Creative and Freelance Writer
I read ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ from Alan Baxter’s collection Crow Shine last night on the train home from Sydney. I’d started in late in the commute and finished just before getting to my stop. A good thing too, because I was so engrossed I would have had to sit on the platform in …
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I’m a lazy writer. Sometime in the last year, I don’t when, I decided I didn’t need to work at writing anymore. I had a few publications under my belt, heck, I’d won a competition. My work was good, I was good, everything was good. And so I got complacent. I stopped getting …
Last week I spent a beautiful sunny Thursday editing one of my short stories. I'd gotten some great feedback from some writer friends and was ready to get stuck into the editing process. If you want to hear about how I write short stories to begin with, I have a video on that too. Happy …
I get it. Rejection is tough. Sometimes you start to wonder, is my story good enough? Is it good at all? Should I just give up and move on to the next thing. I’ve talked about rejection before. I’ve talked about how sometimes a rejection letter can be the most motivating thing you receive, I’ve …
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Hello Dreamers, I have some exciting news... I've opened a new Etsy shop. I know, I know, I already have an Etsy shop. Well yes, Hearsay Designs is still open and serving all your statement jewellery needs. But I wanted to start offering writing services to people like you (creative writers) and small business (like …
I was watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently and it occurred to me that it would make an excellent writing exercise. Writing exercises are great to have in your back pocket for when you need an extra boost of inspiration. Exercises, whether you follow them exactly or not, get you thinking critically and …
I was listening to the Being Boss podcast yesterday and they were talking about magic. Specifically, they were talking about how saying what you want to do and achieve out loud can make the thing manifest. Or at least it may feel that way, since saying it out loud may subconsciously make you work harder …
Hello Dreamers, I've been knocked out with the flu for the last week so forgive me if this post is a little incoherent. Last month I wrote and submitted my first short story collection and I wanted to tell you how I went about ordering my stories for submission. I'd expected it to be a …
When I won the Thuderbolt Prize for Crime Writing last year a lot of people started to think of me as a crime writer. If any of you have read my other published short stories you’ll know I’m much more of a speculative fiction writer. So, how did I come to write a crime story? …
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Inspiration. It’s sacred. Sometimes we have too much. Sometimes we can’t even find a crumb of it between the couch cushions. But inspiration isn’t a mystical, magical force of nature. It is something we can cultivate, build up and harvest. Some people call it filling the well. You can fill the well by reading a …
Continue reading "Inspiration for Writers and Illustrators: Intro"
