I have to admit to cringing a little (lot) when I re-read my first (and never to be published) manuscript.
What I dislike most about it is that it’s written in the first-person, present tense. Here’s the first paragraph:
I watch the stream of water … Interested? Read More...
Last week I bought a new shirt.
Made from flannel, it’s as comfy as a bed-sheet and if you match it with a leather jacket and boots, it’s a tiny bit ‘Westwood-meets-the-burbs’. That’s if you’re squinting. If you don’t squint, I could pass as a … Interested? Read More...
There are so many different types of authors in this world – but the ones that really excite me are those who seem to operate on a different plane to the rest of us. The ones who notice things that we (or I) seem to … Interested? Read More...
Imagine you’re at the start of your creative writing life. You have a short story. You have no idea if it’s any good. But you send it off anyway to a national, well-respected short story competition – the first one you’ve ever entered.
You wait … Interested? Read More...
It happens to all of us. At some point in life, we all become familiar with grief in a way we’d always hoped to avoid.
For me, that happened last year.
The death of my father in law was shocking and not shocking. Not shocking … Interested? Read More...
There’s this natty little function on the Sydney Writer’s Festival website that allows you to search for events by genre.
There’s fiction, of course (more than 60 events, mostly literary fiction) but also more ‘niche’ genres, such as crime (16 events), sport (6 events), even … Interested? Read More...
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 … Interested? Read More...
There are times (many) when I think of the ego involved in writing.
What makes my voice, my thoughts, my ideas, worth recording, let alone publishing? What gives me the right to think I can and should write? Who cares what I have to say?… Interested? Read More...
You know how it feels when you’re a kid and it’s the night before Christmas, and you have that delicious sense of anticipation about what tomorrow will bring… Well, that’s exactly how I feel about the publication of Natasha Lester’s new novel A Kiss from … Interested? Read More...
I was 19 when I traveled overseas, alone, for the first time. The only book I packed was The Lonely Planet Guide to the USA. It was my bible, telling me where to go, how to get there and where to stay.
In those days, … Interested? Read More...
