Work commitments meant a move to Darwin for 12 months in 1996. During this time I was on maternity leave and as I waited impatiently for the baby I decided to take a correspondence course in Freelance Journalism. My first article was published by Pregnancy Magazine in that year.
I did intend to keep writing but Paddy Johnson put an end to that after his birth in March 1997.
Before I knew it, I was back in Sydney teaching full-time and I didn’t catch the writing bug again until 2005.

In that year I sent off my first manuscript Something More to two publishers. Both rejected it but one said if I wanted to revamp it they would look at it again. Talk about a golden ticket out of the slush pile? Of course I revamped it - five times, actually. It’s now a completely different story in many ways and will finally be released by Allen & Unwin in April 2009 as #11 in their popular new Girlfriend Fiction series.

Naturally many months passed in between sending new versions of the ms off and hearing back from the publisher, so I used the waiting time to try some other types of writing. I sent off two stories to the US Chicken Soup for the Soul series and had both accepted. I entered a short story writing competition and received a Commended certificate and I entered a picture book writing competition and was awarded ‘Runner Up’.

In 2006 that picture book, Noah’s Garden was contracted by Walker Books Australia and is due for release in the next eighteen months.

In 2007 I decided to submit to the Education Press. Luckily I was successful and have now contributed to ten titles as well as having had a junior fiction novel
C U L8ter released by Pearson Education in August 2007.

My first non-fiction book Let’s Get Physical was released by Pearson Education in March 2008 and the second, Go For It will be released in August 2008.

I wrote my second YA novel Boofheads in 2007 and it will be released by Walker Books Australia on September 1. 2008.

Publishing is funny like that. Often the first thing published is the last thing written.

Currently I am working on my third Y/A novel and several other projects, always keeping in mind that patience is everything in this game.

So if you want to write follow these three golden rules:

#1 Bum in seat
#2 Fingers on keyboard
#3 Type

It doesn’t have to be any harder than that.

Good luck.

Mo Johnson