Category: Fiction writing

As an author who speaks regularly in schools, I get to talk to keen writers of all ages. Over the years, I’ve found myself answering the same questions over and over, and giving out the same advice, whether to those students I visit or, as my boys became teens, to

The world is divided into two types of people – those who pore over the acknowledgements page at the end of a book and those who don’t even glance at it. If you’re an aspiring author, whether of fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry, I recommend you join the first

We are so thrilled for AWC graduate Zewlan Moor who is celebrating the launch of her debut picture book Nothing Alike on 19 August. Zewlan never imagined that she would be a published author one day until she started listening to the ‘So You Want to Be a Writer’ podcast.

When you’re writing a suspense or thriller novel, you want to make sure you keep your readers hooked and compelled to turn every page. But sustaining that level of devotion from a reader means that every word needs to count. And you need to ensure that your plot, characters and

You may have heard authors, particularly authors of book series, talk about their ‘bible’ when discussing their writing process. And no doubt you realised they were talking about the notebook or document that helped them to keep track of characters, relationships, settings and other important information in their book or

The So You Want To Be A Writer podcast has become a feature of the Australian publishing landscape since it first appeared more than eight years ago. Since that day, the podcast has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times and featured hundreds of writers, who’ve shared the ins and

The best moment of every author talk I ever give in a school is when I share the dirty secrets of being a professional author. “Writers are horrible people,” I say, to a response that varies from gasps (grade three) to blank faces (grade eight). “Writers are mean and they

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s been a sudden rise in the number of authors who’ve begun blogging again. Around ten, and even five, years ago, blogging was a big part of building a platform or profile for many authors, and I count myself among them. It was

In 2000, I was contacted by a nun from the order of the Sisters of St Joseph – the order established by Mary MacKillop (who is now Australia’s first saint). They wanted to commission me to write a children’s book about MacKillop, and I’d been recommended because I’d been brought