Tag: featured
If You’re Anxious And You Know It
Being a writer is nerve-wracking for everybody. Self-doubt, uncertainty, writer’s block, nerves–it all kind of comes with the territory. Right? Well, while everyone feels these things sometimes, or to some degree, a lucky group of us feels it all the time. That’s the difference between what I call lower-case anxiety (as in a commonplace feeling […]
Moving from Fact to Fiction
Working as a journalist is more than a job: if you do it long enough, it becomes a state of mind. True to the cliché, you suspect everyone does have a story to tell. And with each story you hear, real life appears more outlandish than the most melodramatic plot. Most of all, when you […]
Who Influences You?
When I think about the authors who have influenced me, I have to go back in time—to my early teens—when I started reading gothic novels from authors like Daphne du Maurier and Charlotte Brontë. I loved the idea of a heroine coming to the house of a family she didn’t know and finding out all […]
Social Media: To Share Or Not To Share?
In this golden age of social media, I still find it a bit of a novelty that I can tweet my favourite author. Even more so on the occasions when they tweet me back! Having this kind of direct access to an author would have been unimaginable just 20 years ago. Back in the old […]
Paint Vs Prose
Not that it’s a competition but as a professional artist who has recently become a published author, I can’t help but compare the creative processes that characterise the two modes of artistic expression i.e. painting and writing. What are the similarities and how do they differ? ‘Difficult pleasure’ is how renowned Australian painter, Brett Whiteley, […]
What to Learn from Frozen, Besides the Words to ‘Let It Go’
When Frozen debuted in 2013, my daughter was two months old. I thought I missed “Frozen Fever.” Nope. A few months back, we caught it on the Disney Channel and my daughter promptly requested to have her own copy, the sing-along edition. We have Frozen sheets, cups, plates and bowls, utensils, dolls (Elsa and Olaf), […]
What’s the Point of Point of View?
The changing use of point of view has had an impact on everything I’ve written. The most visible example is in The Last Woman Standing, a historical novel about Wyatt Earp’s true love, Josephine Marcus, which I wrote and rewrote over a period of years and stages of child development. In the final manuscript the […]
Light after Dark
My little boy spoke of wanting to die. His statements came out of the blue at innocuous moments – once when we were playing with Lego on the living room floor. Yet his reception class teacher described his smile as ‘lighting up the room’. Perhaps that light shone all the more brightly for its contrast […]
Everyday Magic
My love affair with magical fiction began at seven years old, when I inhaled A Wrinkle In Time. I still remember the goosebumps that spread across my gangly arms and legs when Mrs. Whatsit blew into Meg’s life and proclaimed, “Wild nights are my glory!” This anticipation of the impossible has yet to loosen its […]
In-Person Pitching: The Thrill of Victory and Agony of Defeat
#pitching. If you’re a writer and you’re on Twitter, you know what I’m talking about. It’s super fun and super simple. Just hide behind your screen and pitch your book to all the agents on Twitter in 140 characters or less. No likes? No problem. That tweet – the one that that couldn’t even scratch […]
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