Voiceworks, The Words We Found + a COMPETITION
A lot of people ask me how I first got published.It happened when I was twelve. My mum bought me a copy of Voiceworks magazine. Voiceworks (in case you are unfortunate enough not to know) is Australia's literary journal for under 25s, published by Express Media. It's awesome.Well, I wrote a poem and sent it off to Voiceworks, and to my utter joy it was accepted, and soon afterwards I received a cheque for $40 and a shining copy of the magazine. My first publication.That was in 1994 (I think). I had an opportunity to revisit that poem recently, and let me tell you - it isn't very good. It's bloody

NaNoWriMo: Half way
So yesterday was the half-way mark for NaNoWriMo.I'm on track, with 27 000 words under my belt. It's certainly the most I've ever written in such a short time. I'm not sure if any of it's any good, but I think some of it will be salvagable. I'll need to put it in a drawer for a month or so and then spend some serious time reworking it, but as I always say, it's much easier to turn a crappy story into a great story than it is to turn a blank page into a great story.But I have to say I'm kind of enjoying the pressure. I like only having to write a small amount each day (1667 words). I like being able to compare my progress with other people (I am a competetive little m

Jellyfish
I have a friend who is a jellyfish*.I've known her since I was born (she is a couple of months older than me).We used to play a game called Hawaiian Grandmother. It involved some wire-rimmed glasses and a hula-skirt.When we were about 4, we climbed up h

NaNoWriMo
When I was in the UK I read an article in one of the Sunday magazines. And like the very best lazy-Sunday morning reads, I thought - that'd make a great book.So I've put the murder-mystery-in-a-natural-history-museum on hold for a month, and am delving into NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50 000 word first draft in the month of November - 1667 words per day.So Michael (who has also signed up) and I headed down to the Great Ocean Road for a few days to get some serious, internet-free, no-distractions writing done.

Alan Turing and Bletchley Park
When I was in the UK, I made a special visit to Bletchley Park. This was part-research for a percolating book-idea, but mostly I went there for wholesome nerdy awesome. And Bletchley delivered.Ever since I read Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon I've wanted to visit Bletchley Park. It's an hour and a bit out of London, and there's a fascinating (and pleasingly lofi) series of museums and things there, including the National Museum of Computing. Also, Ian Fleming used to work there as a gopher, and obviously got some good spy-related ideas because he ended up writing some books that became quite popular.