When most people finish their first draft they have no idea of the mind-numbing and heroic journey they are about to embark on. Finishing the first draft is only the beginning… as editing may be one of the hardest f—— things you’ll ever do. Here are the nine stages of editing your novel (with cats of…
A few months ago I pitched face to face with a mid-tier publisher in NSW, Australia. The publisher in question was Allen & Unwin, an independent publisher that I have always dreamed of getting published by. I used to get butterflies just thinking about them. I mentioned about getting ready for the pitch in an earlier post, so I thought…
I was initially going to call this blog ‘How it feels to be rejected by literary agents’, but that’s super depressing, why not focus on the positive this time? My novel, Mesmerise, has been officially rejected (since last friday) by the grand total of five literary agents I was able to query it with. Most of…
I’m going on an Instagram craze at the moment, and have tried to write some ‘instapoems’ for my instagram @millyschmidt. WARNING – these are the first I’ve ever done so I hope they aren’t too atrocious. And just so you know, it’s summer in Australia, which is why some of my poems are all sun, surf…
There are around 65 million bloggers on WordPress – and god knows how many more that use other platforms. But no matter which one you use, it’s most likely that every single one of you go through the following nine stages (and if you don’t I bow down to you oh holy one):
There comes a time when every writer needs to step back and see what a #writerslife looks like from the outside – and yes it looks like cats. Be warned, these stages can come in any order, you can be in the middle of number 6 when suddenly inspiration strikes and you’re back at number 1.…
You’ve done it. 630 hours later and you’re ready to send your perfectly polished masterpiece off to the Big 5 (or the Small 254). But what happens next isn’t pretty…
