I hadn’t cried about my thesis until that afternoon. I had certainly felt annoyed and stressed about it at times over the two years I’d been writing it, but I’d lasted a whopping 713 days without crying over it. 

At first, I dismissed it. I figured it was just a bad day. I took it easy for the evening. It wasn’t until a few days later, when I still couldn’t shake the feeling, that I knew something was seriously wrong. 

Academic failure 

I grew up in a culture that valued academic perfection above everything else. There were two sorts of results: 100% (success) and anything else (room for improvement). 

A common joke in my community was: ‘What do you call a B+? An Asian fail!’

Because it takes a lot of work to achieve perfection, I started attending tutoring classes in addition to school when I was still a child. By the time I was seventeen, I’d done multiple years of North Shore and James An and private tutoring for English, Maths, Japanese and French. 

By the time I got to the end of Year 12, I’d given up on the hope of getting a good ATAR. I knew I couldn’t live up to those impossible standards anymore. 

I decided I would be happy enough as long as I got an ATAR which would get me into the university course of my choice: Arts/Law at ANU. 

That is exactly what happened. By the standards of those around me, my ATAR was deeply average and nothing to brag about. It was not a 99.95; it was a failure. There had still been room for improvement. And I had not improved. 

But it got me into ANU. Good enough. Unfortunately I must be a glutton for punishment because even though I had full choice over where I ended up after high school, I picked a college full of geniuses. 

I loved ANU and I was very proud of my extra-curricular achievements there but never really of my studies.  

The crash out

Fast forward to the great thesis crash out of 2025: I felt completely immobilised by the voices in my head reminding me of my failures during high school and undergrad and that it was silly to imagine that my Master’s degree would be any different. Essentially, I felt crushed by the realisation that I was immensely stupid. 

I wrote about it in my diary:

I got stuck on the fact that I am stupid, I’ve never been happy with any major academic result I’ve ever received and I’m being naive for thinking that this is going to turn out any differently. And it was kind of hard to convince myself of anything else. 

I tried so many things to snap out of it. I tried to combat it with truth: I got accepted into university. I did well in some areas. I hadn’t encountered any issues during my Master’s degree. If I was too stupid for it, someone would’ve told me by now. 

None of it worked. I had around two weeks left before my submission date. I knew I needed to quell this distraction as fast as possible so I could get back to work. 

Radical acceptance

As a last resort, I tried something called ‘radical acceptance’. I knew it could only be a bandaid solution but I was getting desperate. 

I accepted the bad thoughts. I said to myself: I’m right. I am stupid. I am probably going to get a bad grade on this thesis. But all there is left to do right now is put my head down and do the best that I can. And what will be, will be. 

It worked. I was able to finish my thesis. I submitted it a day early. 

Long term thinking

As I suspected, it was only a short term solution. Despite my hopes, the horrible feeling came back right after I’d submitted and I was forced to start unpacking it for real. 

Was I a stupid person? Had I ever been smart? Did being smart matter? Why did it matter so much to me? Is it even possible to be smart in the arts?

It was like living with a highlight reel of all the negative things people had said to me: an English literature degree is a total waste of time. I am a bad writer. I’m not doing the right things to pursue my dreams.

Trying

I tried so many things to snap out of it. Some helped. 

I threw a party to celebrate my thesis submission (co-hosted with my lovely thesis-partner-in-crime Leah). 

I went on an overseas holiday with my family. 

I went to pet cute animals with friends.

I told myself what was happening was very normal. I read a lot of online graduate student support forums. They helped sometimes. They helped me know I wasn’t alone in what I was feeling.

It’s not like I’ve never had a creative-related mental breakdown before. I once made the bone-headed decision of watching Tick, Tick… Boom! in the middle of writing the first draft of a book in one month (the movie is about Jonathan Larson writing a musical) in my mid-twenties right before my birthday (the movie is about Larson being depressed about turning thirty) while I had a heart condition (Larson died of heart failure before seeing Rent debut on Broadway). Needless to say that did not end well (however I can highly recommend the movie).

Writing

I hate the long term solution almost as much as the short term one. 

