Snow outside my building in Bratislava
I’ve had a lot of trouble choosing a title for my current work in progress, the one I simply refer to as my Bratislava novel. But I finally have, and I thought I’d share how it came about, although it’s nothing to be particularly proud of and you probably won’t learn any great tips from this story: although you might empathise, perhaps. Here goes:
Choosing a title is both an important and a nonsensical business. As I understand it, publishers change the title of a novel …

I’ve mused before about whether writing short stories is really something I want to do. I’m not usually especially thrilled by reading them, and the main reason for this is that, well, they’re short. Just as I’m starting to like (or loathe) a character, and get into the story, then it stops. I think I can safely say that at least as my tastes stand at the moment, I’m really a novel reader.
But – there’s always a but – I recently found the information about an interesting novella contest. It’s …

Yes, I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I am just a teensy bit pleased that the Best Colleges Online blog decided to list Becoming A Fiction Writer in their list of the Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs. Although I personally would have categorised this blog into the “Aspiring Authors” section, I’m perfectly happy to be in their “Fiction Writing” category too, since this blog clearly is about writing fiction.
The list also has sections on Poetry, Improving Your Craft and Published Authors, and it’s worth taking a look because there are …

It’s that time again: the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest is happening today. Right now, as I type, in fact. Each time I seem to get just a little bit better at turning out a half-decent short story within a day; last time I wrote a story that I still actually like, a few months later.
I’m stuck! My story has no ending!

This time round the contest theme connected to a wedding in a small chapel. After a few paragraphs of brainstorming and free-writing, I found some interesting characters and …

I guess I should start getting less surprised that everything in my life seems to happen for a good reason, and often with great timing. It was just yesterday that I made a commitment to have a beautifully-edited version of my Japanese novel ready by February 2, as per the 15 day creation challenge set by Zoe Westhof.
This morning I sat down at my computer with the fresh eyes and stimulated brain of a Monday morning. (Oh, that might sound odd. My Monday morning, the first day of my working-from-home …

Remember how I insanely finished my novel to enter the TAG Hungerford contest? I knew that a last-minute finish was a bad thing for that novel, but the value for me of actually getting something finished to enter the contest far outweighed the inevitability of not getting anywhere with the contest. But now that the award procedure is almost over (there are three shortlisted novels now, although the winner won’t be announced until February 2009), I’ve got even more value out of the process.
I recently received a “thanks but no …

Over at a blog I often read called The Writer’s Technology Companion they’re running a contest on mind-mapping -a technique my visual-learning brain rather likes – and the theme was “where do you get ideas”. That’s where this colourful mind map sprung from. In fact my ideas come from so many different sources that I ran out of room to represent them all, but you get the idea. It’s no grand amazing news or anything, but it was fun for me to flick through my lil’ green notebook of ideas …

With my teaching load finally reduced (I’ve been doing extra work at that job for the past three months or so – there’s a massive shortage of ESL teachers in Perth!), this week I have actually had two days at home to get my writing work done. Of course, I actually need about three or four, but two days is certainly better than one. And it was great timing because I’ve been trying to write a Christmas-themed short story for a contest which closes tomorrow.
The idea for the story has …

You might remember that one of the goals I successfully met this year was to submit a novel to the Australian/Vogel Literary Award contest. I did it – albeit a novel that I think needs a lot of revision, but at least a full verison exists thanks to the deadline of the contest – and the act of sending in that manuscript really meant a lot to me. And I hope to enter the Vogel with a new novel every year until I can’t (which, with an upper age limit …

Each time I enter the quarterly Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contests, I try to use a different approach to writing the short story. I’m a little ashamed to say that this year, these are the only short stories I’ve written, but it’s definitely been more of a long fiction year.
Anyway, in the July competition I did a lot more serious plot planning than usual; back in April I did a lot of brainstorming and then a one-hit write. This time round I decided to use a strategy I’d read …