It’s been happening again, that thing. I’m sitting at my keyboard, thinking I’m writing a novel and doing what authors do. Managing the plot. Creating characters. Making things happen. Deciding who does what and why. After all, it’s fiction. Then, even as I type the words, I become an observer. Forced to stop my silly […]
I’ve been thinking lately about the many different ways that research contributes to my own writing. There’s been a lot on the social media landscape about the ways other writers use research. In reality, it can be a very expensive process and can seem problematic or impossible if it involves travel. I gave a talk […]
In a blog about writing and being a writer, it’s well past the time for saying something about READING and being a reader. It must be thirty years since I first heard the phrase ‘the reader within the writer’ and I used it often as a teacher of writing but it began to feel like […]
I look forward to three days of immersion into the world of books every year at the Perth Writers Festival, held at the UWA campus. It’s always exciting but this year I experienced a different kind of anticipation. I was there as invited author with two panel sessions to take part in and a 3-hour […]
Did you, or did someone you know, visit Swallows Welcome winery (near Margaret River WA) more than a year ago and buy a copy of the self-published edition of this book for a friend? Someone paid for the book, left details of the dedication they wanted me to write inside and said they’d call in […]
With writing on hold now for a few weeks and time for other things, I’ve been thinking even more than usual about the way each moment leaves us poised forever between our past and our future. I suppose that fascination with time is one of the reasons I love history. I’ve spent the last year […]
When the frenzy of writing has been going on for more than a year it begins to feel like the only thing there is. It invades every waking moment and sometimes the sleeping time, too. I dream of words. Not sentences or meaningful phrases, just words. Then suddenly, it comes to an end, on the […]
Well, that hasn’t been me over the last two months since my last blog! I haven’t been slacking but the current projects have been moving forward in fits and starts in a busy diary of events including a few overnight trips to Perth. Last week was the final booking until November so I’m back to editing […]
Earlier this year I was at the Margaret River Library, talking about the latest research I’ve been doing since publication of my book about Georgiana Molloy. I closed the presentation by making the point that some things simply have to remain a mystery forever. I showed the audience a photograph taken at the JS Battye […]
The last month has been a time of three worlds: time in the city with travelling to and fro’ for book events in Perth, gardening days to plant and weed now the rain has returned, and being a writing hermit again whenever I can catch a day to shut myself away and work on my […]