The thing that finally snapped me out of it was starting to write again. 

I find this annoying because I didn’t want work to be the solution. But it’s the truth, in the end. The solution was to keep doing what I was already doing. 

As I began to write again, I felt good about myself once more. I enjoyed writing. I knew I had at least some skill. I knew this because writing is at least a little bit easier than it used to be. Hence, I must have learnt something along the way.

After such a long time focusing on the one project, it felt nice to try new things and be creative again. I started several short essays in March. I’ve finished a couple already. They are a completely different kind of writing compared to what I did for my thesis. 

The result

I got my thesis grade back on a random Wednesday. For the first time ever in my academic career, I got a mark I was happy with. I got what I was hoping for.

There was still a voice in the back of my head which told me it wasn’t 100%. 

I told that voice to shut up. 

While I did plan to take some time off writing for Overthinker last year, I did not expect to be gone for quite so long! I was very proud of sticking to a regular writing and publishing schedule, but unfortunately I got too overwhelmed and needed a much longer break than I expected. 

Overthinker in 2025

I have no plans to end Overthinker. I’m still very proud of this blog and it’s important to me that I have a space for writing on my own terms. I’ve written so many weird pieces for Overthinker that I would never have tried to pitch traditionally.

However, as I have a bit too much going on in my creative career right now (wild!), I clearly need to make some changes. 

While I believe that having a publishing schedule for Overthinker in the past was very helpful in encouraging myself to write regularly, it’s become evident that it’s no longer working for me. 

Moving forward, I will write and publish here whenever there’s something I want to write about. 

As a result of this, I have turned off the paid filter on the ‘Insiders’ section of Overthinker. 

I have decided to keep the option to be a paid subscriber of Overthinker. Given that ‘Insiders’ is now available to be read by everyone, there will not be any additional benefits to being a paid subscriber. 

Instead, if you choose to be a paid subscriber, please know that you are supporting my writing career as a whole. I have a few ongoing expenses, such as paying for my portfolio website (both the domain and the design), competition entry fees and attending workshops, events and talks. Even though my income stream from Overthinker is small, it really helps!

I am so exceptionally grateful to everyone who has been a paid subscriber to Overthinker at any point over the last two years. Especially those who stuck around even though I wasn’t publishing anything. Thank you very much if you ever contributed! 

What I’ve been up to

As soon as I reflected on what I’ve been up to since I last wrote for Overthinker, it became very clear to me how I allowed this blog to slip off my to do list. 

I covered the AFLW for Hawks Insiders. 

I made my return to acting in my university’s production of Macbeth. 

I went to Europe on a holiday where I saw eleven shows. 

My short play Strangers was performed at the National Theatre of Parramatta as part of the Slanted Theatre New Year showcase. 

Most significantly, I finished and submitted the thesis for my Master’s degree. 

I finished another round of revisions on Song of the Summer and am finally out querying it again. 

At least I was productive on my break!

What’s next

In the past, I’ve set creative goals one year at a time. This year has felt a bit disjointed since submitting my thesis in February, so instead I’ve been setting my writing goals month by month. 

It’s been working really well! If you’re interested in the nitty gritty of what I’m currently working on, you can follow along on my Instagram stories and my Tiktok. 

This blog will continue to be a home for my in-depth thoughts about what I’m writing, reading and watching.

Up next will be a piece about the major crash out I had right before my thesis was due (super fun!). 

Stay tuned.

Throughout Macbeth, I’ve felt really grateful that Lady Macduff has so much depth to her. While she might be a small role, she’s a complicated person with big feelings and she has a direct impact on the events of the play. The story wouldn’t be the same without her.

She’s definitely an upgrade from some of the roles I had in high school theatre. She has a name and a backstory. She even has a Wikipedia page! That’s pretty cool.

But as much as I love Lady Macduff, she was not on my list of dream roles. 

Most actors have a list of dream roles in their head: the kinds of roles that you would be so lucky to get to play in your lifetime. Maybe it’s a famous role, it’s got an iconic song, it’s from your favourite play or it just feels like a role you were born to play.

