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The Little Things
April 14, 2026I remember when writing used to feel easy. How effortless it was to type at a keyboard relentlessly, ideas pouring from my youthful brain, back when life had very little worries. This was a period I look back on and wish I never took for granted, because now, as an adult, I no longer have as many hours to write away.
Now, that eagerness to write all the time is drowned by work, social life, and the simple day-to-day challenges that constantly appear from nowhere. This was only amplified by my expectations that I should be writing A LOT, constantly, or not at all – an incredibly unrealistic goal that was only pushing me further away from what I loved most.
You see, with social media’s portrayal of productivity becoming increasingly difficult to relate to – believing we can never live up to the same level of efficiency – the easier it is to feel like giving up, or push ourselves towards burn out.
I very quickly became a victim of this. I found myself writing loads in between my school breaks and then not touching my prolonged literary projects for months, sometimes even years. Why such extreme break periods? I simply could not meet the expectation I’d set for myself, wanting too much and only setting up for failure, quickly experiencing major burnout despite wanting to continue writing. I’d convinced myself that writing sessions meant producing thousands of words at a time every time. If I were to write anything less it wasn’t worth trying to write at all.
Recognising this pattern had me questioning if I was cut out to be a writer, and at one point even put me off altogether, doubtful over if I could sit down and write anymore.
But I knew how much I loved to write, and how fulfilling it was to add to my work and escape from reality during the process. It was something I’d treasured my whole life and certainly not a passion I was willing to give up on that easily.
However, I knew I couldn’t just continue the mindset I’d previously had, wanting to start from scratch and create a discipline that was going to build me up rather than keep me at the bottom.
I started being less harsh on myself about how many words I produced, reminding myself that a couple hundred was better than none, even if it wasn’t the thousands I’d previously hoped would constantly flow onto the page. It was a reminder difficult to convince myself of, still making comparisons with writers I scrolled past on social media. But I kept my head forward, pushing through the doubts to write something instead of nothing.
Instead of spending a whole day trying to write thousands of words for a couple weeks and then leaving my manuscript to collect dust, I was now writing briefly for fifteen to thirty minutes every day, collecting a couple or so hundred words at a time. While not seeming like much, I soon noticed the subtle progress I was making, while also finding that pleasure in writing beginning to come back again.
To keep this habit up I created a physical word count log that I write in every single day. I note the number of new words I’ve written, and update the existing word count of my project, keeping this in a journal that I can look back on and see the slow but promising progress.
As a writer, success shouldn’t be found in the big and intimidating goals you set for yourself, because they will never be fulfilled the way you want them to be. It is instead the small milestones made each day, even as small as a dozen words, that are going to help you chip away at the end-goal sooner.
Gently guiding yourself, rather than forcing an impractical amount of work onto your conscience, will inevitably quicken your progress. It is this gradual satisfaction, slow and steady, that is the most rewarding overall. Wanting to rush and do so much at once lead to a wall impossible to break down.
So, remind yourself as I have that a little goes beyond a long way, and that it is THE way if you want to succeed in discipline rather than motivation, because that guiding light can only last for so long before it eventually snuffs out.
Sit yourself down and write, just for a little bit, every day, even when you don’t want to, and be patient. You’ll be surprised how far you go!
Alessandra Donnelly
Editing Intern
My Second Death
April 7, 2026Fresh out of university in 2023, I was a junior nurse working at a public hospital. At work, each shift would consist of either mundane jobs such as vital sign observations (checking blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, etc.) or complete chaos of medical emergency calls. By the end of the year, I felt confident with managing both the predictable and the unexpected tasks.
That was before I witnessed the traumatic death of a patient. As my patient gasped for air one last time and went still, the doctor standing across from me – holding the patient’s other hand – looked up. Our eyes met, and the doctor gave a small nod, a silent agreement that we both knew it had been her final breath.
I stood frozen, holding the patient’s hand, terrified. My patient had just passed away in front of me.
No, a person just died in front of me.
A life just went out of a person, echoed in my head.
I had seen death before, but never like this – not the exact moment of leaving, not from this close, and not with one of my own patients. Tears came before I could stop them. The silence filling the room between the nurses and the doctors was suffocating. I had to escape it. I had to run out as quickly as I could. I couldn’t bear to stand in that room, faced with death and the unfamiliar weight of grief.
Fast forward to March 2025, another patient of mine passed away. Ironically, it happened just after all the doctors and nurses had stepped out briefly, leaving only her daughter and me at the bedside. Once more, it became my responsibility to stand next to death. But this time, I could be there until the end.
