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It’s that time of year again, where we welcome a new batch of writers to our Wheeler Centre hot-desks. And a wonderfully varied crowd it is.
There’s a singer–songwriter venturing into memoir, a poet seeking refuge from a Duplo-strewn house, a Zimbabwe migrant writing about her experience, a Werribee writer defending her much-maligned suburb, and a freelancer planning to split her time between several assignments.
All of them will work on their writing projects at their own Wheeler Centre desk for the next two months. Thanks to the Readings Foundation, they also receive a stipend of $1000 each.
Let’s meet the second round of Hot Desk Fellows for 2013.
Angie Hart, former lead vocalist and co-collaborator of nineties pop-band Frente, is working on a series of short memoir-essays on her life as a touring musician.
‘I had never been in a band, I had never travelled overseas, I hadn’t written a song before I joined Frente, I didn’t know how to be famous, and I had no concept of moderation,’ she reflects.
Angie has been writing and performing songs for over 20 years, but she describes her reading for the inaugural Women of Letters event as ‘the most humbling experience I have had for a long time’.
She has been writing ever since, including for Liner Notes, Going Down Swinging and the Wheeler Centre’s own Erotic Fan Fiction.
L.K. Holt is working on her third full-length poetry collection, This is Mars, which will be published by John Leonard Press. Her first collection, Man Wolf Man, won the 2009 Kenneth Slessor Prize, as part of the NSW Premier’s Awards.
‘After my son was born, he and I came to the unspoken agreement that he was the centre of the universe,’ she says. ‘Nineteen months later and our house is the templum of this new celestial cult: devotional objects, burnt offerings and Duplo are scattered on the floors of every room.’
She says that the hot-desk fellowships will impose regularity on her writing schedule, and provide fresh surroundings to inspire her. She looks forward to mixing with writers of different genres as she works.
Meleesha Bardolia’s short story about her experience of returning to Zimbabwe, which she left thirteen years ago, has blossomed into a novella-in-progress.
Waiting Upon Arrival has two strands, and two voices: 25-year-old Leeza, on holiday in a place that was once her homeland, and ten-year-old Leeza, growing up in Zimbabwe and reacting to the devastating news of a move to Australia, for political reasons – and then adjusting to her alien status in her new ‘home’.
Meleesha plans to use her time at the Wheeler Centre to examine the gaps and intersections between those two voices.
‘I think a story like the one I’m itching to tell is not only personal but also political,’ she says. ‘After working at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre over the last year and observing the debates that occur in the media and academia about refugees, I think the line drawn between resident and alien needs to be blurred.’
Fatima Measham is a social commentator and feature writer who lives in Werribee. She is working on an essay in defence of her suburb – ‘a literary attempt to subvert prevailing perceptions of Werribee as “the place where your poo goes”, as one so-called friend gleefully told his child’.
She will explore the district’s rich indigenous, pastoral and migrant history, and its ‘natural endowments’, and will reflect on the assumptions people make about such places and those who live there.
‘No one within my close circle of family and friends is a writer, or even vaguely in the arts,’ she says. ‘Nor have I ever been part of a writing community or been mentored by a literary sage. So when I’m not feeling like an alien, I feel like an impostor.’
Fatima has been published by The Drum, National Times, The Big Issue, Eureka Street and other publications.
Pepi Ronalds is a freelance writer of non-fiction articles and essays – thus she finds her imagination captured by different assignments at any time. She’ll be working on a number of projects while at the Wheeler Centre.
Firstly she plans to extend her story, ‘After Shock’ (about the 2011 Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown). The extension comprises a long term, long form project documenting the stories of individuals living in Northern Japan as they deal with the ongoing aftermath of the disaster.
As an enthusiastic freelancer Pepi will also be researching and writing various articles for other publications including Kill Your Darlings (she’s a 2013 columnist on Books and Writing for Killings), Outback Magazine and Southpaw. Throughout her time at her hot desk, Pepi will continue to research and post articles about writing on her blog: Future of Long Form.
Chris Somerville’s stories have appeared in literary journals including Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, Paper Radio, Islet and Stilts. In 2003, he won the State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award and in 2009, was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards (Emerging Author category). His debut collection of short fiction, We are Not the Same Anymore, was released at the start of this month.
Chris discussed with us the mentorship he took with Kris Olsson, the unlucky animals in his stories and why, given his many siblings, he’d like to observe JD Salinger’s Glass family over dinner.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
A short story called ‘I Guess I’m From Here’ which I wrote in my first year at university and it was published online in Retort Magazine. It was a pretty cold story about cold teenagers being detached and mean to each other.
What’s the best part of your job?
That there are a few people out there, people who you don’t even know, that take pleasure in something that you’ve made and then are genuinely interested in talking to you about it.
What’s the worst part of your job?
That it’s mostly up to me to pressure myself to work on something, and even then it can be hard, sometimes, to do this work without feeling guilty that I’m wasting time.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
In 2009 I was given a mentorship to work on my book with the author Kris Olsson. For almost a year we’d meet every fortnight and we’d go over what I’d done with each short story and what I was trying to do with them and so on. Without this my book probably would have never become what it is now.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
The best advice I’ve received was a while ago and it was that you should just get a first draft done and it doesn’t need to be the best thing ever.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
That animals seem to have a real string of bad luck in my book, which I hadn’t really noticed until someone pointed it out and I read through the whole thing again.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I’m not sure if I make a living from writing or if I ever will.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
Even though I’m currently a creative writing teacher at a couple of universities I’m still entirely not sure myself. I think you can guide people, tell them what books they might enjoy to read, and above all be at least one person in their life that will take their work seriously.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Read a lot of books and write a lot, like almost every day. Also, voice is important but isn’t everything – what you also need is some kind of tension in there. Something needs to happen.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Sometimes online if they’re out of print and if I really want them, but mostly in a physical bookshop. I still haven’t gotten around to buying an ebook at any point either.
I really enjoy going into a real bookstore, though. I’ve had a lot of support from bookstores over the last few years, especially at Avid Reader up in Brisbane, who have done a considerable amount for me, and was really the first place, outside of university, where I read my work out loud to an audience.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
Though I did enjoy Catcher in the Rye, I’ve always preferred Salinger’s stories and novels and novellas that were about the Glass family. Coming from a big family myself, I’d much prefer to have dinner with all of them together, and I’d probably just let them do all the talking.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Probably the Dog of the South by Charles Portis, which is the funniest book I’ve ever read, all the way up to the end, until the last line which is sad and maybe heartbreaking a little bit, which I think is an incredibly wonderful thing to do, and a thing to keep up; the funny/sad balancing act.
Chris Somerville’s story collection, We are Not the Same Anymore, is published by The University of Queensland Press.
Simmone Howell spent her teen years writing love odes to eighties pop stars and English essays for her friends. Her novel Notes from the Teenage Underground was awarded the 2007 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Her second novel Everything Beautiful was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Best Writing. Her latest novel, Girl Defective, was released this month.
We spoke to Simmone about her alternative career of being a bookshop person or a hobo, why a person who wishes to write should ‘do some livin’ as well', and the fabulous lies she’d hear over dinner with Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
The first poem I had published was co-written with my friend. We were 13. It was a (rhyming) poem, an ode to the drummer of 1980s pop band The Hooters and it was published in their International newsletter!
What’s the worst part of your job?
The waiting and the general anxiety.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
A long ago phone call from my agent. She asked me if I was sitting down and then told me that Notes from the Teenage Underground was being fought over. There were exciting follow-up emails and then champagne. It was a nice, nice time.
What’s the worst advice you’ve received about writing?
People in bookshops love it when you go in and offer to sign your own books. Best advice? Plod on.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself or your work?
When I was 34 and had been trying to write ‘professionally’ since I was in my teens, and I finally had a little success, an interviewer asked me if I was worried about ‘peaking too soon’.
If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I would probably be a librarian or a bookshop person. Or a hobo.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I think it can help. Sometimes people have raw talent and don’t know how to control it.
Sometimes people don’t know what they should be reading … and how what they read can guide what they write. What I write now is a thousand times better than what I wrote when I was 20.
But I am also of the opinion that if a person wishes to write they should do some livin’ as well… so that there’s something to write about.
My favourite writers were self-taught and would rather bomb a university than attend one.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Keep a notebook. Read everything. Don’t despair.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I love bookshops (especially second-hand) but sometimes I can’t wait and use Book Depository. I also love my local library.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
Argh! These questions are hard. I am wary of meeting my heroes and these include fictional heroes … But maybe Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird because he would tell me all sorts of fabulous lies …
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
It might be Lace by Shirley Conran. I might never get over the idea of three teenage girls at a Swiss finishing school eating eclairs and painting each other’s toenails …
Simmone Howell’s latest book is Girl Defective (Pan Macmillan).
We’ve been talking to tech-savvy writers and publishers this week, finding out how they navigate the brave new world of promoting books online.
Today, we share some dos and don’t for writers, from Benjamin Law, Text Publishing, Paddy O'Reilly, Hardie Grant Books and others.
How do you use social media well? How do you avoid turning people off? And should you build an author website? We have the answers. (Or, some answers.)
Be yourself – people want to know about your life and the work that you do.
Roxy Ryan, marketing manager, Hardie Grant Books
If you’re going to do it, do it enthusiastically – and committedly, much like writing; otherwise it won’t see many results.
Rebecca Starford, associate publisher, Affirm Press
For authors new to Twitter and Facebook, I recommend they start slowly. Twitter especially can seem hysterical and daunting for a newcomer, so I recommend authors just sign up and spend some time on there without necessarily interacting with others. Follow your publisher, see who they follow, see who follows those followers, etc. You’ll start to get the hang of it, and then you can take a breath and wade in.
Alaina Gougoulis, editorial and digital publishing, Text Publishing
Know how each social media platform works before you use them. Generally, Facebook is for friends and Twitter is for the public. If you have fans/readers, consider setting up a separate fan page instead.
Benjamin Law
Focus on fewer platforms, and do them well. Generally I would suggest using Twitter if nothing else, but if you’re not at ease in 140 characters, consider a blog where you talk about your research, writing process, events that you attend, whatever you’re excited about.
Catherine McInnis, digital marketing assistant, Melbourne University Press
As with most things, the trick is to try and be yourself, but also be mindful and respectful of the medium. I am very glad that Twitter and Facebook weren’t around when I was a teenager. That would have been a personal disaster in many, many ways.
Monica Dux
Be consistent. I don’t have a blog because I don’t have the time – and I never want to be the sort of blogger I see way too often, who posts four times in a week, then nothing for two months. That might work for other people, but for me it’s off-putting.
Kylie Ladd
Honesty is important. Don’t suggest you’re more accomplished than you actually are. Skilful achievement, however humble, is far more impressive than a well-polished facade.
Damon Young
Have a website with accurate information, so that if someone wants to interview you she can do her research and get the basic info right. I got my website for two reasons – my publisher wanted me to and, more importantly, there was a website at the time that had published wrong information about me that people had started quoting back to me!
Paddy O'Reilly
Having an online portfolio of work is super handy for editors ho might be interested in commissioning you. They want to see your track record. It’s good for readers who might be keen to read and share your old work. If you’re a blogger, try to keep your personal blog separate from the stuff you’d want editors to see.
Benjamin Law
I think all authors should have their own websites because in my other role as deputy editor of Meanjin (published by MUP), I’m always trying to contact interesting writers and it’s incredibly frustrating if they don’t have a site with their contact details on it. But that’s purely self interest.
Catherine McInnis
Don’t sell your book too hard. By all means promote your book and your publicity, but a good online presence is more than just links to a book.
Roxy Ryan
Don’t forget to make it easy for people to find and purchase your books!
Catherine McInnis
Be rude. Civility gets noticed. Butting into Twitter conversations is cool. Doing so aggressively or sycophantically will not help your development as an author (personally or professionally).
Damon Young
Don’t take criticism to heart (ha!). No author I know can manage this entirely, but particularly online, where people are relatively anonymous, they will say anything. Many of our authors are politicians who haven’t used Twitter before, and they can find it a bit of a shock (again, the #auspol hashtag). Then again, we have books like Speechless by James Button – who is not on Twitter – that are universally adored by everyone who talks about it online. So you could be one of the lucky ones.
Catherine McInnis
The point of social media is the interaction, the conversation, and the immediacy of it: there’s no point in retweeting or reposting something that’s two weeks old.
Alaina Gougoulis
Don’t be discouraged – it takes time to build up an online presence. You have to enjoy it.
Roxy Ryan
If you have your own tips to share – and things you love or hate about interacting with writers and readers online – please let us know in the comments below.
Michelle Dicinoski’s memoir, Ghost Wife, about love, secrets, and same-sex marriage, was published by Black Inc. this month. It’s her second book; her first was the poetry collection Electricity for Beginners. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals, newspapers, and anthologies including the Australian Literary Review, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, the Australian, and Cultural Studies Review.
We spoke to her about self-belief, persistence and talking Dirty Dancing with the narrator of Tom Cho’s Look Who’s Morphing.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
A prose poem, in a now-defunct online journal called Dotlit.
What’s the best part of your job?
When the writing goes well and you feel like you’re soaring.
What’s the worst part of your job?
Every single part of it takes about 27 times longer than I would like.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
When Chris from Black Inc. contacted me last year to say they were interested in publishing Ghost Wife.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Be persistent. Boring, but true.