I used to dislike this question—I can’t think of many roles made for a Vietnamese Australian actress, so the ‘born to play’ aspect has never felt possible to me—but the joy I have felt returning to acting this year has given me the confidence to dream a little bigger than I have in the past. While none of the roles on this list were specifically written for Asian women, I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of them have been played by Asian women.

I have crafted this list with a semi-delusional mindset. I’ve left off the roles I could never play (e.g. Simba in The Lion King) and roles I definitely could never sing (e.g. Belle in Beauty and the Beast). But if I could see myself maybe getting there one day, I’ve included it. They’re called ‘dream roles’, after all! I reckon I can be a little bit out there.

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare which follows two romantic pairings subject to tricks and rumours: Claudio is tricked into believing that Hero has been unfaithful and enemies Beatrice and Benedick are tricked into believing that the other secretly loves them. All this is observed by the plucky and weird neighbourhood watch who might just save the day.

Much Ado About Nothing505 is my favourite Shakespeare play and potentially my favourite play of all time. I'd happily be a servant in this play. But, if I'm dreaming, then I'd love to play Beatrice. She's bold, brash, unapologetic, witty and funny. She'd be so much fun to bring to life.0505555550555055516055

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This year has marked a bit of an unusual situation: while the rest of the world spent the last week of July fully enjoying the beginning of the Olympics, I was furiously finishing the rewrite of my book. 

But of course, as a sports fanatic, I couldn’t resist getting a taste of the Olympics in between my big writing sessions. The big ticket event during the first week was obvious: the swimming.

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One of the reasons I landed on my current preferred descriptor of ‘artist and writer’ instead of just ‘writer’ is to help encompass all the different things I do. ‘Artist’ allows me to work on other photography, film and theatre projects from time to time under the same identity.

But I’ve had many moments where I wonder if this is the best way to do it.

Jack of all trades, master of none

The disadvantage of having so many creative interests is that I often feel like a jack of all trades, master of none. I’m spreading myself widely, but thinly.

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The weather forecast wasn’t looking good for a beach getaway but I figured that would only motivate me to stay inside and write more!

It ended up being a really productive trip. I arrived with around 8,000 words already written towards my new draft of Song of the Summer and I left with 23,000 words. So I wrote 15,000 words towards the new draft during my time at Phillip Island. Yay!

I’m still really far off from reaching my goal of around 80,000 to 90,000 words but progress is progress. 

Here’s what I learned about writing while I was there.

I need to focus on writing

This may sound really obvious, but let me explain. There are lots of ‘hidden’ parts to writing that aren’t writing. These include: networking and meeting other writers, building your social media profile, connecting with others on social media, pitching, querying, chasing invoices, etc. All of these extra things are necessary to make the writing happen. 

However, I need to prioritise my time to focus on the actual writing right now. Even though I’m rewriting, 80,000 to 90,000 words is a lot of work! My priority right now is doing everything I can to reach that goal.

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When I say rewrite, I mean I’ve got a copy of the previous draft sitting on my desk beside me and I’m retyping out every single word into a fresh Word document. Rewrites can be pretty terrifying as it feels like I’m going back to a blank page but I’ve been trying to remind myself that I’m very much not back at the beginning.

As I chronicled in The seven drafts of Song of the Summer, I’ve been writing and rewriting this book over and over again. In March, I decided to head back in for round eight to incorporate some publisher feedback.

These are the major drafts I’ve done so far:

• Draft 0 (2015) - getting to 18,000 words then giving up

• Draft 1 (2017) - first full draft! Woohoo!

• Draft 4 (2020) - rewrite through Kill Your Darlings Editorial Mentorship program

• Draft 6 (2022-23) - rewrite partially through Bundanon residency and my own determination

So since I had a first draft, this is the third time I’m going back to the blank page and typing every word out all over again.

Obviously, this can’t be the best way to write a book. It’s woefully inefficient. It’s going to be a decade minimum by the time Song of the Summer comes out (if it comes out at all).

