I am Australian, and I live in rural Victoria. I have moved around a lot, from living outside the tiny town of Newry, population 500 or so, to living in Sydney. I have worked in many places, managing to secure, or should that be unsecure, many temporary positions or positions that were relocated or made redundant.
Along the way, I studied a lot. I like to learn stuff. It started with an Economics Degree straight out of high school. It took four years instead of three. I struggled with computer accountancy and using card-reading computers. I was also having too much of a good time. I was involved in student theatre and winning scavenger hunt teams, and I was elected to the SRC (Student Representative Council). I wrote sketches for comedy cabarets, and a friend and I had great fun writing a very irreverent magazine for a college we resided in.
It wasn’t until a decade or so later that I started writing a novel, I’ll Just Watch it on YouTube, when living in Brisbane and working as a storeman. A virus then went through my workplace, leaving me with an enduring illness, ulcerative colitis. It made work impossible, so I evacuated to live with my parents. While convalescing, I completed a diploma in professional writing and editing. I also finished the first draft of the novel.
I completed an online Master of Creative Writing while working part-time at the ATO. As part of my master’s, I started writing a second novel, Stalking Tigers.
After many changes of medication, my ulcerative colitis was somewhat controlled. But my father was diagnosed with dementia, so I decided to stick around at home and help my mother look after him.
2010 was a momentous year for me, as my father finally sadly succumbed to dementia. I also got my first paying job as a writer. I wrote articles for the Divine website—a website for people with disabilities written by people with disabilities. I wrote for them for six years until a change of government had the Victorian Department of Health close the site.
While writing for Divine, I completed National Novel Writing Month three times: in 2011, when I started writing Jack Logan: Astronaut. In 2012, I finished off the first draft of Jack Logan. I then missed a year before doing it again in 2014, where I continued Branded after writing the first two chapters during my master’s.
Diabetes and asthma added to my health issues. I like to think that diabetes is hereditary, as my mother has it, and the brother of my father also had it. When I was diagnosed, I had been a bit of a fitness fanatic for years, as I swam three kilometres three times a week and completed weight training three times a week. I also did a set of exercises every day. It also seems that people who have ulcerative colitis are susceptible to other inflammatory illnesses.
After Divine finished, I enrolled in an online BA in Internet Communications. It involved learning all about the web, including web design. I also completed a few writing electives.
I then started my own business, Wangaratta Website Design Services, right on the eve of COVID-19. I will forever wonder how my business would have thrived if COVID-19 had not struck. Contrary to what the media said about all businesses heading online during COVID-19, I think many businesses were not confident spending their dwindling finances on web designers.
To supplement my income from my business, I looked for other work and started my next paid writing job as a contract writer at North East Media. But then I got COVID and debilitating long-covid for seven months. My contract was not extended. I just wanted to get well again.
This leads me to November 2023, when I once again completed NaNoWriMo and started writing the sequel to Branded. I finished it in June this year. I have now returned to redraft the original book in that two-book series.
Some books have affected how I view the world and my place in it. Two of those books are 1984 by George Orwell and Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen Donaldson. I wrote an essay about their influence on me and my writing for a BA in Internet Communications.
© Copyright Graham Clements 2024
2 Responses
Great site Graham. Nice to see the different aspects of your work together.
Thanks. Some of the sections could easily have gone on other pages, so I think it fits together well. I am trying to create a one-stop shop for science fiction fans, potential employers and other writers.