A huge CONGRATULATIONS to our Admin Assistant, Sarah Gates, who received the Colin Thiele Writing Scholarship from Carclew recently, of $12,500. We’re very proud of her and her writing achievements and we’re excited for this wonderful step in her career. (more…)

By Raelke Grimmer Twitter is great, but let’s be honest, it can also be a jealousy-making machine. Especially when it feels like everyone on your Twitter feed is live-tweeting from the most incredible Writers’ Festivals around Australia, and you’re missing out because you’re not there. This is, partly, the person’s own fault. If you really […]

By Kevin O’Brien Why not join us for the Fiction Feedback focus group? I should start this blog post by saying that good editors will ask you more than five questions about your novel, but I’ve chosen the following issues in particular as they can be the hardest to fix if left until the end […]

By Lynette Washington This year I embarked on the biggest editing job of my career. In the past I’d edited individual stories, mammoth technical manuals, small magazines, brochures and websites, but I’d never edited a collection of short stories, and this task felt different. More important. The collection, which came to be called Breaking Beauty, […]

By Ben Brooker Everybody has a point of view but it takes more than just an opinion to be able to write a review that other people will want to read. Your job as a reviewer is not just to tell your readers if you thought a book, play or movie was good or bad […]

By Vanessa Jones As a writer, you may be quick to disregard LinkedIn assuming that it’s for those who work in the corporate world only. But the professional business networking site, which has been around for nearly twelve years, has over 300 million users and shouldn’t be underestimated as a tool for writers.  (more…)

By Cassandra Dean and Lucy Clark Cassandra and Lucy provide insight into a common mistake. In their capacity as editors, they come across the same misstep all too often – a rush through scenes and situations, so that all emotion and depth is lost. A reader wants to feel the emotion deeply, wants to experience […]

52 Tuesdays is a locally produced feature-film by Adelaide-based collective Closer Productions. It explores the relationship between a mother and daughter over a year, a year in which the mother decides to transition to become a man. 52 Tuesdays was filmed once a week, every Tuesday, for a year – with the scripts for each week constantly evolving, […]

By Katy McDevitt NB: SAWC is holding an Editing Bootcamp. Register early to avoid disappointment. Here’s a proposition for you: editors are the most misunderstood of any publishing professional. Let’s test it out. What do you think of when I ask you to imagine an editor? Perhaps a dainty woman in spectacles, wielding a red […]

This was first published in the Australian Society of Authors enewsletter. If you have any questions or concerns about your contract, please contact the ASA for assistance. The ASA is concerned about the increasing number of authors being presented with book publishing contracts which require the author to assign copyright to the publisher. Of particular […]

By Mark Dapin I started my writing day at six o’clock this morning, when I printed out and proofed the first chapter of my upcoming military history book. I’m already weeks behind schedule with the book, which has to be in the shops in November. I must complete another chapter before the end of the […]

By Johnny von Einem For the last three years I’ve been working away at a journalism and creative writing degree, essentially straddling a line between two seemingly similar, but in practice starkly different worlds. Tight sentences and a strict adherence to hard facts are the main tenets of (good) journalism, whereas beautiful, descriptive and immersive […]

You’ll notice in our program that we have a practical workshop on writing for radio coming up. You may be thinking, why write for radio? Well, there are a number of opportunities to get your writing out there, that you may not have yet considered. One of them being narrative drama for radio. Here, we’ve […]

by Rose Hartley As I fumble my way through the second draft of my novel, writers’ guides call out to me from every corner of my bookcase, claiming to be able to help me craft a story that someone might want to read. The latest one I’ve picked up is Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story, […]

By Fleur Kilpatrick Every now and then you have that moment: the moment when you realise just how foreign the workings of your brain are to the majority of the population. Yes, it turns out that it is you who is the alien. Don’t be alarmed. Our minds are so complex and individual that every […]