Oh, hello, my poor neglected blog!
Just popping in to share a lovely review from Reviewers of Oz of my Brain Jar Press chapbook You Are Not Your Writing & Other Sage Advice! This little book is part of the Writer Chaps Series One – others are by Sean Williams, Kaaron Warren, Alan Baxter, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and publisher Peter M. Ball himself. All are available as singles, a series, in e-form or paperback.
The lovely Kylie Thompson writes:
Now, let’s be honest here: writing guides can be a little… dry. Preachy, too, sometimes. A lot of authors fall into the trap of saying success comes from doing exactly as they do, and for people with mental illness or physical limitations, the constant refrain of ‘real writers write every day’ can leave you feeling majorly discouraged, and kinda unwelcome in the writing community. As someone with a love/hate relationship with writing guides, this chapbook is a bright point in the genre. There’s no preaching – always nice – and Angela is quick to note that what works for her likely won’t work for everyone.
This is a low pressure, high relevance little chapbook of advice designed to give you small doses of helpfulness without weighing you down with all the backstory – like if recipe bloggers took all the well-meaning nostalgia trips and advertising out and just got straight to the important stuff.
One of the things I’m loving about Brain Jar Press, a new Aussie publishing house, is that they’re focused on quirky titles. This isn’t your typical oh-so-serious lecture from a famous author. There is no shaking of fingers, just a conversation that feels like settling in with a coffee while a highly passionate and witty woman sets you right about some of the deeply unhelpful, even hurtful, assumptions we hold about writing.
This is also part of an ongoing series of writing guides, and one that’s captured my attention so much I’ll definitely be collecting the whole set.
The rest is here.