As I listened to my patient’s laboured final breaths, I took her hand in mine, rubbing her shoulder gently with the other. When her breathing came to a stop, I felt her empty pulse and closed her eyes. Hours later, I noticed her warm hands turned cold as I changed her gowns, washed her, and prepared her body. Even then, I could stay in that room and whisper my goodbyes.
These past few months have been like that. Some things could no longer reach me or wound me the way they did the first time; experience has given me armour in certain places and scars I can lean on.
Yet, there are still moments that felt like a sharp, new sting, piercing through places I didn’t know were unguarded.
So many experiences and emotions, in work and life – different patient’s heartfelt stories, the exhaustion that clings after every shift, and the growing absence of those I miss – made me want to run out of that room again. Certain aches also circle back in ways I never expect, and I find myself running away, hiding in the pan room, crying.
But I am slowly able to tell myself that one day these heavy moments will stand between me and the worst of the hurt, protecting me in the name of ‘lived experience.’ And even if I cry over the same things I thought I’d healed from, maybe that’s okay, maybe feeling this deeply is part of living fully.
Hayun Jeon
Editing Intern
Labubu – Friend, Enemy, or Frenemy?
March 31, 2026Clonk.
My friend’s handbag hit the table as she sat down next to me. As I drew breath to greet her, my eye snagged on something hanging off the clutch. The ugliest stuffed toy I had ever seen was clipped to the bag as if it swung from the gallows.
“What is that?” I spluttered. (I may have used an expletive here.)
“My Labubu!” she beamed. The little monster – a gargantuan excuse for a keychain – stared up at me. Furry everywhere else, its face was somewhat humanoid. Its wide smile exposed a string of serrated teeth.
Labubus, I learned, are trendy collectibles. Yep, you fork out sixty bucks for the little devils not once, but again and again, until they form a grotesque little clan that all but obscures your bag.
The kicker? They often come in “blind boxes” that hide your Labubu’s colour and outfit until you make the purchase. Shoppers can’t even select what they like; in this sense, Labubus seem to herald a disturbing era of consumerism for consumerism’s sake.
I’m a staunch defender of Generation Z – I’ll leave the young-people-these-days gripes to my grandparents – but come on. Soon enough the population growth of Labubus in landfills will outstrip the world’s major cities.
I should also mention that I’m not someone who prides herself on going against the grain. I indulge in “the trendy”, from Taylor Swift to Birkenstocks to chocolate coconut water to flared leggings. I follow friends’ recommendations for TV shows, phone plans, nail polish brands, uni subjects.
Usually, I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon – I’ve got a reserved seat. But you can’t do anything with a Labubu. They’re not toys; they’re status symbols and eyesores.
I’ve played the role of the cynic amongst my friends once before. When we’ve travelled together, I’ve found their insatiable desire for souvenirs befuddling.
If we had the misfortune to encounter a souvenir shop – gaudy postcards, keychains, and magnets spewing out from the shopfront – a thorough perusal would inevitably ensue. One of my friends finished a trip with 54 postcards in total – a colossal stack that took up valuable real estate in her bag, as I enjoyed reminding her.
Once, at the airport, I talked my friend down from buying a puppy soft toy clad in a Union Jack cap. The twinkle faded from her eye as I ushered us towards more practical supplies: water and snacks. Although I intended to relay this anecdote with cynical relish, this particularly memory has me wondering – am I a bit of a hypocrite?
If anything happened to Big Ted, the teddy I’ve had since I was a baby, I’d be inconsolable. And Big Ted’s pretty mangy these days – in his 22 years by my side, he’s never been through the wash.
Big Ted was with me the night before I started prep. He was with me when I had pneumonia in Grade Three. He was there the night after I made my first friend in high school, and he was there the night after I failed my driving test. He was there my first night in a new country. He was there the night before I started this internship!
Maybe – maybe – I’ve been a tad harsh on the souvenir-obsessed. I’m clearly not immune to sentimental feeling towards objects. I guess souvenirs – and childhood stuffed toys – remind us of who we were. As the years accumulate, these objects become emblems of continuity and change.
My friend who bought the 54 postcards has stuck them up on her wall, and I must admit, they look great. The mural distils the laughs, views, meals, new friends, and mishaps that coloured each city we visited.
If you’ve been to the Busybird HQ, you’d know that it’s brimming with trinkets, knickknacks, and ceramic and stuffed toys. And from the handmade monkey puppets to the “intern badge” prank (don’t open the wooden box!), each object has a story about the intern or client who gifted it to Les and Kev.
I’ve taken this blog to a rather sappy place with this whole “objects-hold-memories” thrust. But I think the physical reminder that you existed as a younger version of yourself, or you went somewhere once, or you had someone who cared about you enough to buy or make you a personalised gift – these are nice supplements to memories, which can be fallible.