So over the last couple of years, I’ve been paying specific attention to how I write my drafts and trying to figure out what I could do to hopefully speed up the process for the next one. Maybe it’ll take me five years instead of ten!

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This essentially means that you need to learn how to edit and cut parts of your writing in instances when it isn’t working – even if you love it. This might be a fun side character or a particularly great metaphor that you’re really chuffed about, but if it doesn’t actually work in the story as a whole then it’s got to go.

But if it’s so clear that it isn’t working, surely cutting it will be easy? Well, writing is often such a personal pursuit – maybe your story is inspired by something that happened to you or it’s literally a memoir piece – that it can be hard to cut out the bits that you love the most.

Getting feedback

When you’re in the early stages of your writing journey, it can be really easy to dismiss the feedback you receive from other writers or editors. Oh, they don’t understand what I’m doing. I built this fantasy world, of course it has to work exactly like this. They don’t know my characters like I do.

Except that they do! It can be really hard to detach your story from the world you’ve created inside your head, but all your reader will have is the words on the page. It’s actually so exciting that each reader will arrive at it in a slightly different way.

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‘What? You’re making a film? Why aren’t you at writing school or film school?

It’s not the first time I’ve gotten this reaction. I open my mouth to explain, but he doesn’t let me get a word in.

‘Why are you a paralegal? Why aren’t you following your dreams?’

So I laugh politely until he’s done and I can excuse myself from the conversation.

I’M FIFTEEN. I need to find somewhere to do five days of work experience at a job I might want someday. It feels impossible that an adult would let me shadow them. I google companies related to the arts. I cold-email every place that has a publicly available address.

I get one response from a company called Fremantle Media. They offer me two days on the set of Neighbours.

Neighbours! I’ve heard of that. A legitimate TV show!

I’ve got two days covered, so I arrange to do the other three days at a barrister’s office.

Everyone is very confused that I’m doing my five days at two different places but there’s no rule against it. It’s allowed as long as I do twice the paperwork.

I love all five days.

Everyone at Neighbours is nice. The writer’s room have an argument over the pronunciation of pho so I teach them. The editor’s room ask if I’m impressed that Neighbours has a gay couple now and I tell them that Glee has one already. The actors tell me that Neighbours is great at launching careers, have I heard that Margot Robbie is going to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife in the new Martin Scorsese movie? Surely not, I think. Not from a TV set in Melbourne.

The barrister’s office is in a beautiful skyscraper in the centre of the Melbourne CBD, one of my favourite places in the world. He finds me trials to observe and cases to read when he’s busy. He sends his secretary to court with me to make sure the content of the criminal trial is age-appropriate. He sends me home at five o’clock on the dot even though he’s still working.

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At the turnover of the Gregorian calendar, I didn’t feel quite ready to sit down and write a list of goals for the new year yet. So, being the lucky benefactor of two new years, I gave myself until Tết to write it. I’d use the five week gap – all of January and the beginning of February – to truly reflect and think about what I wanted out of 2024.

So here we go.

Word of the year

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Australian author Amie Kaufman’s piece about choosing her word for 2024. I’ve never chosen a word of the year before but it makes a lot of sense to set the tone for the year. My writer friend Bianca Breen has also picked a word of the year for the first time.

My word for 2024 is wonder. 

Here’s what wonder embodies for me:

• Curiosity: I will continue to learn more about the world around me. I will dedicate time to studying young adult literature and becoming a better writer through my Master’s degree.

• Travel: I will visit and explore new places. I will go overseas to Europe for the first time since 2019.

• Magic: I will write my first magical realism novel. Also, it’s the year of the dragon!

• Admiration: I will embrace the beauty of the world. 

• Dreaming: I will continue to dream big dreams for my writing career and do my best to achieve them.

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At the beginning of 2023, I took the biggest step in my journey so far and I temporarily paused my legal career to go back to university to start my Master’s degree in literature and creative writing. It was an immensely scary decision but it has felt like the right one.

Highlights

I GOT SHORTLISTED FOR THE TEXT PRIZE!

I think that’s worthy of capital letters. This is the biggest achievement in my writing career to date and will hopefully get me one step closer to publishing my first book.

