Catherine Deveny - Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing

Catherine is one of the most extraordinarily motivating writing-champions in the world. Use Your Words will act like a rocket in your back-pocket, as it does in mine.

CLARE BOWDITCH, MUSICIAN AND RADIO PRESENTER

This book is brilliant. I wish Id read it decades ago. Use Your Words is well-written, honest, heartfelt and genuinely motivating.

MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE, WRITER AND SLAM POET

Catherine Deveny uses all words brilliantly but she uses swear words like an old master. Thats one reason why shes so much fun to read.

JANE CARO, WRITER AND SOCIAL COMMENTATOR

If youve always wanted to write seriously, in Use Your Words Deveny provides the kick-up-the-arse youve been gagging for.

BENJAMIN LAW, AUTHOR AND COLUMNIST

With a brilliant mix of insight, humour, candour and swearing Catherine Deveny wrestles to the ground a problem as old as the book itself. If youre having trouble using your words, simply read hers.

LOUISE FOX, ACTOR, WRITER AND DIRECTOR

Catherine Devenys words on writing are wise, witty and wonderfully inspiring for writers of any genre or style. Every writers desk should have one.

JACQUELIN PERSKE, WRITER AND PRODUCER

Knocks down every barrier to writing. Inspirational, practical and entertaining in equal parts. Reading this will make you want to write.

STEVE ELLEN, PSYCHIATRIST AND AUTHOR

Use Your Words is a fresh and powerful inspiration to and for anyone who wishes to write, with all the hints, tips and tricks that have made Devs Gunnas Masterclasses so successful. That she manages to deliver it all in her frank, arresting and yet ever-loveable style is the proof she really does know what shes talking about.

VAN BADHAM, WRITER AND SOCIAL COMMENTATOR

Quite simply, the best book about writing youll ever read. A defiant middle finger to pedants and gatekeepers everywhere, you wont find a thing about split infinitives or other rubbish rules. Just damn good advice, from someone whos actually done it and rather brilliantly at that. A few chapters in, and youll be bursting to write.

MICHAEL LALLO, JOURNALIST, THE AGE

Use Your Words lingers like one of those rare, powerful conversations with a close friend, where the mental dust settles and you finish feeling energised, confident, assured and, best of all, smiling. It bristles with a care and wisdom so elemental that it transcends advice on writing and becomes a reminder of what makes a happy life.

DANIEL BURT, WRITER AND COMEDIAN

Published by Black Inc.,

an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

www.blackincbooks.com

Copyright Catherine Deveny 2016

Catherine Deveny asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material in this book. However, where an omission has occurred, the publisher will gladly include acknowledgement in any future edition.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Deveny, Catherine, 1968 author.

Use your words : a myth-busting, no-fear approach to writing / Catherine Deveny.

9781863958349 (paperback)

9781925203974 (ebook)

Authorship.

Creative writing.

808.02

Cover design by Peter Long

Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

Text on pages 523 reproduced courtesy of David Cain of raptitude.com.

For my son Dom, hero of his own novel.

Encouragement, at its heart, represents an attempt to make others feel that they have the strength, wisdom, courage, and ability to solve their problems themselves: it aims not to provide specific solutions but to make others believe that they can find those solutions on their own. With encouragement we express our belief in the indefatigable power of the human spirit to make what appears to be impossible possible, all in the hopes of awakening the same belief in those were trying to encourage.

ALEX LICKERMAN, THE UNDEFEATED MIND: ON THE SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTING AN INDESTRUCTIBLE SELF