QA Forum

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

We were discussing Writing your story
With Jackie French, Tehani Wessely, Virginia Tressider

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.

-Melinda Haynes

Different people take up writing for different reasons. Some want to tell their life stories or write biographies of people they admire. Some, inspired by favourite novels, create their own worlds and characters for the simple pleasure of entertaining. And still others want to get their opinions and ideas heard on subjects they care about.

With the advent of the internet, there are many new opportunities for publishing your stories. You can write blogs online of your thoughts, which are available for anyone with internet access to read. You can also get stories and novels published by online magazines and e-publishers.

Have you got great ideas but aren’t sure how to put them down on paper? Do you want to know how to edit your own work, or how to join a group to ‘workshop’ your pieces? Have you dreamed of self-publishing your stories and artworks for grandchildren, but don’t know where to start? Or do you have an interest in writing non-fiction pieces, such as opinion letters and specialist articles?

For the months of September and October, the Seniors Portal Q&A Forum explored ‘Writing your story.’ You can read through the following questions and answers from the forum and view a short background to each of our panel members: Jackie French (best selling author), Tehani Wessely (editor and writer) and Virginia Tressider (editor and writer). For further information on the subject, please have a look through our list of useful resources.

The following questions were answered: