Do the fucking work.

So, I had a bit of a rant on Twitter today. But I thought maybe I’d copy it here too. You know, for posterity. It was triggered by two or three of those awful memes that followed one another this morning. You know the ones – the shit about needing your...

Some writing tips

I was recently asked by Lynne Lumsden Green for some writing tips. The Australian Writers Centre runs regular Wednesday night writing races where a Facebook group is set up and people encourage each other for an hour to get some words down. It’s a good way to...

On making time and recognising privilege

I posted the meme you see here the other day on Twitter and Facebook, etc. It generated a fair bit of comment, some of it a bit snarky. So I thought maybe I ought to address the concept. Firstly, I stand by the basic premise of the meme, which we’ll look at...

CI-A, Me and the Battle of the Worlds

I was looking through some old stuff my mum had saved and discovered a bunch of old exercise books. Most of it is pretty rubbish, appalling “religious education” that was nothing but Christian indoctrination and so on. In truth, I always hated school,...

Motivation and refreshing the well

I spent this past weekend at GenreCon. You can see my previous post for some photos of that fantastic event. As part of his opening speech, con organiser Peter M Ball said the following incredibly true thing: GOOD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WRITERS TALK TO EACH OTHER. He...

Rejectomancy in words and numbers

There’s been a lot of talk online lately about rejectomancy. For those who don’t know, rejectomancy is the dark art of turning rejection into motivation and positive reinforcement. It’s a kind of bloody-minded alchemy of will. As Kate Heartfield...