Publish or Perish
Paul Mitchell on the pressure creative writing academics face to maintain their vocations.
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Paul Mitchell on the pressure creative writing academics face to maintain their vocations.
Continue readingPaul Mitchell spends a night in the emergency waiting room, waiting.
Continue reading1. It’s not a life. It’s a profession, a hobby, an activity or an obsession. Life goes on regardless of it. In fact, life doesn’t care whether I write or not. Thank you life. 2. If I desperately have to…
Continue readingYesterday, I had a brilliant idea for this column. I stood in the doorway of my lounge room and thought, Yes, that’s it; that will roll off the keyboard and be something people want to read and all will be…
Continue readingPaul Mitchell on open readers at poetry evenings – and the bad first impressions that can be made.
Continue readingPaul Mitchell examines the editorial biases at work in the Australian poetry community.
Continue readingWhen I was a writing student at RMIT (twice), I was told that if I ever worked as a freelance journalist (an ill-advised career path), the best way to get published was to send a pitch to an editor. Send…
Continue readingI once thought there was only one kind of rejection slip/email: a bad one. Dear Fool, we’ve had a record number of submissions by so many amazingly talented writers and we are so sorry that we couldn’t include yours on…
Continue readingIt should be obvious that a quote about writing that has its origin in a comedy movie starring Billy Crystal wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.
Continue readingPaul Mitchell on finding the space to write.
Continue readingPaul Mitchell considers the question of vocation when it comes to writing and its worth. A true story: one of Australia’s leading writers is watching a documentary. A surgeon performs a live-saving operation on a child. The leading Australian writer…
Continue readingRob McGere, alias Paul Mitchell, ponders poetry from the construction site ahead of his Melbourne Fringe performance, Being a Wheel Family. This is one of them Bogs, isn’t it? Yeah? Nah? A Blog you call it? Oh yeah? Short for…
Continue readingPaul Mitchell reflects on his experience running Australian Poetry-sponsored workshops with the Aboriginal community at Lake Tyers, Victoria. I’m standing on the balcony of the Lake Tyers Indigenous Training Centre, with a view to the water. It’s a grey day,…
Continue readingIt was the late ‘90s and I found myself riffing poetry for a then start-up company calling itself ‘Crumpler’. These bike couriers had realised the bags they’d sewn for themselves to carry packages were a better business proposition than making…
Continue readingIn both its media and creative guises, the writing life has taken me on some fascinating journeys. I followed Tasmanian ocean trout from their fish farm to L.A. and New York restaurants. I played ‘Coke bottle golf’ on a Mumbai…
Continue readingSo The Monthly’s editor, John van Tiggelen, recently made public his spat with former editor (now Good Weekend editor) Ben Naparstek. If you didn’t catch it, it was all about what John perceives as Ben’s lack of ideas, and his…
Continue readingEvery three weeks, seven-time Going Down Swinging contributor Paul Mitchell will provide insight into the practicalities of a writing life: from staying inspired to surviving. Once people get over their amazement that I remain a writer despite not having written…
Continue readingFirst, a pop quiz: which of these three statements is true? 1. When I went to school, I learnt to swim. I am now an Olympic swimmer. 2. I was taught maths at school. I’m now a mathematician. 3. My…
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