hands: Writing With Children
  • Little White (and not-so-white) Lies
  • What to Do When You Need a Creative Recharge
  • Take 5: Kitty Bennet’s Diary
  • The Voice
  • A Broken Piece

    • Let it Go

    By

    BxboI have two daughters, ages 5 and 7, which means– as people with similarly aged daughters will probably tell you– that we like the movie Frozen in our house.  A lot.  We do not even have a television, and I have still heard the signature song Let it Go so many times that I click my teeth to it while folding laundry.  My husband absent-mindedly whistles it while writing computer code.  If my 8 mos. old opened his mouth and ‘let it go’ came out instead of the standard ‘ah-boo, ah- BOO’, I wouldn’t be surprised.  The incipient muscle-spasm in my right eye would develop into a full-blown twitch, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

    However.  Sometime last month as I was putting on a Frozen-themed birthday party for my 5 year old and buying her a Queen Elsa snowglobe wand that plays . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Let it Go (because apparently I am a masochist), I started listening to the song’s lyrics in a different light.  Listening and realizing that the words to the song actually offer some pretty solid advice about writing.

    For your sanity and mine, I won’t recap the plot of the movie except to say that Elsa, the character who sings Let it Go, is for most of her life ruled by fear.  She’s afraid of her own magical powers– afraid what other people will think if they ever learn about her powers.  She spends her life hiding, for fear someone will discover the truth.  Let it Go is what she sings when she’s accidentally given herself away– when she realizes that she has nothing to lose, that she can’t hide anymore, and can finally  Let it Go.

    As writers, I think there are so many times when it’s easy to be similarly ruled by fear.  It can be as simple (yet scary) as having to admit to others that we are writers.  Before I landed my first contract, I practically NEVER confessed to writing books.  Ever.  “I’m a free-lance editor,” I would say when people asked what I did.  It took my husband’s tough-love approach to break me of that one.  “This is my wife Anna,” he would say, whenever we met someone new.  “She’s an author.”  Of course people would then ask what kind of books I wrote, and I would feel totally stupid and always kind of want to stab myself with a rusty fork rather than answer– but of course I would (answer that is, not stab myself with a fork) in stammering, tongue-tied sentences.  But you know what?   [Read more…]

    Write Faster (and Better, Too)

    By

    Have you read Rachel Aaron's book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love yet?  You really should-- it's great. Shortest.  WU post.  Ever! Just kidding.  But not about my recommendation of Rachel Aaron's book, it really is well worth checking out.  Now just to be clear, I don't know Rachel at all, never met her, never even e-mailed with her.  I hadn't heard of her or her book until another author whose blog I follow mentioned that she was giving the … [Read more...]

    Your Inner Reader Knows What to Skip

    By

    Elmore Leonard famously said of his writing: “I try to leave out the parts people skip.” Solid advice for writers of all levels of experience. But what exactly are "the parts people skip?" How do you identify whether you're managing to leave them out of your writing or not? I had a couple of encounters this past month that immediately made me think about that quote-- and made me think about its relevance in a new light. The first was a conversation I had with my oldest daughter a couple of … [Read more...]

    Open Mode

    By

    I recently watched a video of John Cleese's lecture on the five requirements for creativity.  If you haven't seen it before, I highly recommend it.   It's both insightful and hilarious (it is John Cleese, after all) and well worth the 30 minutes or so of your time.  One of the requirements Cleese mentions is the necessity of getting your brain into what he terms 'open mode' or the mode of thinking in which you can be creative.  That resonated with me particularly, since if there's one area of … [Read more...]

    The School of Happy Endings

    By

      Today I want to talk about endings-- or more specifically, an odd phenomenon about novel endings that I've noticed. At least, I think it's odd. Generally speaking-- and I'm sure authors of category romance books could probably speak to this issue even more than I can-- there seems to be a widely-held view that happy endings are somehow inherently less 'meaningful' or 'literary' than sad ones. I remember once reading an interview with Sue Monk Kidd about her breakout debut The … [Read more...]

    Where Do You Go From Here?

    By

    I've read a lot of posts on rejection, lately, both here on WU and elsewhere.  Understandably-- it's a common topic, because if you want to get into the writing business, the odds are about 99% certain that you WILL face the snake-bite sting of rejection at some point.  And probably more than once-- because the truth is that these days (unless you're outrageously, spectacularly successful, and sometimes not even then) even if you land a publishing contract once, you will still likely have to go … [Read more...]

    Helping Hands: Writing With Children

    By

    There are days when I joke with my husband that I'm going to dedicate my next novel: To my children, without whom this book would have been finished sooner.  Oh, it is tempting sometimes.  My kiddos are my joy, my light, my universe-- all those good things.  One of the first things you learn as a parent is that all those squishy greeting-card sentiments?  When it comes to your children, they are really true.  But conducive to long stretches of uninterrupted writing time, small children are … [Read more...]

    Little White (and not-so-white) Lies

    By

    My children and I are studying Picasso at the moment, and I learned that he famously said, "Art is a lie that tells the truth."  (Everyone else in the world may well have known this already, but I'd  never heard that quotation before).  He wasn't talking about novels, specifically, but nonetheless, it struck me as one of the most apt descriptions of a well-crafted novel that I've ever heard; the essence of what I'm trying to accomplish with every book I write.  But actually, those aren't the … [Read more...]

    What to Do When You Need a Creative Recharge

    By

    In the last couple of months, I released one book and wrote another in six weeks, start to finish.  (No, I don't usually write that fast; yes, I really, really wish I had the magic recipe to make novels come that quickly and easily all the time-- if I ever figure that recipe out, I'll post it here!)  I have more to do-- there's always more to do.  Edits on another mostly-completed book, a sequel to the just-finished novel . . . But this week, I'm not working on any of it.  This is the part of … [Read more...]

    Take 5: Kitty Bennet’s Diary

    By

    This past month, Kitty Bennet's Diary, the third book in my Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, released. Thanks so much to everyone here at WU for letting me share a bit about the book here! Q: What's the premise of your novel?  Kitty Bennet's Diary is the third of my diary-format imagined sequels to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.  The story focuses on Kitty Bennet, younger sister to Elizabeth Bennet.  To quote the back cover copy: Kitty Bennet is finished with love and romance. She lost … [Read more...]

    The Voice

    By

    This month, I've been dipping my toes into the water of a brand-new project, taking the first steps on the looooong road that will eventually (I hope!) lead to a finished novel.  I actually love this part of the process.  Doing loads and loads of research reading, letting myself daydream as I read (or do dishes, or watch my six year old  practice handwriting), racing to my computer to type notes into my 'ideas' folder as they occur to me.  It's a little like decorating a Christmas tree at this … [Read more...]

    A Broken Piece

    By

    I wish this were one of my books, and I could somehow re-write the ending to this story, make it a happy one.  But it isn't, and I can't.  Two months ago, I shared the news here on WU that we were expecting our third baby.  Very sadly, this past month, the baby died during the second trimester. At hard times in my life, I've always turned to prayer, and faith.  But you know, I've always relied on stories—on books and imaginary characters and other authors' words—too, even if it's in a … [Read more...]