Narrative thrives on the promise of disturbance
You can use a foreshadowing opening as a generative writing tool, to challenge yourself to explain the promise of what is yet to happen.
Reading aloud for revision and performance
Reading aloud is so physical, and revealing. That’s exactly why reading aloud is such an excellent writing and editing tool.
What we’ve been talking about. Time & Time-Shifts.
The post discusses the narrative use of time and time-shifts and the challenges they pose for writers. It emphasizes the importance of purposeful time shifts, providing examples and insights from a writer’s workshop. Additionally, the post invites writers to join Jane Messer’s interactive online workshops.
Don’t bother with resolutions, just write.
New workshops for 2024. And other news. There’s no need to be writing into the ‘void’ as one of my workshoppers described the very solitary journey of writing her novel. For many of us writers, at one time or another, working on our own, without a readership to encourage, critique or in any way appraise…
Reading Like A Writer
Thanks to Lee Kofman for inviting me to contribute to her blog, ‘The Writer Laid Bare’. See below for a brief bio on Lee. Read my original contribution at: Reading like a Writer: A Guest Post by Jane Messer (leekofman.com.au) Reading has been essential to my development as a writer. I don’t just read as…
Eros, beauty and friction: what happened when Susan Johnson took her 85-year-old mother to live on a Greek island
This is a copy of a review that I wrote for The Conversation recently. Sydney folk, you might like to know that Susan Johnson is going to be talking about the book at a few venues in early May – I might see you at the Marrickville Library event, May 3. She’ll be in conversation…
Speech and silence in narrative
One of the things I love about my writing workshops is that all sorts of questions come up spontaneously during our discussions, and directly from the creative works underway. Using these prompts, I prepare short essays, or micro-lessons, about these questions of technique, revision and editing that the writers have raised along the way. What…
Position of the ‘I’ from observer to centre stage
This passage is from the contemporary British author Deborah Levy’s memoir, The Cost of Living: a working autobiography. It’s a brilliant example of how much presence the narrator can have as an observer, on the sidelines. ‘As Orson Welles told us, if we want a happy ending, it depends on where we stop the story.…
The ‘I’ and other voices
This is my second post for writers on the topic of the first person ‘I’ in creative nonfiction and memoir.
The presence of the ‘I’ in memoir and creative nonfiction
One of the challenges of writing memoir and other forms of narrative nonfiction is how much presence the ‘I’ should have as the narrator at any moment in the text.
The earliest humans swam 100,000 years ago, but swimming remains a privileged pastime
One of my life’s aims is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as I possibly can, to use my liberty and swimming skills as freely as I can. I love the feeling of being in a large, fresh body of water, its soft immersive, vast or deep buoyancy. Review: Shifting Currents:…
Dramatisation & reflection
Over my many years of teaching creative writing I’ve written a great deal for students about the art of narrative writing, and specific techniques. I love doing this kind of work as by reading closely and thinking a passage through, I’m also teaching myself as a writer. By working from a close reading of a…
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