Sick!

Hi everyone - I've picked up some cold/'flu thing in Sydney and have been sick ever since I got home. I won't be in to teach tomorrow. Sorry about that - I hate missing two weeks in a row, but really can't manage teaching yet.

We'll catch up with all the workshops, book reviews and short story analyses next week. In the meantime, think about archetypes. Can you choose one of the following archetypes to write a story about - or move them from one archetype to another during the course of a story? Or, alternatively, can you name or use one of them in your novel?
1. The Innocent
2. The Orpahn
3. The Warrior
4. The Caregiver
5. The Seeker
6. The Destroyer
7. The Lover
8. The Creator
9. The Ruler
10. The Magician
11. The Sage
12. The Fool

These are from a book called, Awakening the Heroes Within - Carol S. Pearson. You can read more about the archetypes here. But you can also use your own intelligence and intuition to think them through - and think about their dark sides, as well. It's often the dark side of someone that pushes the story through into the light.

Grammar tests and information

I know, I know - grammar is booorrrrinnnngggg! But, really, it's simply a tool of communication. And it's essential to know the rules before you break them so you've got a good idea why you're breaking them and what it is achieving for your writing.

Here are some fragment exercises.

Read this on active and passive voice.

Read this on parallel construction and do the test at the end.

Read this on subject/verb argreement and then do this quiz.

Write lots!

one of the new faces of publishing -

the internet has opened up a myriad of different publishing opportunities for writers. Instead of the old photocopied broadsheets handed out at various poetry venues, there are now ezines. check this out. Amazing new publishing worlds...