Susan M. Tiberghien
After marrying a Frenchman, following him around Europe with a growing family, I started to write more or less full time at the age of 50 when we settled down in Geneva, Switzerland. I published my first book, Looking for Gold: A Year in Jungian Analysis, at the age of 60.
I continued to publish, two more memoirs and numerous narrative essays in journals and anthologies. Then the widely read One Year to a Writing Life, and spring 2015, Side by Side: Writing your Love Story and Footsteps: In Love with a Frenchman.
I have been teaching writing for over 20 years, here in Geneva where I direct the Geneva Writers' Group (an association of writers, with presently over 230 members), around Europe, and in the States for the International Women's Writing Guild, at Writers Centers, and at CG Jung Societies.
I feel extremely fortunate at the age of 80 to still be in love with the same Frenchman, to enjoy visits from our six children and spouses and sixteen grandkids...and to write and teach and read and dream.
“When asked about rewriting, Ernest Hemingway said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that spontaneous eloquence seemed like a miracle and that he rewrote every word he ever published, and often several times. And Mark Strand, former poet laureate, says that each of his poems sometimes goes through forty to fifty drafts before it is finished.”