Tag: Sean Williams

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

Another week where the list is far less complete than I’d like, but such is life these days… Okay, did you know Angela Slatter has a blog now? No? Well, now you do. Do yourself a favour and go read it, for Angela is a phenomenal writer and a sayer of useful things – I recommend starting with her posts on dialogue or the Clarion South experience. So Friday of last week I put forth some ideas about SF and Gender in response to debates that’ve raged across the Australian SF community of late. Most of the discussion seemed to occur over in the comments of my livejournal, but it also spawned a response from Ben Payne (which generates some interesting discussion on its own). Scienceagogo on Biodeversity Regions as Hotspots for War (Courtesy of Chris Green) Chris Green takes my standard screed on the awesomeness of being rejected and turns it into a yearly writing goal. The Conjecture website has been updates after

Journal

Not a thesis post, really.

Tonight Clarion South instructor Sean Williams delivered a reading at Avid Reader in West End, which seemed as good a reason as any to bugger the thesis and go listen to Sean read (awesome) and have dinner with a bunch of writer folks in the aftermath (ditto). This is tag-teamed with a trip into the city to pick up my ticket for the Aurealis Awards earlier today, which meant going to Pulp Fiction (at which point, because I was there and breathing, I bought books). In terms of swag, it was a good day to be at Pulp – Cherie Priest’s Not Flesh or Feathers was waiting for me, and will now sit on top of my to-read pile until the exegesis draft is done. All in all, given that today was meant to get me away from the angst of the thesis, I’m not sure it gets much better than that. But after loading up on fiction and writer-talk,

A close-up of a typewriter page with the word "Writing" typed on it.
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Talking Dirty: Why Writers Should Focus on Being a Business

Over the weekend I headed out to a Professional Writing Seminar held by Marianne de Pierres which covered the terrain that’s common at such things, but also hit a few key points that I hadn’t come across before. Part of what she talked about during the seminar was taking responsible for your own professional development (and, well, your career), and as someone who has done a lot of development (as a student) and developing (as a tutor, and a lecturer) it got me thinking about the gaps in my skill set. I’ve done a lot of stuff to develop my skills as a writer – undergraduate and post-graduate writing programs, workshops, six-week courses like Clarion South – but more and more I’m feeling like I’ve got the writing part down (kinda) but still need to work on the day-to-day business side of things: dealing with page-proofs, handling contracts, and taking care of what little money I make via writing. We