Here are the things I’m proud of this year:

• Song of the Summer was shortlisted for the Text Prize

• I wrote every week and consistently published on Overthinker once a week starting in June 2023

• I made really good progress on my Master’s degree and wrote a first draft of my thesis novelette (a young adult story about girls playing Aussie Rules football)

• I continued to write every time I felt like quitting

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However, the nature of pursuing writing as a career means that it bleeds into a lot of my free time. I’ve spent countless weekends, evenings, lunch breaks, holidays, etcetera writing when the normal thing would be to relax.

This is not a particularly new revelation to me. I knew that pursuing writing would involve a lot of sacrifice. 

Reentering my crafting era

But last year, I got back into crafting. I used to be really into cosplay and various craft projects when I was a teenager. I was never amazing at it – I had a lot of help from talented friends! – but it was so much fun and it brought me a lot of joy.

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At the beginning of 2023, I wrote a list of creative goals. I thought about what I wanted to achieve for the year and aimed to set myself a healthy mix of creative goals that would help my creative life in both a professional and personal sense.

It’s been a big year! I’ve achieved a lot. But it’s always nice to take some time to think over what my priorities are and what matters to me. Or in this case, what mattered to me a year ago, whether it’s stuck and if I want to carry it forward.

Finish writing Song of the Summer

I did this! I finished writing Song of the Summer on February 20. 

February was so long ago that it almost doesn’t feel like an achievement anymore. But I worked on this book for over seven years so it was a massive achievement! If I’m proud of anything in 2023, it’s that I finished writing this book and sent it out into the world.

Submit Song of the Summer to at least 10 opportunities

I technically failed this. I only submitted Song of the Summer to 7 opportunities.

But I feel like I did it in spirit. I finally sent Song of the Summer back to the Text Prize after previously putting it off. It’s been in an editor’s inbox since July.

I’ll be doing my first round of UK/US submissions in the new year.

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Hence my ‘Lyneham Lodge writing residency’ was born! In late November/early December, I spent a week writing out of Hannah’s spare room in her house in Lyneham.

The book

My current work in progress manuscript is a young adult murder mystery called Murder at St Thérèse College (for now, I’m hoping to give it a new title). It follows an eighteen-year-old student journalist who investigates the mysterious death of another student at a prestigious residential college in Canberra.

It’s the fifth manuscript I’ve written and I’m planning for it to be the second book I send out on submission for publishers to consider.

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Earlier this year, I finished writing my book Song of the Summer. It was a long time coming. I’d written the first words for it back in October 2015.

There are many reasons why it took so long, but a big one was this idea of ‘finished’. What does that even mean? When on earth is a book finished? When is it good enough for a publisher to read it? Everyone has a different opinion. Some writers send out their first drafts. Others would rather die than have anyone read their first drafts.

All I knew was that seven years was a LONG time to be writing a book and that I am incapable of doing anything without a deadline, so I set one for myself: the Text Prize closed on Monday 20 February which also happened to be one week before I started my Master’s degree. Two great reasons which would hopefully motivate me to finish writing my book: send it off to this great opportunity and clear my writing slate ahead of starting my thesis.

So I decided that was the answer: my book would be finished on Monday 20 February, whether I liked it or not (spoiler alert: I almost exclusively did not like it). My confidence in this decision wavered many times, particularly over the Christmas period when I wasn’t getting any writing done (note to self: holidays are not for ‘catching up on work’). 

But against all the odds, I did finish writing Song of the Summer about ninety minutes before the Text Prize deadline. I kissed it goodbye and sent it off. I felt sick about it. But I let it go.

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It was the first time I’d directed anything. It was for my school’s House Concerts competition. We had around three or four weeks to write, design, cast, stage and choreograph a 20-minute original play. 

Each year, I’d try not to be too disappointed when we lost. My house was notorious for being extremely sporty and not very good at anything creative (needless to say, I didn’t really fit in).

Year 12 was my last chance and being the director gave me a lot of drive to try and bring us a victory. Five days before we were due to perform, we had our first dress rehearsal. 

