“Are you bored yet?” This is the most common question that people have been asking me since I’ve become a bit housebound thanks to some pregnancy dramas. At first, I was a little surprised to be asked. Then it kept happening, and I realised that obviously a lot of people think they would be bored if they were in my situation, “stuck” at home.
Of course, I’d much prefer to be still at work teaching, and also able to get out of the house a bit more (although I don’t miss …

Listening to an interview with one of my favourite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, recently, I heard him say something fantastic:
What I want to emphasise is that for novelists … I think that your peak is likely to be somewhere in your mid 30s to your mid 40s. A few years after footballers!
But then the pressure came on …
You have to really go for it when you’re in your 30s, and you have to ignore older people who patronise you as though you’re some kind of little chick that’s about to hatch. …

I wonder if other writers have this in common with me: when I think about the music that I like, a big reason I might like a particular song or artist is because of the lyrics. Others might remember a band for a great drum beat or an excellent guitarist, but pretty much all I remember of music is the lyrics; I’m guessing that’s because I’m so focused on words.
Down here in Australia we have a fantastic public radio station called Triple J (you can stream it from anywhere by …

Pat me on the back, please, because I have finally got past my read-it-in-one-sitting procrastination problem and am now editing, bit by bit, my first novel manuscript.
If you’ve been paying attention over the past year or so you will know that this poor novel has already seen quite a few incarnations. It began as the scrappy product of a frantic NaNoWriMo experience in November 2007 and then got brushed up and rewritten with a few additions (at one stage, five extra chapters) for submission to a couple of contests. Each …

I didn’t really mean to, but I’ve been having a feast of writing how-to books passing through my life lately. Usually I try to ration that kind of stuff out – because the one thing that’s a whole lot better than reading writing how-to books is definitely just WRITING – but the writing’s been in a bit of a lull and a bunch of how-to books that I’ve had on reserve at the library for ages just all arrived at once.
Which means this week I’ve been devouring Stephen King’s On …

This is a post of two extremes. To start with, I have to rant and rave about published books that include spelling or grammar errors. I hate that. I really hate that. This week I’ve been reading two books that were both self-published – one a novel, one a non-fiction book – and both are riddled with errors. I’m not talking just the odd missing apostrophe or one or two misspelt words, but the kind of errors that would leave the pages obliterated in red ink if I was doing …

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 …

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 …

I’ve been having fun using the Behind the Name site to generate names for characters recently. When I wrote my first chapter for my Bratislava novel, I needed a Slovak girl’s name, a Korean boy’s name and an English girl’s name, and after plugging that information into the website and clicking a few times to reject the first suggestions, I found names that suited, without having to use names of people I know – I find it hard to separate a character from a real person if I’ve used the …

As I was driving along the coast today – inspired, perhaps, by the fantastic view over the Indian Ocean to Rottnest Island – I was listening to some new music on the radio. I’ve got no idea who the band was, and that doesn’t really matter – the point is, as always I was paying the most attention to the lyrics, and in this song they were particularly, well, lyrical!
Somewhere on a long list of lifetime goals I know I’ve got “write some song lyrics” written down. So I got …