After retiring from full-time language teaching and tutoring at the beginning of the 2000s, I was able to devote my time to writing and developing my creative skills. I joined a writers group, ‘Bondi Writers’, and rose to become the convenor of their meetings at the Waverley Library in 2010. By then I was also interested in the slowly evolving internet and I started a writing blog that has gone through various incarnations until this current one.

I have been researching and practising the skills of creative writing since I retired from academic teaching and writing in 2000. Since then I have been learning about short story and novel structure, poetic forms and how to get published. And practising, practising, practising!

One of the most exciting discoveries on my writing journey was that I could publish an e-book, Writing a Novel: The Big Picture from my blog posts.

I then taught myself the mammoth task of self-publishing my debut novel, Karrana, and uploading it to Amazon.

All of this was thanks to my ongoing research into the aspects of writing narratives and the help and input from other writers in groups such as ‘Randwick Writers’ and now ‘Waverley Writers@the Library’. See Waverley Writers Blog that I manage.

In one of these groups I was able to collaborate with others to publish a book Sharing Writing Skills with a small publisher, ‘Ginninderra Press’.

You, too, can have success if you put in the time to read about and practise the skills of writing. By following me and my learning arc here on this blog and learning how to edit your own work, you can become a master of this creative art that is Narrative Writing, and continue to improve and enjoy the journey.