If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Hmm … Ideally, something that involved less sitting down.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what do you think?
I think it can be taught. Mostly, writers teach themselves, slowly, over many years, but it’s possible to learn in a more formal context, too.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Write, show your work to people who are also writers (or who want to be), find yourself a supportive community, aim for publication, don’t be too shy, and keep going! Also, try to believe that you are good enough to make it. You need a lot of self-belief and persistence to keep going.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Both.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
Today, I’d go out to dinner with the narrator of Tom Cho’s Look Who’s Morphing, because you wouldn’t know in advance who you’d get or where you’d end up. We’d talk about Dirty Dancing and Dr Phil.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Like everyone, I’ve been influenced in one way or another by every single book I’ve read, and I suspect that some of my greatest influences are quite invisible to me. But I can tell you that Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover meant a great deal to me as a teenager. And for reasons outlined in Ghost Wife, I was also scarred/shaped by David Reuben’s 1969 sex manual Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).
Michelle Dicinoski’s Ghost Wife (Black Inc.) is in stores now.
Michelle will be one of four guests at next week’s Debut Mondays.
With the rise of e-publishing, online bookstores and social media, mastering the web has become increasingly important for authors and publishers when it comes to selling books. But how do they navigate this brave new world? Should you dip your toe into every form of social media, or immerse yourself in one? How often should you use social media to sell and promote, and how often to chat and share news? And perhaps most controversial of all … to retweet or not to retweet (compliments)? We put these questions – and more – to a selection of authors and publishers.
‘My favourite social media outlet is Twitter,’ says Alaina Gougoulis, who works in editorial and digital publishing at Text Publishing – and provides the voice behind its social media. ‘It’s immediate; you can have a conversation in ways you can’t on other forums.’ Her preference for Twitter is widespread among the publishers we spoke to; that conversational element makes it a natural fit for sharing ideas (which books do, too). Facebook, on the other hand, is perfect for events or sharing images; it’s popular for promoting illustrated books (as is Pinterest, to a lesser extent).
Text’s social media voice is bookish, cake-loving and fast-quipping, complementing the inevitable self-promotion with links to news and pop culture posts, wry one-liners and conversation with followers. Alaina describes Text’s approach as ‘the classic 70/20/10 formula: 70% interesting content relevant to our followers, 20% interaction with others (retweeting, reposting and commenting on other posts) and 10% self-promotion’.
Author Benjamin Law has an enviable social media following, including more than 25,000 Twitter followers. Does it help with book sales? ‘Absolutely,’ he says. People follow him for reasons as diverse as ‘crass poo jokes’ and links to great articles – but for whatever reason they’re there, they notice when he’s making an appearance at a book festival or event, and some of them turn up to say hello. The key? ‘Make every tweet interesting, educational or funny. If it’s none of these things, maybe – I don’t know – write it in your journal. Tell it to your cat! Or nobody at all!’
Novelist Kylie Ladd says that while she ‘knows’ her online presence has helped her sales, she’s not sure if that help has been significant, though it has directly led to jobs – as a guest commentator on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters and creative writing teacher at the Australian Writers Centre.
She believes that it’s important to be consistent; to commit to a form of social media (whether that be Twitter, Pinterest or a blog) and show up regularly enough for people to get to know you and connect with you. It’s those connections – with readers and other writers – that she enjoys most about her social media presence. ‘Don’t do it because you have to, or your publisher says you have to – that always shows through eventually. Find an online medium that works for you; keep your voice real and authentic. Anything else is just too hard to sustain.’
Paddy O’Reilly started using Twitter – which she had previously disparaged – last year, at her publicist’s suggestion. She doesn’t think it helped her sell books, but she was surprised by how much she enjoyed it – for finding links to articles, book recommendations and making friends. ‘Twitter has become a conversation, often about books and writing, which is great.’
Damon Young, author of Philosophy in the Garden, believes that Twitter contributes to his commercial success. ‘It’s hard to match tweets with sales. But I certainly see Twitter followers reading my columns or extracts (or listening on radio) then buying the book. (And sometimes tweeting photos of the book in their hands.)’
‘It’s great if authors can be engaged (and engaging) online,’ says Catherine McInnis, digital marketing assistant at Melbourne University Publishing – and Damon’s publisher. ‘Maybe it won’t make you sell thousands more books, but it helps. And it keeps publishers interested in your next work, and the one after that, because you have a following.’
She doesn’t want her authors to straight-out spruik their books online, though. ‘It’s about opening up conversations that people can join, or witness, on things the author is passionate about. For the same reason, having a website about your book rather than yourself is not terribly useful. Whether you like it or not, people want to know about you, the author.’
‘I see some clever people on Twitter who manage to promote their work without being total pains in the arse, but it’s not easy to get it right,’ observes Paddy O’Reilly. Maybe part of the reason authors like Benjamin Law manage social media so seamlessly is that their personal ‘voice’ is so central to their books – so just being themselves is a kind of promotion. Others, like Damon Young and MUP stablemate Antony Loewenstein, trade in ideas, both online and in their work. ‘They’re also ideas-driven people in real life, it’s not just a persona they’ve created,’ says Catherine McInnis.
It’s somewhat tougher, perhaps, for authors of fiction, whose own personalities and ideas are separate from those of their characters. Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, has worked around this marketing roadblock in a nifty way, by giving his protagonist, the wife-seeking Professor Don Tillman, his own in-character Twitter account. The Rosie Project is also supported by online quizzes where you can find out if you’re a match for Don, or that pose the question ‘Which character are you?’. Simsion, who has a background in business, worked with the publisher to create these companions to his book. The Rosie Project also has its own book trailer, though this device seems to be waning in popularity as a sales tool.
‘Some work, lots don’t,’ says Roxy Ryan, marketing manager at Hardie Grant. ‘People are used to seeing really high quality film trailers, advertisements and film clips. So when a book trailer comes along that looks a little less than 100% polished due to the inevitably smaller budget, it can have a negligible or sometimes negative effect. The other issue is channels to show book trailers. If all you are doing is putting them up on your YouTube channel, then I wonder if the time and investment is worthwhile. But when they work, they can be a great way to get the concept of a book across really quickly. And good creative work can always flourish without a big budget. I thought the trailer for The Rosie Project was really cute and well executed.’
The trailer for The Rosie Project.
Andrew Wilkins, of children’s publisher Wilkins Farago, is hugely enthusiastic about book trailers. ‘They can be really cheap to do and they really promote the book,’ he says. The production technology is free these days, so the only cost is the time to produce it. And it’s relatively easy to use – his thirteen-year-old son edited his last video for him. Andrew concedes that publishers need to think carefully about distribution, and that they need others to host the video in order for it to take off. ‘You need a strategy around it.’ Wilkins Farago builds book trailers into their data feed to online booksellers, and disseminates them to schools and libraries. ‘They love them, because they help engage kids as readers.’ Wilkins Farago’s most popular trailer has head nearly 130,000 views. ‘But there’s not necessarily a direct correlation between how popular your video is on YouTube and sales,’ he says.
The Trailer for Wilkins Farago’s Kampung Boy has attracted nearly 130,000 views.
Monica Dux has been on Facebook since 2008 and on Twitter for the past couple of years; while she says the direct link to readers (and potential readers) is satisfying, she also finds it somewhat mysterious and terrifying. ‘It is such a weird medium,’ she says. ‘I suspect our generation are sometimes not very good at it because it’s really not what we expected when it came to promoting our work. There needs to be a rule book that can tell us exactly what is appropriate, and what will get us mocked.’
One of those things that can attract mockery is the practice of authors retweeting compliments about themselves – which can seem a logical thing to do. ‘I steer clear of it because it can be irritating for your followers,’ says Monica. ‘Having said that, I actually did retweet a compliment last week, and immediately felt dirty. Yet I understand why so many authors do it. We’re all told that we must promote ourselves, and then when we do we run the risk of getting attacked and mocked for it. So it’s a catch-22.’
‘It’s perfectly fine, as long as it’s done with some vestige of modesty,’ says Roxy Ryan. ‘But if an author is feeling a tad personally modest they could always alert their publisher and ask us to tweet it for them – it’s our job to be shameless!’ Catherine McInnis suggests authors respond to the compliment rather than retweet, ‘which will make the complimenter pretty chuffed too’.
But Benjamin Law counsels against the practice. ‘As my friend Sophie once said, retweeting a compliment is similar to someone running into a room and screaming out, “You guys, someone just said I was pretty!” I actually know people like that and actively try to avoid them in real life. Why would I want to follow them online?’
Alaina Gougoulis agrees that ‘it’s going to rub your followers the wrong way’, unless the circumstances are exceptional. ‘By all means, retweet the really out-of-this world ones – if you get praise from Joan Didion, I’d forgive you if you got it as a tattoo – but try to do it with charm and be humble about it.’
Damon Young disagrees. ‘I like to hear what’s said or written about authors I follow,’ he says ‘We reprint praise from reviews on book covers and websites. Why not retweet compliments on Twitter? And yes, I do it.’
This Friday on Dailies, we’ll publish some ‘dos and don'ts’ of internet promotion, as gathered from the authors and publishers we interviewed. Stay tuned …
We bring you our favourite findings from around the internet this week.
It’s International Women’s Day today – and there’s a slew of interesting articles out there today on the subject of feminism. Daily Life has published an edited version of a lecture Clementine Ford gave at ANU this week on women’s voices in the media. The Drum has published Julia Baird on the way women’s anger is being harnessed to fight oppression through organising on social media. And The Economist has published an international ‘glass ceiling index’ today, rating nations on their working conditions for women. New Zealand topped the list, while Australia came in at number five.
What better way for bookish types to celebrate International Women’s Day than by deciding to read one or more of the 12 books on the Stella Prize longlist? The Stella Prize (worth $50,000) will be awarded for the first time on Tuesday 16 April, to the best book by an Australian woman writer published in the past year. In the week of the prize’s announcement, its founders and judges will discuss its evolution (and winner!) at the Wheeler Centre. Put Thursday 18 April on your calendar.
George Lucas – the king of creative control – has sold the rights to his beloved Star Wars franchise to Disney. Why? All those Jar-Jar Binks jibes from outraged fans really hurt.
He found it difficult to be creative when people were calling him a jerk. ‘It was fine before the Internet,’ he says. ‘But now with the Internet, it’s gotten very vicious and very personal.’
Photo from Bloomerg Businessweek. From left, R2-D2, Disney Chairman and CEO Robert Iger, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, and Mickey Mouse.
In this Businessweek article about how the deal went down, Lucas reveals that Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford have signed on to the next suite of Star Wars films (or, they were ‘in final negotiations’ at the time of sale). And that after the sale was made, excited Disney chairman and CEO Robert Iger went trick-or-treating with his kids dressed as Darth Vader. Awww.
The internet has been abuzz this week with the latest in the ongoing saga of writers being expected to write for free (which is linked to the parallel saga of readers expecting content for free, and publications being broke). Nate Thayer published an exchange with an online editor at The Atlantic this week, in which he was invited to write a 1200 word version of a 4300 word article for the magazine, but when he asked about payment, was told there was none. (He was also told that even writers who deliver original content are paid $100 a piece these days.)
Digital journalism doesn’t seem to pay – at least not like journalism used to.
The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic issued a formal apology to Thayer for offending him. Bob Cohn, the head of Atlantic Digital, said that ‘it was a mistake’; Thayer should have been asked ‘if the Atlantic could cross-post, or syndicate, the original piece, with no more work involved on Thayer’s part’.
Felix Salmon uses the whole affair to look at the current media landscape and concludes:
Digital journalism isn’t really about writing, any more – not in the manner that freelance print journalists understand it, anyway. Instead, it’s more about reading, and aggregating, and working in teams.
In an ironic twist, the Nate Thayer piece that the Atlantic was so fond of has been hit with some pretty incriminating plagiarism charges. ‘At the very least, his citations are a bit sloppy,’ writes New York magazine, which calls him out in detail for a raft of unattributed quotes through his piece, which was ‘deeply indebted’ to a 2006 article on the same subject.
Meanwhile, over at Overland, Jennifer Mills addresses the issue of writer payment from an Australian perspective – again, using an example of being offered exposure in lieu of payment. She argues in favour of writers organising as a collective to negotiate reasonable payment and conditions.
Karen Pickering: Has argued against writers working for free.
We published arguments for and against writers working for free, by Helen Razer and Karen Pickering respectively, late last year.
Lesley Jørgensen won the 2011 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize for an unpublished manuscript for what is now her debut novel, Cat & Fiddle.
We spoke to Lesley about her first forays into writing, the buzz of having ‘a real, live publisher’ show interest in your work for the first time, and why you shouldn’t for a minute go into writing as a way to make money. ‘There are many, many, other ways of making money (and losing money) that are easier than this.’
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
In 2008/9 I was approached by Aviva Tuffield of Scribe, who had already seen some very early chapters of Cat & Fiddle in draft, and asked me to contribute a short story to the New Australian Stories 2009 collection. I said ‘I don’t write short stories’ and then remembered that I had written one a while ago for an editing exercise, so passed it on to her, and it was included in the anthology. I had previously published quite a few legal articles, in law journals and in conference, but I don’t think they count. No one reads them.
What’s the worst part of being a writer?
I am fortunate in getting a lot of pleasure from the actual process of writing. However I find it physically very demanding: carpal tunnel syndrome, sciatica and eye problems from too much screen time, are my writing-related work injuries to date! And it makes me fat. I have not yet figured out how to write without Fruchocs.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
A real live publisher showing some interest in the first place. Nothing beats that, the first time: not prizes, not even seeing my work in print.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Worst advice, or rather commentary: ‘What’s the point in going over the manuscript again?’ And: ‘No one likes long books.’
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
I’m not famous enough, or perhaps not complex enough, to be misunderstood. People seem to pretty much have tabs on me as I really am.
If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I’m not a writer, primarily. Writing fiction is tremendously important to me, but my sense of purpose is very much tied to my profession as a lawyer. I love the law and my area, medical negligence, in particular. And to a certain extent, my writing is dependent upon my continuing to practice as a lawyer: I am always much more productive as a writer when I am working as a lawyer.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I do believe that most things can be taught, by people that do those things well. I do believe that a writing course taught by writers, not academics, and focused upon the process rather than theory, can accelerate the progress of most budding writers enormously. I took this path. Without the guidance of experienced writers and the pressure to produce, I do not think I would have achieved very much at all.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Do a reputable course run by writers: one that puts the pressure on to produce work every week, and has a strong emphasis on workshopping. And do it only for yourself: don’t for a minute think along the lines of actually making money from it. There are many, many, other ways of making money (and losing money) that are easier than this.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Due to the sheer ridiculous volume of my reading and an inclination towards the classics, I only buy second-hand. My home looks like one of those houses that are filmed in documentaries about hoarding, but at least I can admit that I have a problem. I also like to scribble and underline as I read, and delight in finding and deciphering other people’s scribble and underlining, as well as the odd pressed flower, bus ticket and crushed earwig.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
At the moment I’m still very caught up in the world of Cat & Fiddle, so I would love to go to Windsor cottage and eat one of Mrs Begum’s home-cooked meals. She would feed me too much and then give me excellent advice about my life, which I would follow to the letter. Shunduri and Thea would be there as well. Thea would advise me on how to dress, and Shunduri would tell me where to get designer clothes at half price and tell me that I should be wearing a push-up bra if I really want to get ahead in the world.
Outside the world of Cat & Fiddle, I find that I bond more with writers than characters. I would invite Virginia Woolf and George Steiner to dinner, and then be in far too much awe of them to do anything but listen. Mrs Begum would still need to cook for us though.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
How impossible to narrow it down to just one! And it changes as my life changes. Jane Austen’s Persuasion approaches perfection with its continual tension of yearning versus restraint. Virginia Woolf’s diary and her partial memoir Moments of Being, contain the best description of the writing process that I have come across. And Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation which, like all of Helen’s work, is full of nothing but the leanest, cleanest writing: an object lesson whenever I put pen to paper.
Cat & Fiddle by Lesley Jørgensen is available now, published by Scribe.
We bring you our favourite findings from around the internet this week.
Wells Tower reports on his father-son trip to Burning Man, the world’s largest chemically enhanced self-expression festival, for GQ. ‘When I mentioned to friends that I was going to Burning Man with my 69-year-old father, “Good idea” were the words out of no one’s mouth,’ he writes.
Image from GQ.
A set of Jane Austen stamps has just been released in the UK, to celebrate the 200th birthday of Pride and Prejudice. Newly-commissioned artwork depicts scenes from all six of her books.
Following Horrible Histories creator Terry Deary’s diatribe against libraries for lessening his book sales, Flavorwire has compiled 25 feel-good tributes to libraries from favourite writers. ‘I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college,’ said Ray Bradbury. ‘People should educate themselves — you can get a complete education for no money.’
Ray Bradbury, library lover.
You might want to put down your chocolate and rethink your lunch after you read this New York Times article on the science of junk food. Yale University professor of psychology and public health, Kelly Brownell is quoted: ‘As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.’
What do you do if your magazine is famous for its swimsuit issue, and images of unclad women are readily available at the click of a mouse? You go extreme. Kate Upton, the cover girl of Sports Illustrated’s latest swimsuit issue, posed in a bikini in Antarctica – and got pretty sick as a result. ‘When I came back, I was losing my hearing and eyesight … My body was shutting down because it was working so hard to keep me warm.’ What exactly are the ethics of that?
Favel Parrett’s debut novel, Past the Shallows, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2012. She won Newcomer of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards and the Dobbie Literary Award in 2012. Favel has also had a number of short stories published in literary journals, including the Griffith REVIEW, Island and Wet Ink.
We spoke to Favel about why writing is hard work (but worth it), that it’s easy to hear the negatives and forget the compliments, and why you should ‘back yourself’ as a writer, even if it takes decades.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
I wrote a 300-word story called ‘Waterproof, Lightweight, Good in Snow’ about something that happened to me while trekking in Bhutan. Wet Ink published it in 2009 and that gave me the most incredible feeling. I was inspired to keep sending work out, to keep writing. Wet Ink gave me that first big nod of approval and I will never forget it.
What’s the worst part of your job?
I often think people assume that being a writer is so free and fun and that you can just do it anywhere, anytime when the inspiration strikes. But it is not like that for me.
Writing is hard work, sometimes even uncomfortable. It is often lonely, or at least a very solo road, and I think most writers are brave.
George Orwell said, ‘Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness.’ I wouldn’t go that far, although some days it does feel horrible. But there are moment when it feels right, brilliant even – when a problem is solved, when something slots into place and has come from my own mind, from my own creativity. Those moments are worth all the work and doubt and all the time alone. When something in my writing is working, running, it feels great.
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What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
When my publisher, Vanessa Radnidge told me she loved Past the Shallows and believed in it, that she would try her hardest to get it through. At that point there was a 50/50 chance of it being published, but even with those odds it was a defining moment for me. Someone from the industry believed in my work and was my champion.
What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?
A creative writing teacher gave me this quote from Annie Dillard, and it helps me often.
‘Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? And, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too – the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that. He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air, and it holds. And if it can be done, then he can do it, and only he. For there is nothing in the material for this book that suggests to anyone but him alone its possibilities for meaning and feeling.’ – Annie Dillard, This Writing Life
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
When I was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, the whole thing was a bit of blur. I couldn’t take it all in at the time, but months later, I read the judges’ notes properly for the first time. They said something about one of the characters, Harry, being a remarkable achievement. And even though most of me didn’t believe it, I tried to sit with those words and let them sink in. It is easy to hear all the negatives, to focus on them, and hard to believe the compliments.
If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I would love to work at sea in some capacity, specifically on the southern ocean on a ship like the CSIRO vessel Southern Surveyor. If I could go back in time I would tell my 20-year old self to think about going to maritime college or becoming a trainee seaman. Working at sea is hard, but I know I would love it. It is very much in me.
I would also love to work with sea birds in some way. To work on Macquarie Island or somewhere similar is a kind of dream job for me. No surfing, but Macquarie Island is one of the most amazing places on the planet, so it’s a fair trade.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I have learned so much from a few fantastic teachers and writing mentors. I have also had some not-so-great teachers who wanted to lead me down a boring and dull road of planning and plotting. Your voice can’t be taught, but as writers we need tools and they can indeed be taught. I am also very grateful for the teachers and fellow students who have brought writers into my life that I might never have read. That has certainly made a great difference to my own writing.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Keep going, keep writing, keep reading. When you have a piece that is the best it can be, send it in for something. Don’t put it in your drawer and let doubt win. Back yourself. It is a long road. It can take years, decades even, but if you want to be a writer you have to keep going, keep writing, keep sending your work in for publication and rejection.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Always, ALWAYS in a bookshop. They are places of sanctuary for me, galleries of imagination. I love walking around bookshops with no destination in mind, no particular book in mind. I just like to look, to wander aimlessly, my brain resting. We are lucky to have such passionate booksellers in this country.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
I am going to bend this question a little and choose an author instead of a character. I would love to sit and listen to Maya Angelou speak about what writing and words and poetry mean to her. I think she is one of the bright lights in this world – a gift. I listen to her read her own work often and it always calms me down and grounds me.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson impacted my life in a way I can’t really explain. That story, read out loud to my class by a primary school teacher, changed something inside of me forever. I felt it deeply – an actual physical response to the words. I never knew that books could do that. The world was different after that book.
Favel Parrett will be a panelist in Tasmania’s Tipping Point, at 6.15pm tonight at The Wheeler Centre.
Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project is one of the most awaited books of 2013. Since winning the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript last year, it’s been a whirlwind journey. Text Publishing debuted the book this month; rights have already been sold to over 30 countries for over a million dollars.
Graeme Simsion
Professor Don Tillman, an associate professor of genetics, lives a highly regimented life. So, it’s only logical that when he decides to find a life partner, he embarks on it in an unusually planned fashion: The Wife Project. He devises a complex questionnaire designed to find the ideally compatible mate: organised, punctual, logical and healthy living. But along the way, he stumbles on Rosie – a feisty feminist smoker who is habitually late and works in a bar – and entangles himself in her quest to locate her birth father. Although he considers her ‘the world’s most incompatible woman’, Don enjoys Rosie’s company more than anyone he’s ever met, and finds himself uncharacteristically breaking rules and routines (and trying new things) in order to spend time with her. Chaos, comedy and romance ensue.
We spoke to Graeme about the book’s journey to publication, the evolution of Don Tillman’s voice, the laws of comedy (and screenwriting), and writing a character who seems to have Asperger’s Syndrome.
It’s strongly implied in your book that Don has Asperger’s Syndrome, from the opening pages, but it’s not explicitly said. You’ve talked about wanting him to be more a person who has characteristics than a diagnosis. Is that that led you to that approach?
Yes. I made a very conscious decision not to say he had Asperger’s. When I first ‘took Don out’ in a short story, in my class at RMIT, all the questions were about Asperger’s, not about my character. I thought, let’s just put this whole thing aside. Let’s just present Don. And if you want to sit there and say ‘Don has Asperger’s’, then you be the diagnostician.
The Victorian Premier’s Award judges, when they wrote up their decision, said ‘Don Tillman has undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome’. And I thought to myself, ‘undiagnosed, except by the judges of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards’.
I read you saying somewhere that a lot of men have a bit of Don in them.
Yes. From what I’ve read, it seems that men already have a head start on the spectrum. And whatever happens genetically (and perhaps environmentally) pushes them further along it. Whereas women start further back. You do have women with Asperger’s, but it seems to be a lot less obvious and common than it is with men.
Yes. And it presents in different ways.
Again, when I’m talking about Don being given an outing, one of the women in my class said, ‘For goodness sakes, he’s just a bloke. Every bloke I’ve been out with has been like this’. And lots of men have said, ‘I can see things in there that are me’. Particularly analysing situations, being problem-oriented, not picking up on how other people are responding, not picking up on social cues. These are very traditional male characteristics.
What was behind the creation of Don, and in particular the idea of him being a character who had poor social skills but was highly intelligent?
I have a very close friend – a really intelligent man – who struggled for a long time to find a partner or get past a second or third date, or even a three-month relationship. He did find a wife and their story is very interesting. I made a short film about it that was shown at the Bondi Film Festival recently – a documentary film.
I was going into the screenwriting course at RMIT back in 2007. I wanted an idea to take into that, and his real-life story was the starting point. I moved away from it very quickly, but his manner of speaking – which comes from having an IT computer background – I channelled for Don. That’s probably the one thing from him that’s left in the final story. He’s not the real Don, I hasten to add. In fact, there’s probably more of me in Don than there is in him.
You had been working on this project for six years – so I suppose it’s undergone quite an evolution in that time?
When it started, it was a drama. Because I like to lighten things up, it had a few moments of comic relief, and I realised those moments were quite strong. When I realised that the shape of what I was doing was very close to the genre of romantic comedy, I decided to take it down that path.
I had a really big ethical question to ask, which was: Are we laughing at a disability? Are we holding up someone who has a disability they can do nothing about and laughing at it?
I ran the manuscript past a lot of people who were from Asperger’s families, including a couple of people who are self-diagnosed with Asperger’s – and without exception I got a very positive feedback from those people about the portrayal.
Also, I think that stories, whether they be dramas or comedies, are typically about someone setting out to do something for which they are not as well equipped as they may not like to be. If they are manifestly under-equipped, then it’s comedy. And Don is manifestly unequipped to handle social situations, just as some people are manifestly unequipped to handle a physical confrontation. (Like in The Karate Kid.) So, they set out to do something about that.
I try to push the line throughout the book that Don is different rather than in any way inferior, but his differences mean that he’s going to have to make some changes if he wants to achieve certain things.
‘If the character is good enough, the comedy will happen almost automatically. And that’s what I found with Don, that he’s an intrinsically comedic character.’
I think you really did a terrific job in terms of that rounding that out. You’re on his side. One of the things I thought was interesting was that there are moments when Don seems to commit a huge social faux pas, but actually he’s using his ineptness as an excuse to get out of something, or to put off something he’s not ready for. I thought that was one element that really helped to round him off as a character.
Yes. People have said to me, ‘Don’s just absolutely honest’. In my mind, he isn’t. Don is a great rationaliser. He uses science to rationalise his behaviour. A rational decision is to do this.
