Love, Music and the Here and Now: the music of Watch Over Me
Claire Corbett writes about the music that inspired her new novel Watch Over Me, and the soundtrack she put together to go with the book, which you can listen to below.… Read the rest
Nicole Hurley-Moore on finding inspiration on her doorstep
Today we welcome Nicole Hurley-Moore to our blog, as she shares the inspiration behind the setting of her third novel for us, Country Roads.
Inspiration can be a little elusive but sometimes it can be staring you in the face.… Read the rest
Ben Sanders on the spark of inspiration behind Marshall’s Law
Young New Zealand writer Ben Sanders shares the inspiration behind his latest crime thriller Marshall’s Law, and how all it took was a car at a diner for a story to unfold.… Read the rest
Charlotte Wood wins The Stella Prize and shares her reasons to write
We’re overjoyed that Charlotte Wood has won The Stella Prize with her remarkable novel The Natural Way of Things. Our staff have been HUGE supporters of this book since it first landed on our desks, reviewers and readers swiftly followed suit, and the discussions haven’t stopped and look unlikely to do so anytime soon.… Read the rest
Rewriting the Rules
Alexandra Joel, one of many successful alumini of Patti Miller’s Writing True Stories courses, has just published her memoir Rosetta, and writes about how a Faber Writing Academy course helped shape her writing from a journalism background and break down the writing rules she’d known.… Read the rest
Dive beneath Olga Lorenzo’s The Light on the Water
Olga Lorenzo recently launched her beautifully moving novel The Light On The Water at Readings Books in Melbourne, and gave a moving speech about three of the themes central to the novel: inclusivity, leadership, and family, which she writes about below:
As I write this, I have just read the first review of The Light on the Water, where the reviewer notes how much my protagonist, Anne Baxter, longs for a family.… Read the rest
Writers on Writing: Sofie Laguna on writing One Foot Wrong and finding a voice
I wrote One Foot Wrong over a period of seven years. In early drafts I interwove the voices of other characters around Hester’s – I didn’t trust that Hester’s voice alone could carry the story.… Read the rest
Writers on Writing: Kathryn Heyman on Floodline, truth & courage
It’s a truism that writers come to their work with different methods. We hear of the writer who plots out moment by moment versus the writer who scribbles random lines down for pages and pages with no idea of where they’re going.… Read the rest
Five highlights from the 2014 Sydney Writers’ Festival
It may be over for another year, but if you want to relive it or missed out on all the fun, we’ve collected some of the key sessions from this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival for your enjoyment – featuring entertainment, controversy and some writing tips, here’s your chance to enjoy our top five highlights.… Read the rest
Writers on Writing: Getting Started with Kathryn Heyman
Kathryn Heyman offers up these tips on how to battle the blank page, defeat distraction and get started writing:
You’ve always wanted to write a novel. Yet every time to sit down to write it, you are distracted by an overwhelming compulsion to clean the oven, phone your mother or feed the dog.… Read the rest