(I just looked at this photo and saw that he’s holding up a sign that says, ‘Stop and Pray’. Ha! Now that I’ve inserted it into the blog, I can’t be bothered removing it and replacing it with something else. I’d pray that these annoying spammers have their server farms zapped and blown up in […]
Enrolling into Creative Writing Stage 1 Course with the Australian Writers Centre
This week, I decided to finally take the plunge and enrol into a course with the Australian Writers Centre. I had been eyeing this course for some time but made plenty of excuses not to do it. Frankly, my money could be better spent on things around the house that need improvement or fixing (plumbing […]
Using Scrivener
Yesterday while Andrew was using the home office to work, I took the laptop into the kitchen and sat at the table with it. I pondered what to do on it. Should I surf YouTube? Should I work on my YouTube channel Life Lessons From Books? Should I write a short story? What? I decided […]
If You Write Dull Shit, It Doesn’t Matter What You Die From
Time Without Clocks
I’m excited!!!! I’ve booked myself to do this creative writing workshop at the wonderful home Mulberry Hill, of writer Joan Lindsay (author of Picnic at Hanging Rock) and artist Darryl Lindsay. WORKSHOP: WAYS OF LOOKING Saturday 17 February 202410am – 3pm Created for writers, this is an interactive workshop where participants encounter a work of […]
Creative Writing Practice
I have been having a lot of fun writing creatively every day. Most of it is done in a journal called the Writer’s Workbook which I’ve nearly completed. It encourages you to let the mind wander and write whatever comes to mind. That comes easily for me especially if I have a pen in my […]
Writing Practice
I’ve discovered a site called Reedsy which has writing prompts that I could use to practice writing short stories. They have weekly contests where you could submit your story if you want to but I don’t think I’ll be doing that all the time. Instead, I’ll use the prompts to let my mind wander and […]
Death of an Author
I awoke this morning of news on the radio that a novel written by AI called Death of an Author and I thought, “how is it even possible that I’m now living in a world that is stripping away every possibility of being able to think and create for myself?” It irritated me because at […]
“If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is”
Today, I did nothing. Nothing but sit back in my husband’s recliner, watching YouTube the entire day. The cat dozing in my chair while I allowed myself to have an entire day devoted to watching Kurt Vonnegut documentaries. Something about today just made me make it all about this brilliant humanist writer. While I sat […]
Memoir Writing Masterclass
Yesterday after my weekly French conversation with my friend online (we have been talking for nearly two years every week which has improved my French considerably), I headed to the local library for this masterclass. In all honesty, the reason I signed up was that finally, there were places and I managed to get a […]
Viktor with a K
I decided to submit a short story for the My Brother Jack Awards again which is a local writing competition. Of course, I have no delusions of winning prizes for creative writing because I find this type of writing difficult. It’s as if I have to get out of my own selfish ego and write […]
My Female Crush: Anita Brookner
This week I read Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac. I bought the book from a local second hand book store for $3 and at the time, I was deliberating whether or not to buy it because it won the Booker Prize in 1984. I’m not a fan of Booker Prize winning books. Every time I […]
My Brother Jack Fiction Prize
I’m sitting in the peace and quiet of our local library. With my jacket and beanie on as it’s freezing outside, I found a book that may help me write my next story. I’m a hopeless creative writer. Abysmally hopeless. I need to learn to write not as myself but through a character. My problem […]
Window Shopping
I recently read in Pamela Paul’s book, 100 Things We Lost to The Internet, that window shopping was going by the way of the dodos. Yesterday to get out of the house a bit, as I was getting a bit stir crazy (hubby can sit in front of the television from morning until midnight but […]
Figuring Out What’s My Next Skill to Learn
I’ve been thinking about what skill I’d like to learn next so I share some thoughts about that in my recent video.
One Minute Fiction: The Urge
The familiar urge overcame him again. He wondered where it had gone to for some months. Now it was back but stronger. It cursed through his blood stream, felt it’s pulse in his temples. Sweat trickled down his back. He watched the man who hadn’t moved from his seat. It was time. He took a […]
Random 6 Word Generator Stories
For a bit of fun, every morning I practice my creative stories by using a random word generator to generate six words that I could write a story. The words are bolded in the text. Here’s my first attempts. I have no idea if they are grammatically correct or structured well. My aim is to […]
I Wagged School Today
I did a Ferris Bueller. I wagged school. I didn’t feel like going to the U3A classes today because I had been playing the ukulele and practising French in my own time all weekend. Those classes could wait another week. Instead I wanted to walk the city streets and have some time to be in […]
When You Got To Go, You Got To Go
This is a short piece of fiction from a photo I took this morning that seemed odd and out of place. As I walked around the park, I thought about the story of how the car got there.
The Natural History of Love
My new book review is now published on YouTube. How this book got into my hands was full of coincidences that I simply couldn’t explain and wrote about them in the blog post: Eerie Coincidences. In the video, I wander around the golf course showing where the site of the original Mayfields House was. I’m […]