NICK EARLS

Don't be too concerned about the wingnut ears. Anxiety produces the wrong pheromones. Roll with the punches. Make time for life around your deep abiding need to write. Say Yes more, but not always. Say No enough that you have a life.

When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.

Are You Seeing Me? is written powerfully with both the heart and the head, and neither gives an inch. It's funny, moving and hugely insightful. Darren Groth puts the reader into the heads of Perry and Justine in a way that feels so true and so revealing that I think I've come away with a greater capacity for empathy. I didn't know a book could do that. We all need to spend some time inside this story.

I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen has been the Queensland premier the whole time we've been in Australia, and the state is a national joke for having a Deep North government thats said to resemble governments of a generation or more ago in some parts of the US Deep South - governments that always talk about getting things done and never talk about rights.

My maternal grandmother was the longest-lived of my grandparents. She migrated to Australia in her 80s and lived into her 90s. It was great that she got to be part of my adult life.

Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.

The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

You can have your own language. You can have your own dialect; you can have your own way of saying things, but if you don't actually understand the way the language fits together, it's chaos.

I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.

I want to grow up to be Tom Keneally or David Malouf: still in the game, relevant, putting out quality work, and paying tax aged 78 and 80.

When I create a character, particularly my central character, I want someone who is interesting and feels real and who might have quite a few virtues but is unlikely to be perfect, who hasn't necessarily made all the right choices.

E-books present the greatest opportunity readers have ever had to find each other. It's a chance for stories written for paper to find new life and a chance for new stories to appear, freed from the constraints of paper publishing.

I'm happy to work until I'm 70 if I'm able to. Actually, I'm happy to keep writing as long as people keep buying my books.

I think one of the things the writers' festival does that is very good is that it brings writers from around the world and around the country and locally and puts them all in the one spot together, and that's what a lot of the world's great writers' festivals do.

My maternal grandmother was the longest-lived of my grandparents. She migrated to Australia in her 80s and lived into her 90s. It was great that she got to be part of my adult life.

When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.

I like to jot down ideas on the back of envelopes and to recognise the potential value in small things. I also like the freedom to think without feeling compelled to write too early. Stories are often better if we can hold back and get to know the characters and the sounds of language.

Being a parent means my time use has to be a bit more focused, but it also gives me a new non-writing dimension to my life, which is a healthy thing. I can't wander along for weeks with an idea drifting through my head - I have someone who will drag me back into life, and that's a good thing.

One of the most interesting female characters I've written about was Meg Riddoch, the lead character in 'The Thompson Gunner'.

I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service.

I actually find it pretty tedious when magazines ask me to write articles based on my real life, because I've already lived it and there's nothing new to discover. So, I'm unlikely to write a memoir.

Are You Seeing Me? is written powerfully with both the heart and the head, and neither gives an inch. It's funny, moving and hugely insightful. Darren Groth puts the reader into the heads of Perry and Justine in a way that feels so true and so revealing that I think I've come away with a greater capacity for empathy. I didn't know a book could do that. We all need to spend some time inside this story.

I'm a plotter. A thinker, a note-maker, a mapper and a flow-charter. I'm up for using any device that will teach me more about the people I'm writing about and their story.

One of the things that makes characters real is details. Life offers a lot of details. You just have to choose and use them wisely. When you give them to fictional people and a fictional story, their purpose and their meaning changes, so it's best to see the version in the book as fiction entirely, wherever it started out.

I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.

The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen has been the Queensland premier the whole time we've been in Australia, and the state is a national joke for having a Deep North government thats said to resemble governments of a generation or more ago in some parts of the US Deep South - governments that always talk about getting things done and never talk about rights.

Don't write poems to make girls like you, because it will not make them like you but it will give them something to quote back at you later in life.

Don't be too concerned about the wingnut ears. Anxiety produces the wrong pheromones. Roll with the punches. Make time for life around your deep abiding need to write. Say Yes more, but not always. Say No enough that you have a life.