Creative and Freelance Writer
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? …
Continue reading "How I wrote a crime story when I’m a fantasy writer"
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"
I want to talk about this idea of the suffering artist. I’ve been thinking, and this might sound harsh but, we bring it on ourselves. I think that part of us love the suffering, we love the idea of being a martyr for our art, we love being able to tell people how much we’ve …
Hey Dreamers, I’ve been working on a short story collection lately and I really wanted to share with you a little of my process so far. It has been a major goal for me this year to gather all my short stories together into a cohesive collection for publication. I spent the first few months …
I watched Annihilation the other night. Horror/thrillers where the cast gets picked off one by one until only the protagonist is left standing is not usually my jam but I really wanted to like this one. I wanted to like it because the core cast was entirely female in a genre and narrative structure that …
2015 was the first year I made any money from writing. I made $15. It was for my short story 'A Girl and her Dog' in SQ Magazine and I was stoked. In 2016 I made $151.06. That's more than 100 times growth. I also won a short story competition and an iPad mini. In …
Last month I turned 29. According to many grants, competitions, festivals and publications, that makes this my last, official year of being a young writer. Loosing this label is a little disheartening, panic-inducing some might say. It’s as if the clock hands have been suddenly wound forward. I know it’s not true. There’s no definitive …
Continue reading "Are you a young writer? What it’s like getting old."
Two weeks ago Volume 18 of FIVE:2:ONE hit the stands with my name on the contents page. It was a long slog from acceptance (mid last year) to publication but it was worth it to see me name in an honest to goodness Amazon listing. The story, ‘Showing Hearts’ is about a pair of ex-lovers. …
I always associated writing prompts with getting started. Used to spark new ideas or stories. What I didn’t realise was that prompts can be used at any stage of the writing process (and at any skill level). Natasha Lester’s post on how she uses writing prompts really helped with this realisation. So, while some prompts …
Continue reading "How to Use Writing Prompts to Keep Writing"
Can you only have one creative passion? If you’re a writer can you be a painter too? Can you be a musician and a sculptor? Yes, of course you can. Now that was a short post, perhaps I should go into more detail. For a very long time now I have identified as a …
