What’s the Big Idea? Or more to the point, where did you get that big idea? What is the one question you can be almost 100% sure you’ll be asked on a school visit or when you’re running a workshop. You guessed it: where do you get your ideas? I’ve heard all sorts of answers over the years, from authors who have quite seriously taken a deep breath and answered that they found them at the supermarket, fourth aisle, about half way down, on the middle shelf between the sugar and

I just love drawing inspiration from anywhere I can… and, today, I found something in an unexpected place that made me think. Helping my son organise his thoughts for his new online learning program, I found a list about creativity and how to achieve good ideas. Looking through, I thought that many of these methods for his design course could be modified to help writers get started. So here goes. This is my list on how to come up with some good ideas for writing – whether

Planning is one of those vexed questions that some experts on writing can become quite passionate about, even resorting to saying unkind things about writers who do it differently to them. I’ve read quite a lot about planning, however, and I’ve come to the conclusion that EVERYONE plans (or, possibly, doesn’t plan – but I’ll come to that in a moment) differently. At the two extremes are writers who plan their story to the nth degree with everything that is going to happen nea

Believe it or not, getting words on the page can be daunting for anyone, even seasoned writers and best sellers. Having a firm idea for your story is only the start. Sitting down every day and knowing what you want to write is both a habit and a skill, and some days it will seem easier than others. The first thing to realise is that you have to commit to forming a writing habit. There are different ways to approach this. Word Count Some writers have a word count that they str

Most people who want to write a novel probably already have a good idea about what they want to write about. It’s the idea that fuels the desire, and keeps you up at night (or, if you are like me, wakes you up early in the morning, kind of like the family pet, helpfully licking your face to let you know the sun is about to come up). I understand, however, that it is a source of mystery for many. And perhaps some of them would like to write a novel if only they could work out

When I ambitiously started this little project, apart from ruthlessly choosing to split an infinitive or two in the quest for conversational style, not to mention other grammatical anomalies, I had visions of a neat, linear group of posts that would follow one from the other and provide a guiding light for others who, like me, are on the never ending quest for knowledge. Ha. Ha. And then I started thinking. Learning to write is not a sequential process. It is an amorphous who

Imagine yourself here, wandering along this old track above the creek. The breeze is chill, but the sun is warm. Under your feet, old, dry leaves and twigs crackle and crunch with every step, birds are flittering around you, swooping and diving to catch the insects your movement disturbs, and you can hear the gentle babble of the creek as it wends its way down the the gully. It is your time, just you on this quiet track through the bush, with no need to rush or be anywhere

Ideas? Go to any writer's FAQ page and there will be a question something along the lines of “Where do you get your ideas?” I've been to quite a few writing conferences, too (at least, more than I can count on my fingers, which is about as good as it gets for me and maths), and, at some stage in the Q & A process, someone will ask the same question. Usually whilst hovering their pen over a blank page. It is an eternal question, and one of immense interest to writers and non-