He’s a caricature, or an extreme version of the man – typically – who’s out of touch with his emotions and yet they are driving him. So he’s being quite heavily driven by his emotions, but he’s madly rationalising it.
The idea of him approaching what is seen these days as an entirely emotional situation – finding a partner – with the opposite (entirely logical) was a great comedic device as well.
Of course, it’s now very topical, because internet dating has really popularised an approach that was once the province of very specialised dating organisations. Lots and lots of people are essentially doing this. They’re making a list. So this is essentially taking that idea and pushing it.
It was hilarious that women started to like his questionnaire because they felt it was nice to have someone listening to them. Have you had any response from women readers about that?
No. I have been wondering if anyone will take offence to the fact that he quite clearly objectifies women. You can’t ask for someone to objectify a woman much more than Don does. He takes all the emotion out of it and says, ‘here’s the list of characteristics this person must have’. But he’s not objectifying them in the traditional sense. It’s not a sexual objectification. So I wondered how women would respond to it. But so far it’s been quite a positive response, including from quite a lot of women who would describe themselves as being strong feminists.
I think that the fact that you write in Rosie’s response – which is exactly that – really helps, because you’re acknowledging within the book that women might respond in that way.
I hope that she is the voice from the other side, if you like. And then Claudia is the moral centre. Claudia is the gentle voice of reason, whereas Rosie’s fairly strident. She’s got some issues, too. The hardest part of writing the book was Rosie.
I read that she’d completely changed from the character you wrote?
Yeah. It was ‘The Klara Project’. Klara was much more the sort of woman you’d expect Don to end up with. She was a nerdy Hungarian doctoral researcher in physics. And it made it too easy. Of course they were going to end up together, once they got their heads together! In the earliest incarnations of The Klara Project, they actually moved in together partway through the book. It was boy gets girl, boy moves in with girl. It was an examination of their domestic life. There was lots of fun to be had, but I wanted to write a character who was gutsier.
It’s interesting that you started with someone very like Don, because one of the threads of the book seems to be that the thing you think you want often isn’t what you want at all. Rosie’s the opposite of what he thinks he wants.
I would never have been allowed to write it in a screenwriting course without having the basic rule that the hero sets off wanting one thing and has to learn that he needs something else. Don’s want is one thing, his need is another. And his want is the perfect woman who will accept him exactly as he is. But he needs to make some changes in order to find someone who accepts him.
So that idea was something that suits both Don and telling a story?
Exactly.
It struck me that Don’s impaired understanding of social skills is a really handy narrative device for comedy. It throws up so many funny situations, like where he reads things literally. I wondered if you were looking at creating someone who had those social deficits partly because it was a great way of creating a comedy?
No. Because I started this as a drama. Don started out as a fully-formed character. I was very wary of making him comedic. But then I found that as soon as I was able to open myself to comedic possibilities, Don was just a great character for that.
I threw away a lot of scenes, and I learned that I could throw them away with confidence and replace them with something else, always knowing that whatever happened in a dramatic sense, Don being in it would add the comedy. So I never had to write a scene for comedy. Every scene advances the dramatic story and the comedy is incidental. It just flows.
The official trailer for The Rosie Project.
So it was the character leading you towards comedy, rather than comedy leading you towards that kind of character?
Absolutely. Tim Ferguson from the Doug Anthony All Stars was my situation comedy teacher at RMIT. And he’s a very smart analyst of how comedy works. He pointed out if the character is good enough, the comedy will happen almost automatically. And that’s what I found with Don, that he’s an intrinsically comedic character – whatever you wheel him into.
For example, the ball scene was originally quite short. Because it came out of a screenplay, where time is quite tight. You’ve got your 90 minutes, you get on with it. And my editor said, I want you to wallow around in this a bit more, I want more to happen. So I just added more stuff that might happen at the ball, and because Don’s there, it’s just going to be funny.
Was it fun writing some of those bits? They’re so fun to read.
Absolutely. I loved writing the book. I really enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed this whole journey.
It sounds to me – you keep referring back to it – like the RMIT course you did was incredibly beneficial as well.
It was fundamental. Absolutely fundamental. The book would not have happened without the course. Not just for discipline, which is important. Not just for knowledge, techniques that you learn, but the feedback that you get, the camaraderie.
So you would definitely be on the side of creative writing courses being a good thing?
Absolutely. If you want to progress at something, you need three things at least. You need to know the principles and so forth, whatever your field might be. Think about it. You’re a plumber, an engineer, a doctor. You’re going to need to have knowledge, you’re going to need to have practice, and you’re going to need to have feedback. On top of all that, you need the discipline of 10,000 hours. A writing course is one of the easiest ways of getting all that bundled up in one package.
And of course you need talent. But I don’t think it’s talent that holds people in writing courses back. It’s putting in the hours. 10,000 hours is one of those figures that’s bandied around a lot – for a professional to achieve excellence, for expertise to be gained.
That’s a lot of time. That’s 2000 hours for five years. And I didn’t see anyone putting in anything like that amount of time. People say, ‘I’ve read a lot of books’. That’s like saying ‘I’ve listened to a lot of music, therefore I can learn how to play the piano very quickly’. You won’t learn to play the piano without putting in a lot of time.
Most people have other things in their lives. They’re trying to earn a living. So they have pretty good excuses, or reasons, but if you don’t put in the hours, you’re not going to get there.
One of the key things about this book is Don’s voice, isn’t it? So obviously you were developing that voice right from when you created the character in 2007.
Yes. And like I said, that voice came from a good friend of mine I’ve known for 30 years, and we see each other pretty regularly, and I can picture his voice.
In fact, I got him to read the first chapter and record it for me. And he sounded exactly as I’d imagined the voice in my head; it was quite wonderful. I’m inclined to talk about it being an official audio recording. But that may not be the voice the person reading the book hears, and it might be quite off-putting for them to hear that voice.
That’s the thing about a book, isn’t it, as opposed to a screenplay – that everyone can imagine their own version of that character, based on their experiences or desires.
Particularly a book like this, which is extremely lean in terms of description. You don’t know what colour the trees are, or anything. You know the weather, but that’s about all. I’ve stripped it of everything else, because that’s Don’s point of view. You’ll just have to fill it in yourself as you read it.
Has that got anything to do with it starting as a screenplay, or is more to do with Don’s voice?
It’s got a fair bit to do with mine. A lot of people, particularly male readers of the book, have said to me, ‘Oh it’s great, it doesn’t waste any time on description, I hate description, I just skip those paragraphs’. And sometimes I think authors putting in a lot of description are being quite self-indulgent, or catering to quite a narrow audience. There is an audience for a book that concentrates on action, dialogue, emotions, but not on literary description.
One thing I liked about the book was the many moments when the reader knows more than Don. It’s nice for the reader to be able to see things that the character doesn’t.
Yeah, it’s all from Don’s point of view. So the only way we can know things more than Don is for us to be smarter than Don. Which means more socially aware.
One of the huge decisions in writing the book – which I took very quickly – was to write it in first-person. And most stories you see about somebody with a syndrome – or if you want to go further, a disability – are written from the point of view of another character, be it a film, whatever.
Just as Rainman is from Tom Cruise’s perspective. We’re asked to identify with Tom Cruise, not with Dustin Hoffman. And I wanted us to identify with Dustin Hoffman, as it were. I thought it was really important to be inside Don’s head.
Image from Rainman. ‘I wanted us to identify with Dustin Hoffman, as it were. I thought it was really important to be inside Don’s head.
I guess from the point of view of reading a comedic novel, too, it works better anyway.
You’ve got the unreliable narrator. You are buying depth and humour off the character’s mistakes. But we also understand how Don works and how he’s reached his various conclusions.
As I was reading this for the first time, intensely curious as someone with experience of Asperger’s, I was curious as to how I would react to the portrayal. And I found it fascinating because there were a few times when I thought I wasn’t going to like it. There were those key words that raise my hackles, like ‘affliction’. But every time that happened, a few pages on that would be knocked down. I thought that was very clever and wondered if that was something you were deliberately setting up – raising those kinds of stereotypes and knocking them down.
It’s quite deliberate. I always think something’s more powerful if you put both sides on the table and you argue. I come from a background of teaching skills to consultants. And I would always say that rather than knock your client down with your argument, your first job is to express the client’s different argument as clearly (and aggressively, if you like), as you can. To show that you’ve understood them. I wanted to see those different views.
There is one change I will make in the reprinting. Don uses the term ‘idiot savant’ at one point and I don’t want him using that term. It’s not a correct term. But later on, the head of a medical institute uses the term ‘idiot savant’, and that will stay, thank you very much. It’s a discussion point. Would the head of a medical institute use an out-of-date term insensitively? I say yes.
That’s interesting. Because the one thing where I have to admit I questioned was whether teacher in the school who was teaching a class of Aspie kids would really be so uninformed and insensitive. But then I had to think about some experiences that I’ve had in schools, and I thought ‘okay, maybe’.
That term ‘Aspie’, there’s been controversy around that. Do we want to make Asperger’s something that people are proud of, and identify with?
This is always an issue with any form of difference. Deaf people, for example. Do you want the form of community that says Auslan is at least as good as English or better, or should we teach them to lipread? You can go back to homosexuality, too. Is this part of your identity and a positive thing, or is it something you’ve come to fix?
Julie, the teacher, and the parents have said, We don’t want you celebrating and jumping on top of the desks and saying ‘Aspies rule!’ I wondered how parents of kids with Asperger’s would feel about that scene, because it’s quite challenging.
As the parent of a child with Asperger’s, I thought it was a great scene. Especially because I was going through this process of being annoyed and having my hackles raised and then enjoying Don’s journey – him thinking it was an affliction at first, reading more about it, and then changing his mind. I actually read that tiny passage to my son and he thought it was hilarious.
Actually, I gave a copy of this book to my dad, who is Asperger’s, and he’s telephoned me three times already to tell me how much he loves the book, and to go over scenes.
That’s really important for me, because I feel a great affinity with that group of people and I would just hate to be writing something that was insulting or disempowering. I like to feel that it’s the other way around.
In fact, I have a guy who was involved in the film side of things and wanted to know from the screenplay whether my portrayal was realistic. So he went to a guy in his apartment building, who is well along the autism spectrum, and asked him, ‘Is that what you would do?’ He said, ‘No, I’m not a geneticist’. It took half an hour to explain what feedback he wanted. ‘Would someone with Asperger’s Syndrome who had qualified as a geneticist – would they do this?’ Eventually, he said ‘yes’. The answer didn’t take very long, but formulating the correct question for someone who had a very literal interpretation was.
Graeme Simsion with Casey Bennetto, Ted Baillieu and his fellow category winners at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards dinner 2012.
I wanted to ask about your path to publication, and what it was like to be in the path of editors and publishers after so long driving the project yourself.
The path to publication was really straightforward. Once I was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, I had already popped the book into a couple of slush piles, so I contacted those publishers and said ‘Hey, guess what, I got shortlisted for the Premier’s Award, does that help?’
I had a couple of publishers come on board at that point and say they were very interested. Another one came out of the slush pile after I won the award. So, I had lots of publishers interested. I come from a business background, so I said, ‘Give me your best offer by the end of the week and I’ll make a decision’. So, we had a number of conversations, and Text made me a fantastic offer – and I’ve had no reason to regret running with Text.
Alison Arnold, who became my editor, was in fact the person I’d met from Text when she came along to talk to our school. So it was great to have had that connection. And she’s been terrific.
I think the concern is – Is the person who’s editing me helping me to make it as good as it can be in my eyes, or do they have a different vision for it? If it’s the latter, then you’re going to be in trouble.
You seem to have a real affinity for that screwball romance genre. I wondered if you’re a fan of that kind of writing, or if you did any particular research.
Remembering that this thing developed as a film script, my research was films. I looked at the romantic comedy genre and watched a lot of romantic comedies. And then, as a further part of research, I went back and looked at some of the older screwball comedies, going back to the 1930s. Bringing up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, those sorts of films. They were different from the modern romantic comedies. They were much more comedic. And the women were stronger.
In those old screwball comedies, there were two powerful personalities that met, and I really liked that. I liked the plot twists and so forth – and the way that they were genuinely funny. As distinct from now, when romantic comedies tend to be light romances.
Did that research you did feed into the research Don does, watching romantic films?
I was really conscious that I had created a really archetypal romantic comedy and I wanted to reference it. At the end he says, ‘I’ve been living in a romantic comedy’, because he’s researched it. I wanted to acknowledge, wryly, that I knew what I was doing.
Interview by Jo Case, senior writer/editor for The Wheeler Centre and author of the forthcoming book, Boomer and Me: A memoir of motherhood, and Asperger’s. She recently reviewed The Rosie Project for Australian Book Review.
Graeme Simsion will be appearing at Debut Mondays tonight at The Moat.
We bring you our favourite findings from around the internet this week.
Groundhog Dog is one of those quietly classic films – it’s not showily clever, it didn’t win any Oscars, but it remains much loved, and admired by contemporary filmmakers who do win Oscars. ‘I would give my left arm to have written that f—-ing script … It makes me mad because I would so like to make a film like that. Oh man, I could go on forever about that movie,’ says David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) in this anniversary tribute to Groundhog Day.
‘I would give my left arm to have written that f—-ing script,’ says David O. Russell.
