Cranbourne’s wordsmith

By Lia Bichel
LISA Wardle may be Cranbourne’s answer to JK Rowling.
The up and coming fiction writer was awarded the Herb Thomas Memorial Trust Award at the 25th annual Herb Thomas dinner held at the Dandenong Club.
She was one of four students studying in the print and media field awarded for their excellence.
“I was so proud to win the award,” Ms Wardle said.
“After four years at TAFE and a lot of work, it was icing on the cake for me.”
The 41-year-old said she only started “seriously writing” five years ago, when she began a professional writing and editing course at TAFE.
Now, she has a number of published stories under her belt and her own book on the way.
“It’s extremely exciting,” she said.
“I have always wanted to be a published writer.”
The book, Reflections, is a short stories collection to be published by independent press Ginninderra Mockingbird Imprint.
Ms Wardle said she drew upon life experiences for her inspiration, and pushed herself to write every day.
“I procrastinate sometimes,” she said “But if you want to be a serious writer, you have to write every day.”
Ms Wardle said it is sometimes difficult to find time to write as she had three sons, and her youngest was autistic.
“He’s mainstreamed at school, but it’s still a lot of work,” she said.
“But I need to write for myself, and I have to make a balance in my life.”
The next project in the works for the budding writer is a novel, which she is currently busy doing research for. Ms Wardle said the project might take a while to complete, but she looked forward to a future of writing.
“I expect it will take a couple years to do,” she said.
“Ultimately it would be great to write full-time and make a living from it.”
The Herb Thomas Memorial Trust was set up in 1979 by the Rotary clubs of Berwick, Pakenham, and Narre Warren in memory of Herb Thomas, proprietor of Pakenham Gazette, now the Star News Group.