Julie Modra’s middle-grade novella Oscar Was Here has been published by Rhiza Press, and the foreign rights have already been acquired by a publisher in Slovenia. Julie is a graduate of our Novel Writing Essentials and Write Your Novel courses, and she credits them with turning a former English teacher’s love of words into writing that publishers want.
“Every single course I have undertaken has guided me to the next step or filled a gap in my knowledge that has propelled me forward,” she says.
A story about kindness
Oscar Was Here follows thirteen-year-old Milo, who goes with his older sister Ruby to stay at his grandmother’s rural property in Southeast Queensland over the summer holidays. “He meets a young boy named Oscar, who has a congenital heart defect, a dog-eared copy of Prince Caspian, and an imagination as vast as Narnia itself. They share a love of reading and adventure, and as the holidays draw to a close, Milo faces the hardest battle of all: saying goodbye and believing that life – like the best stories – never truly ends.”
The inspiration came from close to home. “The main inspiration came from my daughter’s experience of being bullied throughout her schooling because of disabilities arising from her battle with cancer as a baby, which resulted in permanent spinal damage and severe deafness. At the heart of Oscar Was Here is the message that everyone deserves a friend.”
What the courses changed
What the courses changedJulie came to the Australian Writers’ Centre after more than ten years as a secondary English teacher, with a stint as a sessional university lecturer before that. She assumed all of that would translate into fiction. “I thought I knew how to write fiction. I was so wrong! As a huge fan of works by Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, and the Brontë sisters, I had a penchant for writing overly verbose purple prose.”
Novel Writing Essentials and Write Your Novel took the purple out of her prose. “I learnt how to avoid using all the flowery language and rid my writing of redundant words. I also learnt how to quicken the pace and deepen characterisation, among many other valuable techniques.”
The biggest change came in Write Your Novel. “The most defining impact on my writing was my introduction to Deep POV writing style. What I learnt then was instrumental in improving the quality of my writing to a level that has resulted in some success.”
The workshopping in that course did something else for her too. “The accountability of having my writing ready for workshopping was instrumental in overcoming my resistance to writing, which plagued me a lot, to the point that I found myself looking for reno jobs to do around the house. And of course, the feedback I received from the workshopping was so valuable, and participating in workshopping others’ work was where the real learning took place.”
Julie has since gone on to do several more of our courses, including Romance Writing, Cut, Shape, and Polish, Your Author Website and Book Covers That Sell. She is now studying a Master of Creative Writing, and found she arrived well prepared. “It was no surprise to discover that there was little to learn in the way of narrative fundamentals. I started with a firm foundation of knowledge received through the AWC courses I studied, which has resulted in strong academic success.”
The road to a book deal
Julie always starts with the theme and the message, then plots the story around them. “Because of my faith, my difficult upbringing, as well as my daughter’s cancer battle and my first husband passing away from cancer, I try to write stories with heart that carry messages of hope. This was the case for Oscar Was Here.”
She met her publisher, Rochelle Stephens from Rhiza Press, at a writing conference, and afterwards pitched a synopsis written to the publisher’s brief. “Thankfully, my ideas for the story met a gap in the list, and it was accepted. It was a really lovely experience to write to spec, knowing that the initial chapters and synopsis were approved, rather than having to write the whole story with no promise of publication and then pitch it to editors and publishers cold.”
Signing the contract meant a great deal after what she’d given up to get there. “It was such a good feeling knowing that all the hard work and sacrifices had paid off. I felt a lot of relief after risking it all and turning my back on a very good, secure career. I held onto my dream of becoming a published author with white knuckles, so signing that publishing contract was very validating and reminded me that anything can happen and will if you don’t give up!”
One of the most enjoyable parts of the process turned out to be the cover. “There was a particular way the book cover needed to look to link to the story’s plotline, so I did up some watercolour paintings to be passed on to the illustrator to be used as a guide. However, the publisher and cover designer decided to work with one of my paintings, so, unintentionally, I became both the author and the cover illustrator.”
The Slovenian rights deal means the book’s message will travel further than she expected. “My sweet characters, Milo and Oscar, will help to spread the message of kindness overseas in a foreign language. I don’t think it gets any better than that!”
From the classroom to the writing desk
From the classroom to the writing deskJulie’s writing started young, with poems and songs in her early teens and scripts for puppet plays performed at her local church. At sixteen she wrote a screenplay that was staged with a large cast. Marriage and three daughters came next, and the writing fell away until she became an English teacher in her thirties, which let her work with words again while earning a regular salary.
Over the years, helping students plan their creative writing assessments kept reminding her of what she loved. “Eventually, despite loving my job, I realised I wasn’t fulfilled in my career because I was working hard to support my senior students to graduate and achieve their dreams, but I wasn’t achieving my own.”
Our podcast turned out to be the first step. “Once my passion for writing was reignited, I started listening to the AWC’s podcast, So You Want to Be a Writer, while driving to and from work every day, and that inspired me to invest in the Reinvent Yourself course. As a result of the course, I realised that writing was something I really wanted to do and becoming a writer could be a reality for me.
“After a lot of back-and-forth discussions with myself and my family, and due to suffering from teacher burnout, I took the leap and quit my teaching job to focus on recovery and my passion for writing. After several months of rest, I signed up for AWC’s Novel Writing Essentials course, and I have not looked back.”
Life in the slipstream
Julie lives in the bayside city of Redlands, southeast of Brisbane, and her days look very different now. “You have all the time in the world when you are writing the draft to that first book, but once you get that publishing contract, things speed up exponentially as you dedicate time to editing and marketing and then writing the next book, then editing that book, and so on. I am definitely in that glorious slipstream at the moment as I work back-to-back on projects and lots of exciting writerly things.”
She’s doing the final edit on an adult inspirational historical romance she rewrote during the Write Your Novel course, supporting other writers through manuscript workshopping groups, occasionally running writing workshops, and keeping up with her master’s study. “I still occasionally check SEEK for teaching jobs, just in case this writerly dream goes up in a puff of smoke, but I am so busy with one project after another that I am reconciling with the real possibility that I may never go back to the classroom unless on an author visit.”
Would she recommend an AWC course to a friend? “I always take every opportunity to recommend AWC’s courses to other writers, both published and aspiring. In fact, in every writing workshop I have conducted, I have dedicated a slide to recommending AWC. Anyone interested in becoming a writer should consider AWC’s courses as the first step in building a strong foundation towards writerly success. The tutor-led courses that allow for workshopping with peers are invaluable and will definitely help propel writers forward with all the necessary knowledge they need and more! The self-paced courses are also wonderful and are easy to access and use. I will always be grateful that I stumbled across AWC’s podcast, which prompted me to take the first step and ultimately led me to where I am today.”
You can follow Julie on Instagram at, on Facebook, or visit her website at juliemodra.com.
Courses taken at AWC:
