I am a terrible traveller: I get motion sickness, I’m a germophobe, I always pack too much stuff, I melt down when I can’t get wifi and I lose things at inopportune moments. So, I’ve often asked myself whether I …
The Writer Laid Bare
Re-drafting in Isolation: Guest Post by Angela Meyer
At a crucial stage of writing my debut novel, A Superior Spectre, I travelled to the Scottish isles of Islay and Jura. I had been to Scotland three times already, but on this occasion I wanted to experience the …
Fifty Shades of Self
One of the first questions I ask myself when I begin a new creative non-fiction work, short- or long-form, is existential in nature (and stolen from Shakespeare). To be or not to be? Am I going to appear in my …
Second Book Syndrome: Guest Post by Bram Presser
Having come from the world of music (well, punk rock, which to some might not count), I’m all too familiar with the curse of the sophomore album. A band bursts onto the scene with a killer debut only to come …
Writing the Silences: Guest Post by Alice Nelson
Many years ago, in one of those serendipitous but fateful-feeling writing discoveries, I came across an essay by the American poet Louise Gluck. In her poetry, Gluck said, she was attracted to gaps and ellipsis, to disruption and hesitation, to …
A Book in Identity Crisis: Guest Post by Amra Pajalic
I first started writing my recently completed memoir, Things Nobody Knows But Me, when I was doing my Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. I titled it then Sins of the Mother. I was 20-years-old and even though I …