Posts tagged 'debut mondays'

Our monthly focus on new and emerging writers takes place again on Monday night. This month, Debut Mondays will feature Raphael Brous (author of I am Max Lamm) Melanie Joosten (Berlin Syndrome), Dan Disney (And Then When The) and Eli Glasman, whose piece ‘Bag’ is in edition 84 of Voiceworks magazine, subtitled ‘Pulp’.

There’s a beautiful book trailer for Melanie Joosten’s novel on YouTube. Kill Your Darlings have published an interview with Raphael Brous in which the author is asked how he goes about writing a sex scene. Here’s his reply:

I wanted to write a challenging, fearless book that I would enjoy reading, that reflected the animal drives within us. Freud may be scientifically discredited, but the Id is, I think, his most astute allegory. The psychosexual elements of the novel will polarise some readers, but they’re essential to its themes. Sex is ultimately about procreation, about life, and therefore about death. In that sex scene, Max Lamm’s guilt – his guilt in having prematurely ended a boy’s life – disturbingly morphs his sexual relief into something utterly disgusting. I was influenced by the paintings of Francis Bacon, the way that he revoltingly, beautifully explored the domination, the submission, the will to destroy that fuels the sexual act. Guilt is, I suppose, motivated by life; that is, motivated by the increasingly fashionable expectation that we lead something approximating an ethical life. Sex is about death; about creating life and in momentarily reaching, through pleasure, some transcendence above ordinary experience. All that collides in the disturbing sex scene.

Debut Mondays author Lara Fergus

I wrote a book about 2 characters. An obsessive cartographer – organised to the point of insanity – and her artist sister, confined to, or hidden in, the small spaces of the house. And while I was writing these 2 characters I led a double life – my organised, ordered daily existence (mostly work) and my hidden life of writing.

I wrote the book in secret. I didn’t tell anyone who didn’t need to know. I wrote it in the early hours of the mornings with the keyboard cold and sticky under my fingers and the blinds closed against the rising light. I blasted baroque fugues through my headphones so that I wouldn’t be able to hear the noise of the coming work day, with all its detail and its urgency, with all its far, far away demands. I wrote because I was clutched by the cartographer, who couldn’t stop working, who pulled me along, who needed me to keep up. I wrote as if any moment I might have to stop, as if any moment I might get caught.

All my energy and thought was channeled into the simple act of writing. It was intense, almost shameful. I never dared think about what the writing might mean, as an artifact, if published.

Now here it is. The book. The story nobody knew about in the hands of whoever wants it. All these obsessions and delusions exposed for anyone to see. I feel outed. And thrilled. And relieved.

It’s the collision between two worlds that makes being a debut author such a schizophrenic experience. My imagined world crashing into my real world. Having to catch a taxi across town to a radio interview in the middle of the work day, ten minutes to shift out of the efficiency-driven whirr of work into a calmer space from which I might be able to answer a question about the book. And then to notch it all back up again in the ten minute return trip so that I can hit the ground running to make up for the time ‘lost’.

It was on a return trip last week that I realised I’m living the schism represented by my work-obsessed cartographer, and her artist sister, who has been given so little room to move. But for as long as I was writing them I had a way to negotiate the space between them. For as long as I was writing them I could move without friction from cartography to painting, from passion to rationality, from control to chaos. I could be inside, with both of them. I could be both of them.

I went in and talked to the cartographer the night before I had to hand over the final manuscript for typesetting. She refused to engage, of course, kept her head bowed over the draftboard as if indifferent to my presence. I said to her:

I need you to look up from your mapping just long enough to see me as your writer and one who can no longer follow you in infinite detail but who has come to shut you down.

She raised her head at that as if she could challenge me. But she didn’t have to. The light from her headlamp was blinding; her face disappeared from me. Completely.

Lara Fergus has written her first novel, My Sister Chaos, and is appearing at Debut Mondays.

Debut Monday author, Kirstel Thornell

Tonight’s Debut Monday author Kristel Thornell has written for Readings blog about how she came to write her Australian/Vogel Literary Award-winning Night Street.

Sheltering from a hot Adelaide summer in the art gallery, Thornell found herself “transfixed by a small painting of a misty city street. It was subtle and gentle—but at the same time, so involving, mysteriously deep.” She had found her inspiration.

