Trigger warning: this blog includes references to violent crimes, both real and imagined. Writing is my third career but, when I think about it, I have always been tumbling along this trajectory. The books I read as a child were predominantly mysteries: Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, The Famous Five, anything by Anthony Horowitz. […]

Part 2: On display After the birth, there is noise. Medical checks, maternal health nurse visits, emergency trips to hospital. Most of the women in my mothers group have taken their husband’s names except for one or two of us. I hadn’t seen the need until I arrive at the hospital one evening with my […]

When I looked up from her hospital cribTo see the wider world, could I help it,If I saw a war?—Katie Ford, From the Nursery Part 1: Being good We meet in the local café. Most of us in my new mothers group are still breastfeeding so we order decaf. Because we are trying to be […]

This is the last of my series with Margaret River Press online, so—if you’ve read the other blogs this month and find yourself here—thanks for making it. I feel like you deserve a bop (and if this is the first you’ve happened to click onto —you, too, deserve a bop):              (for your reading experience, you […]

Written March 24 In the past few weeks—as the global COVID-19 pandemic has blown up past being a ‘distant news item’ and into the everyday reactivity of Australia—I have seen many variations of a motivational, writerly ‘headline’ either shared amongst my circles or sponsored to me on social media. This revolves around making the most […]

They search for meaning in the volumes of thick paper stitched together in fine leather with gilt borders on the shelves of libraries housed in their great temples—so many smart words ordered in regimental lines—but essence cannot be captured in a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and packaged up neatly into […]

Best writing advice you’ve ever received? The best writing advice I ever received came from Robyn Mundy, author of beautiful novels like Wildlight, who encouraged me to write the way I wanted, about the things I wanted to, not what I felt I should. My writing practice is very eclectic but has never been very edgy. […]

I’d kept a blog through my teenage years, partly out of curiosity about the Internet, which was still pretty new to us back then. I’d written diligently about completely inane and vapid details of my daily life as a completely ordinary teenager. Then at some point—I’m still not quite sure when—I stopped blogging and somehow […]

In my final year at Junior College, when I was 18 and about three months away from the ‘A’ Levels, someone discovered that someone else had messed up a thing or two with the curriculum of my Higher Art class, and, as a result, we had unfortunately been missing out on a lot of the compulsory syllabus. […]

In my time as a writer, I’ve taken part in maybe five or six NaNoWriMos. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an event where participants around the world sprint towards writing 50,000 words in the month of November. The idea is, we all want to write a novel ‘someday’ and the best way to […]