Back to Blog

Let's talk about triggers

And I don't mean gun triggers.I mean those everyday things that can trigger a memory, a sensation, an emotion. These triggers can be the true stuff of life writing.Take this morning. I brew up the coffee and put some bread in the toaster. The toast pops out and as I am buttering it, I remember my secondary school English teacher.I didn't like English when I was at school. Even though this teacher was one of the best I've ever had the good fortune to know, I didn't really like going to her classr...

When the going gets tough, the tough sack out

Writing can be joyous, momentous, creatively satisfying when it's going well ... but when it isn't, finding words can be impossible and the blank computer screen can be a vision from hell and the stuff of nightmares.There is of course the old 'writer's block' where you just can't get to first base with anything; it's like a creative constipation. Nothing is moving and you need some kind of 'laxative for creative people' - hey, there's an idea! I can see that on the retail shelves already. &...

Writing is like learning to ride a bike: you never forget how

Do you remember the first time you rode a bike?I was about ten. Mom had a bike that she'd brought over from the USA when we immigrated to New Zealand. It was black with two large wire baskets hooked onto the back of the frame, deep enough for all your shopping. Dad was building a sailboat in the garage at the time. He'd done that before in the garage of our house in Seattle. That sailboat was about 23 feet long and it was called Nameless. Unfortunately the New Zealand version was never comp...

Coming up with ideas for horror

I've written before about how much I enjoy horror movies - I was raised on them. My sister and I were loaded into the back of the car in our pyjamas and driven by our parents to the drive in movies where, more often than not, there was a double-horror-something.And, as you can see in the ad opposite, my parents were probably attracted by the $1/carload 'family night'. Nothing better for us kids than a night on 'Hell's Island' and getting to know the 'Creature with the Atom Brain.'If you're wanti...

What is it about horror?

What is it about horror? We kinda know that monsters aren't real (although walking up the stairs to my house late at night, through the bush, I am absolutely 100% certain there is 'something' lurking just beyond the weak illumination my flashlight provides and I think that by walking with purpose, head down, straight ahead, I will deter it from attacking me) and yet after reading a cracking good horror or ghost story, or watching something spooky on TV, we find ourselves ...

Let's talk about laundry

A friend of mine had a stressful job for years and said she could only relax by setting up a lounge chair in her back yard on a sunny day and watching the laundry flapping and waving on the line.I asked her if she had a gin and tonic alongside and she said no, she didn't, it was something about the movement of the clothes drying on the line, the sunshine on her face, and being on a  patch of green (a small patch as she lived in the city) that did the trick for her.My friend added that watch...

What I learned from a little black ninja cat

Writing can be opportunistic.If we're short of time, we grab an opportunity to write when we can - on the bus to work, at the kitchen table after the kids have been dropped at school.Sometimes we submit a piece of writing to a magazine editor and they say, 'Great, I'll take it!'We've made our approach at the right time, taking advantage of a window of opportunity before it closes.    And if you're a self employed writer, you're always looking for opportunities to get your writing ...

Taming the Dragon

It seems there is software for just about anything these days to help you write, punctuate, spell ... it can almost compose a book for you.Where's the fun in that? Actually, it's very fun. Yesterday I installed a voice recognition programme called Dragon. Ah, you've heard of it ? I also got a good headset with a very astute microphone that can pick up all the subtle nuances of my extraordinary speech and fabulous words.Actually my speech and words pale in comparison to the Dragon....

Who would sign up for the writing life?

You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.  George LucasI ask you -  who would sign up for the writing life?Most days it feels nuts and I often think I'm the only person in the world doing it. And there are hurdles, many many of them, and...

Give yourself permission to write the worst stuff in the world

Allowing yourself time and permission to write, and acknowledging that it takes courage to do so, is something we'll talk about in my 'Feel the fear' Workshop on 4 August. In her fabulous book 'Writing Down the Bones' Natalie Goldberg says,Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world." ... If every time you sat down, you expected something great, writing would always be a great disappointment. Plus that expectation would also kee...

Feel unsupported in your writing? Try this!

Warm up your creativity, come along to my 'Feel the fear and write it in anyway workshop' Saturday 4 August, Whangaparaoa Library, Auckland and you can bring your own dragon if you like. The Library doesn't mind.  Protect your writing time like a Hungarian Horntail protects its egg. Breathe fire, flap your wings, and bellow loudly.​You know how it is. When you sit down to write, people interrupt you. All you want is to take hold of that precious writing time, the hour that you h...

My internal gremlin says, 'Call yourself a writer?'

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway said,  "You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless - there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing."It's a kind of despair and melancholy that I can certainly relate to - being in the thick of a project, having made good, promising progress, and then boof! It all falls to pieces, I have a crisis of confidence, I hear my internal gremlin saying, 'Call you...

Do we take time ... or make time to write?