It was a disaster. Actors missed cues. Stage managers fumbled transitions. There were several awkward periods of dead silence on the stage. I felt my heart sink as the perfectly designed play fell apart right before my eyes.

I went home and cried my eyes out. I couldn’t believe that something I’d worked so hard on looked so horrible.

Five days later, we performed. It was fantastic. I was really proud of it. Several people complimented me on how seamless and well put together it looked. By the end of the week, my house had won for the first time in over a decade.

The dress rehearsal moment

This remains one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learnt as an artist. I call it the dress rehearsal moment: whenever I’m working on a big creative project, there will almost always be a moment where I’m convinced it’s the worst thing I’ve ever made and it’s a complete waste of time.

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It’s a question which all writers will have to field at some point in their journey and one that most are already tired of answering. I think it emerges from the simplicity of wanting to know more about a story we love. We want to know where it came from and how it grew to be the version that we love to read today.

Sometimes the question is frustrating because a writer hasn’t stopped to think about what the answer is. Some writers write instinctively. Others are meticulous planners. I know that the very first time someone asked me, I had no idea what to say.

I’ve given it a lot of thought since and this is my best attempt at an answer.

From my life

Another question I sometimes get is whether my fiction writing is autobiographical. Sometimes people don’t even ask, they just assume this! They must think I lead a much more interesting and metaphorically-resonant life than I actually do.

My fiction writing often starts from something that happened to me or something I have felt but instead of being what actually happened to me, it is about remixing those emotions into a more interesting story. What happens in my real life doesn’t usually quite make sense and we always want fiction to make sense. 

Song of the Summer

In the beginning, this manuscript grew instinctively from free writing sessions with absolutely no plan.

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While August is already quite self-reflexive, there are always more details about how I made something. So here they are!

The idea

This is already contained within the essay itself: I was sad. I was listening to august by Taylor Swift on repeat, not by choice. I saw this tweet at around 11:30pm which made me totally rethink the song. I decided to make a photo essay about it.

And I’m very pleased to say that I did!

The logistics

I did take a photo everyday. I didn’t fudge any of it! I remembered for 31 days straight. It honestly feels weird to have stopped.

My original vision was for the essay to have a written introduction at the beginning and then to include all 31 photos after that.

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I felt really happy with the story itself: a young adult murder mystery about power, privilege and perception set in a prestigious residential college in Canberra. So why wasn’t I moving forward with my writing?

I managed to finish the latest draft of my previous manuscript Song of the Summer earlier this year, so I reflected on how I made that happen. I’d chipped away at it slowly over time but three periods of dedicated writing time stood out to me: a week in the Dandenongs in March 2022, a week at Bundanon in September 2022 and nine days in February 2023.

What did these periods of time have in common? They were times when I had put aside the rest of my life to focus on writing. They were periods of extremely dedicated, almost non-stop, writing time where I just sat at my desk and wrote as much as physically and mentally possible.

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Twitter is currently the best social media platform for writers. Its primarily text-based method of communication feels kind of rare on the internet at the moment! Instagram is photo-based and TikTok and YouTube are video-based and these days I really only use Facebook for connecting with friends or in closed-off writers groups. 

Twitter is one of the few places where I can talk about my writing or post a link and not have to show my face all the time. The best way to get new eyeballs on my writing is to make it as easy as possible to find.

To my ongoing annoyance, Instagram still doesn’t let you include a clickable link in a post description – so I can either post a link in my stories that has much less reach, or pray that a post can lead someone to a link in my stories or my bio. 

Not only is Twitter just better for sharing words online, I’ve also found it better for making writing connections. I’ve gotten writing gigs off Twitter! It sounds so silly but it’s true.

I’m sure something will emerge to replace Twitter. That’s just the natural way of things on the internet. I did see someone suggest a dating app-style app for writers and publishers to match – absolutely not, no thank you. Hopefully something will eventually pop up. Maybe I’ll start using Tumblr again.

But in the meantime, I’m going to take a moment to grieve Twitter and the writing opportunities it’s given me.

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