‘Before you cast a critical eye over your own work (not a negative eye, but an appraising one), one thing that can help is to set the work aside for a time – a day, a week, a month. This can give you some separation from the work and provide some useful perspective.’

‘I think originality should be one of the aims of a critic – to say something about a book or artwork that hasn’t been said before. But I also think this should be balanced against humility – the ability to acknowledge and meaningfully engage with other intelligent commentators who have opined on a subject.’

‘We read non-fiction for information and also for emotional engagement. Does your topic have the potential to reach a wider audience because it has ‘big human issues’ to share? By this I mean issues about resilience, survival, love.’

This month the Writing NSW team has been devouring poetry, fiction and non-fiction, read on for what we’ve been enjoying!

‘What if systems were created to ensure that disabled people were put first, and not last? What kind of world would exist if disability was taken for granted, rather than tacked on? Let’s write some stories to find out.’

‘I have so many lovely moments when readers have recognised themselves in my personal essays and felt like I was writing about their own lives. It is in these moments that I see the true power of memoir; we are writing our own personal truths and yet these are universal truths.’

I believe our mental instability and persistent dissatisfaction in life can be attributed in part to being writers – the anxiety about a permanence that can never be perfect. We live with our past selves in print— yet we are allowed to grow. At any chance we are given. How do we write a self that will continue to expand and twirl across the eons of our limited time?

“The better you understand the intricacies of good writing, the more powerfully you can write about any aspect of your life.”