London Writers' Salon

#191: Debra Curtis — Becoming a Novelist After Sixty, Surviving Hundreds of Rejections, Radical Forgiveness, and Not Giving Up as a Writer

Episode Summary

Debut novelist Debra Curtis on teaching herself to write by copying poems by hand as a dyslexic child, using contemporary novels as craft manuals to learn structure, meeting the Dalai Lama, the importance of radical forgiveness & publishing her first novel in her sixties after years of rejection.

Episode Notes

Debut novelist Debra Curtis on teaching herself to write by copying poems by hand as a dyslexic child, using contemporary novels as craft manuals to learn structure, meeting the Dalai Lama, the importance of radical forgiveness & publishing her first novel in her sixties after years of rejection. 

You'll learn:

• Why copying poems by hand into a composition notebook secretly teaches a dyslexic child to write.
• The hospital-bed moment with her dying father that became a three-decade family motto.
• A vision at a marina, a prescription bottle, and the woman who became her protagonist.
• What hundreds of rejections actually teach you about persistence.
• Using contemporary novels as instructional guides while drafting your own.
• How a psychic’s prophecy and a chance encounter in Paris both pointed toward the same agent.
• Finding your future agent’s name in the acknowledgments of a book you’ve never read.
• The big editorial note that hurts to hear, and why listening anyway is still the right call.
• Radical forgiveness as the emotional heart of a novel.
• The writing ritual built around a sleep mask, noise-cancelling headphones, and a sound machine.

Resources & Links:

• 📄 Interview Transcript
• The Freeing of The Dust by Denise Levertov
• Laws of Love and Logic by Debra Curtis
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Publisher’s Marketplace
• Debra’s Instagram
• Debra’s TikTok

About Debra Curtis:

Debra Curtis is a retired professor of cultural anthropology at Salve Regina University, where she specialised in gender and sexuality. This is her first novel. She is the mother of grown-up twin girls and lives in Rhode Island with her husband and her English bulldog, Harry, who is the star of much of her TikTok content. TikTok: @EnglishHarry; FB: @DebCurtis; Instagram: @Deb.curtis.906.

Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lulu. If you're interested in self-publishing, Lulu has the technology you need to turn your idea into a professionally published book. Our community anthologies are published using Lulu and we’ve used their direct ecommerce integration and on demand publishing to send the anthology all over the world. The editorial team has found it really intuitive to use. For more information head to lulu.com.