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The Toxic Tendency
July 8, 2025Procrastination.
My worst and constant companion.
We coexist. Living in a toxic, symbiotic relationship I can’t escape from.
… but do I even want to?
Perhaps, the hug of procrastination feels safe, even if his crushing grip hurts me in the end. It’s possible, stepping into unknown tasks feels riskier than the burn of delaying them. Or maybe, it’s the deep-seated fear of never being good enough that sends me running back to his suffocating arms.
The truth is: it’s a mix of all three.
It’s hard to call yourself a writer when you shy away from your Word doc and keyboard at any given chance. It’s hard to say you’re dedicated to your art when he’s always there, tossing up enticing distractions that send me straying from the unfinished page and blinking cursor.
And It works. He never fails to stop me from fulfilling the one thing I’m meant to do.
Write.
It’s ironic, to love a thing so much, and yet find it impossible to begin. And the question I end up thinking is, how can he possibly spoil something that I choose to do?
That answer is easy.
Fear.
Fear of judgement. Of failure. Of putting myself out there and getting turned away.
It’s those choking fears that make procrastination like me so much. He can smell the doubt and uncertainty clutched close to my heart and he feeds off it.
Without the fear, procrastination would starve, and I’d be rid of my freeloader forever.
Which brings me to my next questions. How? How do I stop my fear? And how do I stop him?
And what I’ve discovered is this.
I can’t.
No matter how good I get, no matter how many stories I produce, the fear of never succeeding, never amounting to anything, is always there.
Showing your work to someone is like baring a little piece of your soul. Hoping they won’t look at it, scoff, and pound it into the ground.
And that’s where procrastination makes himself present. He knows trying can lead to rejection, to pain, to failure. And with every degrading whisper, he convinces me not to keep going. And sometimes…
I let him.
He’s only trying to protect me after all.
But at what cost?
The key to getting better is to not let my fears stop me. No matter what could go wrong, no matter if no one likes my work. You’ll never know what could have been if you never tried. And I’m so close to breaking through the mental barrier that I’m not enough.
But he’s still there.
Awaiting me with open arms.
Hoping I’ll run back to him like I always do.
I hear his voice in my head telling me, You’re no good. You’ll be a failure. Stop trying.
And too many times I give in, sustaining him with belief I am inadequate. Fueling him with my insecurity.
So where does that leave me? A writer who doesn’t write. A storyteller with no stories. Do I continue to exist stagnantly? Never moving towards my goals or achieving my dreams?
That’s not what I want.
What I want is to write.
Because I love it. And that’s what should matter.
As for the rest of it. The fear, the doubt, the worry…
Him.
It’s all noise. What matters is my love of creating. And I don’t want to stop. Not for anything. Especially not for him.
So maybe I can’t rid myself of my fears entirely, but pushing through them to continue moving forward is a good start. And the more I do it, the less procrastination will hinder my progress.
Procrastination.
My brain’s way of avoiding pain.
But you don’t get anywhere without a little suffering.
And maybe acceptance is the first step to getting rid of him for good.
Anais
Work experience
Work Experience
May 27, 2025
Doing my Year 10 work experience at Busybird has inspired me more than I could have hoped. With 80s music playing constantly in the background, it makes the atmosphere even more homely and inviting, although much to the horror of Les, I only got the ABBA songs correct.
After spending the whole morning of my first day stressing about everything possible going wrong, the moment I stepped through the bright orange doors, the first thing that greeted me was Oscar the labrador waiting for attention, and the robot vacuum beeping loudly because it was stuck on the neon orange carpet in front of bright blue walls with shelves stacked with piles of books. Talk about colourfully chaotic.
Before I came to Busybird, I was just a high school student that was guessing how to do pretty much everything in her book and just hoping for the best. Now, I’ve learnt many things that I know will help me to become more successful and grow as a writer. I now know how to edit properly, as well as the sheer amount of time it takes to go through every page in detail and fix every little mistake I’ve made as I’ve poured words onto a page in a hurry of ideas without thinking about how they sounded.
When you’re fifteen and your dream is to be an author, most people don’t have much faith in you. They tell you to ‘find a better paying career’ or ‘just pursue it as a hobby on the side, but to find a real job that will actually get you somewhere in life.’ (No, Dad, I still don’t want to be a doctor.)
Most people don’t understand that not everything is about how much something pays, but it’s about doing something that matters and makes you feel fulfilled at the end of the day. Because yes, I could have a job that has security and pays well, but I’d always feel a lingering sense of regret about choosing something safe over doing something that I’ve known I’ve wanted to do since I was thirteen and wrote the first draft of my book in a black binder with a torch and a Harry Potter pen in the middle of the night.
