Writing, business,
and everything in between.

University assessments are under pressure. How does a lecturer know how a student got their answers? How does a lecturer know how each student within a group worked. Writion is trying to answer that problem for lecturer Rachel McBride through a pilot with University of Otago.

A working example: how I used one Writion account to write, promote and tour a self-published children's book — the book, the visits, the readers and the writing.

Writion wouldn't be what it is without our early founding members. They have helped to shape Writion. They are real writers, just like you.

Writion wouldn't be what it is without our early founding members. They have helped to shape Writion. They are real writers, just like you.

The arrival of AI in classrooms and lecture halls has produced a great deal of anxiety, and a rush toward detection — software that claims to catch machine-written work, and too often catches honest students instead. There is a calmer, fairer conversation to be had, and it starts from a different question: not "how do we catch cheating?" but "how do we recognise and value genuine work?"

Writion is not really a piece of software. It is a room full of writers who happen to share a tool — New Zealand authors, journalists, poets and storytellers, each getting on with the particular business of their own writing life. This is where we introduce some of them.

Something has shifted for writers, and quickly. In a world where a machine can produce plausible prose in seconds, a question follows the honest writer around like a shadow: how do you show your work is your own? Awards now ask you to declare it. Editors wonder. Readers are unsure. And the tools rushing to answer this have mostly reached for the wrong instrument — detectors that are unreliable, and surveillance that watches you type.

Launching a book yourself is a strange kind of project management. For months you are a writer; then, quite suddenly, you are also a producer, a publicist, a community manager and a logistics coordinator — often all in the fortnight before release. The authors who launch well are not the ones who work hardest in that fortnight. They are the ones who organised the months before it.

Most writers do not have a business problem. They have a business problem disguised as a time problem. The writing gets squeezed not because there is too little of it, but because the pitching, tracking, chasing and remembering pile up around it until there is no clear space left to actually write.

Tax time for a freelance writer doesn't have to be a scramble — if you've been keeping the right records throughout the year. Here's what to keep, what you can claim, and what your accountant actually needs from you.

I have always loved writing. From the time I could hold a pen, words were the way I made sense of the world. But in those early days, I never once imagined it could become a career — let alone a business. This is the article I wish someone had handed me at the beginning.

Here is the thing no overseas-built writing tool will ever tell you: how tax actually works when you are a writer in New Zealand. How to claw back the 30% the Americans withhold from your royalties. Whether you owe GST on your book sales. Where to get an ISBN — free, as it happens, if you know where to look. What Public Lending Right is, and why you might be owed money you have never claimed.

Nobody sits you down at the start of a writing career and explains the money. You learn to write; you learn, eventually, to pitch. But the invoicing, the rates, the GST, the client who goes quiet the week payment is due — that part you tend to pick up the hard way, one awkward email at a time.

Late payments are one of the most common frustrations in a freelance writing career. Most of them are preventable — not by chasing harder, but by setting things up correctly from the start.

The $60,000 threshold. What goes on a tax invoice. What changed in April 2026. A plain-English guide to GST for NZ writers — because the IRD doesn't explain it in language writers actually use.

Writing for Australian clients is genuinely exciting — and genuinely confusing the first time you try to sort out the currency, the bank transfer, and who owes what GST to whom. Here's how to handle it properly.

What do publications actually pay? When should you negotiate? And how do you know if you're charging too little — or whether you even can charge more? A plain guide to rates for writers in the New Zealand market.

What to include, when to send it, how to handle GST, and what payment terms actually get you paid on time. The invoicing basics every NZ freelance writer needs — from the first commission onwards.

Writion wouldn't be what it is without our early users. They have helped to shape Writion. They are real authors and writers, just like you.

If you write romance, you already know the pace. A series doesn't wait. You're drafting book four while book three is with your editor, book two is out on ARC, and book one is quietly earning royalties in three currencies. The writing is the easy part. It's everything around it — the launch teams, the release dates, the invoices, the continuity you swore you'd remember — that eats the hours you meant to spend writing. If you don't manage all these well burnout will happen. The magic of writing becomes a nightmare.

Not all editors do the same job. Hiring the wrong type of editor for your manuscript is one of the most common and expensive mistakes self-publishing writers make. Here is how to tell the difference — and how to find the right person.

I built Writion because I needed it. This is what an actual writing day looks like when you have a tool that handles the business side so you can stay focused on the work.

Five editors. Three deadlines this week. Two pitches outstanding and a brief that just landed. This is what a working freelance writing career actually looks like — and here is how to manage it without everything falling apart.

Tax time for a freelance writer doesn't have to be a scramble — if you've been keeping the right records throughout the year. Here's what to keep, what you can claim, and what your accountant actually needs from you.

A good pitch is not just a good idea — it is a well-constructed argument that a specific editor should commission a specific piece from you, right now. Here is how to build one.

A magazine assignment has more moving parts than most writers track consciously. Here is the full lifecycle — every stage from first idea to money in your account — and how to manage it without anything falling through the cracks.

What to include, when to send it, how to handle GST, and what payment terms actually get you paid on time. The invoicing basics every NZ freelance writer needs — from the first commission onwards.

If you work from home, you are entitled to claim a portion of your household running costs as a business expense. Many freelance writers either miss this deduction entirely or under-claim it. Here is how to do it correctly.

The $60,000 threshold. What goes on a tax invoice. What changed in April 2026. A plain-English guide to GST for NZ writers — because the IRD doesn't explain it in language writers actually use.

Late payments are one of the most common frustrations in a freelance writing career. Most of them are preventable — not by chasing harder, but by setting things up correctly from the start.

What do publications actually pay? When should you negotiate? And how do you know if you're charging too little — or whether you even can charge more? A plain guide to rates for writers in the New Zealand market.

Writing for Australian clients is genuinely exciting — and genuinely confusing the first time you try to sort out the currency, the bank transfer, and who owes what GST to whom. Here's how to handle it properly.

I have always loved writing. From the time I could hold a pen, words were the way I made sense of the world. But in those early days, I never once imagined it could become a career — let alone a business. This is the article I wish someone had handed me at the beginning.

Most writers don't think of themselves as running a business. But the moment you submit an invoice, negotiate a fee, or manage the lifecycle of a self-published book — you are. Here's a practical look at the parts of the writing life that don't get talked about enough.