Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre 2023 Fellowships announced

I am beyond thrilled to let you know that I am a Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Fellow for 2023!

The Centre announced the Fellowship recipients earlier this week:

This annual fellowship program provides placements for dedicated aspiring, emerging and established writers looking to develop a writing project. These successful applicants will have the time and space to work in an inspirational environment with special access to Katharine's Cottage, where celebrated novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard wrote most of her works. While in residence at KSP, these fellows also have access to an active community of peers through our many writing groups and workshops.

This means at some point next year I will have two weeks of immersive and focused writing time at this beautiful-looking centre in the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, where I will be working on my PhD novel. Hopefully by then I will be well and truly on a third draft…maybe a fourth.

At the start of the year I vowed that 2022 would not be another year that I lost to imposter syndrome, which means I’ve put my hat in the ring for many things like this, things I might have been scared off applying for in previous years. Not all of them have come off but that wasn’t the point - the point was to try. That was the deal I made with myself. Just try - no expectations or cherished outcomes beyond that. The lesson Liz Gilbert taught me four years ago seems to have finally sunk in.

To say I can’t wait for 2023 now would be an understatement! Getting this news has been utterly wondrous and spirit-lifting. The day I got the email, I kept checking it to make sure I hadn’t misread it! It’s amazing what can happen when you get out of your own way and just try.

Thank you so much KSP - see you next year!

you have waited long enough

Be brave enough to do what you really want.

You have waited long enough.

Humble yourself to really take on your true vocation.

Where you’ll work harder than you’ve ever worked before, be tested more than you’ve ever been tested, and where you’ll have to give everything you have, over and over again.

Where you’ll soar and fall, cry tears of joy and pain.

Where the counsel and support of others will help, but ultimately you’re on your own.

You have to crack open your own head and break your own heart.

You have so much to learn and then you’ll have to forget it all every time you meet the blank page or the blinking cursor.

Every time it will be like wading into cold water. The longer you wait to dive under, the harder and scarier it gets. You have to go under.

You have to do the work.

Not just the appearance of it. Not setting up your laptop and latte with a lovely view and curating a perfect Spotify playlist to write to.

Put your eyes where they need to be.

On the work.

Don’t let your talent and drive and ideas sit out for so long they get flat like sparkling water left in a glass.

Embrace it. Seize it. Fight for it.

Let go of your ego’s need to control everything and be prepared to get lost.

Get down on the floor, be of the earth.

Your voice matters. The stories you want to tell matter.

Give these women their voices, the voices they didn’t have while they lived.

Let go.

Lose yourself.

Who knows what you’ll find?