Creative Momentum with Meg

Season 2: The Home Season
The second season of Creative Momentum with Meg, The Home Season, features interviews with Australian writers and artists where I explore how and why people do their creative work.
Episode 8: Toni Jordan
Toni Jordan is the author of several much-loved novels including Addition, Tenderfoot, and The Fragments, and was my first writing teacher at RMIT. In this conversation, Toni is as funny, sharp and generous as you would hope.
Toni is a devoted pantser who runs her writing life with military precision. Word counts on whiteboards. Breakfasts and lunches made on Sunday night. A strict desk-by-11 rule. And a story about sitting at her desk until 4 in the morning to prove to her unconscious mind that she meant business, which she only had to do once.
She talks about matching what she reads to the tense and point of view of what she is writing, why writer’s block is often just losing the rhythm of a sentence, and the two books she recommends every writer keep on their desk. One you think is a masterpiece. One you think is terrible. And somewhere in between those two is you.
Her advice for anyone at an early stage or a wobbly moment is simple and beautiful: fall in love with the process. The rest takes care of itself.
Connect with Toni Jordan
Instagram
Website
Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews
A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.


Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

Season 2: The Home Season
The second season of Creative Momentum with Meg, The Home Season, features interviews with Australian writers and artists where I explore how and why people do their creative work.
Episode 7: Stacey McCall, Painter
Stacey McCall studied gold and silversmithing at RMIT, raised five daughters, and somewhere in between all of that, discovered that the things sitting around her house were the most meaningful subject matter she could paint.
These days she works full-time from a tiny studio in her backyard, shows regularly with Boom Gallery in Geelong and Michael Reid Galleries, and is about to head to London and Berlin, where she has an exhibition opening.
In this conversation, Stacey talks about the rituals that get her into flow each morning, the bridge painting that connects one body of work to the next, and what four weeks in a Montmartre Airbnb with a fellow painter gave her that a regular studio day simply cannot. She talks about knitting as thinking time, afternoon naps as creative problem solving, and why she always goes back to the sketchbook when confidence runs low.
And she shares something that will resonate with anyone whose creative life has had to wait: she didn’t really start until her youngest started school. And then she found her thing.
Connect with Stacey McCall
Instagram
Website
The Bridge Letters: letters between artists Stacey and Elizabeth Barnett
Galleries & exhibitions
Michael Reid Berlin exhibition (14 May to 6 June 2026)
Boom Gallery in Geelong
Michael Reid Murrurundi
Links to things mentioned in the interview
Fitzroy Painting
Amber Creswell
Still Life book
Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews
A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.


Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

Season 2: The Home Season
Welcome to the second season of Creative Momentum with Meg. This season is features interviews with Australian writers and artists where Meg Dunley talks to them about their processes, routines, inspiration and more to explore how and why people do their creative work.
Episode 6: Alice Garner and Dave Bowers, a creative couple
Alice Garner and Dave Bowers have been together since 1987 and have been making things, separately and together, for just about as long. Dave is a painter, illustrator, musician, songwriter, gardener and cook. Alice is a musician, actor, oral historian, audio editor and has discovered that a loop pedal is basically heaven. They play in a band Sunshine Tip with a couple of friends.
In our conversation, Dave and Alice share what it looks like to live a fully creative life as a couple: how they carve out time, how they let go of precious bits that don’t work, and why they have never really had a territorial battle over who gets to take up creative space.
They agree on the best piece of advice they can offer anyone trying to make things: get out there and be part of the community you want to belong to. The rest will follow.
Connect with Alice & Dave
Dave Bowers:
Instagram
Website (for his art)
Sunshine Tip band:
Bandcamp
Website
Instagram
Email
Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews
A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.


Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

Season 2: The Home Season
Welcome to the second season of Creative Momentum with Meg. This season is features interviews with Australian writers and artists where Meg Dunley talks to them about their processes, routines, inspiration and more to explore how and why people do their creative work.
Episode 5: Melissa Manning, Author
Melissa Manning has been writing for close to 18 years, and her practice looks nothing like it did when she started. These days she is up before dawn, moving her body before she sits down at the desk, keeping her brain free of noise until she opens the laptop and sees what comes.
Her debut short story collection Smokehouse won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her novel Frogsong, published by UQP, launches in April. And she still has a folder on her laptop called S**t Poetry.
In this conversation, Melissa talks about writing from a spark rather than an idea, why she never plans her work, and what happens to the words on the page when she tries. She talks about the studio she has filled with twigs and leaves and art and a wearable minotaur’s head her daughter made for a university theatre production. She talks about the questions her fiction keeps returning to: who are we, how do we become the people we become, and is any of that fixed?
She also shares something that will resonate with anyone who has been waiting for the right idea before they start. She waited until she was 40. And then she realised it was never about the idea.
Connect with Melissa Manning
- Publisher’s author page
- Instagram
- Books: Frogsong (2026), Smokehouse (2022)
Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews
A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.Episode 5: Melissa Manning, Author


Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe

Season 2: The Home Season
Welcome to the second season of Creative Momentum with Meg. This season is features interviews with Australian writers and artists where I talk to them about their processes, routines, inspiration and more to explore how and why people do their creative work.
Episode 4: Amanda Hewitt, Debut Author
What does it look like to write a debut novel while working three days a week, raising three boys and fitting in words wherever you can snatch them? On the lounge, in the kitchen, on post-it notes stuck to the back of your phone?
This week’s get is Amanda Hewitt. Amanda is an Australian romance author whose debut novel The Last Resort, an over-40s romance with baggage, was released in February this year. In this conversation, Amanda shares what it means to be a pantser, why her best writing happens between 5 and 7 in the morning with just her and the dog and how a holiday in Fiji reminded her that love stories are absolutely everywhere if you know how to look.
She talks about the book that started as a spy drama and became a romance, the magpie out the back that sings for its food, and why writing in the chaos of family life isn’t a workaround. It’s just how it works.
And her piece of wisdom for anyone sitting on a notebook full of ideas? Stop taking the ideas down. Start writing the book. Because unless you have something tangible, you don’t really have anything at all.
Connect with Amanda Hewitt
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Book The Last Resort
Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes and interviews
A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on Bandcamp and Instagram.


Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe