Top Tip Tuesdays!
Hello and welcome to KSP's Top Tip Tuesday blog series, designed to inspire your writing habits - or just distract you for a few moments! - during the coronavirus pandemic.
These top tips have been retrieved from the KSP archives. They will be published fortnightly on Tuesdays and come to you courtesy of past Writers and Fellows in Residence.
Photo: Natalie Kon-yu, courtesy Victoria University, Melbourne Australia
Top Ten Tips
By Natalie Kon-yu, KSP's 2009 Emerging Writer-in-Residence:
Make a space for writing, a desk, a favourite chair; a place you can always sit down to.
Set aside time every week to write. Having a time for just writing allows you freedom from the rest of your commitments.
Be organised.
Turn up to writing, even when you don’t want to. Scribbling for half an hour is usually a good way to get into your work.
Read work which inspires you, and read as much as you can.
Get a good book of writing exercises, so that you always have something to work on.
Revise your work. Recognise that writing is a craft. This means being willing to revise and alter your work. The more you write, the better your work will become.
Join a writing group. Having other people read your work is a great way to look at it afresh. It also keeps you disciplined.
Know when to put the pen down. Go for a walk. Walking is a great way to clear your mind when you hit a blank spot. Or alternately, start writing something else.
Dr Natalie Kon-yu is a writer, academic and editor whose work has been published nationally and internationally. She is the co-commissioning editor of #Me Too: Stories from the Australian Women's Movement (Picador, 2019), Mothers and Others: Why Not All Women are Mothers and All Mothers are Not the Same (Pan Macmillan, 2015) and Just Between Us: Australian Writers Tell the Truth about Female Friendship (Pan Macmillan 2013).
Natalie was the co-director of the Stella Diversity Count in 2016 and is researching cultural diversity in the Australian Publishing Industry.
Her creative writing has been awarded numerous prizes and she sits on the Board of Directors of Her Place Women's Museum.
She has an abiding interest in women's narratives, particularly those which have been marginalised. She is one of the co-founders of the VU Feminist Research Network.