Where the dreaded Labubu fits into this message remains to be seen. My friend promised that the little beasts – no doubt raggedy and balding – would still be dangling from her bag when she was eighty.
But I’m not so sure.
Juliet Guthrie
Editing Intern
Give Yourself Some Grace
March 24, 2026
I started my internship here at the end of January and, until very recently, lunchtimes would consist of me chipping away at the mountain of work that was my thesis. I had only been given six months to conduct my research and write the 10,000-word report – the biggest project I’ve ever attempted.
As I was already juggling several competing priorities, I knew two things: I needed to put in consistent effort, and I needed to start immediately.
I would be lying if I said that I put in the same amount of effort every single day without fail for six months. Some days passed without me even looking at the document, and some days I could only spare an hour. The latter included every Wednesday — as work and study for my other classes took up the rest of my time, the lunch hour here was frequently the only time I could dedicate to my thesis on those days.
I’m a perfectionist to my core, and I saw these days as a failure. This mindset could have derailed my efforts entirely: all I could see was that I was unable to be consistently productive every single day, which was discouraging given the standards to which I was holding myself.
However, the broader picture shows a much more consistent effort. I didn’t consider that two or three unproductive days per week meant four or five days where I did make much-needed progress. I also didn’t consider the impact of just one hour per day: whilst not a lot of time individually, the consistent use of my lunch break on Wednesdays totalled 24 hours of work by the time I finally finished my thesis. It was the accumulation of these small but repeated efforts that ultimately got me across the line.
My point is if you’re writing a book or undertaking another big project, don’t pressure yourself to make a huge amount of progress every single day.
Making your standards more realistic – adjusting your expectations from writing two thousand words a day to two thousand words a week – might better facilitate long-term consistency.
I’ve found that missing one or two consecutive days with perfectionistic standards more readily led to inconsistency, overwhelm, and the abandonment of projects. Producing the same amount of work and effort every single day is challenging when you’re already juggling other priorities and whatever else life throws at you.
Give yourself a bit of grace; you’re not a machine.
Zoë Forbes
Editing Intern
The Writing Vulnerability
January 13, 2026The Writer’s Vulnerability
You know what a natural habitat for predators is?
The indie publishing landscape.
Yep. They’re after YOU.
The predators will prey on your inexperience, exploit your naivety, and profit from your dreams.
But you wouldn’t know any better, because predators aren’t vaudevillians. They don’t twirl handlebar moustaches and dress in black. They cloak their intentions with a smile, charm and seduce you with what you want to hear, and befriend you so that you couldn’t possibly imagine them ever wronging you.
They will, however, if given the chance.
And they exist in every facet of your writing journey.
A Quick Aside on Rights and Royalties
Self-publishing is a derivation of traditional publisher, so there’s a lot of the same terminology, although they’re applied differently.
Here are the two main things you should know about your writing when it comes to publishing …
Rights
When you sign with a traditional publisher, they gain the right to publish your book. That means you can’t take the book and publish it elsewhere or even self-publish it. If the publisher didn’t have the rights, you could do this.
Don’t like your existing publishing deal?
Well, go shop yourself around.
Uh uh.
The publisher owns the rights to your book. It’ll be for a set time, and sometimes it might be region-specific (e.g. they own the right to publish the book in Australia, but an international publisher could acquire the rights to publish it in their own country with no infringement), but it simply protects their investment in you.
Royalties
With traditional publishing, you don’t pay a cent to publish. The publisher’s taking a chance on you and backing you financially.
Since they’re taking all the risk, they’re entitled to the bulk of the return.
Your royalty will be around 10%. That sounds low, but it’s standard for a first-time author. In some cases, it might be a little lower. Sometimes, there might be a bonus built in, e.g. if you sell XX amount of books, then the royalty increases to 12%.
You might also get an advance (a small lump sum up front), or what’s called an advance against the royalties (which means the royalties have to pay off the advance before you see anymore royalties).
Indie Publishing
Blaise, who used to run Busybird Publishing before her unexpected passing in 2022, would say at talks and workshops that if you pay even just $1.00 for publishing, then you’re self-publishing.
If that’s the case, whoever you’ve retained should not make any claim on your rights or royalties. And just to emphasise: none. You’re paying them for the labour of producing your book – so here, you’re taking the entire financial risk. If that’s the case, why should they own any of the rights and any of the royalties?
The only exception as far as royalties go is if they’re selling your book through their own shopfront, then they should make a commission on those sales (but not any of the others).
