At the Writing Desk

I found out today that my father died in an accident back in October, 2008. As you will no doubt assume from the fact that it was a year and a half ago and no one has tracked me down to tell me, I never really knew my father. He and my mother married in January 1966 and had me in 1973. Ten months later their marriage was over and I didn’t see him again until I was 15, when my Aunt and Uncle (on my mother’s side) accidentally came across him when they where holidaying up the Queensland... More...

Even if we don’t write historical stories, or military suspense with technical details, all writers have one subject which they must all research: happiness and how humans pursue it. Even the most evil of evil villains, we believe, is motivated by their own belief that their actions will bring them some form of happiness. In this fascinating... More...

A post at Betsy Lerner’s wonderful blog, today, asked why those of us afflicted with narrative disorder at a young age began to write. It sparked a memory of the very first time I ever showed my writing to anyone and, since upon leaving Japan this blog will return to focusing more on its original topic: writing and chasing publication, I thought... More...

Okay so the tardiness of these is getting ridiculous but I’m totally immersed in my writing atm so I promise that things more important than my blog are also being left by the wayside. Apologies. This weeks’ TED talk comes from Amy Tan, author of “The Kitchen God’s Wife” among others. A warning for those of you who thought... More...

For those of you in the midst of NaNoWriMo and for the rest of us in the midst of writing anything, here is J.J. Abrams talking about the blank page as the ultimate “mystery box” and how technology inspires him. What mystery boxes are you creating for your audience? Enjoy! And, yes, I’m aware that these TED Tuesdays are being... More...

This week’s talk is from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat,Pray, Love” and many others and is a must watch for all writers or anyone who loves a writer (or artist for that matter) and would like to understand them a little better. Let me explain. Each week from 7-10pm Sunday GMT (5am Monday, Japan time) there is a Tweetchat under the hashtag... More...

In my RSS travels, I recently discovered a source of inspiration about which I am no doubt very, very late on  the uptake. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) I just didn’t know there was a place we could go to hear the speakers (rather than hoping the ABC would include them in Big Ideas broadcasts lol.)... More...

SHELDON It must be an emergency; everyone at the university knows that I eat my breakfast at 8 and move my bowels at 8:20 LEONARD Yes, how did we live before Twitter? - from The Big Bang Theory, S.2, Ep.23,The Monopolar Expedition. When even the boys of The Big Bang Theory, champions of all things techie and geeky, appear to use Twitter merely... More...

The sound and fury regarding the future of newspapers in the last couple of months has been getting ridiculous. In a speech recently, James Murdoch blamed the BBC’s “free” online news service (the BBC is funded by a license fee paid by any Brit with a TV or radio, for which I say “Thank you very much”) for the fact that he and his fellow... More...

The New Zealand retreat was wonderful! I cooked and ate clean, NZ produce, drank and washed in sweet rainwater, chopped kindling and built a fire for my heating each day and I managed to slow my brain right down and get lots of writing done. The Northland winter was astonishing, equally cool, sunny, blue sky days and wild, wind-whipped stormy days... More...