In a fun exercise that’s become an annual affair, The Millions compares the US and UK covers of their Tournament of Books contenders.
Alice Munro’s Dear Life – the painterly US cover.
Alice Munro’s Dear Life – a more expected photographic cover, from the UK.
Esquire publish some truly terrible celebrity profiles, but they also publish some fine journalism that pretty much makes you forgive them. This week, there’s a long profile of the man who killed Osama bin Laden – simply referred to as ‘the Shooter’. He tells the inside story of the raid, his opinion of Zero Dark Thirty’s version of events, and (most importantly), the personal aftermath for himself and his family … and the startling lack of support from the US government.
The Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation:
Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family.
Zero Dark Thirty’s portrayal of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The Occupy movement is about to get its own superhero comic series, courtesy of DC Comics. The Movement, to be launched in May, will be a chance to ‘Meet the 99%… They were the super-powered disenfranchised — now they’re the voice of the people!’ In the same month, a new series about teen trillionaires who use their riches to make people’s lives better is also being launched. The Green Team is being touted as ‘the adventures of the 1%’.
As the New York Review of Books turns 50, the Financial Times takes editor Robert B. Silvers out to lunch – and discusses the art of editing, the importance of long-form reviews in the digital age, and his renowned work ethic.
‘He is in the office seven days a week, often until midnight, where he keeps a bed in a cupboard. He edits every piece in the NYRB himself. Contributors speak of his long polite memos revealing an encyclopedic knowledge of even the most obscure subjects, as well as a disregard for normal working hours.’
Leonard Cohen at his desk in Montreal, Canada, 1963
Yesterday, we welcomed our first round of Hot Desk Fellows to the Wheeler Centre, where they’ll work on their writing projects for the next two months. Thanks to the Readings Foundation, they also receive a stipend of $1000 each.
They’re escaping distractions as diverse as neighbours' renovations up against the wall of their writing rooms, toddlers wailing outside their study doors, and the competing lure of dirty dishes and washing on the line.
Meet our first five writers – and their projects.
‘Virginia Woolf said a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction, but I would happily and productively settle for a desk,’ says Penelope Chai.
Last year, she was selected for Film Victoria’s Catapult Lab for new Feature Film Writers with a feature film screenplay called Pack Savage.
Penelope describes it as a teen black comedy in the spirit of Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mean Girls and Juno.
Teenager Frankie Arbuckle’s life is thrown into turmoil with the arrival of her new foster sister Sarah, but the charming and accomplished Sarah has a dark secret. In a former life, she was a wild child raised by dogs.
With the support of producer Jane Liscombe (Beaconsfield, Save Your Legs), Penelope has been developing an outline for her film. During her Hot Desk Fellowship, she plans to develop that outline into a Beat Sheet (a breakdown of each scene) and from there, a treatment, to be used to apply for Film Victoria funding.
Martin McKenzie-Murray is working on a journalistic book about the 2004 murder of Rebecca Ryle, to be published by Scribe. It’s intended to be a study of grief, a search for motive and an examination of meaning in the criminal justice system.
‘Too much of our crime writing is shallow and salacious, given to macabre details of crime scenes and a paucity of psychological or procedural context,’ he says. ‘We excitedly exchange the blood-soaked details around the water cooler, breathlessly admonishing the killer, and then move on to the next atrocity. With this book, I have sought context and understanding.’
While the book ‘flirts with finding a reason’ for the murder, it is most interested in knowing what happens when we can’t.
Martin is a columnist with the Age and has been published in Griffith Review, ABC’s The Drum and Crikey.
Wahibe Moussa is an actor, emerging writer, community artist and Arabic language and culture consultant. She has collaborated on many theatre and television projects as a script consultant and actor.
She is working on a draft of a new play, In the Garden, about a strong, intelligent woman who retreats from the world around her and attempts to reinvigorate an overgrown and undernourished garden. As she works, she finds relief from the post-traumatic stress she has sustained after escaping political persecution in her homeland, while her husband attempts to reach her and save their failing marriage.
Wahibe sees writing as ‘a double-edged sword’ – you need dedicated time and space, free from disruptions, and the stimulation of discussion with other writers and thinkers. She believes that the Hot Desk Fellowship will offer a solution.
Award-winning young adult author Kirsty Murray has published several books of fiction and non-fiction. She is currently working on the final draft of a novel about three sisters whose lives are irrevocably changed by war, beginning on Armistice Day, 1918.
She hopes to finish her novel in the next few months, securing a 2014 release through her publisher, Allen & Unwin. But her neighbours are about to start construction of a townhouse against the wall of her bungalow backyard office, meaning she needs a quiet place to work.
‘I desperately want to secure a 2014 release for this novel,’ says Kirsty. ‘In 2014, Australian bookshops will be awash with war books commemorating the outbreak of World War II, but very few of these books will deal with the lives of the women who stayed behind. My novel is a rites-of-passage story about the girls who came of age in the post World War I era. It’s not a novel about war, but about peace and the courage it takes to rebuild lives in the face of grief.’
The Wheeler Centre’s location next to the State Library of Victoria will be ‘fantastic’ for Kirsty, who will ‘need to make regular mercy dashes to the library to clarify historical details’.
Dominic Gordon’s novella-in-progress is set in a ‘semi-dystopic, but current, Melbourne’ and is influenced by William Burroughs and other beat writers. His main character, Jimmy, suffers from schizophrenia; we follow his journey through a waking nightmare.
Dominic is studying novel and screenwriting at RMIT – but took ‘a roundabout route’ to becoming a writer. After leaving school aged fifteen, he became a self-described ‘juvenile delinquent’. But after a magistrate told him to learn how to fight (‘because where I was heading, I would certainly need to defend myself’) or smarten up, he decided on the latter. That was more six years ago.
Melbourne is the main character in his work. ‘I am using my voice to yell out to the streets, screaming, spitting, laughing, pissing and kissing the concrete of my birth.’
Dominic says that this fellowship will provide ‘impetus and discipline’ as he moves onto the next phase of his novella.
Monica Dux is a writer, social commentator and co-author of The Great Feminist Denial. Her new book, *Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting) will be published by MUP in March. Monica is deputy chair of The Stella Prize and a frequent guest on ABC radio.*
We spoke to Monica about the art of peeing while standing up, the painful journey towards getting your writing to work, and the importance of finding your voice as a writer.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
I had numerous articles published in academic journals when I was a postgraduate studying history. At the time I was writing a PhD on the history of venereal disease so I suspect that these reached a maximum audience of about seven people.
When I finally decided to abandon my thesis I wrote a short piece about the art of peeing while standing up, a skill that I had perfected as a young lass. I sent it to the Age and they published it. It was thrilling seeing my words in print and getting paid for it, especially something that was all about urination.
What’s the worst part of your job?
Isolation, self-doubt, poor pay. The inevitable triumvirate of the neurotic writer’s life.
There is so much joy when your writing is working for you, and that’s partly what keeps me doing it, but the journey to get to that point is often fraught and painful.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
I’d been writing for a few years, and had co-authored the book The Great Feminist Denial, but I was starting to feel that I’d lost touch with my voice, and was becoming a bit earnest. So when I was pregnant with my second child I wrote an essay about my fear of doing a poo while in labour; something that I’d become quite passionate about. It was possibly the best 5000 words I’d ever written and it inspired me to set about writing my new book about pregnancy and motherhood. Clearly, bodily functions have provided me with considerable inspiration.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Best advice: I can’t remember if I was ever told this, but I would say, FIND YOUR VOICE. And then run with it.
Worst advice: ‘You really should take up writing.’
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself or your work?
Like most writers, I’ve been called many unsavory things over the years, and I’ve had my fair share of abuse and attacks over things I’ve written, particularly online. So the nasty stuff never shocks or surprises me anymore.
I do sometimes get surprised when I meet someone and they recognise my name from something I’ve written. Sometimes you forget that people are actually reading you. (Although I’m yet to meet anyone who recalls those learned articles I penned about VD.)
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Modeling. Definitely modeling.
Other than that, I like to think I’d be working in some creative capacity. Either that or I’d be an incredibly bitter check-out chick. As a teenager I had the fastest scanning rate at the North Ryde Woolies, so I’m sure they would have taken me back if things hadn’t worked out. Perhaps there’s still an opening?
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I think talent needs to be cultivated, but I don’t believe that writing can be taught. However I do think that courses can help people to develop the discipline they need to put their words on the page. And, crucially, it’s a way for aspiring writers to find community and get a practical understanding of how the world of words works.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Just do it! (And try to avoid clichés).
Ask readers who you trust to look at your work. Work to your strengths. Don’t be disheartened by criticism. Don’t expect it to come together straight away. Good writing takes time, patience and hard work, no matter what genre it is, or how long the piece may be.
And all drafts are shit until the final one.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Both. I live literally around the corner from Readings in Carlton, yet in my lazier moments I’ve considered ordering books from them and having them delivered to my home. It’s only my fear of being outed has stopped me from doing this.
I love buying second-hand books online that I wouldn’t be able to source otherwise. Being able to do that had been a very useful research resource for me.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
Trixie Belden. I’d want to ask her why she gave her pony to Miss Trask. This has remained one of the great unanswered questions of my life since I was eight.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Possibly the Bible. I was brought up very Catholic, and all that Jesus-love certainly moulded by worldview, but unfortunately not in the way that the Church would have hoped. I think all those years of alleluia-ing gave me a healthy appreciation of the absurd.
Monica Dux will be one of eleven writers performing at this Saturday’s Wheeler Centre Gala, Where the Wild Things Are. Some tickets are still available.
Monica will be talking about her new book, Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) at the Wheeler Centre on Wednesday 13 March at 6.15pm. The event is free, but bookings are required.
It’s always nice to have new neighbours. And we’re especially thrilled to welcome the ten new writers who’ll be moving into the Wheeler Centre Hot Desks in the first half of 2013.
With the generous support of The Readings Foundation, the recipients of our Hot Desk Fellowships will be offered a $1000 stipend and workspace in the Wheeler Centre over a two month period, as well as in-kind support from the Wheeler Centre’s resident organisations.
The fellows were selected from nearly 200 applications, by a selection panel that included representatives from the Wheeler Centre and all of our resident organisations: Melbourne Writers Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, SPUNC, Australian Poetry, Express Media, Writers Victoria and Melbourne PEN.
‘We were pleased – and just a little overwhelmed! – by the number of applications we received, so many of them really compelling,’ said Donica Bettanin, programming co-ordinator at the Wheeler Centre. ‘After a tough selection process, everyone here is looking forward to welcoming the successful writers and to learning more about their projects.’
Applications for the second two intakes for 2013 will open later in the year.
Intake 1, from Monday 11 February – Friday 19 April
Penelope Chai, Pack Savage (film script)
Martin McKenzie-Murray, A Murder Without Motive (non-fiction)
Wahibe Moussa, In the Garden (play)
Kirsty Murray, The Year It All Ended (YA novel)
Dominic Gordon, Bright City (novella)
Intake 2, from Monday 29 April – Friday 5 July
Angie Hart, Hurry Up and Wait (memoir)
Pepi Ronalds, Untitled, (non-fiction)
L.K. Holt, This is Mars (poetry)
Meleesha Bardolia, Waiting Upon Arrival (novella)
Fatima Measham, No Shit (essay)
Novelist Charlotte Wood launched a new publication this week, The Writer’s Room Interviews, taking its inspiration from the famed Paris Review interviews with writers, by writers. We spoke to Charlotte about the hopes, goals and driving force behind it.
‘I am approaching writers at a time when their focus is not publicity but the real work of being a writer – the day-to-day tinkering at the desk, and the private world of their book.’
What is The Writer’s Room Interviews?
A bimonthly e-magazine focusing on the creative lives of writers in Australia.
What inspired you to start this project?
I have always loved long-form, Q&A interviews such as the Art of Writing pieces for which The Paris Review is renowned. Not long ago, a painter friend gave me an old Artist Profile magazine interview with the painter Euan Macleod, conducted by another artist, Steve Lopes. It was about the former’s work, and was a wonderfully detailed, fascinating interview about the artist’s process. I came to think its complexity and restful tone was because the interviewer was a fellow painter; at its base there seemed a quiet knowledge of a lot of stuff about painting. So they didn’t muck around on the surface but moved straight into a really rich discussion of how Macleod works. I just loved it, and I returned to it several times over a few weeks. Then I got into a little blue funk, wishing there were something like that for Australian writers, especially given the shrinking literary space in traditional media such as newspapers.
So then I just thought, well if nobody else is going to do it, I will! I have a background in journalism, have done a little basic design work over the years, and I have a huge enthusiasm for this project, so I figured it was a way for all my skills to come together as well as giving me an opportunity to develop my own writing life. I am always learning from other writers.
The interviews will be produced in PDF format and emailed to a subscriber base. How did you decide what format the project would take?
The Writer’s Room Interviews is an unashamedly old-fashioned publication – the interviews are long – and while I think it will be a great resource for serious students of writing who may be young and very tech-savvy, many of my colleagues in the writing world aren’t very technologically adventurous, so I didn’t want to go down the proper e-book route. Some of those I contacted as a sounding-board exercise early on told me they would love to subscribe to something like this but wanted to be able to print it out, which is another plus for the PDF format. I like the democracy of PDF; it will work for just about anybody and can still be read on an iPad or other reader as well as good old-fashioned paper. And it’s cheap and incredibly easy to produce.