It was her first encounter with the forgotten artist Clarice Beckett and Thornell fictionalised her life as the subject of her novel. What fascinated her about Beckett was “the artist’s life could be read as a tragic or a triumphant story”. Beckett never married and spent her life looking after her parents, dying relatively young with little recognition of her art in her lifetime. But rather than isolation or tragedy, Thornell saw another story.

“She explored her own sensuality – in her connection with her city and with nature, in relationships with men. She lived unconventionally, bravely, dedicated to her artistic vision and to the landscapes of Melbourne.”

Photo Lucian Chaffey

Leanne Hall arrives at the State Library engulfed in a coat and scarf, a lavender beanie over her pixie haircut. Her attention to detail when it comes to costumes – literally following my suggestion that she bring a coat and beanie so we can brave the cold on the pavement tables outside Mr Tulk’s – makes me laugh. It’s just what one of the two narrators of her debut novel, This is Shyness, would do. But image-conscious Wildgirl (who pauses to fashion a turban out of a tee shirt while underground tunnelling) would probably be wearing fake fur and glitter, rather than Leanne’s more practical get-up.

A children’s specialist at Readings Carlton, Leanne has long been a bookseller by day, writer by night (and days off). She’s been slowly but surely building a publication record and a reputation as a writer to watch, with short stories appearing in The Sleepers Almanac, Best Australian Stories and Meanjin. Then last year, she won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing – and a book contract with one of Australia’s most respected publishers.

This is Shyness is dark, funny, joyful and engrossing – the story of two teenagers from literally different worlds who spend one long, crazy night together in the suburb of Shyness, where the sun stopped rising three years earlier. Once indistinguishable from the neighbouring suburb of Panwood, Shyness has descended into a bleak chaos.

Adults have fled, leaving teenage children to fend for themselves in grotty sharehouses. Tribes of children – Kidds – live together in a compound, and roam the streets with sinister monkeys known as tarsiers, mugging people for sweets and getting hopped up on sugar. A sprinkling of darkened bars with pale-skinned staff attract ‘tourists’ from nearby suburbs. When Wildgirl, running from intrinsically teenage-girl problems, is smitten by the mysterious Wolfboy after a chance meeting at The Diabetic Hotel, she dares him to stay up all night with her, to prove to her that the sun never rises. Of course, Wolfboy has major problems of his own, in the form of a fractured family – and together they find a temporary release and the chance to be new people with each other.

Like Leanne’s short stories,This Is Shyness treads a fine line between realism and fantasy. The psychology and dynamics of the characters are palpably true, and the writing is crisp and stark – it makes you utterly believe in the place being described, seduces you into it. Like Haruki Murakami, who Leanne is a big fan of, her stories begin with a portrait of life as we know it, and then silkily veer into the eerie, the fantastical. ‘If I try to write straight stories, those other elements just creep in and I almost don’t identify them as being unusual or magical or slightly odd elements,’ Leanne says. ‘Honestly, when I do write my stories, I feel like it’s just reality that I’m representing – which of course it isn’t. I don’t know what that says about my brain or what my everyday life is like.’

The book began with the names of Wildgirl and Wolfboy, the two narrators, and thinking about what kind of place they would inhabit led to the ‘suburb of darkness idea’. From there, the central theme of the one long night emerged. ‘I wanted to write about one of those really, really crazy magical nights – probably one of the first really crazy magical nights you ever have as a teenager – and how you never forget that kind of situation.’

The teenagers in the book are vividly drawn – not just their youthful bravado and conscious hipster cool, or the delicious, volatile fizz of attraction at that time of life, but their transitional state. They’re no longer children, but not yet adults – and while they’re both on an irreversible path away from childhood, they’re young enough to relish a brief return to some of its forgotten pleasures, even (perhaps especially) as their problems – and their feelings for each other – are anything but childish. Wolfboy and Wildgirl ride their bikes and explore underground tunnels on their quest to recover a precious item of stolen property from the sugar-crazed Kidds. ‘I thought it was pretty funny to set a couple of urban streetwise teenagers on a quite old-fashioned quest for an object,’ laughs Leanne. ‘To me that was the biggest joke, to send these really cool teenagers on a quest for an object, which is such a sort of dorky childhood thing.’

