CKT's Blog

One thing I look forward to each year is the announcement of writers' festivals around the country. I'm like a big kid in a candy store working out which ones I want to sample next. The seduction of speakers I've not yet encountered tempting my creative taste buds. Which festival offers speakers more suited to where I am on my creative journey? Whi...

We are always looking for ways to further support the writing community, and for the past few years, we have been the major sponsor of the KOALA Awards.  KOALA is a non-profit organisation run by volunteers (teacher/librarians, public librarians, teachers, publishers and other supporters of children's literature).Every year, young readers from...

 Hello, my name is Allison Howard and an Illustrator/Author on the Creative Kids Tales site and one of the illustrators on the 2017 CKT collective (and one story). I am mainly an illustrator and I have all the fine art degrees you can think of all the way from Diplomas to Masters, I have run the full gamut; (still thinking of doing my PhD but ...

Another Word or two from Eileen Magee—still practicing to be a 'famous' Author—in between cups of tea. Savvy Stodginess In happily moving forward with the benefits of technology all these years in my working life, writing life, and personal life, I fear I'm now becoming a stodgy old woman, refusing to embrace change. Not refusing as such, but more ...

A homonym is words that sound and are spelt alike, yet have different meanings. Example – fair (pale), fair (market) and fair (unbiased). The fair maiden considered the price was fair when she attended the market fair. A homograph is words that are spelt the same, yet sound different and have different meanings. Example – bow (bend at waist) and bo...

The other day, I was reading one of my current favourite books to my little group of Year 1 students. The book in question is 'The Red Book' by Beck and Matt Stanton. I love this book. It's hilarious and it always had the kids in stitches. It's based on such a simple but brilliant concept. When I read it, I always feel pangs of envy and always ask ...

When people discover that I write books and have been published they love to ask questions. Funnily enough they are often the same questions. I guess it's natural to be curious and I can honestly say I try to answer them as best I can. Sometimes though I feel like guarding my writing and the process. Then I remember that I have learnt so much from ...

In prefacing this blog, I won't pretend that I've been to many Publisher talks yet. I'm aspiring to be traditionally published and I'm new to it all. My questions are naïve and I'm a sponge, soaking in all the advice I can get but aren't we all, as emerging authors? Maybe you've wondered the same things I have, so I've compiled the pearls of wisdom...

I think one of the biggest problems facing new writers is finding time to write and to revise our work. Very few have the luxury of being able to afford to be full-time writers, and everyone still has to juggle family and friendships as well as work commitments, so time is always a precious commodity, let alone finding time to write. Writing can al...

I was lucky enough to win a manuscript assessment recently. Aside from obviously being excited I was very interested to know what this would include. You see for many years I have belonged to critique groups both physically with the Eastwood Hills Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) and online with Creative Kids Tales. In those critique groups I...

My day started at 4:30am. A three-and-a-bit hour drive along mostly boring highway, and a dash through more Sydney tunnels than I knew existed, and I parked in leafy Crows Nest and made my way to Allen and Unwin. I'd made it. I was at the Getting Published as a Writer for Children course at the Faber Writing Academy. It was a pleasure and an honour...

There is a quote I love from a movie called 'The Magic of Belle Isle.' Morgan Freeman stars as an invalid who was once a writer, but now sees no point in life. A young girl moves in next door, and when she finds out that he is a writer, she begs him to teach her how to write. He repeatedly turns her down, but she eventually wins him over. This is w...

Writers know The End is when you really begin. You write, write, write. Finally, you arrive at the magic words. The End. Heralded by 33,110 rough-cut words, I've recently typed The End to my latest story for 'middle grade' children. As a writer, you have probably at some time arrived at The End. And asked yourself: where do I go to from here? For m...

I am proud to say I am an alumni of the Faber Writing Academy. Although the children's writing community is wonderfully supportive, it can be soul-crushingly isolating. When you hit one of your writing goals, your writing family is there to celebrate your achievement. But the road to those achievements can be few and far between for the most part o...

Competitions. You've got to be in them to win them, right? Well, yes. But when it comes to writing competitions, there's more to them than just winning. While winning is a great boost to self-esteem (and occasionally the express train to a publisher's desk), there's this precious commodity that is like cake to unpublished authors and if you are wil...

Have you noticed some words make you cringe inside? Over my lifetime, I physically recoil when I hear or read specific words. Below is a list of my ultimate antipathies. Potential This word tops the list of my all-time cringe-worthy words. From the moment my husband and I first started looking at houses, we heard this word bandied about. The hidden...

Another Word or two from Eileen Magee—still practicing to be a 'Famous' Author—in between cups of tea. What's up? I happened to have a conversation the other day about pickles, jam and relish.A little later, I was thinking about deadlines.Somehow, the two melded together and my mind was off on a tangent… Here's where the tangent took me… Deadlines ...

Have you ever been to a writer's conference? Recently, I went to my first one. As an aspiring author and one who is unpublished (although I am going to get published in the Creative Kids Tales Anthology soon!), I have sometimes felt silly saying, "I'm a writer of children's books". I think that's one of the reasons it has taken me so long to get up...

I've heard this talked about a lot lately and never really paid it much thought, as it goes hand in hand when I am writing. It wasn't until I attended a recent course at my local writers' centre and the presenter talked about the importance of playing music when he writes. The surprised reaction from his attentive audience got me thinking; how many...

I attended my first creative writing course many years ago, as part of the Continuing Education programme offered by Sydney University. It was held once a week, in a rickety building that was just a few doors away from my old student digs in Forest Lodge. Kate Llewellyn was the tutor and I remember being astounded that some in the class, when offer...