Welcome To My Writing Home
This website is the culmination of years of writing, teaching and other writing activities. Here you will find evidence of my journey so far and witness my writing future unfold.
I invite you to visit often to share my passion for the written word. Enjoy the gems I spread here for you – Writing Tips, Writing Exercises, and my Blog The Writer’s Journey… where I’ll explore various aspects of writing to hopefully enrich your writing experience as well as mine.
Come, take this writer’s journey with me!
Blog ~ The Writer’s Journey
My passion for the written word began in childhood and has been integral to my existence as I’ve journeyed to, and lived in, five different areas of New South Wales, before settling on the Far South Coast.
When I was eight, I wrote my first book – one copy only – about a dog and his friends, and the mischief they stirred. In a household with no money to spare, I scrounged paper for my masterpiece from my father’s workplace. I used a home-made glue mixture of flour and water to stick these discarded cattle identification forms face to face, to make them stiff enough and to hide the printed lines and squares. Then I searched the laundry cupboard for string and tied these thicker pages together, encased in cardboard from the back of my mother’s almost empty writing pad. I covered my creation with brown paper and pasted a cartoon picture of three puppies on the front.
The creativity and tenacity displayed in the production of that little book were far greater than in the story itself… but I knew then I would be a writer. That tenacity survives today, only now it is focussed on the writing.
I have truly come home, bringing my work together on this site and in my first-ever dedicated writing room, where there is a beautiful Bega Valley view from my window. The undulating hills, ever-changing with the seasons and the shifting shades of the sun’s reflection, constantly remind me why my paternal great-great-grandparents chose to settle in this area when they migrated to Australia in 1851.
I invite you to share this part of my writing experience. Drop in to my writing home time and again, follow my Blog postings and enjoy my journey while building your own.
Tips
This page is where I’ll share the tips for writers that I’ve accumulated through my own writing and the development of the Writers’ Courses I’ve facilitated. The list of tips will grow regularly, as will my blog and other features for writers on this website.
These tips will be presented in short, direct sentences, for clarity and so they can be used for quick reference. At first glance they may appear to be over-simplified, however, each entry will be the essence of the concept I’m passing on. Some will stand alone, while others may need further explanation.
This expansion will come via future tips posted on this site or may be expanded in my Blog – The Writer’s Journey. In some cases, there will be opportunities in the Writing Exercises section for you to explore the ideas behind the tips.
Check in frequently and enjoy the ride!
Exercises
On this page I’ll challenge you with Writing Exercises from the Writers’ Courses I’ve developed and facilitated over the years. New tasks will be added regularly, so you can build on your writing experience and increase your skills and resources at the same time.
Some exercises are intended to be ‘jumping-off points’ with some room for interpretation, so they won’t restrict creativity or voice. Their purpose is to get you writing, regardless of where they take you. Other assignments are more specific and are designed to illustrate particular techniques which require the instructions to be followed as outlined.
Any activity can be repeated again and again, giving you a fresh piece of work each time.
When teaching, I apply a three hundred word limit to most exercises due to class time constraints. You may choose to self-impose a threshold or continue to write if you’re on a roll. Who knows… you may have the beginnings of a short story or even a book – it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened from one of my challenges!
Kathryn’s Corner
This category has been created to provide a space for my personal writing… as opposed to writing about all things writing, which continues to be posted in The Writer’s Journey blog.
Kathryn’s Corner features a drop-down menu, dividing my work into sub-categories: Musings Poetry Posters Other Writing. Other sub-categories will likely evolve, but these will suffice initially.
Ancestral Stories
Gallery
The Gallery features photos from my writing journey, and of my writing students and writer-friends… all of which overlap in one way or another.
Some form of sub-categories will no-doubt evolve here too, and I suspect there may be some shuffling before they find their natural angle of repose.