Well, the deadline has arrived, and I haven’t even procrastinated too much, because I have already submitted my entry for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2010: the novel now titled Bratislava. Three cheers for me! Interestingly, in the process of my revisions I went through a folder I had labelled “Bratislava novel” and found a most interesting file which seemed to be the very first idea I ever had for the novel, and it went like this:
I’m not quite sure what, but I really want to write a novel …

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 …

Oops. I just looked back at the writing resolutions I made for 2009. There were just four of them, and in any average year I think they would’ve been pretty achievable. But this wasn’t such an average year, as you’ll guess by my dropping out of the blogosphere for half of it.
Just the same,  I did manage to partially achieve some of my 2009 resolutions. The second goal was to finish revising Kanako’s Foreigner and submit it to agents; well, I finished revising it, submitted it to the ABNA contest …

You can see one of Bratislava’s most prominent sights in this picture: the Novy Most, or “New Bridge”, built, as you might be able to guess by its appearance, by the Soviets during the communist era. They’re also responsible for the monstrous collection of bland apartment buildings across the other side of the river (which is the Danube, by the way). You’re seeing a picture of Bratislava because I’m in the middle of writing what I keep calling my “Bratislava novel”, since an actual title hasn’t made itself known to …

In my continuing effort to read outside my preferred genres – and also because Stella Rimington was a special guest at last year’s Perth Writers Festival, and I really liked her (and she appeared outdoors in the sunken garden, pictured above) – I’ve just finished reading her first novel At Risk. Rimington was the first female head of MI5 (the British Secret Service, basically) and after she retired she turned to writing spy novels – which are especially interesting because you know she writes from the voice of experience. It’s a …

Back in Germany, I taught English to a lovely Italian student (pictured above with an Aussie flag!) – he spoke Italian and German beautifully, but was a beginner at English. Despite knowing virtually no English grammar and guessing at vocabulary by trying out English-sounding versions of the German and Italian words he knew (quite a successful strategy, actually!), Antonio managed to tel me long stories and keep me entertained for most of our lesson time. Unfortunately that meant his English probably didn’t get much better, but I remember one day …

If you know me even just a little, you’ll probably be aware that I’m renowned for having a messy desk. Well, I’m a bit of a mess in general, but these days usually I manage to contain most of that to my own office area, under threat from my husband of him eating all my chocolate if I don’t. I actually love having a neat, tidy desk, but somehow it doesn’t seem that easy. I often tell people the story of my university days when I lived together with my …

You may have noticed I haven’t stopped by this blog for a lil’ while. Sometimes life does get in the way of writing, no matter how hard you try to stop it, and that’s sure what happened this year. While I’ve kept up my paid blogging more-or-less, finding the mental space and the physical time to be creative hasn’t quite been there, for a bunch of now-not-so-important reasons that I might go into later.
What I find interesting, and wanted to share today, is the process of how the need and …

At the same time as giving Becoming A Fiction Writer a bit of a facelift, I’ve been (finally) doing more than just dipping my toes into social media. Once I noticed that even my husband was finally on Facebook and that I can follow Kevin Rudd, Paulo Coelho and somebody’s cat on Twitter, I figured these were the places to be. Or if they’re not, they’re at least quite fun, and great for a procrastinator like myself.
So if you want to follow my fiction writing life a bit more closely, …

Just a few more sleeps and it all gets started: you might remember I’ve been waiting for the Perth Writers Festival for ages. I’m looking forward to getting a huge dose of inspiration both for reading and writing.
Special events – Some evening experiences

While most of the events of the Perth Writers Festival are free – and I have to say again how fantastic that is, and I hope that never changes – they usually hold some evening presentations, daytime workshops and special events like lunches that require tickets. And that’s …