Writing tight and loving hard arses
Revise your work. Write tight. Kill your darlings. Schya! I believe in these tenents. I do. But actioning them can be easier said than done. When I’m at the tightening phase of my work I check against Sol Stein’s ‘Solutions for Writers’, ‘Liposuctioning Flab’ chapter. This chapter has helped to surgically remove some baaad writing [...]
Non-fiction and the now
I was in a state of absent-mindedness, sipping tea at a café on the edge of a writerly event. There was a din that echoed around the high-ceilinged space. People passed through the beam of my vision, noticed yet somehow unnoticed. My stare occasionally attached to bright things: a balloon on a string, a pair [...]
Make way for long form
I have two TVs in my garage. They sit near the door, one covered in an old blue and white striped sheet. They’ve been there on two years now. A thick lick of dust has formed on the sheet. Every time I open the garage door – just after I feel its cool air on [...]
Breaking into Random House
What is a book these days? In a bookshop they’re objects, ‘of a certain girth…[with] a spine of a certain depth,’ says Meredith Curnow, Publisher at Random House. E-books have no such limitations and this has opened opportunity for writers to publish small pieces with big houses. Curnow is the publisher of Storycuts, Random House’s [...]
MWF: A bag of mixed quotes and reflections
From the early morning of August 24th I am in possession of a treasure. In the days that follow I find myself coming to a stop along Swanston Street and rummaging through my bag until I feel the shoelace-like necklace in my hand. When I wear it around my neck in Federation Square I anxiously [...]
Interviewing and Paper Radio
A few months ago I wrote a story for a glossy magazine. I couldn’t find my potential interviewees online or on the phone. I had to get out amongst them, and query each one until I had the stories I was looking for. I gleefully went out and popped my digital recorder in front of [...]
Robin Hemley on breaking rules
‘I write what I want to write,’ says Robin Hemley, author of eight books, winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and Editor of Defunct Magazine. ‘I tend to break the so-called golden rule [of knowing where you’ll pitch a story before you write it] all [...]
David Grann on obsession
At ‘The New Yorker‘ (TNY), writers are allowed to pursue their obsessions. Staff Writer David Grann says it comes from a theory that tapping into writers’ excitements and interests will make them write something better. I think they’re onto something there. The magazine’s circulation has long since travelled past its namesake. Here in Melbourne, Grann’s [...]
Creative Nonfiction is keeping it real
More and more, writers and publishers are being counseled to go digital: we must learn a broader set of skills (not just writing), we must be able to present to video, edit an audio file, and charm on social media. Serendipity has enabled me to develop most of these skills throughout my career (perhaps not [...]
Oratory, rhetoric, poetry and prose
So the saying goes, as does a session at the Melbourne Writers Festival, ‘Campaign in Poetry, Govern in Prose’. If you have an interest in the power of words – or politics – it will be one for you. It’s a session, ‘about political rhetoric in America in an election year,’ says Sally Warhaft, anthropologist, [...]
