Who doesn’t love a good life hack? You know, like the ones you see on TikTok showing you the easy way of peeling fruit or mending a rip in your clothes sans needle and thread? Well, here are some hacks to make your life easier as a writer. Not all of them will work for you, so pick and choose and see which ones will best motivate.
This will depend on your whether your creative project is big or small (novel? feature article? essay?) but if there is a deadline, make sure you work towards it incrementally, giving yourself enough time to conduct research and interviews if required. Buy one of those large planner diaries in poster size, so you can future map your goals and actually see it in front of you instead of using your phone diary as reminders.
Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian.
Her debut, a collection of poetry called Turbulence, came out in 2020 and was released by University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP). Her second collection, Decadence, was published in July 2022, also by UWAP. Her third book, Essence, will be published in 2025.
Threads: @thuy_on123 Instagram: poemsbythuy
