For four months now, I’ve been commuting full time to Sydney. My commute is long, about two hours uninterrupted train time each way. And every time someone asks me how I’m coping with the commute I say I’m fine because it’s four hours, five days a week of guilt and distraction free writing. For the …
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 …
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 …
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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 …
You Reap What You Sow
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 …
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? …
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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 …
I’m Writing a Short Story Collection!
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 …
Showing Hearts has been published!
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. …
How to Use Writing Prompts to Keep Writing
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 …
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