Liz Monument

I wrote my first book, The Heirs of History: A Nation From Nothing, on Google Docs. The book clocked in around 111,000 words. Writing it on Docs was a mistake. 

TLDR: Google Docs is not a good book writing…

The expression ‘clunky prose’ is often used by writing coaches and editors. It describes prose which is clumsily written. We’ve all been guilty of using clunky prose at some point, which is why the phrase is so commonly used. Aspiring…

Line editing involves making changes to a manuscript at a sentence-by-sentence level. 

A thorough line edit can crank up the tension in your work, by making the prose punchy and to-the-point. The purpose of this is to improve the storytelling…

If you want to know what a writing coach will bring to your prose in terms of editorial help, read my blog explaining how and why.

I’m delighted to have recently been appointed a coaching Mentor for Jericho Writers…

If you're interested in knowing how an editor can help improve your manuscript, I've written a blog about it here. I've also explained, with a detailed example, the process of line editing here. 

One of the interesting things…

In March 2020, I began working as a freelance fiction writing coach in Geelong, my hometown. I was at the end of a PhD in Creative Writing, so the timing seemed perfect. Nobody could’ve guessed that Covid and…

Writing decent women characters is vital for the modern novelist, because surveys tell us that sixty per cent of all readers are female. The majority of editorial and commissioning staff in publishing houses today are also women. This means…

Yes - family stories provide terrific inspiration. Here are a few things to consider before you embark on your journey.

Recently, I’ve been privileged to connect with three writers who used aspects of real-life family history to…

Many years ago, when my bookshelves were filled with ‘how to’ manuals on writing, I remember struggling with the popular wisdom that writers should make a ‘character board’ for every character they invent. I associated these kind of pictoral…

A client recently asked me how the mechanics of publishing work. This client has no interest in self-publishing; rather, he’s hoping to take the mainstream route when his novel is ready. I decided to blog about this because there…