Category: writing

• May 30, 2022

  Organising my Short Story Files

  

  The time has come to *shudder* organise my short story files. I’ve been writing short stories since I was about sixteen. Before I had ever even read an actual short story! Needless to say I have a lot of files. Countless short stories with countless drafts. Not to mention all the half-baked ideas where I […]
• April 7, 2019

  Writing on the Train

  

  If you use public transport to get to work each day, chances are you have a chunk of free time in which to write. When I was working full time in Sydney my commute was more than 2 hours each way. When people heard how long my commute was they always assumed it was a […]
• August 3, 2018

  On Reading ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ by Alan Baxter

  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 […]
• July 27, 2018

  Writing Practice, Like Actual Practice

  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 […]
• July 10, 2018

  VLOG: Editing Short Stories

  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 […]
• June 22, 2018

  4 questions to ask before you give up on a story

  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 […]
• June 8, 2018

  Writing Exercise: The Buffy Effect

  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 […]
• May 18, 2018

  Arranging Short Story Collections

  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 […]
• May 11, 2018

  How I wrote a crime story when I’m a fantasy 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? […]
• May 1, 2018

  Stop Being a Suffering Artist

  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 […]