Culture Street asked me to write about five books that influenced me, including one from childhood. This was a fantastic exercise as it made me really think hard about which books - among many many - had some sort of influence that I could trace. I had 100 words limit to spend on each, they [...]
Category: Writing
Chigozie Obioma and the case for ‘audacious prose’
This week, Chigozie Obioma's debut novel The Fishermen was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Obioma was already on my radar, first because I'd been hearing about the book, and then because I booked into a workshop he's running at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival next month. I booked into it so fast, it was like [...]
Book launch for THE SECRET SON
Last Wednesday night I had my book launch party at Bella Union in Melbourne. It was a fantastic night, I couldn't be happier with how it went. We had a belly dancer and drummer: My book was graciously and intelligently launched by AS Patrić. He said lovely things about it and it was quite overwhelming. He read [...]
So there’s this
Allen & Unwin just tweeted this. How is the beauty? And I was so happy to see the bee. Just the week before I'd seen another book with bees on the cover and thought wistfully 'I wish I had a bee on my cover' and then forgot about it. And there it is. Meant to bee. [...]
Gone fishing
Leaving Friday for my trip but wanted to close the blog down now, as I have a lot to do before I go. Like googling directions and printing them out. Making sure I have enough boots packed. And hats. When I come back in mid Feb I have a first meeting with my new [...]
Friday wrap, with lettuce
Ouf how time is pressing against me, with lots of things clamouring for my attention. Once I worked in a place where a (wonderful) graphic designer used to call out to the room "priority conflict!" when deadlines were ticking closer and she had heaps to do and now it's what I feel like shouting too, [...]
The Writer as Editor, with Christina Thompson, Alice Pung & blow-in Gideon Haigh
Chris Wallace-Crabbe moderated this panel, and the first note I have written was something he said: Editing is almost everything. He introduced the panel, saying they'd asked Gideon along even though he wasn't on the program. Christina spoke for a while, giving her background. She worked for Peter Craven on Scripsi, the lit mag he [...]
Monuments to Love, PWF session w/ Andrea Goldsmith & Aviva Tuffield
Novelist Andrea Goldsmith spoke with publisher and editor Aviva Tuffield (Affirm Press.) First up, Andrea gave a great explanation of her recent novel The Memory Trap. She introduced the characters and told the audience something about them. Andrea is a skilled presenter, no, really, she goes beyond skill into gift territory. She clearly enjoys it [...]
Anna Funder – The Dymphna Clark Lecture, University of Melbourne. Last night.
Last night I went to see Anna Funder talk and her topic was "Reading My Mind - and Yours. A celebration of the act of the human imagination that is writing, and the act of the human imagination that is reading." She was softly spoken and utterly gorgeous. As my thick curly-headed friend and I [...]
Laurent Binet and HHhH
I read a bit more of HHhH last night, but I was so whacked I couldn't read much. (Twitter does seem a little quiet today, I think people are catching their collective breath after an amazing first few days.) The voice of HHhH is easy to read I find; the narrator, purportedly Binet himself, cast [...]
So what’s it about?
This is what I'm grappling with now. A distillation of my second manuscript into one or two sentences that tell another person what it's about. A few years ago I did a Carmel Bird* workshop. We went around the class (natch) each saying what we were reading and what it was about. This is how [...]
Writing when you’re not a writer who can’t ‘not write’
It's a convoluted title but it expresses, once you penetrate the layers to get to the exact meaning, something I've thought about before. I know a few writers and most of us would say that we can't 'not write' but there must be some who write for reasons other than not being able to not [...]
Are you, like me, tinkering with a novella?
I've got so many things on the go, including a novella. Australian and NZ writers can submit their novella ms by 2 December this year to Seizure and be one of 4 winners. If nothing else, the writer submission page answers what a novella is (well for their purposes): 'a slim 20 - 50,000 words. [...]
While I’m cogitating on the next ‘How-to’ book review post…
I wanted to quickly list the books that I have on my shelves that I have found (variously) helpful in improving my writing skills but thought I'd also write a bit about my beliefs for revising work. Editing Knowing and clearly understanding what the different types of revision are is a first step and this [...]
First plot point, mid-point, second plot point. Etc.
I'm doing a bit of reading about screenwriting and how a person might apply structural and plotting strategies to novel writing. I've ordered a book about 'story engineering' because I want to learn how to be able to make conscious decisions about plot and structure while not losing my instinctive organic processes with characterisation and [...]
Advice from The Times on writing well.
This is an excellent article on writing, from The New York Times. I reckon you could spend a day reading it and following the links and making notes and having either light-bulb moments where you go 'ahhhhh' OR affirmation moments where you go 'yes, that's right, that's what I think.' It's one article that encapsulates [...]
Emotional fiction with moral heft
From a recent New York Times piece on writer George Saunders, I took a few notes. I found it fascinating what he says about fiction and the idea of 'emotional fiction' especially. The thing on the table was emotional fiction. How do we [Franzen, DFW and Ben Marcus] make it? How do we get there? [...]
Throughlines
I first heard about throughlines (in fiction) last year (2012). Today, I am focusing on my own, making sure that the unraveling of story is perfectly paced. To me it's about keeping a story connection going, a character's development; managing the revealing of information and then tying it up (or not) at the right time [...]
Great things
Found $450 pushed up the back of my bedside drawer - excellent. This morning, I think I solved my structure question about the next thing I'm working on. It's another novel, it's the first of my Turkish stories. I have the first draft completed, it's rawther polished but still is really just the base now [...]
All serious writing starts from within
This is a quotation from an article I just read on The Times Literary Supplement, on a talk given by Richard Ford yesterday. All serious writing starts from within. This is contained within the concluding paragraph: Ford concluded that “to define and detail and to push and extend what can be said is the essential [...]
Writing & 2013
Last night, my writing group met at Walter's Wine Bar (try the coq au vin. Delish.) to finish off the year. We discussed some things we want to do for next year, our goals if you will: 1. We all committed to a stated number of hours we will put in on our writing per [...]
Brain Pickings
I came across this on twitter - what a blog, so much stuff, nice layout too. Brain Pickings
The Bridport Prize 2012
They finally have the 'shortlisted' names on their website. My name doesn't appear twice, but I had two stories in the shortlist: Click here to see the page. I'm pretty happy about it.
SERAGLIO 