Free Writing Tips and Expert Advice

BY LAURINDA LIND I’ve had bushels of writing advice dumped at my feet, most of it inspirational for a day or so. Show, don’t tell.

When my life upended in 2018, one of the things I did to re-anchor was to take a course of workshops in ‘Creative Writing Outside’.

BY TESS GADD ‘What?’ my lecturer asked me in her I-only-baby-my-children-and-not-my-students voice. She looked up from her laptop, glasses holding on to the edge of

BY REV DR JILL RICHARDSON I got my first World Religions paper returned with an ‘A’ slashed across the top. This should have elicited joy

BY KIRSTY MACDOUGALL ‘Write what you know, Kirsty.’ This advice stayed with me for well over a decade. At 17, I wrote an essay about

BY WENDY SPENCER My phone beeped as I was buying milk in Sainsbury’s. Mom’s icon flashed on my screen and I smiled. We had said

BY LYN CUBILLAS Time checked: six o’clock in the morning. I was gearing up for my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I looked towards

BY MESHNA BHATTARAI The best writing tip I ever received was to get my hands bloody.  ‘Wrestle with words, scream at them, claw at them,’

By Ross Ian Fleming 1994 It’s 11.30 a.m.. Early April 1994. Probably a Monday. Our country is on the cusp of a ground-shaking change. But

BY EVA BELL Writing was always my first love. One thing I wanted above all else was to be a writer. But my father had

BY LISA CORTEZ ‘I’m bored already,’ my mother said, removing her reading glasses and throwing my manuscript down on the coffee table. She’d come to

BY BELINDA MOUNTAIN The best piece of writing advice I ever received? It was from a professor of journalism in my hometown of Makhanda, Eastern

BY LIZ AMOS I have a confession to make: no one told me this. No one sat me down, looked me in the eyes and

BY SIMON WINTER Bill Nighy, the famous English actor, recently celebrated his 74th birthday. Interviewed, he said, ‘I am a world-class procrastinator. I’m only an actor

BY TOM LARSEN I wrote my first short story at ten years of age. Back then, magazines would have a back page full of two-inch

BY AMY HADDEN Writers. Each stroke of the marker let out a faint ‘shhh’ across the yellow chart paper. Its scent danced over the rainbow

BY SARAH DAS GUPTA It had taken five very sexy young firemen to move me to the ambulance on that hot July afternoon. I couldn’t

BY RINA BESTER My life was a mess: children grown up, husband retired. In the background, an unnerving prodding from my unfulfilled dreams begged me to

BY TRI NGUYEN I am a gardener. Well, I am not a gardener by trade per se, but a gardener by style. That is the

BY ALANA BETH DAVIES Plot was always my downfall, my weak spot, my Achilles heel – you get the picture. Description, I was okay with:

BY KRISTINE LACO Sheena wasn’t a writer, but she gave the best writing advice. She was my instructor at a cognitive behavioural therapy group. ‘What

BY GEETHA RANGANATHAN Sitting at the city library in Parramatta, I asked myself what drove me to write. As the clouds passed by, I realised

BY SHAYNA LEWIS My music career ended at age 15. I’d just finished my second year of high school. As a music student, I’d been

BY FATEMEH EBRAHIMI If, like me, you’re a woman in a traditional family and society, whether you’re working or not, you must do the housework.