Sure, sometimes staring at a blank page waiting for the words to come to you can be overwhelming, but when you look back on your manuscript once it’s done, you’ll be thinking, I wrote this. I actually wrote this. And that will be worth the time, the effort, the fighting with yourself not to give up for something easier. Because even though sometimes it can feel impossible to be able to put all these words in your mind onto the page and make them sound good, you’ll find yourself glad you took the leap when you get to type out the last words and look at the worlds you’ve built from your imagination.
As someone who’s always been obsessed with reading, I suppose it’s really no surprise that I ended up desperately dreaming of being an author. I’ve also learnt the hard way how much effort it takes to get yourself noticed in a world where there’s book after book to choose from, and sometimes nothing feels unique anymore, like all your ideas have already been used up by other people. So you need to do it better.
That’s why you need to keep going, why you can’t give up. Because one day in my dreams, someone may be walking through a bookstore, browsing shelf after shelf, and maybe, just maybe, my book will be the one they choose to take home, and it will change their life as much as writing it did mine.
And then it will have all been worth it.
Georgia Milner
Year 10 Work Experience 2025
My Week at Busybird
May 16, 2025Staring at a blank page, writing a blog about … anything?
At first, I was expecting Busybird to be a normal publishing business, very formal, very bland.
When I walked in, those assumptions melted. It was messy, but it was also unique. The decorations hanging up high, the dog, Oscar, greeting my arrival with a few licks and growls. I quickly learnt the names of everyone, and some of the interns present.
My experience here at Busybird so far has been a lovely one.
The environment is nice, friendly and inviting, often welcomed in by interns or Oscar. I was immediately caught off-guard by the sheer amount of stuff lying around. From the stage at the back of the building, and the fidget toys, Rubik’s cubes, to all the photographs and books, and then back to all the old cameras on the shelf. I didn’t think it was possible to have this much stuff in one place, but that’s mainly why I love it.
Busybird Publishing proved to be an easy challenge to get used to, (aside from Les asking me, “Who sings this song?” which I got used to quickly, maybe because he asked me so many times). I fit right in, mainly because I shared similar interests with Les, or had a good conversation with Kev; I could express my opinion on a certain topic.
Of course, then there’s the blasted kettle in the kitchen. I’m nearly positive that thing is possessed by a demon that stops me from making a tea. Why does the kettle have four modes? Why do all the modes have every single type of tea except for the one I want to make? WHY HAS IT GOT A SEPARATE BOIL BUTTON?? It drove me crazy for a good six minutes or so until I realised I just had to click the power button. Simple mistake, but I wasn’t satisfied.
My tasks were pretty simple. “Edit this” or “proofread that” and “social media post this”. I quite enjoyed them, even when certain things gave me five trillion headaches consecutively. It was a challenge, and I liked the work I’d been assigned.
Meeting all the interns was fun, especially since there was so many. They were all friendly and hospitable, and it was great to work alongside them.
So, as I said before, a lovely experience, as well as getting fired every single day of the week for spilling a little tea, a joke which Les has been dragging ALL week.
I give my thanks to Les and Kev, and of course Oscar the dog, for the opportunity to work here.
Jaxon
Work experience student, May 2025.
Get Digging
March 18, 2025
Too many writers sit around waiting for inspiration to fuel them through the course of their writing.
It just won’t happen.
Inspiration is such a small part of the writing process. The rest is hard work.
The reason so many writers fall away from their projects isn’t because they’re no longer inspired – or they’re not receiving a series of inspirations, like a string of firecrackers detonating one after another – but because they just don’t know their project well enough.
Regardless of your writing methodology, before you sit down to commit to the act of writing, you need to know what you’re writing about. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to know every word and idea. Some things will develop organically. But you need to have an intimate familiarity with your content.
If you’re writing a novel, you need to know your world and how it functions. If it’s a contemporary story, jot down all the characters and locations you think you’ll use. Give them brief descriptions and histories. You’ll find this now begins to inform your narrative and contributes to shaping the plotting. If it’s an otherworldly story, you need to know how that place functions.
If it’s an autobiography, a biography, or history of some sort, jot down all the events you’ll cover in a chronology. Determine what the story’s going to be. It’s not just a recount of events. It might be about a triumph over illness, or building a business, or migrating and establishing yourself in a new country. These are just examples, but they demonstrate the story that’ll intertwine through that chronology and give form to the structure.
