Don’t worry, I haven’t entirely sunk into a can’t-finish-a-novel depression – I just liked the idea of entering the How to be Miserable contest being sponsored by life coach Tim Brownson. But in fact, trying to becoming a fiction writer can certainly produce its moments of misery, so if you’re in the business of wanting to be miserable, here’s how:

Set yourself a goal of becoming a published fiction writer. Being just a writer is hard enough, but wanting to be published? It’s a guaranteed path to misery. I don’t know …

I’ve mused before about buying books online or from my local bookshop, and my preference is definitely to browse through my favourite independent bookshops and enjoy touching the books, reading the first pages, and discovering books I didn’t even know existed yet. But in recent weeks I’ve been a bit let down by this strategy and I’ve gone online again.
I really wanted to buy a particular Australian novel as a gift for a friend who had a birthday. I can’t tell you which book yet, because I’ve yet to give …

Since my new bookshelves arrived, I’ve been gradually unpacking more boxes of books which had been stored (generously) in my mother’s cupboards. Last weekend it was the turn of my childhood books to appear out of the boxes, and if anybody had been listening to my ecstatic cries each time I uncovered another old treasure, they would definitely have thought that something more than books was involved.
Most exciting to me were rediscovering my collection of Enid Blyton books. At least half of these are in fact from my mother’s own …

Regular readers will be glad to hear that the much-anticipated writing buddy system is finally bearing fruit, so to speak. We’re both about a week behind our timetable but a few days ago I sent the next chapter of my novel over to Katrina and have started work on the following one.
Writing this novel is certainly more relaxed this way than under the pressure of NaNoWriMo, the way I wrote the first one. But something’s been bothering me as I write. Last year when I was writing under major time …

You might remember my frank confession about my difficulties in returning library books by the due date. If you don’t remember, suffice to say that I have major overdue library book issues. On three continents.
However, I’m pleased to say that until now I have never been arrested in connection to overdue library books. Heidi Dalibor has. Her library book problems had reached the stage where the library sent her a court summons, which she ignored (presumably she was too busy reading) and this week the police came to her home, …

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote another short story for a Writers Weekly 24-hour contest? Well, results are still not in yet, but what I read on the Writers Weekly site today still cheered me up somewhat.
Angela Hoy of Writers Weekly wrote a post this week about the common themes that she found in the several hundred short story entries for this contest. Remember, every story has to be based on the given topic – that’s one of the ways they ensure you really do write it within the …

So … yesterday was the first deadline in our writing buddy system. Both my buddy Katrina and I had spectacularly disorganised weeks last week with the odd drama and hiccup thrown in for good measure, and failed to meet our deadline yesterday. Instead, we ate cheesecake together. (Baked cheesecake, the best kind).
However, we are not giving up, and decided that our deadlines are there to help us make progress and the deadlines are structured to give us a little room for movement – so we gave ourselves a small extension. …

So far, it’s really been one of those weeks. My paid writing gets done only because a deadline is looming; my poor fiction writing has only got a couple of looks in and only in the form of me opening up a Word file and leaving it open most of the day, hoping that seeing it down there on the bottom of the screen will inspire me to write.
But sometimes, you have those weeks where motivation for nearly everything is lacking. The Olympic Games are on – they’re a great …

I’ve had a car for most of winter, which is handy for getting to work when it’s cold and dark in the mornings. But it does mean that I’m missing an important ritual of my teaching days: catching the train and the bus. I’ll have to give up this car again soon, but I’m really looking forward to getting back into the public transport lifestyle.
If you haven’t tried it (and especially if you otherwise sit in the car for a long commute) I heartily and thoroughly recommend a few commuter …

So if I’m not planning to write my serious second novel for the 2008 NaNoWriMo month, does that mean I skip the event altogether? Or should I turn my hand to some of the other writing ideas I have, for something a little less literary and more fun to write?
Recently I’ve really enjoyed reading a bunch of novels I’ve got from the “Humour” section of the fiction books in my local library. In theory, I dislike the way my library divides up all the fiction into weird categories including “Family …