What's the difference between 'take' and 'make' when it comes to our writing time? Take seems to suggest, 'I'm gonna rip off  this time, take it away from the time I am supposed to spend  fixing dinner.'Make is more like, 'I'm gonna make time while I'm fixing dinner. When the potatoes are boiling, I will sit down at the kitchen table with my notepad and write.'Whether you take or make time to write, actually doing the wri...

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

When I'm reading memoirs by writers they'll often say at what point in their life they knew they wanted to be a writer. Sometimes this revelation happens at an early age, sometimes it doesn't register until the person is 60+.In some cases, it seems this is a profound revelation, there is no doubt, it's a feeling within, one of surety. Sometimes it's a shocking decision. As the wonderful Ms Maya Angelou says, her decision to write was '...like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.' ...

Let your imagination lead the way

American novelist E.L. Doctorow  said that writing is ..."like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."​It’s OK to begin writing a story or novel and not know where it's going.After reading a jolly good book, I'll often think to myself, "I bet they had a really strong idea of that story and where it would begin and end."On second thought, a safer bet might be that the writer didn't have had a clue when they started th...

What makes a good horror movie great?

I love horror movies. I'm reassured in this because I know I'm not alone. Lots of people love them - just not many of my friends who look at me funny when I confess.I was raised on them. I get it from my Mom. She was a hard-core veteran, scared to death as a child by the old black and whites, like Dracula with Bela Lugosi and The Mummy with Boris Karloff and The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. She and her friends used to get so traumatised they'd hide under th...

Writing can throw you a lifeline ... studies prove it.

When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more.' But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been. - Stephen King  Stephen King would not be the first writer to declare that writing saved him.  What's with this? Can it be true?Yes...

Take risks with your writing ... and keep learning

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”— Mark TwainMark Twain gave us lots of great quotes and in this one we can take some lessons for our writing:Don't regret later on something that you wanted to write but never got around to. Let loose those restrictions that tie you to a certain genre, or wa...

My old cat Betsy has a life story to tell

When I think about life writing, I sometimes wonder what my old cat Betsy would write about. She's had quite the adventurous life.I first met her at the pet shop up the road. She was in a large enclosure with several other tabby kittens and I was in the market for a new feline companion.Her cage mates were dozing and lethargic. She was jumping around, playing with things, looking very lively. I thought, "I'll have her."The first evening at my place she disappeared. I was beside myself, thinking ...

A writer's lonely life

Most of us feel lonely from time to time. For writers, loneliness can come with the territory. There's this image in our heads of the solitary writer, head bowed over the desk, the space illuminated by a lamp, working through the dark hours of the night ...They're probably doing that because the late hours are the ones where there are no distractions. Everyone's gone to bed, the house is quiet, the phone isn't ringing and the river of emails has dried up until tomorrow.If we're full on and ...

The weather: there's plenty to write about

People often begin conversations by talking about the weather. In fact, writing about the weather is a prompt I often use to get myself started, especially in my journal. I put the date, then start cracking on about the weather - hot, cold, wet, windy, whatever.And because the weather has been so extraordinary, and, in some cases, quite dangerous this season, it's a really good way to kick-start your writing, and it may even lead you to write about another time in your life when weather pla...

Take time to relax ... and write in your head

Taking time to relax over summer is what we do.After a year of hard work this 'down time' is vital to our health and wellbeing.So far this summer I've spent a lot of time hanging out on the deck, watching the birds hop around the front yard and frolic in their bird bath, reading, visiting with friends ...But I haven't done any writing. ​Well, not on paper on or the computer, apart from Blogs and work related items.I'm writing in my head at the moment.Writers do tend to sit and stare at th...

What's your New Year's writing resolution?

The New Year is fast approaching and for those of us who enjoy writing  journals, one of our resolutions may be:I will write more in 2018or ...I will write every day in 2018Both seem like tall orders - are they achievable, or are we setting ourselves a Mission Impossible before the New Year even begins? And can you imagine writing anything on New Year's Day apart from perhaps, "I don't feel too well today."  If you're wanting to improve your writing discipline, become a better wri...

Killing the darling night blooming cereus

My mother was a great storyteller.Many of her tales came from childhood days spent in the coastal Florida town of Fernandina Beach.  For a number of years, her parents managed the Keystone Hotel in Center Street. They lived there too, and many of Mom's best stories came from that time.Few intrigued me more than the one about the night blooming cereus. Her Dad, Papa Louis, was a keen gardener and prided himself on nurturing some plants that were unusual for a coastal Florida town. One o...

The inspiration of objects

Here is a photo of a rocking chair.It has a nice cushion with birds, it sits in a bright room by a window, it looks like a comfortable place to hang out with a book. Does this chair have a story?You bet it does. This chair belonged to my Grandfather, my Mom's Dad Papa Louis. He used to rock her in it when she was a little girl.He rocked in it when he was living his final years with my parents. It's been in our family ever since.My Mom rocked me in it when I was little. I remember so cl...