Kirsty Brooks writes about how she became an author ten years ago, and how she keeps at it: "...writing fiction is really a whole hell of a lot more than just making stuff up. I'm also writing to entertain myself and I have to keep that objective in mind the whole time. It sounds entirely selfish, and I guess it is, but it's also the central objective to my writing and if I don't entertain myself, then I've failed to do my job. If I'm bored, or confused, or unconvinced by the story, then the story just won't work for the reader, either. If I don't like the story, I can't expect other readers to either. That's the thing, you tend to just be better at what you enjoy, and enjoy what you're good at."
Justine Larbalestier discovers a new writing technique, one that gets her back into the swing of things faster than previously. She also thinks it has given her a small insight into how Samuel R. Delany works. I was with her until that point.
Sean Williams wraps up his year. From the sounds of things, he needs a rest.
Kelly Gardiner has been reading Kate Grenville's novel, The Secret River, and the essay by Inga Clendinnen, and was rather under-whelmed by the novel: "I certainly didn't learn or understand anything new about the time or the violence or the people that I hadn't read years ago, in history by Manning Clark or Robert Hughes, let alone the historians of the last two decades; in novels of a generation before Grenville - say, Herbert or Stow; or even in the poetry and essays of Judith Wright."
Remember all the flak that kimbofo, an ex-pat Australian living in London, received a few weeks back for presuming to suggest that litbloggers need to be careful about what they receive from publishers, what they disclose and how they review free books? Now you can read what another part of the blogging world thinks of something similar: Gadget Lounge is critical of a group of tech bloggers who took the Microsoft shilling to talk to Bill Gates about MS's Zune. Other than a difference in scale, is it only me that sees a lot of similarities here?
