Uncertainty runs counter to human comfort. Most of us like to feel we know what might be coming toward us, that in knowing we may somehow ward off disaster and pain, make future events bend under our will and our want. Whenever we begin to explore our creativity, in art, in music, in writing, we […]

Today I planted spring flowering bulbs in a wide shallow bowl of duck egg blue. The pot was heavy once filled and I didn’t know quite where to put it, eventually settling on a flat rock in the garden near the pond. It looks forlorn there, covered in mulched hay like an empty nest, but […]

Earlier this month I ran a session at Writers Victoria titled, Writing Groups: How to Find, Build, and Maintain an Effective Writing & Critique Group. So I thought it might be a good opportunity to wax lyrical on the advantages and occasional pitfalls of writers’ groups, with a few hot tips thrown in. I am a long-term member […]

I am writing this from the not-too-distant past. Once this blog is published, lockdown restrictions may have passed and we may all be out hugging and dancing freely on the street – although I doubt it… Stage three restrictions lifted in Victoria on Tuesday at midnight this week. The die-hards amongst us ventured out of […]

This morning, as I cycled a sweeping curve at the bottom of Molesworth Street on Kew Boulevard, I realised the antagonist in the novel I’m working on is too mean. I peddled hard as it dawned on me. Yep, his overwhelming spite is the reason the plotline has been so difficult to resolve. How can […]

One morning during the height of lockdown, I attended a live Think Inc. event from my kitchen table. As I sat, muesli in hand, peppermint tea at the ready, Jamie Metzl, an American technology futurist, geopolitical expert and sci-fi author, reminded me that despite my comfortable surrounds, the future was CRASHING IN. Needless to say, […]

When you’re writing, do you sometimes go off at a tangent? Head off in some absolutely fascinating direction, only to discover later that’s not where you wanted to go? Or perhaps you decide the tangent is the new direction, and that what you wrote before is mostly irrelevant. (Maybe life is like that too?) In […]

Author, editor and journalist Gary Kamiya intriguingly suggested that the primary responsibility of an editor is not to the writer but to the reader. He said an editor is responsible for making a piece of writing ‘more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip’. Karen Lee, CEO of the Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd) sent me Kamiya’s […]

If, like me, your senses respond to the feel and smell of books in a bookshop, you’ll like Avid Reader. This award-winning independent bookstore has been in the high street at West End in Brisbane for 22 years and has firmly established itself in the local community. In recent years they’ve spun off a successful […]

Kim Wilkins smiled when I asked her what the main stumbling blocks are for aspiring writers. ‘Some writers think that if they see a lot of Marvel movies, they can write a good book,’ she said. ‘But you have to serve your apprenticeship.’ And Kim should know. She’s the author of more than 30 novels, […]