Being on a pension means that I can indulge my passion in a leisurely fashion without worrying too much about not having enough money to pay the bills.

And, as Paul Oates has observed, for us oldies writing is good for the soul. And probably our mental health too.

Nowadays there’s no pressure, no deadlines, no demanding emails or telephone calls. When and how I finish whatever I’m writing is entirely up to me. A week or a year, it doesn’t matter.

And no more wrangling, weaselling and stretching words and sentences to support dubious and uncomfortable ideas.

Writing has always been a necessary and core skill in all the jobs I’ve had over the years, but it has required a certain amount of adaption to fit the circumstances.

One of the biggest challenges occurred after I left the public service. Shedding the jargon, verbosity and density of the bureaucratic writing style required real effort.

The bureaucratic style, much like academic writing, was definitely not conducive to the clarity required when I went out on my own as a consultant.

And it was a major drawback during my early forays into long form fiction.

There are several cardinal rules I learnt writing fiction. They include brevity, simplicity of style and avoiding the temptation to preach.

These are important because you want the reader to keep reading, stay with you and think about what you have written.

Giving away too much detail is a sure fire way to deaden the suspense you need in a work of fiction.

In addition, in this information age a lot of detail has become superfluous.

Back in the days when very few people travelled widely and had limited access to sources of information, it was necessary to include lots of details in a work of fiction.

If you don’t believe me try reading the Victorian-era writers.

Nowadays, instead of several long descriptive paragraphs, a simple word or two will conjure the necessary image in a reader’s mind.

Along the way I’ve dabbled in writing non-fiction. Back in the day it was a real buzz to see both the fiction and non-fiction I wrote appear in various journals and magazines.

I had stuff published in a whole range of magazines, from New Idea to Penthouse. The only magazine I couldn’t crack was Reader’s Digest. Achieving the blandness they required was simply beyond me.

Nowadays the buzz comes almost entirely from my books and seeing my stuff appear on blogs like PNG Attitude.

If writers come with an inbuilt ego, as many critics contend, then I have to plead guilty.

One thing I discovered is that swapping between fiction and non-fiction requires certain adjustments and it’s still something I occasionally find difficult.

With my fiction writer’s alter ego lurking in the background and telling me to keep the reader guessing I sometimes have to really think about what I should include in non-fiction pieces.

This is where editors like Keith Jackson come in handy.

As a journalist of long standing he’s attuned to the needs of different readers and can add just the right amount of detail to articles to make them comprehensible to his reading audience.

Writers in places like Australia, New Zealand, the smaller Pacific nations and Papua New Guinea are forced by circumstance to be adaptive.

To maintain a satisfying writing life it’s necessary to command as many styles as possible.

The advantages enjoyed by international writers with huge pools of potential readers means they can churn out the same kind of stuff forever.

Indeed, many of them are recognised solely for their unchanging writing style.

When you’re on to a good thing, stick to it is their motto.

Which probably puts agile Aussie, Kiwi, Pasifika and Niugini writers in their own class.

Isn’t that a nice thought?