Rewriting Mothers’ Day
I wrote and published Monday’s Mothers’ Day post in record time—it was done and dusted in under thirty minutes. I wrote the thoughts as they came and published it with little editing. I knew it was raw, but I knew if I thought about it too long, I...
(Un)Happy Mothers’ Day
What do you do when you dread ‘Mothers’ Day’ coming around each year? When those words cause your insides to shrivel because all they do is remind you of the Mothers’ Days of your childhood, when you hid in your bedroom, while your mother stood...
The Golden Age, by Joan London
It’s been a couple of months since I finished Joan London’s third novel, ‘The Golden Age’, but I’m behind with my reviews because I’ve been concentrating on revising my own novel! I absolutely loved...
More On Writing a Novel: Feedback
In my last blog post, I talked about some of the lessons I’ve learned while writing a novel. Besides learning how to write, I’ve also learnt a fair bit about editing, having revised my novel countless times now. There’s a lot more involved in editing...
10 Things I’ve Learned About Writing a Novel—An Incomplete List
My novel began life as a short story about a young girl in the 1960s, but it has grown into a family saga beginning in the 1920s and ending in the present day. In writing it, I sometimes feel as if I’ve bitten off more than I...
Final Draft 2.0 and Carving Out Time to Write
It’s been school holidays for the past couple of weeks, and up until the last couple of days, the weather has been cold, wet and gloomy—and perfect for writing! I took the opportunity to immerse myself in an unscheduled home writing retreat, during...
Making Medical Mistakes — a Letter to My Daughter
This ‘Letter to My Daughter’ first appeared in a recent issue of a medical journal. My daughter had just finished first year Medicine, so I wrote to her telling her about one of the pitfalls of being a doctor—making mistakes....
Snapshot Poetry #9—A Poem and A Painting
Instead of my usual blog, today’s post is a poem by a young Perth writer—my son, Sam*. I loved this poem about the Swan River. I loved the sense of darkness that pervades it—the clouds, the ‘looming’ city, the shadows, the houses trapping the river,...
How Liz Gilbert Won Me Over
Firstly, let me confess: Confession #1: I hated ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. It irritated me from the outset, but I persevered until chapter eight (of the 128 chapters in the book) when I closed the covers once and for all, and I have...
TAG Hungerford Award—Post Script
Last Thursday, after an agonising three-and-a-half month wait, the winner of the 2014 City of Fremantle-TAG Hungerford Award was announced at Fremantle Arts Centre. The winner was ‘Troppo’, by Madelaine Dickie, which will be...