Never Write Alone Part 2: We're Just Getting Started

This isn’t our last act. It’s a literary uprising.

Sandy McDonald, Yamini Naidu, Carolyn Tate, Kath Walters walking and writing together.

The four of us. Friends for more than ten years. Our writing group began five years ago in that loathsome first lockdown — with one change in the group early on.

Now, we’re experienced, seasoned and just hitting our creative stride. Between us we’ve published 16 books and over a thousand blogs. And we’re all currently writing books.

We’ve been through thick and thin together, which you can read about in Never Write Alone Part 1. I can’t imagine a writer’s life without these three women in it. Hands down, they’re the best. There is nothing wanting.

‘Don’t mess with success’ has been my mantra. We’re comfy. We’re having fun. We’re steady and doing good work. Why change a thing?

And that’s when it happened!

After a weekend together at the Sorrento Writers Festival less than two months ago, an idea grabbed hold of us. An idea to collaborate in a way we’ve never explored before.

An idea that’s stretching us, stirring us, maybe even terrifying us a little. An idea we hope will put us on stage at the next Sorrento Writers Festival.

Rather than spend our later years writing comfortably in parallel, we’ve challenged ourselves to try something new, and it might just be our most wildly ambitious and creative act yet.

We’re all sworn to secrecy, which is what makes this project so delicious.

In this next act, we’re not winding down. We’re winding up. Deeper into the stories we’ve always wanted to tell, together. Deeper into the courage lived experience has granted us.

We’re not fading into the sunset. We’re not giving up. We’re just getting started.

We’ve just spent a long weekend together at our home in the country by the fire with nature right outside our door as inspiration. We plotted and planned. We laughed until bursting. We argued (just a bit) and made up. We wrote and roared.

We cooked fresh farm produce, we ate, we drank, we walked and we worked. For three days we stretched ourselves to our limits. We had no idea what we were doing, but we knew something incredible, and life-affirming, was taking shape.

When everyone left, we were exhausted—but not finished. We could have kept going. Maybe we should have. But maybe the ideas needed time to settle into our bones. To find their way into the soft tissue of our hearts and minds.

This is the thing about women with history. An idea like this doesn’t scare us. It only sharpens our quills. It tunes our intuition to a higher frequency. We follow our instincts and find our flow. We don’t waste energy on doubt.

We’ve stopped trying to prove ourselves. We write for the joy of it, for the satisfaction of being in this together. Joy, at this stage of life, is a form of protest. Laughter is a form of rebellion. Creative collaboration is like rocket-fuel for women who choose to write together.

We are now on a roll. And we can’t look back.

If you’re in a writers’ group and have been for some time, maybe there’s a way to stretch together. To deepen the work. To dream bigger. Maybe there’s something in a shared vision that’s just waiting to be cracked open.

Women’s voices are stronger together. The more lived, the more powerful. The braver, the better. Women who write together, are invincible.

We hope to see you at the 2026 Sorrento Writers Festival (April 23–26). We’ll be the ones up front on the stage, laughing too loudly while we share our secrets.

Be bold. Be brave. Just write.

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