When do you have enough material to start writing your book?
The leap of faith from a shorter work to a full-length book comes with many potential pitfalls including procrastination and self doubt. A new book has tips on how to make that jump with confidence.
8 Feb 2021 12:00
Deborah Hunn and Georgia Richter
Writing and Publishing
What’s stopping you from starting writing your book? Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash.
The short answer to this is: you will not know until you try. We assume that writers are the ones who have a drive to write and will turn up at the desk no matter what.
This doesn’t mean that turning up is always easy. Procrastination can be self-doubt in sheep’s clothing. So can the sense that one does not yet have enough material to begin. But ultimately, the only way to know whether you do or don’t have enough material is to start writing.
Deborah Hunn is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. Her award-winning work has been published in anthologies, collections and journals.
Georgia Richter has an MA (Creative Writing) from the University of Western Australia and is an IPEd Accredited Editor. She has taught creative writing, professional writing and editing at the universities of Melbourne and Western Australia, as well as at Curtin University. She is currently a publisher at Fremantle Press.
