There are great writers, and then there are great writers who use annoying local dialect in their dialogue which makes it really annoying to read. If you’re a loyal reader with a good memory you’ll know that a while ago I abandoned Irvine Welsh novels because of his (as perceived by me) overuse of Scottish dialect that was difficult to understand. (He’s the guy who wrote Trainspotting, among others, if you’re not sure.)
So, here’s the thing: Irvine Welsh, who I do think is a great writer apart from this flaw, …

You might remember how my mother solved my “shower thinking” problem by finding me some waterproof notebooks which I can use to jot down ideas that come to me while I am in the shower. Well, there are now two more things I have to tell you today about waterproof notebooks. Who would’ve thought it was such an important topic?
First off, I’ve discovered yet another great use for waterproof notebooks for fiction writers. Or for any writers, I guess. Thanks to some lovely pregnancy-related dramas (pelvis problems and leg swelling, …

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. …

You know I love travelling, but one continent I suspect I may never get to is Antarctica. It fascinates me, of course, but those cold temperatures are not as high on my list as many other places, and since I just finished a great novel set in Antarctica, I am doing a fairly good job of imagining it for myself anyway. That’s thanks to Robyn Mundy who wrote The Nature of Ice, and reminded me of another great novel about a modern Antarctic experience from one of all-time favourite writers, …

I’ve always had the urge to write, at least as long as I can remember. I used to have a spiral-bound notebook, covered with magazine pictures of cats, that I would take around with me on the weekends. In particular, I remember riding my bicycle along the side of our house, down to the street and around, all with this notebook in the basket on the front. Every time an idea struck me – which was pretty often – I’d put on the brakes, lean forward and pull the notebook …

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 …

A while back I blogged about writers writing ideas down “anywhere”, including writing on pianos if necessary. And in that post I mentioned that I’d been trying to figure out how to deal with all the great ideas I come up with while in the shower, which seems to be the absolute best place for me to get inspirational brainwaves.
Well, my dear, wonderful mother read that post, and without mentioning it to me, she set to work to solve my problem. She’s obviously a bit cleverer than me, and figured out …

I consider that I’ve been a writer basically my whole life (at least, let’s say, since I could read and write – even though my grandmother traces my writing conviction back to age three). But it’s only been a few short years since I’ve admitted to anyone more than my closest circle of people that I am a writer.
These days, with a decent income landing in my bank account from writing, and the beginnings of some success as a fiction writer, I feel I have enough of the trappings …

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 …

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 …