The Writer Laid Bare

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

It took me some time to find my way into this profession. There was the business of a certain letter which I wrote in my thirties asking for reviewing work, which was addressed to the editor of a prestigious literary …