HOW.

Words. Because to a creative writer words are like an artist’s colours, a musician’s notes. They are the thousands of plastic balls in a children’s play pit. I like to dive in, roll around and marvel at their colour, their weight and texture. And then eat them.

I don’t write glorified diaries that begin with, ‘I was born in…’

I don’t write a self-indulgent, rambling mess of recorded events loosely strung together by a vague timeline.

I don’t write boring.

I do write creative non-fiction; lively, readable, entertaining stories. Because you don’t want your grandchildren to stop reading after three pages.

You want to gently hold your reader’s hand and take them on a journey – sometimes walking, sometimes running, sometimes stopping in shock or wonderment as you laugh, and cry, together.

Through personal interviews, the use of other resources, and extensive research by the writer, a story unfolds.

Interviews are usually weekly or fortnightly, for a maximum of two hours at a time. Or, for interstate clients, twice a day for a week to ten days.

The whole process can take between three and six months, depending on the length of the book.

About length – ‘War and Peace’ comes in at around 587,000 words, and is not on everyone’s reading list. Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1953, and is a very readable 27,000 words.

Your story will range from 30,000 words to 70,000. Midway through the writing you will be able to make any changes, and also on completion.

Once finished, with photographs, you can choose to have it published online, printed as a book, or simply produced in manuscript form with a digital copy.