-
6 Lessons from a year of writing crime fiction
I spent a year writing crime fiction and here is what I learnt.
-
Digital Writers Festival: HyperSpace Hustle
I am part of the Digital Writers Festival this year. Which is immensely exciting for me. The Digital Writers Festival happens all online. I am in a podcast episode on writing and working rights and conditions for writers. Ben Eltham is chairing the podcast and interviewing me and Osman Faruqi and it is all very exciting. The podcast episode drops on October 31st: http://2018.digitalwritersfestival.com/event/hyperspace-hustle-digital-writers-rights/ Date: October 31, 2018 Time: All day Venue: Wherever thou art. Link: http://2018.digitalwritersfestival.com/event/hyperspace-hustle-digital-writers-rights/ Cost: Free.
-
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.
-
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…
-
3 amazing Australian authors I read in 2016 and absolutely loved
I tend to stumble upon my books (matters not if it is work by Sri Lankan or Australian authors) and I started young. We have a bookcase in our house that spans the length of the downstairs study. It is mostly filled with modern day thrillers and what I refer to as airport novels – Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsythe, Connelly, Koontz, Deaver. John Grisham. Those books. A smaller bookcase housed the encyclopedia set and the treasure trove of Agatha Christie novels. In the bookshelf for us kids, there were Enid Blytons and Carolyn Keenes, topped up by regular birthday and Christmas gifts. I read the classics – the cornerstone foundation of…
-
Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen by Carl Muller
The first author I read this year is not an Australian female writer but a Sri Lankan male one. It was Carl Muller and his book Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen. I thought it would be prudent to try and read more POC authors this year as well as try to understand a bit more about my own English language literary background and read more Sri Lankan authors. Carl Muller can come across as crude. His stories about the Burghers (the mixed race descendants of European colonisers and native Sri Lankans) feature life in the raw as it was in what seems to be early 2oth century life in…
-
The best Australian books that 7 Australian writers loved in 2016
I wanted to write about some of the best books by other Australian writers that I had read and been blown away by during 2016. And then I thought – why not ask them who they read in 2016 that was amazing AND an Australian author? So that then I could have a list of books to then go read myself in 2017? So I did. I yelled out into the Twittersphere: Australian #writers: what was the best book by an Australian that you read this year? I want to write a blog post & will link back to you. — Marisa Wikramanayake (@mwikramanayake) December 24, 2016 And true enough, over…
-
I’m in the Digital Writers Festival this year!
Back in June or July, I sent Jane Howard, who was organising the Digital Writers Festival, a message on Twitter: have ideas on diversity panels etc and grassroots movements and have applied so will await decisions & twiddle thumbs. 🙂 — Marisa Wikramanayake (@mwikramanayake) July 20, 2016 In September/October I received a series of emails the upshot of which meant I was in TWO (count them, TWO) sessions for the Digital Writers Festival. TWO SESSIONS! The Digital Writers Festival runs from November 1 to November 11 which basically means it starts next Tuesday. And it is all ONLINE. YES. Thanks to the magic of Google Hangouts and some other spiffy…
