It’s been pretty wet and cold where I live – and so dark in the mornings. I’m usually a morning person, with a walk around a nearby lake almost every day, even when my walking partner cancels on me at the last minute. But even I haven’t been forcing myself out of bed the last […]
I recently returned from a trip to visit my son in Melbourne and my mum in Tasmania. While in Melbourne, I spent time in the suburb where my son is currently living, and which is also where my great-grandmother was born. What I didn’t know until Mum and I dug a little deeper was […]
“I don’t do Valentine’s Day.” Other than hello, this was one of the first things I heard my husband say in conversation. At the time I had no romantic interest in him—I’d known him for all of two weeks, after we’d started teaching at the same school—and we were enjoying after work drinks with colleagues […]
In putting together a set of Christmas-themed prompts, I acknowledge that not everybody celebrates this festive season, for a range of reasons. While I have attempted to acknowledge this in some prompts, please feel free to adapt them further, or simply choose the ones that are helpful as you develop the characters in your […]
How do you feel about Christmas? For some people, Christmas beings great joy and anticipation. They can’t wait to decorate the tree, string the lights and hit play on the Christmas music. For others, it stirs up painful memories, perhaps of family conflict, or loss and grief. And for some, Christmas is just not part […]
If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, then it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel in during the month of November. If that seems insane, then you can set your own goal. I’ve only ever attempted it once, and even then it was a pretty half-hearted […]