I’ve got to the middle of my first draft of ‘Fight’ and am now researching juvenile detention centres in Australia. It’s hard to do. Max is holed up there for a month, some Australian kids are there for years. In Queensland, where this part of ‘Fight’ takes place, there are more than 10,000 10-17 year olds imprisoned in youth detention. 50% of these are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children, despite indigenous children making up only 6% of the 10-17 year old
‘The Sunset Clause’ is now at what I’ve come to call a ‘red pen draft’. This is where I print it out and literally go through it with a red pen. Amazing what changes you can see to make on paper as opposed to a screen. Thanks to some sage advice from Anna Mackenzie who assessed an earlier draft, it has been trimmed and tucked and tweaked to a better version of itself. I hope! The plan is still to have a final draft ready for an editor before the end of the year.
One of my favourite quotes of all time:
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures, attributed to Jessamyn West.
Good stories can be a window or a mirror, and a fictional character can, and should, give us a deeper understanding of our world and ourselves.
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