Once, in the middle of the night, I watched a Youtuber try to live one week of their life according to Haruki Murakami’s writing schedule.

For such a young medium, podcasting has already developed such distinct cultural markers; the close-mic breathy voice to mimic intimacy, the affectedly natural banter to start the episode, the fourth-wall-breaking nods towards the production and editing that goes into it (‘we’ll fix it in post’).

On 15 May I met my classmates for the first time. It was a Saturday and, after months of online lectures, ‘break-out room’ activities, and virtual roundtable sessions with writing, editing and publishing professionals, we gathered together at the Bowen Street Press for an intensive masterclass…

What does it take to craft the ‘perfect’ sentence? To have your masterpiece sit alongside the behemoths of the literary world—Wilde, Woolf, Didion, Garner, Flanagan and Malouf? What does it take to string together a perfect group of words, that form a perfect group of sentences that form a piece of work that is timeless, moving and memorable?