December 17, 2016
In
Writing
2017 – a year in stories and competitions
The updated version is here »
Writing
December 6, 2016
In
Writing
2016 in writing
Not a lot about 2016 is worth reflecting on, let's be honest. The state of politics worldwide is enough to send a girl hurtling into space, I can't even watch Love, Actually because of Alan Rickman, and the hayfever's been so bad I've resorted to sending
October 5, 2016
In
Writing
Free writing – 19
We had a party when I turned 19, in the backyard of my friend’s dad’s, who was a church minister. The night before, I’d caught the train from Melbourne to Adelaide, all night in the smoking car with a man who thought he was Jesus
June 9, 2016
In
Beautiful Things, Writing
My first book: one week on
Good afternoon! I wrote a book! You might have heard, before you muted me on Twitter for being an Extremely Annoying Author. Quite a lot of things have happened. Many of them involved me going to bed early and then not sleeping very much for the
June 1, 2016
In
Writing
Deleted scene: moving to Gran’s
Dad drives me to Gran's house, even though it's ten minutes on a bus and I've been there a million times. It's just for a few weeks, he says. I've got two suitcases. One has my favourite jeans and some t-shirts and homework in it. School says
June 1, 2016
In
Writing
Deleted scene: the snow
We’re going to the snow. Gran took us to get snow jackets. Mine is blue and it's got a kitten on the back. Fleur wanted a black one but Gran said they don't make snow jackets in black so she got a yellow one. She looks
Quite a large box + signed book giveaway
Today, I got up and I had a shit morning. It was just rotten. So I went to the supermarket and bought some Smarties and decided I would go to bed when I got home and I would not come out until tomorrow. I was getting
April 26, 2016
In
Writing
A bit of author Q&A (part 3)
Part 1 Part 2 Do you consider story structure, or just let it flow? I have no idea how to consider story structure. I wrote about this for Overland a couple of years ago. Structure does not come naturally to me, and I had to work hard at
April 17, 2016
In
Writing
A bit of author Q&A (part 2)
How do you stop yourself from throwing it in the bin when it gets too hard? Firstly: I never throw any writing I do in the bin. I have learned that it is hardly ever as bad as I think it is. That even when I
April 15, 2016
In
Writing
A bit of an author Q&A (Part 1)
teehee, author! Now that my book is at the printer, I'm supposed to write about what it was like to write a book. I've written a bunch of things about what I've learned about writing, but this is the first time I've been at this
April 7, 2015
In
Writing
Free writing: our bodies
This is a little bit I wrote this morning but have decided not to include in the novel, and instead to extrapolate into its own longer story. For five days we sent our bodies into the world without us. On the first day they sat in