Leanne drew on her own memories of being a teenager to create her characters. She personally identifies more with the ‘quieter and more contained’ Wolfboy. But the girl-bullying problems Wildgirl is escaping will strike a chord with any teenager. ‘Everyone’s had that incident at high school … there’s always something where everyone turns against you some day, or you have your dress tucked into your undies and you have to go up on stage at assembly and receive a prize or something. And you really have that feeling of, That’s it for me, I’m not going back. I can’t face those people ever, I just don’t want to exist, and I’m going to move to a different city and have a different name and no one will know who I am.’ Wildgirl gets to live out that fantasy – but her adventures also put her troubles in perspective and allow her to move forward. It’s a fantasy that teenage readers will vicariously enjoy.

They’ll also enjoy the chemistry between the leads. ‘They desperately want to connect but at the same time can’t let go of their mistrust and insecurity, so they’re kind of coming together and pulling apart,’ says Leanne. ‘I like the fact that they lust from a distance. I think it’s important to know that even if that hot boy at school is not jumping on you – he’s still thinking about it.

This is a cross-post of Jo Case’s interview with Leanne Hall which originally appeared on the Readings site.

Meanjin’s blog, Spike sat down with Debut Monday author, Jon Bauer across the digital divide to find out about boxing, street opera and writing notes to self.

What’s a typical day spent writing like for you? Can you describe your routine?

Routine only becomes important to me during the harder sections of a novel. The rest of the time I write when I want to, which luckily is often.

People ask me how come I’m so disciplined and I always say I’m not disciplined, I’m passionate (and they try not to throw up in their mouth).

When I was working on Rocks in the Belly I often had a routine though to keep me grounded and moderately comfortable, because writing a novel is so insidiously destabilising.

Usually I’ll be at the task by ten. Mostly in one café or another. Ideally one where I can sit in the window, plug in my music and write. That way I can see the world even if I’m hermetically sealed from it by writing and music and my back to the room.

By two o’clock I stop if I haven’t already. I’ll need exercise to get me back down to earth, but that might not happen until five when I can go to boxing. I love going in there. I’m not very good at it. It’s a tough gym with a focus on technique – there’s Commonwealth contenders in training, but I just like to hit things. Not so much for aggressive reasons, but the simple fact that it’s as far from mind-based activity as I can get. We use our heads too much these days.

Describe your writing tools – what do you prefer? Parchment or pen, Olivetti or iPad?

My writing toolkit consists of: Coffee, although I’m trying to give it up for something that doesn’t make the voices in my head talk so fast; Music, ideally something melancholically moody. A Macbook Pro, I won’t do that awful rhyme that recent Apple converts do, but I do like this laptop; a café window and some street opera to watch. Streets are highly entertaining – full of dogs and babies and lunch meetings and girlfriend catch-ups and all the emotions and interactions that those elicit from all involved. Seeing life outside the window helps stimulate me in the window. Writing is an insular profession, and just seeing life is enough.

Do you keep a writer’s notebook (or equivalent)? If so, can we take a peek – what’s something you jotted down recently?

I think the good ideas don’t need writing down, but in those anxious moments where the fear of losing one might be keeping me preoccupied or awake, I’ll make a note in my phone in the form of a reminder.

Then days later I might be having a coffee with someone, or wake up in the morning to something like: Man steals dogs for glory of reuniting them; Cancer cry for speech; Two with Jung; Fists thing; Love over lover.

I put reminders in my phone too, for errands I have to run. Often reminders that have begging messages attached to them where I’ve tried to coerce the future-me. ‘Book dentist. Go on. You know you should!’

But there’s always the snooze option, so my mobile is like this little snow plough of jobs to do and stories to write that I repeatedly snooze. ‘Pay gas bill. Do! Go on! You know you should!’ Snooze.

Do you write full time or do you have a ‘day job’? How does this help/hinder your writing?

I’ve been a full time writer for a while now but I used to have this soul-sapping career that didn’t stop me writing anyway. I’d write in my lunchtimes or at work or in the evenings. You can’t write creatively for more than a smattering of hours at a time anyway.

Of course I often feel bad about all the space I have compared to most other artists. I know it’s a great help to me. It means I have more energy for my work.

But having that space is also often typecast by others. Not everyone who had this space would entirely love it. An absence of outside structure can be quite steeply existential. Plus a lot of people are just as unproductive no matter how much time they have. For some, their busy lifetimes are their excuse not their reason.

Writers’ block – does it happen and how do you get over it?

Writer’s block is a sign of personal cruelty. There’s no need for blockages if you’re being gentle with yourself. If every word has to be good. If every story or chapter has to be publishable. If you let your audience or editor or latest crush read over your mental shoulder, you might start to get a bit of writerly constipation.