The big drawback of PDF format for me is that my readers could forward it to non-subscribers, which could really ruin my chances of its success in the long term. But I’m banking on the honour principle and my readers’ goodwill, I guess, at least in the early stages, and will be asking subscribers not to share it beyond their households. I think the price of $27.50 for six issues is pretty good value – so I hope that fact, combined with a literary community desire for quality interviews, keeps me afloat for a while.
That said, I doubt this will ever be a money-spinner (at last estimate my rate of pay was anticipated at $7 an hour if I get a healthy subscriber base!) but I have already gained so much personally from my first interview, with Amanda Lohrey, that I really don’t care.
How did you choose your first subject, Amanda Lohrey? What was it that appealed to you about her?
I am a real admirer of Amanda’s work. She’s a very interesting writer – a respected essayist as well as fiction writer – and has a long career on which to draw. I had met her once before at a festival and found her refreshingly frank and forthright, as well as warm and funny and just engaging to talk to.
I want to talk to writers when they’re not in the midst of promoting new books, which is mostly the only time they are interviewed at length. I hadn’t seen Amanda in public for a while – she’s deep into work on a new novel of course – so the timing was right in that sense, although as it turned out she won the 2012 Patrick White Award the day before we spoke.
One of the reasons I want to talk to writers ‘between books’ is that – speaking personally at least – I am always very anxious around publication time, which can lead to one being a bit self-protective in interviews, or just very quickly tiring of hearing your own voice. You’re also very tired at that stage of coming out of a long work. You can get sort of stuck in an interview rut, where you find yourself going over and over the same ground.
I wanted my interviews to feel quite different from that. I am approaching writers at a time when their focus is not publicity but the real work of being a writer – the day-to-day tinkering at the desk, and the private world of their book.
I am asking writers about their body of work rather than just the latest book, as well as nerdy questions about routines and strategies and how they face familiar obstacles, and then much broader questions about creativity which never really get addressed in mainstream media interviews – quite rightly, as mainstream audiences are not necessarily writers and general readers can find technical talk about writing very boring. Not me.
What will your selection process be driven by? Will you be choosing writers based on your own curiosity about their work and processes, a desire to promote their work to readers – or something else entirely?
Entirely and utterly by my own curiosity about their work, and my own whims of the moment. The idea of being allowed to approach anyone I like and interrogating them for a few hours about how they work just seems like the greatest luxury to me. I do, though, want to get an interesting spread of different kinds of writers – my next interviewee is a male screenwriter, for example. Some will be well known, but lots won’t. Some will be people I’ve met through my writing career – like Amanda – and some will be people I don’t know but whose work I admire. I feel that I have an instinct for sniffing out whether people might have interesting things to say. I hope that as we go on, the magazine will develop its own standing, and become a record of writerly creativity in Australia. I will be really proud if I can achieve that.
You’ve embarked on this project as a one-woman show – you’re producing, promoting and distributing the interviews yourself. What made you decide on this approach? What are the challenges or advantages of doing it this way?
It’s so liberating to just be able to run the whole thing myself, with nobody else’s agenda driving it. I’ve worked on mainstream magazines in the past, so I think I have a reasonable idea of what’s involved in terms of schedules and production and planning and so forth. I am sure it could get exhausting, but my plan is to do it thoroughly and professionally for the first year, and see what happens. If there’s enough interest I’ll keep going for another. But the truth is that I find talking about writing and hearing about others’ creative practice so completely riveting that I expect I could do it forever. It’s just lovely to be able to have these conversations in a more formal way than I would be doing anyway.
As an author, you’ve been interviewed many times yourself. What do you think makes a good interviewer?
Anyone who listens well, reads well, thinks deeply, is genuinely interested in their subject and who is prepared to sit back and let the interviewee really speak can be a good interviewer.
What do you dislike when you’re reading an interview – what makes you cringe?
As a reader I find superficial ‘entertaining’ questions – the ‘if you could be any character in a book who would it be’ kind of thing – I find a bit tedious as they never really go anywhere or reveal much. When interviewers feel the need to step into focus and show that they too are interesting and clever, that can unbalance an interview I think. I’m actually just quite old-fashioned – most interviews are way too short for my liking; I find I’m just getting interested and then it’s all over. One thing I find mystifying about the internet is how often one is directed to write to a maximum length of 800 words. Surely the joy of the internet is that it provides the freedom to create really long, interesting conversations – but instead you get 500 words from the person you’re interested in, and ten thousand words of banal or insulting comments. Actually, I’ve just realised another great advantage of The Writer’s Room Interviews: no comments section!
You can find out more about The Writer’s Room Interviews on Charlotte’s website. A one-year subscription costs $27.50, for six issues.
Damon Young is a philosopher, author and commentator. He is regularly published in the Age, the Australian, by the BBC and elsewhere. His first book, Distraction, has been published in the UK, the US and Mexico. His latest book is Philosophy in the Garden (Melbourne University Publishing).
We spoke to Damon about being a ‘so-called philosopher’, the surreal contrast between public applause and private penury, and why you have to be bored on behalf of your readers.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
I wrote a poem in 2004, ‘Howard Watches the Oscars and Weeps With Joy’. That was published in Overland. I remember poetry editor John Leonard, in a handwritten note, calling it ‘neat’ – an adjective that surprised me.
My first published literary essay was ‘Facing Nietzsche’s Demon’, in Meanjin, 2005. It began as the introduction to a manuscript, and ended as a stand-alone work. The first paragraph still prods me to keep an intimacy with readers.
(My very first publications were in academic journals, from 1998 onwards. But they had a small audience.)
What’s the worst part of your job?
The surreal contrast between public applause and private penury.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
On the strength of Philosophy in the Garden, I was just invited to write a new book for Pan Macmillan UK, part of their popular School of Life series. Writing and rewriting a manuscript can be a prosaic and anxious business—this was a welcome slap on the back.
And I was recently chuffed to sign with UQP for two children’s books. The craft of the rhyming picture book – a cross between aphorism, poem and joke – is a real challenge.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
My Year 8 English teacher had a rule: “Never begin a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’.” But I never took her seriously. (And now I write for a living.)
More helpful was my colleague, philosopher and author John Armstrong: ‘You have to be bored on behalf of your readers. You swallow all the tedium and banality so they don’t have to.’ I enjoy writing – as a career and as a daily discipline – but this reminds me to accept the dull days.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
Angry readers of my journalism (often religious) sometimes call me a ‘so-called philosopher’. As if my profession were in doubt because I take a hammer to their idols.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Teaching philosophy.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I’ll be brief, but this is a Big Question. Writing is a craft, just like carpentry, medicine and the martial arts. These are all what the Greeks called techne: practical skills with predictable outcomes. Techne can be systematised, taught methodically and learned step-by-step. In short: yes, writing can be taught.
Will this guarantee students publication or literary excellence? No. The market is fickle, and the best artistry can’t be taught: it involves aesthetic and existential novelty. But if students have the right skills, and receive good feedback and criticism, this can help them educate themselves. English novelist Emma Darwin is very good on this.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Read widely, charitably and patiently. Write in the same way. Do this daily.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
In Melbourne, I buy from bricks-and-mortar shops like Embiggen, Readings and Minotaur. At the Paris end, I like the Paperback Bookshop.
For out-of-print, hard-to-find and just-plain-expensive books, I do shop online. I also read on a Kindle.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
Odysseus, from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. The so-called “man-of-many-sorrows” is a veteran raconteur – up there with Hemingway. We’ll trade anecdotes.
But Kazantzakis’ Odysseus is also a philosopher and ascetic. We’ll talk about the ambivalence of loyalty, the value of lies, and the role of savagery in civilised life. After a few red wines, we’ll do sprints. Perhaps Odysseus will teach me archery.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics rarely get too dusty. Nietzsche condemns my sentimental ideas, smug certainties; kicks me in the bum to create and destroy without fluffy idealism. Aristotle warns me to check my wannabe iconoclasm with adult virtues like courage, temperance, pride.
Damon Young’s latest book is Philosophy in the Garden (Melbourne University Publishing). You can find our more about Damon at his website: www.damonyoung.com.au.
We share five of our favourite links, videos and articles from around the internet this week.
Love, Actually, Richard Curtis’s celebrity-packed ensemble film that launched a thousand holiday season copycats (Valentine’s Day, anyone?) was on television again last night. Karen Pickering watched it and wrote down all the reasons it’s ‘offensive garbage’ – from a savvy analysis of the way the women characters are all mere vehicles for the men, to locating it as the cause of a truly awful movie trend.
FYI, telling your best friend’s new wife that you’re in love with her (using twee flashcards) is about the most selfish, creepy, dick move imaginable and if she doesn’t tell her husband then I fear for their embryonic marriage.
It’s always a lovely gesture to tell your best friend’s new wife that you love her. While he’s in the next room.
The subject of whether writers should write for free – and if so, under what circumstances and how often – has been one of our hottest in this year’s Dailies. We’ve hosted discussions by Karen Pickering on why you shouldn’t write for free and Helen Razer on why writing for free can pay off.
This week, the conversation exploded all over Twitter when Marieke Hardy asked Mia Freedman why her commercially successful website Mama Mia doesn’t pay its writers (you can read Freedman’s response here). Elmo Keep has written about the subject this week too, saying the argument is ‘so old it needs cassettes’ – but questioning online publications whose business models don’t plan for paying their contributors.
And here’s writer Harlan Ellison getting pretty fired up over the whole issue of not paying writers (and of the free work given by amateurs affecting his own bottom line). ‘I sell my soul but at the highest rate,’ he says.
We’ve shared images from Chasing Ice, James Balog’s mission to document the Arctic ice being melted by climate change, in a past Friday High Five. Now, we can share a video from the forthcoming film, showing the largest iceberg calving ever filmed. ‘It’s like Manhattan breaking up in front of your eyes.’ Breathtaking and terrifying.
Flavorwire has uncovered the original storyboards for a whole host of classic films, from Spartacus to Sound of Music. It’s pretty cool to see the seeds of some of the most popular and ingrained images of popular film culture.
The original storyboards for The Sound of Music.
Are you spooked that the Mayans knew something we don’t? Are you ticking off the items on your bucket list, expecting it all to be over in a matter of days or weeks? Well, NASA is here to tell you that the world will not end in 2012 after all. And to explain how to accurately interpret the end of the Mayan calendar. Sit back, relax and figure out how you’re going to live the rest of your life, after all.
The multi-talented Cate Kennedy (short-story writer, novelist and poet) is one of Australia’s most loved writers. Her books include the acclaimed short-story collection Dark Roots and the award-winning novel The World Beneath. Her latest book is Like a House on Fire, her long-awaited second story collection. Cate is currently completing a Wheeler Centre Zoo Fellowship.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
I had a poem published in the then Sun Herald kids’ pages when I was about nine and a short story published by the Canberra Times when I was in Year 12. I hope both those newspapers can forgive and forget.
What’s the best part of your job?
Being able to experience, occasionally, the sense of working purely on instinct, being answerable to nobody.
What’s the worst part of your job?
Spending big chunks of time by myself when I’m bored with my own company.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
Most ‘writing career’ things feel quite remote from my ‘real life’ but one time I was lucky enough to have a story accepted by the New Yorker magazine, and they wanted to fax some editorial changes through to me. I went into the ‘office’ to wait for the pages and when the clunky old fax machine connected and that first page came through with that unique font and typeface gradually appearing, it hit me that an editor at the New Yorker was sitting up at 10.30 at night their time, devoting time to a story of mine, and soon it would be in the actual magazine … the shock came home to me then. Literally.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Best advice: take your work seriously, not yourself. Worst advice: if you’re not at the desk at 9 am every day dutifully churning out a thousand words, you’re not a writer.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself or your work?
Somehow a suggestion of mine in a workshop once – that a good place to start cutting could be the first paragraph of your short story – had morphed into a hard and fast rule that I’d insisted that the first 300 words from every story needs to be deleted.
As someone who was born when my Australian parents did a short work stint overseas, returning when I was three, I was also gratified to learn from a US reviewer that I had, as a migrant, clearly learned to love my adopted country.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I’d like to say running a theatre company, but then I’d be making an even worse living. Maybe a curator or museum worker or restorer. A job to do with piecing lots of small disparate things together so they reveal something.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
Hmm. I think craft and technique can definitely be honed, but only if there’s something there to work with. If this isn’t too simplistic an answer, I think writing can be taught, but creativity can’t be.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Read as widely as you can, with humility and curiosity, and just for the sheer pleasure of it. Learn what makes you feel energised, and explore it as deeply as you can.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Both. I buy a lot of secondhand books online that are hard to find, and I just can’t resist poking round in bookshops either, to find something I didn’t know I was looking for.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
You want me to say Mr. Darcy, don’t you? There’d be long pauses while I tried to hold up my end of that exquisitely-honed Austen dialogue. Jay Gatsby would know where to get a good table, I guess. But on reflection, I’d like dinner with Jack Irish then a long chatty brunch the next day (my shout) with the Drover’s Wife.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird made an indelible impression on me both in terms of life and writing – I’m still finding new things to admire in it and it’s still a touchstone in terms of making the commitment to write with verve and conviction. It’s hard to pinpoint just one book, though – I also remember as a teenager being mesmerised by the way Ray Bradbury used language and the way Peter Carey’s short stories absolutely subverted everything I’d been taught in my fairly hidebound English class. It was like stumbling into a speakeasy during Prohibition. Sorry to have to add one more, but Lewis Hyde’s extraordinary book The Gift was the one that seemed to come into my hands at exactly the right time to encourage me to persist with writing.