If it’s a nonfiction book that’s about some sort of methodology – e.g. how to reinvent your life – bullet-point all the things you’ll cover. Look at those bullets. How many of them are main topics? How many of them should be subjunctive of the mains? For example, I might jot down, “meditation”, “breathing exercises”, “self-care”, and “walking”, and then realise instead of having four separate chapters, I should have one chapter called “Self-care”, and put “meditation”, “breathing exercises”, and “walking” as things I’ll cover in that chapter.
If you sit around hoping you can improvise it all the way, and/or that inspiration will continue to inspire, you’ll be waiting around a long time, and grow discouraged.
Your idea is a clue to a treasure you find sitting on the surface of the earth. You’ll have to do some digging to find the rest.
So get digging.
The Bookstore Fiction
March 11, 2025One of the things we hear most from authors is this question: “How do I get my book in bookstores?”
Most indie bookstores are happy to talk directly with authors.
Chains tend to work with distributors – a distributor is a business whose sole purpose for existing is to try get books in bookstores. However, they’re not subcontractors. You don’t hire them the way you’d hire a plumber. The distributor will judge the merit of whether they believe they can get your book in bookstores. They’ll also need ready stock, which means you need a substantial print run for them to distribute.
Also, bookstores aren’t Facebook marketplace. They’re not happy to sell anything. They’ll also judge whether they feel they can sell a book. This might vary from store to store. For example, you’ve written a werewolf horror. Northland QBD might take ten because they sell a lot of horror, but Plenty Valley QBD might decline because that’s not something they sell much in their area.
As an aside, bookstores tend to work on consignment. That means you get paid when they sell the book. If they haven’t sold the books after an agreed amount of time, the books are returned to you. So if you printed 500 books in anticipation of sales, and they only sold 150, you get the 350 books back.
This is a quick recount of the process, because getting books in bookstores isn’t as easy as many think.
There’s also a greater reality at work here, too.
Just because your book is in a bookstore doesn’t mean it’s going to sell in big numbers.
Lots of authors have this misconception – all it takes to get a bestseller is getting your book in a bookstore. That’s it. Their job as an author is done.
Let’s break this down logically.
Here’s the first question to answer: have you been in a bookstore?
Second question: just how many books are in a bookstore? Hundreds? Thousands?
Who gets the prime real estate? Let’s say we’re talking fiction. The books that get the front-and-centre treatment are authors who have a readership and could sell their laundry lists. That means you’ll see Stephen King, Lee Child, Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty, etc.
If you don’t have a track record of sales, why would a bookstore sit your book among that esteemed company? You’re taking up room that an author with a good sales record could occupy.
Likelier, you’re going to be lost in the masses among the new releases on some table, or filed spine-out, alphabetically.
Now why are readers, en masse, going to randomly file into a bookstore, locate your book like they’re on an Easter Egg hunt, and buy it in meaningful numbers?
You’ll sell some. That’s likely.
But bookstores are filled with books, many of them better placed than yours. Are you expecting by some magic that consumers will ignore everybody else’s and migrate exclusively to yours? Why? Because you have a great book? Do you know how many authors think this?
I’m different, you think. You would be surprised just how many authors believe this. It’s great to have confidence, but you’re not alone, and wish fulfillment gets you nowhere.
Now let’s look at the online retailer: going to Amazon and typing in “horror novel”, I get fifty-five hits. First is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. At least in a bookstore, he’d be filed in some classic section. Here, he’s competing directly with you. Next comes John Langan’s The Fisherman, Nick Cutter’s The Troop (with the byline of “TikTok’s favorite horror novel”), a deluxe hardcover version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and then E.B. Hudspeth’s The Resurrectionist.
Scrolling down, I’m already exhausted.
Now Amazon’s search hits are cultivated to my browsing habits, but this will be largely the same return for most people.
Your book is a grain of sand on the beach.
So is this whole blog aimed at disheartening you?
No.
But it is designed to awaken you to the reality that having your book in a physical or online bookstore won’t automatically result in huge sales. I’m sure somewhere in the world, some random has gotten a good return, but this would be the exception, not the rule.
The truth is you have to create awareness for your book, and yourself as an author, and connect with readers. If you can do that, if you can create a buzz around yourself and your work, then consumers will go find your book, wherever it is.
If bookstores are getting inquiries from people asking for your book, they’ll order copies in. They want that business, after all.
But the truth is nobody ever finds something they’re not looking for.