You can teach a lot about the craft of writing but style is very personal. It comes through practice. It’s about getting familiar enough with words, the rhythm of how they fit together and the overall shape of a narrative. Even though I’ve been writing...
Whether it’s an article or your first chapter, you need to make your first lines work hard. They must hook the reader, wind them in, convince them to read on. They need to set up your story. They usually establish point of view; they often introduce...
In a recent video interview with the Australian Writers’ Centre I was asked how I write about other cultures. The pitfalls, the pleasures. And how writing about my Indian characters in The Pagoda Tree differed from writing about Ani, the Tibetan nun, in Last Seen...
We’ve all been there. Those days when nothing seems to flow, when your words are wooden and your syntax is lifeless. Those days when you’re bored with writing. Sick of it. Even hate it. I’ve been there too. It’s like you’ve reached a dead end – or...
The first question a journalist asked me last week was why I made the decision to write my new book as fiction. Why I made the leap. Although Last Seen in Lhasa is a travel memoir, I used fictional techniques — creating character, plenty of dialogue...
If you have one of those days when you sit down and don’t know what to write, then find an object and write about that. Ideally choose something meaningful. Or quirky. Or precious. This exercise works for non-fiction and fiction. For travel memoir, pick an object that...
To make the publisher’s deadline for my new novel, I’ve been through an intense period of editing. At times it felt like running a marathon – except the finish line kept getting further away. At the end, when I should have had my feet up, I...