My writing week

Hi all,

There were a lot of articles on writing in last Saturday's Age and I enjoyed one that had comments from published authors aged in from the late teens to early seventies. The younger writers feel that a perception that they lack the wisdom of age is a problem, while the older writers feel like they are running out of time to write all the stories they want to. A couple of them like Robert Dessaux and Alex Miller didn't get their first novel published until they were into their fifties.

David Carroll, this years Miles Franklin award winner, says "books require long periods of substained intensity, five days a week...three or fours hours a day...over two to three years. Most of the authors stress that writing is hard work. Chloe Hopper says "I hadn't realised that each morning I'd wake to face a fresh mutiny; each chapter trying to overthrow me as the boat fills with water".

When I wasn't reading articles about writing, I did manage to write more than the previous week. I had a couple of sessions when the writing began to flow. Didn't read much though, too bloody tired. And I started to critique a story, off critters, written by a guy I ran into on the Infinitas site.

Graham.

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