HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED - TIPS AND TRICKS (part 1) If you’ve started your novel, then you are an author! Maybe not published but still YOU ARE AN AUTHOR. It’s hard to start writing, to think up a plot, characters, to start writing. So pat yourself on the back….you’ve made a start and that’s the … Continue reading STAYING MOTIVATED
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Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
I am often inspired by the simplicity of Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech of 2012. His message is this: Make Good Art Whenever I get stuck, and I get stuck often, I remember that maxim. Make Good Art. When I think about the quagmire that is ethics in fiction writing, I ask myself why can’t we … Continue reading Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
The Hero’s Journey or The Monomyth
The hero’s journey is a storytelling framework which draws your character out of their ordinary world. It puts them in emotional or physical peril. It makes your protagonist uncomfortable; they are inspired to move towards change. There are three essential stages to the hero’s journey model: The hero leaves the familiar world behind.The hero learns … Continue reading The Hero’s Journey or The Monomyth
Biofiction – a story of a story thief
I consider myself an honest person. I might have reappropriated a few lonely books from hotel rooms, waiting spaces or houseboats but I always put them back into circulation after I’ve read them. Almost always. Reading No Malleable Stuff, an essay published in Overland by Jeanine Leane, caused me to question my assumptions about honesty … Continue reading Biofiction – a story of a story thief
Catching up with the Classics
"When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."Cliff Fadiman, American author Recently a well-read friend surprised me by saying how boring she found George Eliot’s Middlemarch. 'I decided to re-read Middlemarch,' she explained to me. 'It was … Continue reading Catching up with the Classics
The Anatomy of a Scene
I started to write my first novel-length manuscript five years ago. After two years I had written it and dismissed it as a failure. Not that I hadn’t learnt a lot from it – I had. Not that there wasn’t any good writing in it – there was. I had planned the thing out in … Continue reading The Anatomy of a Scene
Working with small children
Imagine a woman with an eighteen-month-old daughter. She has just migrated from England to New Zealand. Now she knows how big and how small the world can be and how lost she is within it. She has just discovered she’s pregnant again. This was me. My husband worked long hours and I spent long hours … Continue reading Working with small children
Mockingbird Writers 