Cate Kennedy will be in Wangaratta at 6.15pm tonight, talking to Ramona Koval about By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life.
Next Wednesday, Cate will be a guest in our event, A Night at the Zoo, where she’ll talk about the work she’s been doing during her Wheeler Centre Zoo Fellowship – with Sally Rippin, Judy Horacek and Estelle Tang. At the Wheeler Centre, 6.15pm, Wednesday 21 November. Free, but please book.
The Wheeler Centre has become home to 20 writers this year, thanks to our Hot Desk Fellowships, supported by the Readings Foundation.
Each writer has received a $1000 stipend and a desk at the Wheeler Centre for a period of two months, to work on their writing projects – which have ranged from crime novels set in meth labs to memoir essays about pregnancy and cancer, from portrait poems of Melbourne to translations of Turkish poets. And the distractions we’ve provided refuge from have included needful babies, hungry kids, office dogs, housemates with smelly washing and the anxiety of being a trespasser in a university library.
In short, it’s been a blast. Thanks to all the fellows from the first two rounds.
Now, it’s time to welcome our final round of Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellows, as they have move into their desks this week.
Oliver Mol is working on his debut novel, Transparent, a darkly comedic, satirical novel about the gap between the personalities we project and who we really are.
Told from the perspective of three different characters, Transparent explores ‘whether the twentysomethings of today are as vacuous as they make themselves out to be’ and delves to discover the real feelings that lie beneath their projections of coolness.
Oliver hopes the book will resonate with a maturing Gen Y.
Oliver says he uses method acting to understand his characters’ thoughts and feelings, so the opportunity to write in Melbourne’s CBD, where the book is set, will contribute to making those characters rounded.
‘A novel is an unwieldy beast at the best of times,’ says Georgia Powick. ‘A first attempt is an exciting prospect.’
She hopes to have completed the first draft of her young adult fantasy novel, Amelia Grimes, by the end of the year.
The major themes of the novel are the dangers to society of eradicating differences in people, the need to belong and responsibility. The novel will ask: to what degree are we responsible for others?
Amelia Grimes is set in another world, in an institution for lost children called St Balthus. Amelia will join with a group of other displaced children to fight the powers behind St Balthus – until she’s faced with a terrible choice. Will she abandon the group and return home, or sacrifice herself for the greater good?
Georgia is looking forward to being part of a community of writers in her time as a Hot Desk Fellow – and to having ‘easy access to dumplings’.
Samuel Cooney is working on a novella, Trickle and Trace, that he began as part of a master’s degree at Sydney Consortium.
Though this would be his first full-length published work, Samuel has a varied publication history, including fiction published in Sleepers and forthcoming in McSweeneys, and non-fiction published in Meanjin and Griffith Review. He is currently editor of The Lifted Brow.
Trickle and Trace looks at what happens to a person once they become so ensconced in the virtual or digital worlds they’ve constructed using the internet that they begin to lose their sense of identity, or self.
The structure ‘tips its hat’ to short works like Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and M.J. Hyland’s This is How. Like these works, it will focus on a central character as they cross a boundary of socially acceptable behaviour, then double its focus to hold up a lens to society as it judges the central character not on the act itself, but for not showing the appropriate amount of remorse.
Rachel Hennessy, a published novelist and short story writer, is working on a non-fiction essay about pregnancy, miscarriage, and narratives of motherhood.
Rachel had a miscarriage in January of this year and has close friends who’ve had the same experience. She plans to use this personal experience as a starting point to explore a range of issues.
She’ll explore the literary feminist idea that while sex is a biological given, gender is a socially constructed category – which ‘effectively leaves the body out of the investigation as to how women and men experience gender’. During her own experience of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and miscarriage, Rachel has seen how the body ‘resurfaces as a force to be reckoned with’ in motherhood.
Rachel will explore the absence of this type of body in societal images and public narratives. ‘There is no space for the grieving female, the exhausted mother, the depressed mother.’
She hopes to enter this essay in Australian Book Review’s Calibre Prize, so will be writing up to 10,000 words.
Tim Richards is writing a book about Poland’s Communist past and changed present, and his own relationship with the nation over the past two decades – as a resident, teacher and travel writer.
Stalin’s Cow: Travels Through Post-Communist Poland takes its title from a quote by Josef Stalin: ‘Applying communism to Poland is like trying to saddle a cow.’
Tim writes:
It’s undeniable that there’s been an air of confidence and prosperity in Poland in recent years, even in the face of the current global recession. Despite the EU’s economic troubles, Poland itself has weathered the storm relatively well (none of its banks crashed, for example), and as a result the communist years of scarcity and make-do are being left far behind both in reality and memory.
However, the Cold War era is not that easily disposed of; everywhere across Poland are remnants of the days of enforced socialism, from the tiny ‘milk bar’ cafeterias which were once the state-run supplier of the working man’s cheap meal, to the mighty alienating structure of the Stalinist-era Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw.
To an Australian, having lived a sheltered life in the West during Poland’s imprisonment behind the Iron Curtain, these relics of communism are awe-inspiring, as are the stories of everyday Poles who lived through those times.
Anita Sethi was an international writer in residence and ambassador at the Emerging Writers Festival this year. During her residency, she gave a Lunchbox/Soapbox talk at the Wheeler Centre, which inspired her to apply for a Hot Desk Fellowship.
‘I found it an extremely stimulating experience, both the space of the Centre and the chance to meet with audience members and the resident organisations,’ she says.
Anita is working on a novel with the working title, ‘Shanti’, the Hindu word for peace.
‘During my time in Melbourne, I was greatly inspired by the community of writers I met … and by the city itself – its history, diversity and architecture,’ she says. ‘Melbourne has a fascinating history of migration, which is a strong theme in my own novel.’
Anita says that she has produced some of her best creative writing while working as an international writer in residence, inspired by being out of context. ‘The geographical distance from the country in which I was born paradoxically allowed me greater perspective.’
Tom Trumble is the author of the travel book Unholy Pilgrims (Penguin) and is currently working on his second book, as a recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship, supported by the Readings Foundation. He has worked as a print journalist, a parliamentary political advisor and a copywriter – and still works as a freelance copywriter.
We talked to him about reporting on fat dog epidemics, hanging out with Tintin’s Captain Haddock and why aspiring writers should ‘read, read, read’.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
It was a colour piece in the Herald Sun about a fat dog epidemic in Narre Warren. Not exactly Walkley award-winning stuff.
What’s the worst part of your job?
The worst part of the job also happens to be the best part: as a non-collaborative exercise, it’s all up to you.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
Getting my first book, Unholy Pilgrims, published. Hearing my publisher say the words, ‘we want to publish your book’ was a moment of unmatched euphoria.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Read, read, read …
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
I heard that there was a four-year waiting list on my book at Balwyn Library. Then I was told that library users only find out the waiting time after they place an ‘on loan’ book on reserve.
If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I’d like to think something fun (television) or important (medicine). My professional history would suggest middle management in a company I loathed.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I think it can be taught. Take a look at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. That place is a finishing school for Pulitzer Prize winners, Prime Minister Literary Award recipients, bestsellers and the critically acclaimed. What more proof do you need?
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Read.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Both.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
Captain Haddock from the Adventures of Tintin: a deeply flawed middle-aged soak prone to moments of weakness and heroism. In Haddock’s company, boredom is impossible. We would talk about the secret of the Unicorn over a dram of single malt Loch Lomond whisky or whatever else he had in the ship’s hold.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S Lewis. I write narrative non-fiction, but it was high fantasy that first got me into reading, this book above all. I still love the genre.
The Readings Foundation supports the development of literacy, community work and the arts through annual grants. Applications are welcomed from Victorian individuals and organisations with Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status.
Applications for The Readings Foundation 2013 grants must be lodged by 5pm on October 31, 2012. You can contact foundation@readings.com.au to find out more.
Richard Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat. He was Australian ambassador to Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, the Central American republics, and Cuba. He became general manager of Radio Australia in 1990 and, on his retirement in 1997, became an adjunct professor, first at the University of Canberra and then at the University of Sydney. His fourth book, Fallout from Fukushima, has been called the definitive analysis of the Fukushima accident and its technical, economic, social, and political implications.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
The first substantial piece I wrote was called ‘Arms and the Shah’, for Foreign Policy Magazine (Number 31 of 1978), using the pseudonym Leslie M. Pryor, while on study leave at Harvard.
I wrote lots of reports, analyses and cables from various posts as a professional diplomat for 34 years. Writing as an individual for the public realm only occurred when I was on study leave, and following my retirement after 1997.
What’s the worst part of your job as a writer?
Marshalling facts, doing research – both the best and worst part of being a writer.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
All four of my books are significant moments – especially when they are launched.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
Henry Rosenbloom of Scribe told me that every book needs editing – the best advice I received.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself or your work?
That I write like Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay, the British Whig historian.
If you weren’t writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Playing golf, or leading a wild, directionless and dissolute life.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
Writing can’t be taught, except through the example of reading good literature.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Most people have a book in them, and my advice to most of them would be to leave it there.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I’m a very physical person, so I like to buy books for their heft and smell from a physical bookshop.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
You can’t be serious – there are too many fictional characters I’d like to dine with to make a choice. But if I had to, it might be John Updike’s Rabbit to talk about the women of middle America, or George Smiley, to talk about trade craft.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
No one book has had the most significant impact, but I read for relaxation, so the works of Patrick O’Brian and George Macdonald Fraser are in there near the top.
Richard Broinowski will be talking about Fallout from Fukushima at today’s Lunchbox Soapbox, held at the Wheeler Centre from 12.45pm to 1.15pm. This is a free event.
By Helen Razer
Last week, Karen Pickering asked, why should writers work for free? She wasn’t stuck for reasons why they shouldn’t. But long-time professional writer (and fellow freelancer) Helen Razer believes that in today’s economy, ‘where virtually everything costs nothing’, a savvy writer can turn writing for free to their advantage (and into writing that pays). Here’s how.
At the time of writing, I am not having an easy time of writing. Nor, for that matter, are any of the wretched sots who, like me, are fit to do nothing else but write. This difficulty has nothing to do with ‘writer’s block’; ‘writer’s block’, like gout, is a disorder chiefly diagnosed in those with inherited wealth.
This difficulty has much more to do with a market in crisis. One which sees me and many other full-time writers upchucking around 5000 heavily discounted words each week to make something like basic wage.
This year, two regular print outlets have ceased publication and the newspaper section for which I write most often looks set to disappear. Conventional print media is unable to turn a profit and sustainable models for good reading and writing online are yet to emerge.
No one is to blame. Other of course, than the architects of late capitalism where virtually everything costs virtually nothing. For many years, the digital economy has been in impatient motion toward zero. The only thing that can help the full-time writer survive is money. There just isn’t much of it about.
Last week, my colleague and warm acquaintance Karen Pickering wrote here of her concerns for the crashing market of words. Following a transaction in which she provided commissioned work to a national outlet and was not paid, Pickering was cheesed. And justifiably so; the chick’s a good writer.
This has happened to me a handful of times across the 18 years in which I have supported myself as a freelance writer and I always find it insolent. My usual response is to send a Letter of Demand or invite the knob to discuss the recovery of my debt at VCAT. Pickering’s response was to write about it publicly.
I’m not sure all writers, emerging or otherwise, should be taking the advice she offers.
This is not to suggest that it is wrong for Pickering, or anyone, to turn indignation into a sparky essay. It is to say, however, that it is a little misguided to extrapolate truths and give advice about the current marketplace solely from one’s experience as a creditor. I think we writers need to have a bit of a look beyond the Capitalist and Worker model if we’re to maintain a working life lived chiefly in elasticised pants.
Writing for free, Pickering, says, is wrong. Moreover, to do so is, really, to poop on the Light on the Hill. In the text, any writer who agrees to write for free is called a ‘scab’.
To my mind, this is a serious accusation to publish. Certainly, it is a slur I nay privately utter when, for example, I am paid for my opinion in an amount identical to hobbyist bloggers fluent only in the language of false analogy. But, I would not say this publicly because (a) I would like to keep working, albeit for diminishing sums and must pretend to support amateur writers and (b) the times, they are a-changing apace. Gotta swim or sink like a stone.
One of the ways in which we maintain buoyancy in an already stormy market flooded with free content is by sometimes giving stuff away for free. I offer my stuff for free sometimes and I do so not because I am a ‘scab’ but because this gifting helps me stay afloat.
The digital marketplace has many features of the gift economy. I’m hardly alone in the view that giving stuff away for free can often be a wise business decision. A few years back, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired magazine, corralled ideas that had been milling about online for ten years or so on ‘free’ as a business model in the book Free. Which is, of course, available free of charge.
We find the men of Monty Python are Anderson’s ‘free’ radicals. In 2006, Python established a YouTube channel. Users were greeted with the message, ‘For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.’ Users were then promised, ‘No more of those crap quality videos you’ve been posting. We’re giving you the real thing – HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.’