Creativity is play. And play is never wrong. Writers block means you aren’t doing the first job of an artist, which is ignoring your internal voices. Especially the ones that sound uncannily like you at your cruelest.

Finally, what’s the last book that you loved, and why?

Brenda Walker’s book, Reading By Moonlight – an oblique account of her experience of breast cancer, told through an examination of the books she read to get her through.

Walker would have been forgiven for wanting to shovel her whole deluging experience of cancer onto the page – to bury you as a reader. But instead she’s managed to forge the most subtle, rich and nourishing path through her particular humanity, with all its coal-face drudgery, as well as the most arresting motifs of personal meaning and solace. So many talismans of living flutter from the page, beautifully crafted.

It’s a real achievement to write so honestly about such a confronting topic, but carry the reader through it so gently. I hope I get the chance to meet her.

I received my first physical copy of In-human as a book and I couldn’t imagine the excitement it would bring.

It’s been such a long and hard slog to get it published that there was no joy left in it for me anymore. I didn’t think so anyway. And then I got to hold this beautiful book and I fell in love again. I went home immediately and read it from start to finish in one day. I read it like it was the first time, which sounds crazy after years of re-drafting but I could not put it down. I had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. I didn’t expect this to happen because I’m more than familiar with all the events. But reading a bound book is, I found out, a very different experience from reading that stack of loose pages.

For me In-human is like a fairy tale – I have been able to read it countless times without ever losing the joy of it but by the last edit I was over the whole thing. And this made me sad because we’ve had such a long relationship. I started writing this novel twelve years ago. And the story continues. The novel I’m writing now, How much the human body contains, is Coralee’s take on events. She’s the antagonist in In-human and for me the hardest character to get to know, so I had to start writing this novel to find out about her.

At first (for six years) I struggled not just because In-human wasn’t finished yet, which was significant, but also because Coralee is a very dark and complicated character. Often it’s been extremely hard for me to sit with her story but in the last few weeks I had this amazing insight into what drives her and so now it’s gotten easier for me to let her speak. She’s remarkable and I hope she keeps talking. I’ve put excerpts of the first draft of the new book up on my blog so this time the first draft feels a little more public but also less lonely.

This is an edited cross post from Anna Dusk’s blog.

People don’t much like fear, suffering and death, whether their own or that of others. Spectator columnist Allan Massie has typified this discomfort, arguing that personal experiences of suffering should not be put into memoirs but fictionalised, in part because that way ‘it’s less embarrassing’. This kind of denial is natural enough, but it excludes much more than at first appears.

Because fear, suffering, death and I hung out together for much of my twenties, and because my first book is partly about them, I’ve thought a lot about their meanings and how we write what I’ll collectively term human darkness. As Exposure: a Journey describes, for twelve years I was prey to the regular savaging of pathological fear that is obsessive compulsive disorder. In my mid-twenties, having thrown myself out into an indefinite journey across the planet, I also glimpsed death more often than I’d have liked, as I set fire to my tent in a Bolivian desert, nearly drowned in a half-frozen Alaskan river – you know how it is.

It’s true that none of that was precisely fun. I’m not necessarily recommending people try it. But it’s difficult to overstate how much suffering, fear and the prospect of death offer us.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gifts of darkness are reflected in the way we write darkness (which reflects how we process it). First, you gain understanding of it; then you gain distance; and then you put it through a kind of darkness prism, refracting it so that it can’t overwhelm. You find the comedy in part of it, the beauty and meaning in another part, and the rest you make as terrifying and moving as you can.

This process of refraction embodies the reality that our experiences of suffering and value, of darkness and light, are not only inseparable but mutually constitutive. Significant suffering often deepens, for instance, the capacity for compassion. Prolonged exposure to pathological fear – as exposure therapy has shown – takes sufferers through to calm. But this interrelatedness is perhaps most obvious in the case of life itself, limited and defined as it is by death.

It’s because life has been stolen from death that we value the things and people we love as much as we do: one day, we know, they must all be returned. This is perhaps the richest gifts of both darkness and of the literature that embodies it: to make us see and feel, if even for a moment, how achingly, how heartbreakingly precious and fragile all we love is, and how it will too soon be taken away.

Joel Magarey presented an extended version of this post at the Emerging Writers' Festival. Read the full transcript (pdf)