writing

CSFG in June and July

For those who weren't able to make it to our June meeting, we road-tested our new venue - the Metis room upstairs at the Canberra City Hellenic Club. This proved to be a bit of a winner, with members taking advantage of the opportunity to grab a coffee or a [...]

2019-07-06T17:55:38+10:006th July, 2017|Tags: , |

Flensing your filter words

CSFG member Simon Dewar, currently editing the Suspended in Dusk 2 anthology, has been reading a lot of slush lately. He offer this very useful advice on tightening up your prose by hunting down and eliminating filter words: One of the worst culprits for weakening your prose, distancing our reader [...]

2016-01-19T17:57:59+11:0019th January, 2016|Tags: , , |

Reading for Writing Part 2

President Leife concludes her thoughts on why she reads what she reads. See Part 1 here. In my last post, I talked about how being a writer has limited my capacity as a reader. But I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t read any more. Far from it. [...]

2019-08-01T07:57:47+10:0028th February, 2015|Tags: , |

Reading for Writing Part 1

President Leife Shallcross kicks off the 2015 discussions with some musing on some CSFG'ers recent encounter with a literary hero and how reading is a vital ingredient of writing. This essay is crossposted from Leife's website. I’ve had quite a literary week. On Monday I went to see the entertaining [...]

2019-12-18T06:56:04+11:0024th February, 2015|Tags: , , |

Writing versus storytelling

Guest post by Ian McHugh As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, lots of people (ie, jealous writers) love to disparage novelists like J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer for the quality of their writing. It’s clunky, repetitive, boring, grammatically questionable and blah. At the same time, they love to idolise writers who possess a [...]

2019-08-01T07:57:43+10:0015th December, 2014|Tags: , |

Helsinki Bus Station Theory for writers

Guest post by Ian McHugh Helsinki Bus Station Theory is the creation of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, employed as a metaphor for the career of a photographer. It goes like this: Helsinki Bus Station has a number of platforms and a number of different bus routes start from each platform. All the [...]

2019-06-26T08:36:47+10:0025th November, 2014|Tags: , |

How to Handle End of Novel Blues

Guest post by Zena Shapter Let’s say you’ve been working on a novel for a while – maybe a year or two, fitting it inbetween work, life and kids. Now you’re approaching its end… you’re past the novel’s climax and you’re starting to wind everything up… You should feel elated. Yay [...]

2014-11-15T04:50:04+11:0015th November, 2014|Tags: , |

What to do if you’re bored by your characters

Guest post by Ian McHugh KILL THEM! Obviously. There’s a short story that I love called “A Dry , Quiet War” by Tony Daniel, which is basically a space-western that recounts a conflict between superhuman veterans of a war at the end of time. At the climax, the hero goes on [...]

2018-06-15T06:41:09+10:0025th October, 2014|Tags: , |

Clean Your Novel, As If It’s Your Home

Guest post by Zena Shapter Getting a manuscript ready for submission to agents or publishers is much like cleaning your home or car. Since I’m no mechanic, and we all have homes, I’m going to go with the home analogy for now. But why, do you ask, is preparing your [...]

2014-10-15T04:47:31+11:0015th October, 2014|Tags: , |

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