I know personally of one self-publisher who charged an author almost ten thousand dollars to publish. She sold over three hundred books. That’s a big number in anybody’s vernacular.
And just how much did the self-publisher pay in royalties?
$19.00.
That’s it. $19.00 freaking dollars!
With those sorts of numbers in sales, that author should’ve made about $1,000. The author wasn’t aware that she’d signed away a bigger return because all the language in her contract was in legalese. She had no recourse. The publishing director of that business was a dick.
This is bullshit.
As an aside, the Australian Society of Authors runs a contract review service: https://www.authorslegal.org/home
A simpler way to check, though?
Ask if you’re signing away any rights or royalties.
If you are, negotiate, or walk away.
Just remember, you’re self-publishing – it’s a pay-to-play game. If one business isn’t giving you what you want, find another.
Better yet, find an Author Service Provider. While we have “Publishing” tacked onto out moniker, we’re more-so an Author Service Provider – providing authors the service to publish and requesting none of the rights or royalties.
You have all the power.
Exposure
As writers, we all want exposure.
We want readers.
We want our writing to reach as many people as possible.
We want to touch the world in some way.
While we should write for the passion of it, for the love of communicating our story, a natural byproduct is wanting to infiltrate as big an audience as possible.
We all have ego.
Unfortunately, there are people who try to capitalise on this need.
Unscrupulousness isn’t restricted just to the act of publishing.
Marketing
Recently, I was contacted by a random on LinkedIn, saying she loved my book and would be interested in reviewing it. I have six books, with one that was rereleased in early December of last year (so technically seven), so her question was very open-ended. I also knew what to expect from this exchange.
Which book? I wrote.
Miss Random never got back to me because she knew nothing about my work. If she’d listed a title, I might’ve asked her a question, like, What did you like about it? That would’ve exposed she knew nothing about me and my work. In fact, she hadn’t even gone as far as looking at my profile, or checking me out on Goodreads, and throwing an actual title at me.
The next solicitation did – well, sort of. I love your work at MidnightSun, she wrote me, and added she’d love to help marketing me.
MidnightSun published my Young Adult novel, This, in 2023. The way Miss Marketer phrased the question, it sounded as if I worked at MidnightSun, or that I’d published a litany of books there, and she would help build my profile.
I asked, What work?
It was the simplest of questions, but Miss Marketer hadn’t expected to be countered. She probably expected something like, Oh, wow! Thanks! That’s so flattering! And then she could unload a spiel. But without genuine insight into my relationship with MidnightSun, who I was, or what I wrote, she changed tack. She asked if I wanted help being marketed as a writer.
This one had at least looked at my LinkedIn profile (and LinkedIn reports when people do so), and based on what little information she could glean, she thought she could throw out bait to catch me.
You love my work?
You want to help give my book exposure?
You want to help me improve sales?
Oh yeah! Where do I sign up?
The Unsolicited Solicitation
Such solicitations are common. I hear from authors who’ve been approached via email or social media with similar offers. These people talk a good game. They know just enough to make you think they’re genuine. And, of course, we want fame, fortune, and the dream we’ll be THE NEXT BIG THING, don’t we? So, we invest out of ego, rather than commonsense.
Here’s a simple reality: legitimate publicists, book reviewers, marketers, et al., usually don’t cold call.
If somebody approaches you like this, question them. If they’re legit, they should have no problem answering you.
I had one person say she could generate reviews for me. I asked to see samples of her work. She gave me the names of a couple of authors she’d worked with. I checked out their books: they each had about five reviews on Goodreads and on Amazon – five reviews. Hardly a pendulum swinger.
These things regularly happen on social media. I’ve had numerous approaches on Instagram. I might post a picture of one of my books, or a link to a blog post. Then somebody will either comment, “Share it on [INSERT ACCOUNT NAME]”, or they’ll message and ask if I want to share it on their account, as they have XX followers who’ll see it. It only costs you $XX.
In one case, somebody wanted to feature my book on their page because it would give me BIG-TIME EXPOSURE. I knew exactly what I’d be getting but decided to do a little investigating anyway, so headed over to their account.
Their page was a garish matrix of images that enjoyed no synergy, although posts did feature books with over twenty-thousand likes. I chose three at random, found their authors on Instagram, and messaged them, asking about their experiences.
The first person responded immediately. She said because it was inexpensive ($50.00 US) she thought she’d give it a try. The account then put up a post of her book. She said when she first checked, the book had about five likes. Then, she stepped away from her computer, and when she checked again about twenty minutes later, her book suddenly had over 20,000 likes.
Minutes later, one of the other people I messaged responded with a similar experience.
