Author Archives: susan

I was going to write about the novel I’ve just finished – Margaret Drabble’s The Garrick Year – but got waylaid as I looked in various picture files on  my desk- top. Somehow the koala pictures got into a file … Continue reading →

I have been reading the new Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks. An intense language experience. Something that I first realised many years ago, when I was first beginning to write as an adult, is that specific vocabularies, the real words for things, … Continue reading →

Well, I failed on the ‘Sunday is blogday’ front. Perhaps it’s ‘Blog once a week.’ So here it is. My other attempt at discipline is a sort of 4/7 rule…work on my novel four days a week. No matter how … Continue reading →

Sunday, I’ve decided, is Blogday. No excuses, just do it. Once  a week is nothing, really: in a recent tour of the blogiverse – looking at young writer’s blogs – I see that for some of them it’s EVERY DAY. … Continue reading →

Do I need more books? No, not really, but I can’t resist Op Shops. A few weeks ago, I exited the Salvos shop with a pale grey mohair cabled jumper, a stripy T-shirt, some old knitting patterns and these.   … Continue reading →

If you were at our house, you would have just heard a very angry rant, full of expletives and delivered at higher volume than necessary. In other words, I was shouty and sweary and cross. Why? Searching for a front-cover … Continue reading →

I’m finding that autumn is like spring. After this recent rain, all over the garden plants that died off over summer are poking their heads up and starting to live again. Like Mary in The Secret Garden, I’m excited. I … Continue reading →

For most of Better Than Before, I really enjoyed Gretchen Rubin’s company. She’s chirpy, cheerful and positive. She reads children’s literature. We share  a genuine pleasure in de-cluttering. We find stationery shops blissful and like nothing better than a list … Continue reading →

Every now and then I torture myself with a self-help book. Usually I borrow them from the library, but this one I actually bought, on a whim, in Dymocks in Collins Street when I was in Melbourne last week. Actually, … Continue reading →

It’s Anzac Day. Red poppies. Parades. Talk of sacrifice and death. A recording of the Last Post and the solemnity of “Lest We Forget.” On Anzac Day itself we were never at school, but I remember sitting cross-legged on the … Continue reading →