October 18, 2013
I have been attending the Australian Society of Authors‘ first ever National Writers’ Congress #asa2020 which has meant spending more time in the company of writers than usual. It’s been good to have that shorthand that goes with being among your tribe. The event started with a literary speed dating event which meant standing in sometimes […]
September 25, 2013
This piece was submitted to the Australian literary journal Griffith Review for its Now We Are Ten edition, one of several submissions I’ve sent. My first submission to GR was published. GR’s reply appears at the end of the piece. Now she is 10, the girl who came as a surprise and saved her mother’s […]
June 29, 2013
I headed to a favourite café the other day, book under my arm. There is time enough to digest a short story at one sitting. As I entered the café an acquaintance greeted me warmly. Wrapped in a bright shawl, she sat alone at a kitchen table. I smiled and greeted her and made a […]
June 23, 2013
Today is the 30th birthday my father did not reach. I can’t recall the other 29 clearly. They are shadows of an anniversary that given the preference, I’d rather not discuss. I’d rather just think of him quietly. My father’s only grandson sleeps. If they’d met, they’d have had a quiet bet together, and agreed […]
May 28, 2013
For some years I bought tickets in lottery prize homes. Recently I visited a prize home and again bought a ticket. I didn’t win. In 2008 I wrote a story that appeared in the Weekend Australian Magazine about what appealed to me me about prize home lotteries: I’ve seen my future. Every day before breakfast […]
I once heard novel writing described as the writer setting themselves a puzzle or trap from which they must escape. Over the past few months I have been redrafting my novel Sapphire Day, one of several in progress, and am now 30 pages from the end. That makes it sound easy. And yet I only […]
December 25, 2012
Christmas Day passed in quiet excesses until I had to search snake-infested rainforest for a missing chopper…. On Christmas Eve I whipped through 45 pages of redrafting my novel, Sapphire Day, and it was going beautifully. Funny how soon you can go from this to thinking it may be best to set this novel aside. I […]
/>Jonathan Franzen’s disdain for social media is well-known. He’s also careful not to let the Internet distract him from writing. I read somewhere that he superglued a computer so he could not plug in a modem. In Nathan Bransford’s excellent blog on the topic of books and writing) he described hearing Jonathan Franzen speak and how […]
June 20, 2012
The news this week that Fairfax would axe 1900 staff and streamline beyond recognition, is like hearing about the passing of a friend after a long illness. News you’ve been expecting still comes as a shock. Newspapers were for many years at the centre of my life as a journalist, sub-editor, and an editor. Since […]