This is not an uncommon story.
The Illusion of Quantity
I’d experimented with something similar on Instagram about four years earlier, although instead of featuring one of my books, the person soliciting me said they could increase my followers. Because it was inexpensive and I’d just entered this job and wanted to familiarize myself with what our authors might face, I thought I’d give it a try.
That evening, I was sitting at my computer, writing; sometimes, I prop up my phone against the computer stand. On this occasion, it dinged, showing somebody had followed me on Instagram. Then people were following me in such rapid succession that my phone couldn’t get a full ding out. Notifications were flickering – one wouldn’t have time to fully appear before the next one replaced it.
Welcome to the world of bots.
Have you heard of the Dead Internet Theory? That the bulk of interaction online is driven by bots? When you see stuff like this, it’s hard not to give that theory some credence.
Now, I’m sure there’s somebody who thinks the flip side of this is that if you have numbers like this following you or liking your book on some page, then it creates the illusion of popularity, which also implies there’s a demand for that person or product.
Yep. Maybe.
It’s no different to going to a bookstore and seeing a pyramid of some author’s books. If the bookstore’s stocking the title in those sorts of numbers, then it must be because they expect to sell them all, which means there must be a demand. So, even if we don’t know anything about the book and/or the author, we’ve already inferred a narrative.
But let’s break down that Instagram account: if the prevalence of likes come from bots, then just how much traffic is actually moving through that account?
And if there’s little traffic moving through that account, then how much exposure is your book truly getting?
Are There No Genuine Solicitations?
Let me go back to the guy who offered to increase my followers: he was, at least, honest. He didn’t pretend he knew me, he didn’t pretend he knew any of my work. He was proposing a transaction – money for followers.
In retrospect, I should’ve asked him if those followers would be real people or bots. Would that have changed my mind if he’d admitted they were going to be bots? Probably not, because I still wanted to see how it worked. But it’s never something I’d employ on a grand scale.
I’ve had similar approaches from reviewers making similar offers – for XX dollars (usually around $50.00 US) they would review my book. They’re not pretending to know of me, or know of my work. So at least their solicitations are minus any sort of pretence.
Competitions
Not all these scammers come to you, though.
There are tons of writing competitions out there that act like sirens lulling sailors to their doom. You might stumble upon them through a Google search, or you’ll see a social media ad, or someone you know or know of might’ve entered previously and come away with a win or a placement. So, hey, why not give it ago?
Here’s the most brutal reality: most of these competitions aren’t going to increase book sales. Now, if that’s the case, what’s your expectation on the return? Because you do have an expectation.
This is important to identify, because entering any competition should have a return that’s going to benefit you.
Check out what the prize money is. If it’s not about the prize money and about exposure (e.g. introductions to literary agents; some screenwriting comps promise exposure to producers, directors, and managers), then research whether that exposure is valid, and just how much it might help you and your writing.
Too many of these competitions mask themselves in faux prestige but only return stickers or certificates to say you’re a winner or a finalist. You don’t think about that, though. You’re so happy with the acknowledgement, that you don’t examine that a sticker or certificate isn’t exactly that valuable a prize, and it’s certainly not going to help you.
Others compel continued investment(s), although they’re not entirely upfront about that. There’ll be an entry fee. Check. That’s legitimate (even though some comps are free). But, later on, they’ll invite you to a glamorous reception where the winners are announced – it’s just $199 per ticket. You can get a trophy commemorating your victory or placement – that’s just another $499.
Etc.
These places aren’t outright scams, because they do what they promise, but the subtext is that their model is a great revenue generator for themselves, and it really doesn’t do much for you, other than to convince you that your investment was worth it and you have some temporary bragging rights that are as valuable as fool’s gold.
Be Vigilant
Most of us write for the love of writing – because we have something we want to share. I wouldn’t have to explain to anybody reading this how an idea will pop into our heads, gain traction, grow, and then demand to be heard.
So, we begin the process of getting it down on the page.
That journey itself should be its own reward.
But we do live in a pragmatic world, and the truth is that we’d all like to sell some books. It’s not the motivator as to why we write, but it would be a great by-product of the venture.
And, you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The late, great Bryce Courtenay said a book’s not a book until somebody reads it, and obviously we want our work read by the biggest readership possible.
Just be aware that there’s the potential for missteps in your journey. You’re not expected to be able to identify every potential peril.
I only recognize them (or recognize the potential) because I’ve been around this industry for so long, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. I’ve known or known of people who’ve operated like this, and I’ve known authors who’ve suffered, so it always pisses me off when these things occur to good people.
Be vigilant.
If you’re unsure about anything, feel free to drop us an email.