Midweek Moment #1
Welcome to Midweek Moment! Once a week, Monique (of Write Note Reviews) and I will team up and share our favourite photos on our blogs. Along with our literary pursuits, we both enjoy taking photos. Whilst we're keen...
When Good Enough Isn’t
I've just returned from a holiday to Tasmania, my birth state. I went back for my cousin's 21st birthday, and tacked a couple of days on at the beginning for writing. I stayed in a cottage at Branxholm, a rural town in the northeast of Tasmania....
Photos of Winter
Winter arrived in Perth last week, and for some reason bad weather never fails to stimulate my writing. I think it's a combination of the sounds—rain on a tin roof, wind rushing through the trees—and sights—grey skies,...
Humps and Troughs
I thought I'd squeeze a blog post in before the end of the financial year—so here's an update: The Novel: Unfortunately, I don't have much to report on this front, except that I'm stuck. So stuck, I'm considering seeking help. When I wrote the previous...
Storyboarding and More …
I know I said I was taking a break from blogging, but I thought I'd give you an update on what I've been up to over the past week. The Novel As you know from my last blog post, I'm rewriting Ida's Children. I'm not thinking...
A Break from Blogging
This is a quick post to let you know I'll be taking a break from blogging in order to concentrate on my novel. The thing is, an agent has kindly sent me some feedback. By 'kindly', I mean 'bluntly', and by 'some' feedback, I...
The Break, by Deb Fitzpatrick
I actually read 'The Break' by Deb Fitzpatrick a few months' ago, but I'm way behind in my book reviews—I'm not going to offer any excuses, except to say I'll try and catch up! This is Deb Fitzpatrick's first novel for adults. Her other books...
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 at the...
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 Gilgamesh, also written...
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 a novel...
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...
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. I...
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, the...