When my children asked me to write the story of my early life, I put off the task for many years. Did I really want to revisit that traumatic time when, as an adolescent in the fifties, I suffered from …
Letting more readers in: A Guest Post by Cassandra Austin
I wrote my latest novel, Like Mother, in what I call a ‘white heat’. No plotting, no Proust-like interviews of characters to find out their favourite foods, and no research. Just the white page (or screen, let’s be honest I gave …
When doubt isn’t a small word: A Guest Post by Kim Lock
Allow me to get the irony out of the way first: in writing a piece about self-doubt, I am feeling a lot of doubt.
I have started this post several times. I’ve tried opening with a definition of doubt. I’ve …
Writing the Painful Body: A Guest Post by Josephine Taylor
In my novel Eye of a Rook, modern-day Perth writer and academic Alice Tennant researches the history of hysteria and gynaecological pain to make sense of her own mystifying disorder, coming up with the idea of two bodies:
One, …
Choosing a (fictional) point of view: A Guest Post by Jim McIntyre
Two thirds of the way into structural editing of my novel Nikolai the Perfect, my publisher summoned me to her office. This wasn’t a routine meeting. As soon as she opened the door I could tell she was psyching …
Building Metaphor & Symbol Into Fiction: A Guest Post by Dmetri Kakmi
My novella The Door is inspired by my friend Shane Jones’s painting of a very realistic door. It hung in the stairwell of his home when I went there for dinner one evening. At first, I thought he had added …