-
6 Lessons from a year of writing crime fiction
I spent a year writing crime fiction and here is what I learnt.
-
What you need to know about freelancing in Australia and COVID-19
Marisa Wikramanayake discusses the state of freelancing in Australia in the light of COVID-19.
-
The NYWF-ty List
NYWF is National Young Writers Festival and this is the "NYWFty" ("nifty") list because it is truly nifty and is full of the resources the young writers were asking me and other people about at all the #NYWF2018 sessions over the past weekend.
-
I hit 10,000 words!
I suppose I gave it away in the title but oh my God! 10,000 words! Here’s what happened on each day. Day 5 was the Friday. Nothing got done on Friday. I was really exhausted. My sleeping patterns were out of whack and I was trying to fix my ear issue. I thought I could go out to meet my union colleagues and friends for drinks and come back and write. The drinks part happened and was fun but the writing part did not happen. So I had zero words for Friday. I had about four to five thousand words at this point to write in order to hit 10,000…
-
Day 4: Freedom to write, freedom for writers
Day 4 already. Well, nothing was going to happen on Day 1 given how tired and jetlagged I was. Today, most of the day was pretty boring. I had not slept well the night before. So the day was full of waking, sleeping, doing things I needed to do like eat and so on. I thought about the book a lot. And then I did my makeup, changed, called an Uber and went to see my friend Vicki Laurie interview Peter Greste at the WA State Library. So three things happened today on Day 4: Peter Greste pleasantly surprised me. I was very happy about that. Thank you Peter Greste.…
-
Day 3: So many emotions
Day 3 and I am just grateful. I didn’t get to sleep until five am because I was just so thrilled that I had met my goal. You get a high after you write and type everything in. But I did sleep in bursts till about noon. I would wake up, do some work related things, sleep a bit, write a bit and so on. I woke up at noon and went over to the main house and the office to meet Shannon who is the director here at KSP Writers Centre. I gave her some things from Sri Lanka and she offered to do a pharmacy run for me.…
-
Day 2: A cat is here!
Day 2 and I woke up joyful today. Joyful because it was such a wonderful thought that I could write and everyone was going to be mindful of that. That no one would disturb me, no one would interrupt me, no one would think to themselves “She is free – let’s get a hold of her.” Also annoyance because my article was overdue and I needed to get it done so I knuckled down to do that while battling my ear going strange again. I made a mental note to see my doctor as soon as I get back to Melbourne. I figured out the A/C and I had a…
-
Day 1: Home on my back, home where there is a bed
Oh good heavens, day 1 and am I tired. It was a whirlwind weekend with a wedding and various wedding related celebrations and the attempt to pack a bag that does not want to take on pairs of shoes, two saris and related accoutrements and another trenchcoat. “Do you think this fellowship will be useful?” my mother asks, as I decide where the notebooks will go: main bag, carry on bag or laptop bag? I look at her. I know what she means – Sedition took twelve years to write because I also had to live and it ended up on the back burner a lot and even after finishing it,…
-
Frequently Asked Questions About Becoming A Freelance Writer:
Marisa Wikramanayake answers a few of the frequently asked questions about being a freelance writer.
-
A Guide to effective activism in Australia in 2017
Share this post on effective activism around. This list of the things we can do right now came out of a brainstorming session online where people were despairing a bit and I thought creating a post would render it more available to the public. If you have more ideas on effective activism to share or want to critique an idea listed here (I am not an expert on these things), leave a comment and I will add it with credit. Some of these will have different options to cater for the run up to the WA election. Before you read this post, please read this one by Gilbert Caluya on…
