03 Mar How to cut out the boring stuff & be a better writer
When I started off as a journalist I was fortunate enough to work alongside Mick Brown, a brilliant writer and long-time journalist at London’s Daily Telegraph. He’d read my stories...
When I started off as a journalist I was fortunate enough to work alongside Mick Brown, a brilliant writer and long-time journalist at London’s Daily Telegraph. He’d read my stories...
What’s most important in your writing is to get the reader to care – about the main character, the story, the idea. In fiction you don’t necessarily need to like...
This month I started teaching Creative Writing at the Australian Writers’ Centre. The premise of the course is ‘There’s no right way to write.’ Of course, there isn’t. Anyone who tells...
I’m a great one for New Year’s resolutions. Starting or re-starting a writing project in the first quarter is sensible. You have the rest of the year to get it...
I’m deep into writing a company autobiography about the Kensington Colleges at the moment. The deadline is fast approaching and there’s still too much to do. When you have a big...
No-one likes rejection. But every writer faces it. Martin Green from Pantera Press recently wrote, ‘Virtually every best-selling author was rejected by every publisher they contacted except the one where they...
How often do you stop and write for yourself? Not because you must or you’ve got a deadline to make – just for the pleasure of putting pen to paper...
Ask anyone who writes regularly in a private journal why they do it and they usually say, ‘because it makes me feel better.’ I started writing a diary aged nine....
Overlooking the town of Laurieton is a mountain called ‘Big Brother’. The day after my workshops there I went to the top and there was a parasailer preparing to jump...
Last week I ran two special workshops in the small coastal town of Laurieton on the mid-north coast of NSW. They were held in the old boat shed of the...