Pen Hanley

Category: Books

  • Creativity and Time Management

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    I’m working on a commissioned book (more on that another time), I have a four day a week writing job already plus I go routinely to the library and borrow the books I’ve reserved and try to find the time to read them before their due date. Some of the books relate to the commissioned…

  • Annie March’s wise words

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    My favourite newspaper is The Guardian Weekly. I tried googling Annie March, a woman after my own heart who writes the most wonderful letters sometimes, published in their Reply section. Google suggested Linked In but the illogical, Catch-22 nature of Linked In made it impossible to get her email address. (If I want to contact…

  • Adelaide and a new Barbara Vine

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    After a few days of Conference early mornings and late nights, organising interviews for rural health experts and liaising with them and journalists, I realised yet again how much I love the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission to you lovely people from Canada, the UK and the US who discourse with me about my blogs). Their…

  • Bush Nurses

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    This is an instance of my literary and professional worlds meeting, which is wonderful! Penguin books published a chapter of mine in their recent book, Bush Nurses. So I’m pasting a word from the Editor: attached is a link to Bush Nurses on the Penguin site http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781921901393/bush-nurses

  • Professional and literary worlds

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    Thank you for your interest in my blog, and yours are really interesting – work has been too busy to respond properly but after the Conference is over, I will. Huge Conference is on now – more than 1,000 delegates. So, I am in beautiful Adelaide in the Media Room of the biggest venue (Adelaide…

  • On sitting, standing, walking, and Tim Parks

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    We sit too much, those of us who write for a living. Or use the computer for a living. Hmmm, that’s a lot of us. Some health writers are even suggesting that we stand at our desks. But long ago I read that the best thing we can do for our legs is walk with…

  • Words Simenon would never use

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    Siri Hustvedt, in the last paragraph of her Author Note in Living, Thinking, Looking begins the paragraph with “Every book is for someone”. True. And of course every blog is for someone. There are many contemporary words I dislike. But blog is one I like. A combination of Biography and Log. And it, like a…

  • “Busy-ness”: an update on writing and living

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    I haven’t updated this for a long time because of much busy-ness: Chaucer wrote, “Great peace is to be found in little busy-ness”. He was correct. But who is not too busy these days? So sometimes I take a Sunday off and do nothing. (Sundays will be my time for blogging from now on.) Of…

  • Some favourite books I’ve read recently

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    Non-fiction By Hook or By Crook David Crystal.  Harper-Collins, 2007 Anything by David Crystal is wonderful – he writes erudite and funny books about the English language. This one has entertaining snippets such as the following. A best words competition in The Sunday Times in 1980 came up with: melody and velvet (tied in first…

  • Who am I?

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    For me, books and writing come first, followed closely by the cinema. I’ve always been in love with words. I combined both of these passions by being a film critic for a few years, writing for various local arts magazines and reviewing films on 2XX and local ABC radio stations. I even went to the…