Sustainability in the book industry + new course on preparing your manuscript for publication

And finding a balance...

Hey everyone, I hope your year is going well. I’m back at work at RMIT and enjoying getting to know the writing and publishing students! I’m also still breastfeeding my three-month-old baby. It’s quite the juggle, but rewarding. There have been some hard days, and every day is a tired day, but I’m privileged to have such a rich combination of work and family life (balancing commas and cuddles, as I referred to it on the socials).

Moon Sugar has been out five months now and I’ve received some terrific reviews, one happy royalty statement and some lovely reader emails, and I have some event invites lined up, mostly small festivals (the best kind!). On Saturdays I try to take an hour to put down new words. Sometimes I end up just writing in my journal because there’s so much to capture about this time of life. I know my next book will take longer than the previous ones and that’s okay. Spending a little time with the project at least fortnightly helps me feel like myself. Parenting makes me feel like myself too, because it’s something I’ve always dreamed of and imagined, but spending an hour exploring ideas through character, setting, story, mood – I could never live without that. And I guess it’s good to establish as early as possible that Mum needs her writing time!

The main reason I’m writing today is to tell you about two newly released projects of mine.

Firstly, the report I mentioned researching and writing last year on environmental sustainability in the Australian book industry is out! It has a particular focus on bookselling, but if you’re writing or working in the industry in any way, I hope you might learn something and know that we can all get involved in moving our industry toward a more sustainable future.

Secondly, I have a new self-paced course up on Kill Your Darlings! This is the culmination of much of my teaching and mentoring and the knowledge I gained in publishing and as an editor over the years. It’s called ‘Preparing your manuscript for publication’. It’s a comprehensive look at the stages you can go through with your work before submitting to an agent or publisher, or self-publishing. It’ll help you stand out on the slush pile! There’s an introductory discount for KYD members.

I hope you’re all really well and enjoying your current writing projects.

Currently reading

Children of Tomorrow by J.R. Burgmann is a confronting book to read with your baby in your lap, but it’s both a poetic and clear-sighted rendering of a future not just possible but inevitable. On a theme, I also recently read Everything Feels Like the End of the World, a collection of short stories by Else Fitzgerald. These are stories of personal loss, hard choices (and choices taken away) in a climate-addled world. I’m trying to form some cohesive thoughts about this new wave of Australian literature that is not without hope but that also looks at the crisis head on. Perhaps for an essay…

~

Take care, and all best wishes to you and yours,

Angela

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