SALLY’S BLOG

FIGHT FOR YOUR WRITE Don’t let self-doubt or criticism destroy your passion to write. Over the years of working with clients who have written a memoir, auto-biography, semi-autobiographical novel or their first manuscript, I often hear this: ‘Is my story worth telling?’ ‘Is it a load of rubbish?’ ‘Should I...

“IT JUST NEEDS A FINAL PROOFREAD…” IS THAT ALL? Imagine this. You have just finished writing your first novel. The elation you feel as you type ‘The End’ is palpable; it’s almost as euphoric as the birth of your first child. It has taken many hours, weekends, late and probably...

21ST CENTURY READERS… WHY WRITERS MUSTN'T IGNORE THE EVOLUTION OF READING. In 2014, we are still reading paperback and hard cover books, newspapers, junk mail, magazines, greetings cards, bank statements, and so on. Nowadays, almost everyone who reads printed matter also reads digital text. From toddlers to tech-savvy centenarians, people...

AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH VS. ‘OTHER’ ENGLISH - DOES LOCALISATION REALLY MATTER? AMERICAN ENGLISH ‘LEAKS IN’ Undeniably, Australia is being swamped with American English spellings: ‘labor’, ‘color’, words ending in ‘ized’ or ‘zation’ instead of ‘ised’ or ‘sation’. Students at Australian universities submit essays or theses for proofreading, and are surprised when...

THE DEMISE OF COMPRISE You may have read about UK software-engineer Bryan Henderson, who has made it his mission to remove all instances of ‘comprised of’ from Wikipedia (around 47,000 to date). This vigilante approach to editing has irritated many of the Wikipedia contributors whose work he has corrected—not to...

9 QUESTIONS NEW FREELANCERS ALWAYS ASK Each year, I receive at least a dozen phone calls and at least as many emails from people who want to become freelancers. We chat for a good deal of time as I answer their questions and offer advice. I received one such call...