Liz Monument

One of the interesting things about novel editing in Geelong is how often the local landscape crops up in the fiction I read. I recognise place names and settings, sometimes even the odd historical figure from the town’s frontier…

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…

Recently, I’ve been privileged to connect with three writers who used aspects of real-life family history to craft their novels. Families provide excellent and often exciting sources of ‘remembered’ information, from wartime heroics and smart inventors to colourful eccentrics who…

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…

In 2010, when I was pregnant with my second child, I had a part-time teaching job, a lively toddler, and a stack of unpublished fiction on my bookshelf that I despaired would ever make it into print. Like many aspiring…

Over the last few years, I’ve been privileged to join many writers on their on-going creative journeys, some who are already published, others who aspire to see their work in print. I’ve been asked to offer editorial advice on…

Today, my Script Doctor service went live. I’m delighted to be able to offer editing and structural services for writers of fiction and memoir, based on everything I’ve learned and achieved over the past few years as a full-time writer/editor. 

It’s been a long time since I blogged, mainly due to having moved to the other side of the world. I took a brief intercalation from my PhD, which helped with the readjustment, then picked up writing where I’d left…