Seven sensible steps to success as a writer
Step 5 The discipline of writing

The art of writing demands the same commitment and discipline as any other profession. Unlike most other undertakings, however, the way you practice that discipline depends very largely on yourself.

We’re all individuals, with our own habits and foibles, dislikes and preferences for what works best for us.

Some writers find the creative impulse flows most easily at night. Patrick White, I know, was one of them. Others prefer the afternoon. For me, early morning is best – alone in the dawn at the laptop or iPad with the rest of the house asleep and no telephones or emails to interrupt.

Indeed, I’ll frequently bring my wife her first.........

Seven sensible steps to success as a writer
Step 4 (continued): Heraldic Beasts

The promptings of the cultural landscape can not only offer clues to the psychology of characters, but also provide the writer with external metaphors to help clarify their inner lives. They were certainly there with my Eddison research trip.

When Walter married in 1911 he leased the home farm on the Mottisfont Abbey estate in Hampshire. It was a good-sized property of some 400 acres, with a substantial brick farmhouse, outbuildings and local labour. It had become run down, but with the assistance of one of his Yorkshire uncles he was getting it back into reasonable shape.

It must sometimes have seemed to Water that he could approach that status of.........

Seven sensible steps to success as a writer
Step 4 (continued): Stone Mansions

More evocative clues to action and psychology emerged from the social landscapes during a research trip to England for my book For Love of Country.

I needed to understand why it was that the English farmer, Walter Eddison, transplanted his high-born wife and children to the Australian back blocks after the First World War, to tough it out as a soldier-settler through drought and Depression?

In one way the answer was obvious. He came from a prosperous family in the north, but his father had lost most of his money in unsuccessful farming ventures, to the point where bankruptcy threatened. Land in England was expensive, and Australia offered the chance.........