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 …
The Writer Laid Bare
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 …
Chagall’s Curse
Two years ago I pitched a short memoir to a notable Australian literary magazine. It was a story from my childhood about how I helped my parents, then dissidents in the Soviet Union, to hide forbidden literature during a KGB …
Writing, & Fictionalising, My Parents’ Lives: Guest Post by Anne Connor
How do I write about my parents, Jock and Bess’, lives when they are no longer here, ethically, with credibility? How do I use their stories to examine universal issues such as the futility of war, post-traumatic stress disorder and …