To be honest, this year started well enough but deteriorated rapidly.

I lost my beloved home in the Longwood bushfire in January. And all the things in it meant the world to me, many many books among them. I’ll write more about that one day, when I’m ready, but it hit pretty hard.

So I’m sorry for the silence on here but it’s been a bit of a time.

I didn’t feel much like writing for months, which was awkward, because I had promised several manuscripts would be finished. But I did it anyway, sort of. Over a year ago, I started reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which I know many people find useful and even life-changing. I wouldn’t go that far, and only started it as a test before a Creativity retreat I run each year. But one of Cameron’s central recommendations is Morning Pages – three pages, written long-hand, every morning before you do anything else.

As I wake up early, it’s perfect for me and also keeps me out of mischief and not waking up anyone else. I make a cup of tea, sit down, and start scribbling. It’s not like a journal, though sometimes it is. Other times it’s more like a travel narrative. More often what I write are fiction fragments: half a scene, or scraps of action, or simply problem-solving – working through logic or plot or structure. Each weekend, I review what I’ve written and make sure any new ideas, scenes or fragments, or everyday things to do are recorded. I’m now up to week 62 and so far I’ve only missed one day – on a long-haul flight where I crossed the dateline in mid-air and the day vanished.

For months after the fire, I didn’t feel like writing and my mind couldn’t settle for long hours at the desk, but I did the minimum: my Morning Pages, and Shut Up and Write twice a week with my writing mates. I focused on revision, which I found I could manage, so I finally completed work on my YA bushrangers book, The Adventures of Captain Lightning.

Instead of writing, I threw myself into making – making bread, making chutney, making cheese, and sorting out the suburban garden I’d neglected for so long while recovering from injuries in both hands. Re-framing weeding out vast piles of Kikuyu grass as a creative pursuit makes it a lot less tedious (or so I tell myself). I did a bit of teaching and ran another fun writers’ retreat.

But in recent days, I’ve spent many hours typing up notes from Morning Pages written months ago, which I hadn’t done since the fire. These are notes I’d scribbled on planes, on Waiheke, in Melbourne as winter set in, and more recently in Greece. Thousands of new words for the next Miss Bingley novel, corrections and notes for Captain Lightning and now its possible sequel, and more short science fiction. So I was writing, all that time, three pages a day, in spite of myself and my reluctant brain.

And now I’m writing to you from Rhodes old town, in Greece, in a little guest house lodged right under the old city walls, built by the Knights of St John centuries ago. I’ve spent blissful days in Athens, explored the ancient Agora and archaeological sites on Kos, and then ten days on the holy island of Patmos, enjoying someone else’s writing retreat.

The curse of this year is lifting, I hope.

At the very least, it’s sunny, the world is full of fried feta, and I’m surrounded by old stones and cobbled lanes.

There are boats, and castles, and tiny domed churches.

And there are early mornings full of words.