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The Craft of Writing author invites you to access skills and writing passages that interest you, by exploring this revamped site in your own time. All posts are based on many years of practice and research into the art of creative writing
About the author
Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. You can learn here about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir. Subscribe to this blog and receive a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics and events.
Karrana
It’s the aftermath of the Second World War in the lush valley of Karrana, a fictional town on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. This novel fits into the broad genre of Women’s Fiction, since it explores themes to do with love and family. It examines these issues through the prism of the postwar years in country Australia and in Sydney, but the themes are still relevant in society today. It’s about love, passion and the search for real fulfilment within a relationship. At a victory dance, Bridie meets and falls in love with Will from the other side of the river.
My Blog
What I learnt from writing a novel…
There’s an innate problem with writing about your life, and that is that your relatives might not want to be shown up, warts and all, in a publication. Clive James got around that issue by using humour to recreate his childhood narrative, which is part of an autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs.
Voices From the Past
Words in a book… Esther learnt of my existence and found me through words in a family history tome. My older brother had written and published...
At the Swimming Pool
A Short Story Jeanie is one of these inch worm types. One toe in; one toe back. The cold has always been alien. From birth, really. Even today, with...
Candidly Yours…
In search of a voice… My writing started out as therapy for a polarised — to be explained later on — childhood. My own background had...
Highs and Lows of Self Publishing
Self publishing may require you, the first-time author/publisher, to invest time in learning the ropes by accessing online forums and videos provided by Amazon KDP.
Always something there to remind me…
Do you ever wake up with a song playing in your head? With lyrics by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, this one, I discovered, was originally recorded...
Ancient Stories from Childhood
As a child growing up in a valley where diversity was met with suspicion, I learnt, first-hand, about racism. However, I also saw paradoxes within...
C.G.Jung’s Active Imagination and the Dead
It is an unfinished, personal and spiritual account that was, and still is, at odds with the atheistic and scientific direction of society.
Self publishing a novel as an ebook
What a month it has been! No, make that two—or three…. First a hasty trip to Croatia and to Spain with my husband. I always like to record my...
5 or 6 Things About Valencia
The Old and the New are intermingled in harmony in Valencia
Return to Cavtat…uvijek!
We’re here in Cavtat on the southern coast of Croatia, for the 4th International Symposium on Stuttering that my husband convenes....
Self Publishing
1. Self Publishing Is Easy (according to some!) Firstly, choose a size for your print book, format your Word manuscript to fit that size, turn your...