At nearly 50,000 words into my current WIP, I hit a dead zone. Until that point, everything had been sailing along fairly smoothly. I would sit at the computer, the ideas would come, the word count would creep steadily upwards. Happy days! Until I hit some rough weather and started taking in water from all sides. To continue the sailing…
You know how the Chinese celebrate the lunar New Year? Well, I have a Writing New Year – and I’m celebrating it today! Why this actual day, you ask? Pretty simple. Today is the first day in nearly two months where I’ve had more than one hour of peace and quiet. Yes, the kids have gone back to school/kindy, meaning…
Teenagers are so hard to buy for. Right? Well, I might just have solved at least one of your gift shopping issues for this Christmas. ‘Clancy of the Undertow’ is a brilliant piece of contemporary realist fiction (ie set in the here and now) which would be perfect for any girl (or nuanced boy) aged 15+. You can read more…
READING: After struggling, really struggling to find something great to read, I discovered two highly enjoyable books – both by Australian authors. The first was The Near Miss, a work of contemporary fiction, set in Melbourne and revolving around a near-tragedy that ends up entwining the lives of three complete strangers. The marketing describes it as The Slap meets Love…
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about being the reading doldrums. I simply could not find a book that grabbed me. Then, I stumbled across The Near Miss. Oh, praise you reading-Gods. You always seem to deliver at the right time! The Near Miss was exactly what I was looking for – contemporary fiction, written by an Australian woman writer,…
If you end a book & think nothing could be improved-you’re a reader.
If you end a book & think everything could be improved-you’re a writer.
This was a tweet that came through on my feed last week and sparked an interesting conversation between several writers (including me), who largely disagreed.
READING: I am in the total reading doldrums at the moment. I can’t seem to be grabbed by anything! And I’ve tried. Really tried. I’ve tried some new literary things, some commercial ones, and I’ve even dipped my toe into some crime fiction. But nothing is doing it for me. I want to be captured. Entranced. Romanced. Hooked. Instead, I…
Ah, life! Just when you think you’ve got it nailed, it comes up and bites you on the behind. I think it’s two weeks since I last did an *ahem* weekly round-up. But that’s because of life. Or death, to be more precise. A death in the family makes blogging seem inconsequential. Actually, it makes everything seem inconsequential. I guess…
One thing I have learned about blogging is that it is all about momentum. Getting started is hard, but once your site is up and running and those dastardly technical glitches are ironed out, you get into a groove of reading, writing and posting. Then life intervenes. You go away. Someone falls sick. You have a dry spell of reading…
Yesterday, a parcel arrived on my doorstep. One I had been expecting, but still, as I picked it up, there was a twinge of excitement. It was my manuscript. Printed in full for the first time. ‘What is that?’ my six year old asked, as I took to the parcel with scissors. ‘It’s a story I wrote.’ She eyed it…