On Revising

Tonight I was watching MasterChef, as I often do.

The challenge they had tonight was to:

Make up a recipe Test it out until they perfected it in their kitchen at home (and by home I mean the large house they all share) Write the recipe out Make the dish in the MasterChef kitchen, to be professionally photographed for the recipe card Home cooks then came in and tested the recipes

It occurred to me while watching it the importance of testing things.

Mistakes were evident in the testing phase as wrong measurements were written, wrong times, missing ingredients.

This has been on my mind lately as I was talking with a friend about the revisions I'm doing on my manuscript.

Without my betas (my lovely, lovely, wonderful betas) I wouldn't've picked up half the stuff they did.

Without my betas, I wouldn't know things that I thought worked but don't.

Without ...

On Stealing

I love Natalie Whipple's latest post about stealing ideas.

It made me laugh, and think of the 7 Basic Plots:

(1) Overcoming the Monster — Stories like Beowulf, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, Jaws, and many of the James Bond films, where a hero must defeat a monster and restore order to a world that has been threatened by the monster’s presence.
(2) Rags to Riches — These stories feature modest, generally virtuous but downtrodden characters, who achieve a happy ending when their special talents or true beauty is revealed to the world at large. Includes any number of classics such as ‘Cinderella’, David Copperfield, and the Horatio Alger novels.
(3) The Quest — A hero, often accompanied by sidekicks, travels in search of a priceless treasure and fights against evil and overpowering odds, and ends when he gets both the treasure and ...

Melbourne Writers Festival Program Launch

Tonight was the subscriber’s launch of the Melbourne Writers Festival Program.

Lots of people turned up and I made friends with a lovely lady from country Victoria. We spoke about MWF, writing and the country before Steve Grimwade, festival director, jumped up to kick things off!

Sophie Cunningham gave us a little insight to her Big Ideas talk from the festival. She spoke about women and equality – it was passionate, interesting and I really can’t wait to see her talk again.

Dave Graney played a really great song – again, am looking forward to seeing more at MWF!

Finally, Councillor Ken Ong officially launched the program, citing our City of Literature and saying he tries to read one book a month – but he’s six months behind!

We were, of course, given a copy of the program: it’ll be out in The Age ...

Lit Awards + Events

So much awards news!

Firstly, The Australian Book Industry Awards were held last night and, for the tenth year in a row, Allen & Unwin were named Publisher of the Year!

You can view the full list of winners here, but some other winners include Kate Morton, for The Distant Hours (General Fiction) (I love Kate as you all know!)and Once, Then and Now trilogy by Morris Gleitzman from Penguin Group Australia (International Success).

And then there is The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - the shortlist is up!

Gosh, Cath Crowley is doing so well with the awards lately! Graffiti Moon, yet again, is listed - hoorah! Well done! :D

And also The Three Loves of Persimmon by Cassandra Golds (which I just adored) and The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher by Doug MacLeod (very entertaining!).

Speaking of awards, by now you would have all heard of the ...

Blogging The Uni Way

This week is my non-fiction class was blogging week.

I was nervous and curious at once to discover what would be said.

While my friend next to me took mad notes in the lecture my notebook stayed blank.

In the tute, we had to get into groups and discuss whether blogging was really free speech for all or not.

My group elected me the speaker (this may or may not have more to do with the fact that I am a loud-mouth than my knowledge on blogging :p) and speak I did!

I was particularly interested in other's opinions on blogging and the facts the lecturer pulled out.

As the lecturer said in the lecture she'd simply googled blogging prior to writing the lecture. That much was obvious (to me anyway). Thus why I didn't take any notes: it was pretty stock-standard stuff.

I think we all ...

Guest Review: Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson (reviewed by Clare Griffin)

“Who are you?” I say.
“I’m your husband Ben,” he says. “You had an accident a long time ago. You have trouble remembering things.”
“What things?”
“Everything.”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you. I’ll always look after you.”

Each night when Christine Lucas goes to sleep her mind erases the day. Each day when she wakes she tries to put the puzzle of her life together. But how can she know who she is if she forgets her past?

How can she love someone she can’t remember? Are these things best forgotten? And why is she so frightened?

The central theme to S.J Watsons debut novel questions, who are we if we don’t have our memories?

It’s a scary notion to think that every morning we could wake up and not know
where we are or who ...

Rebekah Brooks’ ‘Friday’ + Journalists on Journalism

By now I'm sure everyone has heard of the News of the World phone hacking scandal. (Oh you haven't? Living under a rock are we? :p You can read up on it here.)

Well! Look what I discovered (via Rachel Hills):

Hilarious right! I couldn't stop laughing.

And I know that's awful given this whole situation is... well... awful. But the parody is fantastic.

Also, while we're on that topic, I'd like to bring to your attention two articles by journalists about journalism.

1) Mia Freedman's In Defence of Journalists
2) Ben Pobjie's I Get Paid To Write This Crap!

Despite the semi-slamming Ben got in the comments and the fact that a lot of you don't like Mia (seriously guys, what's up with that?! She's awesome!) they're both really good articles that deserve to be read.

Want to know about my day? I had three parties at the ...

Friday Ramblings

Guess what I got today? That big black monitor holder thing in the photo!

It's pretty awesome. It has so many great features: that silver strip at the front is actually a page holder, it has a draw (filled with pens, cables, random stationary) and best of all it looks nice and neat: much better than the Yellow Pages I had holding up my monitor before!

The only downside is that it takes up a lot of desk space - as you can see, the two notebooks at the front are only A5 and a few inches of them are actually under the holder.

But I love it anyway :D

Ahh I can't describe how good is it to be back. So much has happened over these past two weeks, in my life and in books/publishing in general.

I think, thought, the break has done ...

I’m Back!!!

Hell-o! Boy it’s been a long time. I’ve missed you all.

But rest assured that I’ve been working hard on making a brand new site for you all!

Well, I should be honest: my designers have done the hard work!

Here’s how it came about...

I’ve been thinking about upgrading for a while actually.

Firstly, moving away from the free hosting site that hosted my website (the meganburke domain one) and also moving away from Blogger and the generic designs (although saying that, I did love the last Blogger design I had!).

I originally got the idea to hire an off-shore VA (virtual assistant) from the book ‘The Four-Hour Work Week’ by Timothy Ferriss. It talks about reducing working hours and one of the suggestions is to hire a VA.

Even me, poor old student me, can afford $10/hour!

I put that book/idea in the back of my mind ...

New Website!

Hey everyone, this is just a quick notice to say that my blog and website will be down for a few days while I get my new one up and running!

Stay tuned: it's going to look awesome!

In the mean time, you should check out the ALEA conference blog where I've been madly writing all weekend.

You should also specifically check out this post about Our Australian Girl at the conference.

There's also a great article about the selling of The Book Depository on Kill Your Darlings and a

Monthly Archives: July 2011