Tag: writing
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Rachel Funari Prize Shortlist
Just a quick jump onto the blog to say I’m thrilled that my short story, An Unexpected Season, has been shortlisted for Lip Magazine’s Rachel Funari Prize. The story is one of my rare ventures into purely literary fiction — no robots, or magic, or any other genre elements! Well, actually, now that I think…
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Where’s the conflict?
A story I wrote recently came back after some time away on submission, rejected but with several rounds of comments. I’m usually glad of comments, even if the piece is ultimately declined. It’s a chance to learn, to really see your work through someone else’s eyes. Sometimes, of course, the comments come from a parallel…
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Only the good die young
None of us are truly good, most of us aren’t particularly trying. But there are good actions, good intentions. I’ve been wrestling with how to write about them without making them boring or schmaltzy. (not for this current story, but perhaps for the next) Marillyne Robinson does it. And possibly, on a lighter scale, so…
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The unlikeable female character
I’ve just put aside a short story which has failed to find a home. It was something true and honest, maybe a little too honest, maybe a little depressing, and, at least for now, it’s going back in the drawer. It was about a woman who, despite a magical discovery, only gets older and more…
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Write like a man
I can’t stop thinking about Catherine Nichols’ article Homme de Plume: What I learned sending my novel out under a Male Name. My first reaction was … I want to say disbelief, but that’s not quite right. Something more akin to weariness, something like really, still, again? And then I thought about one of my…
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Wise words from Wendell Berry
HOW TO BE A POET (to remind myself) Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill — more of each than you have — inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. Breathe…
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Beginnings
. 2014 was a strange year for my family. An underground kind of year for me, though one in which some writing matters crystallised. I’ve been braver in some ways, less brave in others. Marooned, for a while, by the vagaries of misfortune. If you’re in need of some writerly insight/shoring up (and who isn’t…
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Writing in circles
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing it’s that when I start writing about a garden, I’m just playing for time. Not that I realise it in the moment, but later, yes, it’s because I’m stuck. Of course, a grand book about a garden may yet reveal itself. A heartbreaking story set in a…
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Redeeming qualities
My daughter is finishing her last year of school and we, her parents, have been asked by the school to write her a letter outlining her “redeeming qualities”. Implying, however unintentionally, that there is something to redeem. And in a final year of school where stress, work, general teenagerness and more stress have taken their…
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Gender and Writing
Monsters & Dames: Slow Day in the Labyrinth, a photo by quirkybird on Flickr. I came across this wonderful illustration and it seems to sum up a few of the thoughts I’ve had lately on gender and writing. There’s been a lot written about the under-representation of women in the broad literary community. Most recently,…
DJ Daniels 