A Writer's Life
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Writing An Author Bio
Happy Monday! So, if you caught my post last week, you’ll know that I recently received an honourable mention in the inaugural Fiction War—hurray! I received an email from the event coordinators not long afterwards which requested that all finalists submit an author biography and issued a mental sigh of relief that obviously this wouldn’t apply to me, and I wouldn’t have to figure this out, because I’m not a finalist… But I sent them a reply email, just to confirm. Turns out I still had to do one. The sticking point? I’ve never written a biography about myself before. I mean, to give you some idea of where I…
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Aussie Expats Update – Projects New and Old, and Babysitting!
Happy Friday everyone! Remembrance Day (the Australian version of Veteran’s Day, for any Americans who are confused by that term) was yesterday back home, but since it’s the 11th here, it means a chance to think about what armed servicemen and servicewomen have sacrificed for their countries and their loved ones. Especially for us, that’s pretty important—in a world rent by conflict, it’s vital that we remember what the cost of peace and democracy here, and what responsibilities we each individually have to make the world a better, safer and more accepting place in order to honour those who have fought for, and protected, our way of life. But it…
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Racism, Marginalisation and Diversity in Writing: Who owns what?
Welcome to the newest iteration of ‘Ana’s Deep and Thoughtful Mondays’! I spent a lot of time over the weekend wrestling with what’s been happening in writing communities across social media recently, but unsure of whether I should write about it—and if I was going to, how to do so. While taking a quick tour of my Twitter feed this morning, I saw a blog post by Kaelan Rhywiol: her raw and open honesty in considering some of the issues that have been rife throughout the writing community helped inspire me to commit my own thoughts to paper (it’s a truly excellent piece and deserves reading). For this, I’m very grateful.…
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Failing and the Intimidation of the Great Big Writing World
I got my results back from the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge in the early hours of this morning (only the score, as feedback will come later this week), and it would be a mild understatement to say I’m a bit disappointed. I thought that maybe there was some possibility that I would knock this one out of the park and make it into the top 5 to head to Round 3. I got zero. I wasn’t expecting that. I also didn’t know I was going to be as disappointed as I am (I wonder if it’s just a case of bad timing with a number of other things that…
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Why I’m not Doing NaNoWriMo
Happy Monday everyone… and HAPPY HALLOWEEN! May all the ghouls and ghosties resist the urge to devour your immortal souls and may you be gifted with plenty of candy to fill your trick-or-treating pumpkins. I hope everyone had an amazing weekend: we were once again a hit as the tastiest and most-stylish sammich on the market (by which I mean at a Halloween party), I’m 99.9% sure that I haven’t bought enough candy to last me the evening (and by ‘me’, I definitely mean all the little trick-or-treaters who will be stopping by our decorated front porch for some lollies—by the way, Americans don’t know what that word means. Huh?) and…
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Q&A with Victoria Griffin, Creator of Flooded: A Creative Anthology of Brain Injuries
Goooooooooooood morning world!! I’d like to congratulate you all first: you’ve been so well-behaved that I decided to post a special Tuesday event rather than Monday and Wednesday’s standard fare. Hurray! On a second note, buckle yourselves in, grab some popcorn and get excited about what you’re about to read. For those of you who may have missed me going on (and on, and on) about it, I connected with an amazing writer and editor, Victoria Griffin, on Twitter earlier this year and have had the privilege of getting involved with her project: Flooded (the kickstarter link can be found here). Since becoming a Flooded ambassador, I’ve seen the painstaking developmental process that Victoria…
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An Introduction to my Novel
Happy Hump Day everyone! The middle of the week is always a time for partying and celebration… Okay, that’s not true. But it does mean you can all get a little bit excited because it’s that much closer to the weekend (and sleep-ins! Also maybe waffles – James?). Before we get to the promised post though, I wanted to remind you about the Flooded Anthology! The Kickstarter went live yesterday and we’re trying to drum up support for this project: please, spare a few minutes and go over to have a look at this. Perhaps you know someone with a brain injury, perhaps you have suffered one; maybe you’d like to know…
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Figuring Out Your Setting
Hellloooooooo everyone! For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently writing a YA fantasy novel (it took me a really long time to accept that it was YA, so we can all celebrate my publicly announcing it as a lovely little mid-week accomplishment), which is what got me thinking about this particular blog post. But first, a seemingly unrelated paragraph (it ties back in, promise). If you know anything at all about me, you know that I think brains are pretty cool things. For instance, for a woman who is occasionally bad at map reading [Disclaimer: I firmly believe that repeatedly missing turn-offs while James is driving isn’t really…
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Inspiration
Happy Monday everyone! I’m prepping for my politics exam at the moment, which consumed a relatively large portion of the weekend (it also meant getting this up and ready was a challenge). It’s fascinating stuff, if pretty complex; I can foresee this area of my study spawning some politically-oriented posts in the future (hopefully I can keep it theoretical and avoid having to actually understand contemporary Western politics), but for now, I’ve generously decided to keep this post apolitical. You’re all welcome. So, inspiration. I can’t help but feel that, in terms of creative endeavour, inspiration is often held up to be this wondrous, mythical beast we’re all in wild…
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A Wednesday Full of Thoughts
I’m so full of thoughts at the moment that I’m writing three different blog posts about it all simultaneously. One document I’ve got open has four separate ideas going on within it, each trying to wriggle their way out of my head, onto the page and into full realisation while I’m just trying to keep my eyes from crossing. It’s kind of confusing. Mind you, that’s still no comparison to the three-ring circus that’s going on inside my head. So the easiest way is to just start. I really feel right now that there are so many things going on in our world that deserve our time and attention, yet…
