Meet Michele Nugent, writer

Michele Nugent is a Writing the Dream contributor. She is a former newspaper journalist and editor with 30 years’ experience, a passionate communicator and listener, and a consumer and teller of stories. She now works as Communications Coordinator of a large West Australian not-for-profit care group. Michele has been a regular blogger for several years, broaching subjects as vast as the challenges of being thrust into the solo world of parenting teenage daughters, her distaste for personalised number plates and the travesty of the cosmetic industry’s vacuous endeavours to guilt women into giving their vaginas the Mona Lisa smile treatment. A lover of stories since birth and a reader of them since before kindy, she began writing as a youngster, and continues to successfully make a living from it. In her snatches of spare time, Michele is writing a coming-of-age novel for adults young and old.

What are you working on now? Describe it in 15-20 words or less.

Two newsletters at work. At home, a heartrending woman’s story of adoption and loss.

Where did your desire to write come from?

Stories welling up inside me, and me having to get them out to share with others.

What do you think about the phrase ‘write what you know’?

I think that is what enables authentic writing. If we don’t know about something we research from all perspectives until we do, so that we can write authentically.

What’s the hardest thing about writing?

Remembering brilliant ideas to transfer onto the page. And being disciplined about scheduling it into the day.

What would you like your Facebook Page status to say in 2018?

Published author.

What inspires you in life?

People. Family. Friends. Strangers. The endless rich struggle of the human condition.

What is your favourite quote?

“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott.

What is the best book-to-movie you’ve ever seen, and why? And the worst?

Best: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J K Rowling.

Worst: I tend to either read the book, or see the movie. Not both. It’s the story I’m attracted to, not always the method by which it’s conveyed.

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

My daughter, mispronouncing Michael Buble – Michael Blayblay. She’s 16. Cracked us up in the chocolate aisle of the supermarket.

In a letter to your 16-year-old self, what advice would you give?

Keep being an over-confident, arsy little pest. It will pay off. Your ‘big fish in a small town’ over-confidence will subside, and the real more understated you will surface in time. Keep reading books as if they are sustenance and never stop writing, and thinking in paragraphs and sentences when you aren’t writing – it’s who you are. I love you. From, me. XXXXX