• My best productivity tips for writers

    I wrote most of this blog post in August 2021 and forgot to post it. Now here it is and it’s just as relevant! In the age of social media, constant rolling news, and a shorter attention span, it can be hard to focus on the task in hand. This is especially true if you’re […]

  • Famous first lines… or how to start your novel

    Novels with famous first lines. You’ve seen them, even read some of them, or pored over their opening pages. Famous first lines you can repeat from memory. Ursula Le Guin says in her essay, The Fisherwoman’s Daughter, that: First sentences are doors to worlds. She’s right. A great first sentence can hook the reader and […]

  • Joan Lindsay and Picnic at Hanging Rock

    Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock – a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling all through breakfast from the loquat trees outside the dining-room windows and bees murmuring above the pansies bordering the drive. Opening lines to Picnic at Hanging Rock If you’ve ever […]

  • Is social media harming the writing community?

    Are you a writer or editor spending too much time on social media and feeling bad about it? Is it eating into your writing time, your editing time, your work hours, your free time, etc? Social media as slot machine Did you know that social media companies employ ‘attention engineers’ who use Las Vegas casino […]