Amy Laurens's Blog, page 39
February 17, 2020
How To Be A Writer
The bad news: it takes a long time to build a career as a writer.
The good news: you only need to commit to three things to ‘make it’.
Keep writing. Keep learning about writing to improve your craft. Keep getting your work out to readers (preferably for sale, if your goal is a financially sustainable career).Literally, that’s it. If you’re patient and willing to watch it build slowly over many years, follow those three rules and you literally cannot NOT make it as a writer. Guaranteed...
February 16, 2020
Made-It Monday: Quick Horsey Digital Sketch
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!
Yay! We are back in the swing of things with the first Made-It...
February 13, 2020
Friday Fun: Digital Painting
Recently discovered that the new work laptops convert to a tablet, AND they have photoshop installed, AND they come with a stylus. Cue my lifelong (or at least, internet-long) desire to learn to paint digitally.
I used to draw in high school, and I’ve been missing that the last little while–part of the reason why Inkprint’s Inklets line of short stories all have an illustration in them–it was a good excuse to make time to do some drawing again. 
February 9, 2020
On Australian Linguistics For Non-Australians
Some of my proof readers for A Fox Of Storms And Starlight are both not Australian, and not familiar with the way Australians talk about trees, both singularly and collectively. So I wrote this note to go in the front of the book, and because it amused me, I thought I’d share 
February 5, 2020
How To Map Preorder
Yay! The next Inkprint Writers book and the LAST AND FINAL part of From The Ground Up, How To Map, is now up for preorder!
The book will be out on August 4, and you can preorder for now in ebook. Print preorders will be coming closer to release – I’ll let you know
February 4, 2020
New Inklets: DOUBLE ISSUES!!
Some of the stories we had in inventory were really too short to be their own Inklet. We had two options: ignore them, OR COMBINE THEM INTO DOUBLE ISSUES.
Obviously the Double Issue option was the one we went with, ha.
So, this week, I’d like to welcome to the world the very FIRST double-issue Inklet, Certified & Seven Things.
Certified to bring tagged people back from the dead, Anna knows responsibility. So when Millicent, local school bully, approaches Anna to raise...
February 2, 2020
Not A Made-It Monday…
…because I can’t put my hands on any pictures of Created Stuff right now but hey! It’s February! Which means it’s time for the blog to resurrect out of the ashes of the holiday season.
(Literal ashes here in Australia, oy.)
Just going to aim for quick updates for the next little bit while I get back into the habit of blogging, so for today, you get a publishing/scheduling update!
A Fox Of Storms And Starlight is now official: the cover was released as part of the #AuthorsForFiries charity...
January 6, 2020
#AuthorsForFireys Charity Auction
Support firefighters, win books!
(Plus a sneaky title/cover reveal from me 
December 22, 2019
Made-It Monday: Cement Cake
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!
And now, at last, the birthday cake from a couple of weeks ago!...
December 19, 2019
Winner of the ACT Writing & Publishing Awards – Children’s Division
It’s no particular secret that it’s been a rough year, and that that’s taken a toll on my writing. I wrote 200k last year, whereas this year I’m currently sitting just under 75k, and the vast majority of that has been since the start of October. So I’ve been feeling kind of fragile, and my confidence in my writing is… up and down, shall we say
