By Liz Harfull I have just returned from an extraordinary few weeks, travelling more than 6000 kilometres to meet some of the show cooks that will feature in a national version of the Blue Ribbon Cookbook, due out in March 2014. The wonderful conversations and cooking sessions that I shared with these talented men and women […]

By Danae Sinclair Great content never asks readers to work for what they want to know.  Great content meets reader expectations, helps them toward their information-gathering goals and it gets your message across clearly.  To break it down further, here are three things to be mindful of when creating web content: 1. Provide pathways to […]

By Jillian Schedneck On Saturday 8th June, Romance writer Cassandra Dean guided workshop members through several steps to successfully market and promote one’s book (and create a personal brand) online. Class members learned that the most important tool in online marketing is a personal and professional website. Authors must try to strike a balance between […]

by Kerryn Goldsworthy JOIN KERRYN FOR THE WORD FOR WORD WORKSHOP IN JANUARY. * Remember that ‘place’ is an elastic term: it could mean ‘Australia’ or  ‘Adelaide’ or ‘the Beehive Corner’ or ‘the place I came off my bike when I was ten’. * When describing a place, try to emphasise the features that are […]

By Stephen Atkinson About a quarter of the way through his workshop on creative non-fiction, renowned writer and teacher of writing Robin Hemley revealed the six questions he gets all of his students to ask of their work: 1)    What is it about? 2)    What is it really about? 3)    What is it about? 4)    […]

 By Jillian Schedneck Robin Hemley approached this masterclass by giving the nine experienced nonfiction writing students specific and applicable advice on their nonfiction projects. In various stages of conception and completion, each class member spoke in turn about their projects, from a family’s experience organic farming in Italy to an errant expatriate writing from but […]

Hi peeps, Cassandra Dean here, with a few hints and tips for online promotion and marketing as a writer! 1. Have a website. Make the design of it simple and easy to use. Update it regularly. 2. Blog. Blog regularly. Blog often. Blog about random shizz you’re convinced no one wants to read about – […]

By Stephen Lord Our regular volunteer, Stephen Lord, discusses his most valuable resources for writing. The most important resource I have is my writing group. Writing is a wretched, solitary and miserable business even on good days, and I couldn’t be without a support network of like-minded souls. They are beta testers, fact checkers, idea […]

By Katrina Germein Join Katrina for her Perfecting Your Picture Book Story workshop. One very good reason not to write a picture book: you’re hoping to retire on the royalties. Let’s talk actual figures. The standard royalty paid to a picture book author in Australia is 5% of the full priced book. (The illustrator also […]

By Sarah Tooth, SAWC Director I’ve followed the rebirth of the Tasmanian Writers Festival quite closely over the last year, watching it being pulled together by the amazing Chris Gallagher, who also doubles as the Director of the Tasmanian Writers Centre. I was very fortunate to attend the TWF in April, which featured a number of […]

By Lucy Clark 1. If you don’t write your story, who will? 2. Procrastinate… but then write. 3. You make time to go to the gym, work, sleep, socialise, so why not make time to write? 4. Research is MASSIVE and time consuming and from all the info you collate, you’ll condense it to two […]

By Ben Brooker One of our recent Writers in Residence, Ben Brooker, discusses his residency. In the first two decades of the 20th century, James Joyce used one of the upstairs rooms at the now legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop on Paris’s Left Bank as his personal office. There, he wrote Ulysses, universally regarded as […]

By Alan Baxter You’ve heard the old adage, I’m sure. Write what you know. That’s all very well, but it’s actually a terrible piece of advice. After all, we all know some stuff, but not much in the grand scheme of things. And if we only write what we know, we’ll soon run out of […]

By Jane Turner-Goldsmith In the late 80s, psychologist James Pennebaker posed the question: ‘why do people throughout the world seek to tell their stories?’ In his original study, participants were asked to reflect on their deepest thoughts and feelings about a traumatic event. They then had to write for 15 to 20 minutes per day, […]