Six copies of ‘The Dangerous Bride’ recently arrived in my house. It took me five years to write this memoir and then I waited more than a year for the publication to happen, and here it is – printed. The …
The Writer Laid Bare
A Guest Post by Susan Wyndham, the literary editor of SMH: On Not Writing a Novel
I am writing a novel. I have been writing it for five years. But most of the time I write it in my head. Does this sound familiar? Am I just another wannabe novelist who talks big but will never …
That Damn First Draft
Now that my memoir The Dangerous Bride is finally printed and about to be released in a month, I am at work on my new writing plans. I always need lots of plans to produce a little something. Making plans …
A Guest Post from the renowned writing mentor Sydney Smith: Understanding your antagonist
Whenever a writer tells me they have a problem with Act 2 of their novel, I ask them about their antagonist, the character who opposes the protagonist and prevents them from getting what they want. Act 2 forms the bulk …
Can I be honest with you?
My husband, a doctor, jokes that whenever his patients say ‘Can I be honest with you?’ he wonders what was the point of their visit in the first place if they didn’t intend to be honest? The same applies to …
A Guest Post from Jan Cornall about how she looked for Marguerite Duras, but found her mother
I’ve always loved the memoir genre. Most of my writing, be it for theater, film, poetry, song or prose has an autobiographical base. Often my fictional characters serve as vehicles for discussing those aspects of my life that I feel …