During this Sydney lockdown, something has occurred to me. Over thinking is best done between drafts! I'm writing this on July 21, 2021, and as I'm here at home with my husband, my works in progress have taken a back seat. Usually, I'd be working on the next draft of a manuscript while another is …
How Covid-19 made me forget how my novel ends
I've been working hard on my novel set in the 90s. After I began the first draft last year, I had to drop momentum because of Covid. You see, I need quiet to write. That's why I often go to the library to work on a project. And the library was shut early to mid …
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The first draft is when you get your ideas down
I'd heard this many times. Due to lack of a private space to write during Covid, I have one completed first draft and one still being written. I usually have three works at various stages of progress. One at first draft, one at third and one almost ready to submit. But this week I finally …
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Re-visiting that abandoned manuscript
When Covid-19 hit, I was halfway through a first draft. It was a novel set in the 1990s and I was writing it to celebrate a decade I was young enough to fully enjoy. I still have the outline but, at the time of writing this blog (28/10/2020), haven't looked at it since March. This …
Inspiration in Images
In my current WiP, two characters are underdeveloped. I've gone back and highlighted where I can add scenes so the reader can discover more about them. But I did this without really knowing who they are. I've written dialogue which makes them sound similar to other characters and stumbled through creating their history as I …
Getting a manuscript ready for submission
A father and daughter team were on the radio the other morning. Like me, dad obviously enjoyed the house party days of the nineties. He told his daughter (and us) about the Primal Scream track, 'Loaded'. Hearing people still affectionate about that decade is why one of my WiP's is set in that era. I'm …
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Time Away to Write
Last week I was on a work trip. I travelled from Sydney to Broome via a connecting flight to Perth. The first leg of this trip alone was four hours. Knowing this, I decided to print one of my works in progress, The Midnight Man, because I’ve been feeling the urge to get it ready …
Looking back at my Writer’s Notebook – Part Three
This week I'll be sharing notes from a workshop on editing between drafts. Over the last two weeks I've been going through my first writer's notebook and rediscovering my musings on improving my manuscripts, and sharing dot points from seminars I attended on writing. Today's blog is a hybrid of the two from an author …
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The cliff hanger
Do you round up your chapters or add a cliff hanger? This was a question posed by someone using the #writingcommunity hashtag on Twitter. My answer is that I initially rounded up chapters until an editor made me stop. Her reasoning was that if you round up your chapters into neatly self contained stories, then a …
Plotting love affairs and break ups
One WIP has been submitted, one is on the back-burner and one I've just started plotting. I'm taking my time with this. With my other two works in progress I found I plotted too quickly, then went back and tried to expand them. One of them paces well, so I changed my mind and submitted …