According to Anderson, Python sales at Amazon increased by 23,000 per cent. ‘Free worked, and worked brilliantly,’ he writes.
In my small way, I have certainly found that I can improve the currency of my byline by moving it around the internet for free.
On their YouTube channel, the Pythons wrote, ‘We want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.’ They didn’t try to conceal their strategy and, when negotiating with business people who ask to publish my work sans remuneration, I do not conceal mine. It is almost always my goal to acquire more work out of ‘free’ and it almost always works.
Of course, economic futurists often get it wrong. Free, a model that still dominates online, most especially where written content is concerned, may soon have its very own subprime mortgage crisis. After years of over-investment, it may turn out that ‘Free’ has negative equity.
For the moment, though, I can work with free as an occasional business tool and run no risk of bail-out eligibility.
For a freelance writer to survive solely on writing income, our idée fixe about money needs to come undone. We don’t always need to put a price on everything. In the long run, it is sometimes better for us to acknowledge the value of nothing.
Helen Razer is an occasional broadcaster and incessant writer. Her work appears in the Age, Crikey and the Australian Literary Review. Her irregularly updated website is *Bad Hostess.*
In the tradition of the Ryan Gosling ‘Hey Girl’ meme, lovestruck conservative ladies have started a tribute Tumblr dedicated to blue-eyed Catholic boy Paul Ryan, aka the Republican vice-presidential candidate. No matter which side of the political divide you fall on, you have to admit it’s pretty funny.
In last night’s event, we asked, Has America Finally Gone Mad? Here’s some evidence that it has – and that we’re actually pretty lucky to have our compulsory voting system, which makes it tough to edge anyone out of the process, with suspicious loopholes like the one Sarah Silverman points out (in typically hilarious style) in the below video. (Language warning applies.)
It seems that laws in some states require voter ID with a photograph and an address (like a driver’s license) before someone can vote. Student IDs, veteran cards and senior cards are often ineligible – though gun licenses are perfectly valid. (Hence, the argument for getting Nana a gun.)
To mark the release of Zadie Smith’s new novel, NW, Brainpickings has republished her ten rules of writing. There are some gems in there, including this one:
Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page
The Philippines has a population of 92 million people but fewer than 700 public libraries. And despite a 1994 act pledging ‘reading centres around the country’, books are a luxury few can afford. Enter 60-year-old Guanlao, who operates a ‘no rules’ library out of his Manila home. Eager readers can borrow or keep the books from his collection of thousands, which ranges from crime paperbacks to technical manuals and fashion magazines. Guanlao takes books into other neighbourhoods on a specially adapted bike and has helped friends set up similar schemes in ten other neighbourhoods.
The new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, by UK filmmaker Andrea Arnold, has cast black actor James Howson in the role of ultimate romantic hero Heathcliff, described in the book as ‘a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect’. This is clearly not a departure from the 1847 novel, though the casting is a departure from previous film versions, where Heathcliff has been played by actors like Ralph Fiennes and Laurence Olivier. Arnold says, ‘I think it’s very clear that he wasn’t white. I think his difference was certainly very important in my story and very important in the book.’
Elmo Keep is a writer and broadcaster whose non-fiction work has appeared in places like The Awl, the Age, Meanjin, the Big Issue and The Rumpus. She was a writer/producer on three series of ABC TV’s Hungry Beast, was digital media producer with Zapruder’s Other Films and works currently as digital producer on the feature film, Kath & Kimderella, in Melbourne. Elmo’s first book-length work of non-fiction will be published by Scribe in 2014.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
Not counting scintillating copy I filed in the high school newspaper re: changes to the tuck shop menu, an indignant missive in the Rolling Stone letters section detailing Moby’s crimes against music, printed when I was 18. Very proud of you, younger self! (On both counts.)
What’s the best part of your job?
When everything comes together on a story. Supportive editors. Talking shop with other writers. When you write something that connects with people and they get in touch to let you know. It doesn’t happen all that often but it’s the single biggest thing which motivates me to write.
What’s the worst part of your job?
The days when nothing comes, or it does but it’s a horrifying struggle that makes you feel like it might abandon you altogether one day. I would rather stare into the void on days like that but I’ve found that getting out of the house and doing something physical is much more helpful. That, and chasing invoices for work you’ve already done and which has been published. There aren’t many other industries where the workers would stand being treated like that, but writers do. They shouldn’t.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
Signing a book deal with Scribe and being taken on by the Naher Agency. Two huge things which happened one on top of the other earlier this year.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
The best advice is what everyone gives, which is to read voraciously. I once had a great teacher at university who warned us off reading any canon texts we didn’t enjoy. I think that was really smart advice to young writers; to read what really turns you on, not what you feel like you should be reading. There is a whole lifetime to get into difficult books that you will appreciate a lot more from the perspective of later life, I think. It’s about being inspired, not necessarily being classically learned, when you’re young.
Bad advice? Probably someone who once told me it was fine to go cold and unprepared into an interview with a subject. NEVER, EVER do that.
Everything else is covered in this great list from the Atlantic.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
I try and not read about myself, so I don’t know. If you have a Google alert for your name set up, turn it off now unless you have disposable cash for therapy.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I don’t make a living from writing, so I am doing those other things which is working in television production as a digital media producer. The money I earn from writing is just gravy money, because it’s usually quite small amounts and a lot of publications are pretty lax in terms of paying on time.
I work at other jobs to pay the bills, which is something that really works for me twofold: I never waste the time that I do have for writing, and I get a lot out of being around people. It’s the most important thing for a non-fiction writer to understand other people’s lives. It can be a pretty short path to becoming self-absorbed if all you ever do is sit at your computer all day, which is the opposite way to be for someone who wants to connect with people through their writing.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
It can definitely be improved, I think, when someone points out your flaws to you. You can pick up some tools that will give you perspective for specific things, like if you’re blocked and how to get around it. I’m not sure why this is such an impassioned debate. If people want to spend their time and money learning and being with other writers, I don’t see that there is any harm in it whatsoever. It’s about getting outside of yourself and classes can be a great avenue for that.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
You have to be disciplined, that’s the first thing. It’s not about sitting and waiting for inspiration to strike you, it’s work. You have to do it every day. If you are talking about being a full-time freelancer, you have to have a very specific temperament for that, which if you don’t have will make your professional life a struggle. You have to sell yourself, constantly, that is basically the job of a freelancer. I’m too slow a writer to do that now, it takes me a long time to come up with ideas and then even longer to execute them.
Have something else that will pay the bills that won’t take up your whole life: part-time teaching, research assisting, copywriting, all of these things pay well and will contribute to your skills as a writer. Don’t be above a day job. If I get to the point one day where writing pays all my bills again (I freelanced full-time in my twenties) I will obviously be thrilled, but I’m also reasonably happy in my work life and I think that’s an achievement.
Poverty is a great impediment to doing the work you want to do, especially if you need to travel to interview people, file FOIs, pay for transcribing and all the other things that go into non-fiction writing. It can also make you resentful of your life choices when your sense of self is eroded by your bank balance. You need to strike a balance between paying work and doing the writing you love. For me, I’m working full-time at the moment this year to buy a whole year off next year to write my book. Literally every minute I spend at work now is buying those minutes next year, so it’s very worth it for me to do that.
And have at least one story in you that you’re so desperate to tell that you would do it for nothing.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I am terrible but I’m digital all the way. The convenience is INSANE. We have reached peak laziness. It’s really, really bad for impulse buying, ‘buy with one-click’. I read even more than I used to though, on account of that convenience (like the rest of Gen Y). Some people find it distracting, but I love the deep-linking in e-books, and being able to look up definitions instantly. I love seeing the parts that other people have highlighted, it’s like finding library books with notes in the margins. Our bookshelves at home are rapidly becoming an installation piece with no function.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
Miss Amelia at the Sad Cafe, because she is a woman of such deep self-reserves. I would travel both spatially and through time to the American South, too. Carson McCullers was very affecting to me when I read her books in high school, the scenes and smells, the sticky air are all so vivid, the sense of place still looms large in my imagination. And this cafe was extremely popular! I want to try the gravy biscuits and talk about the meaning of love.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
Reasons To Live, the collection of Amy Hempel’s short stories. To read this book is to read a collection with not a single redundant sentence, let alone word, in it. There are such agonising levels of discipline at work to achieve that, it’s mind-bending, but it reads as total effortlessness. There is a reason why ‘In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried’ is one of the most anthologised short stories ever written. It’s devastating. I never tire of re-reading it.
Elmo Keep will be publishing a series of interviews with Australian writers for the Wheeler Centre’s Dailies in late 2012 and early 2013. Watch this space.
Former The Lifted Brow editor Ronnie Scott is also contributor to The Believer, Lucky Peach, Meanjin, the Big Issue, Australian Book Review and ABC Radio. He is currently a Hot Desk Fellow here at the Wheeler Centre – so we hunted him down at his desk and invited him to be our guest for this week’s Working with Words.
Hot Desk Fellow Ronnie Scott: ‘A good, deep, no-bullshit edit is something that stays with you.’
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
Like so many people, my first published thing was in Voiceworks, back when Tom Doig was running the magazine. It was a story called ‘WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SEX TOGETHER!!!’ and I can’t tell you anything else about it because I have nice memories of the story and I’m not sure I want to look at it again.
What I do remember is that Tom wanted me to lodge a funny bio and I had no idea how to handle that, so I said ‘what if you just changed my author name to Ronnie Scotch? Have a drink on me – on Ronnie Scotch.’ Tom did not reply for a couple of days and then told me, ‘Just a regular bio will be totally fine.’
What’s the worst part of your job?
Because I’m a writer/teacher/editor, the work is really bitty, and it can get tough to find long stretches of time to work on projects in a sustained way.
I was talking to another editor last week about the secret habits of busy people, about how there are no special secrets, only labour and luck. But between you and me, the things that are blowing my mind at the moment are all these dumb, embarrassingly self-helpy management tricks: when you click on an email, always answer it right then and there! A one-click policy. Or, don’t answer it – just archive that sucker and move on! If it sits in your inbox for a week, does it really need replying? Were you going to say something especially amazing – because seriously, what are you, the president?
So I have turned into a person who uses Inbox Zero as a verb, which isn’t very gangsta, but it does create more time.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
The first time I had an editor who really went to town on me.
I used to envy my friends who were working with book editors because they got heavy structural overhauls before the copy editing even began; writing for magazines, editors often just monkey with your sentences, rather than focusing the whole piece towards a specific result.
Once, though, I had this editor who sent back a draft with a quick note of apology – I think she called it a ‘Frankenedit’ because it was the best she could do at the time. But what she’d done was rip apart the piece and paste it back together, leaving all the connective work to me. Suddenly, there was the possibility of logic in this essay that I’d known was there but hadn’t any idea how to access. Honestly I almost cried.
Editors often don’t have time to do stuff like this, and it makes sense to focus on producing clean copy when the deadlines are tight. But a good, deep, no-bullshit edit is something that stays with you; when I’m struggling with an essay now, I always try to ask myself what this editor would do. It’s also changed how I approach other people’s writing; I was a much worse editor before that, with very different priorities.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
I’m sure no one thinks that writing is a very clever way to make money, cure insecurity, or wrangle sexy babes. So of all the possible things to love about the industry, you should probably make sure you’re really passionate about at least two or three – do you care about mood, language, structure, character? Doesn’t really matter – work on the other stuff, but figure out the thing that truly interests you and zero in on that. Make the work fun for yourself if you can.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
There was one issue of the Brow that I decided to design myself, perhaps because I wasn’t criticised often enough as a child and thought I had very interesting revolutionary concepts, like ‘Let’s just not have any gutters! This will change the freaking world.’ I think ThreeThousand told me outright in an interview that the issue looked like a piece of trash.
But if I had any kind of brain for it, I’d love to retrain in design or maybe even programming. I liked staying up late and drinking Red Bull and moving things around with my cursor, and writing isn’t super-duper conducive to that. What I’m trying to say is that I want to be a brogrammer, but probably less The Matrix and more, I don’t know, The Net. Sandra Bullock is my original bro.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
Creative writing can be taught, but the programs often aren’t set up as well as they could be, just because of the dictates of being part of a larger school.
I can create a strong workshopping environment, provide exercises, tell people the difference between ‘that’ and ‘which’, and talk about paths to publication. But there’s only so much further I can go unless my students are clocking a pretty significant word count every day, or hour count, or whatever – just building up a regular practice.
You get better at writing by reading writing, and thinking about writing, and talking about writing, and revising writing, but only in conjunction with writing itself. My feeling is this would be pretty simple to implement: I fantasise about having a pass/fail requirement where I mark one story, as usual, but have to see shitty drafts of eleven others as well. Not marked and not scrutinised – just some way of knowing that the student has really been playing around and figuring stuff out. But if I tried to enforce this there’d be some kind of protest and I would die on the street, unemployed and hungry and uninsured.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
Both! My favourite thing to do is buy books straight from tiny publishers, probably because I’ve managed the invoices at the Brow for six years now and I know how much direct sales help. But I’d be really sad if my local bookshop ever closed – Brunswick Bound on Sydney Road, run by a couple, crazy-nice. They can’t always be counted on to stock the one thing I’m looking for, but what I end up buying is often a cool surprise.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
This will sound insane, but about 24 hours ago I was lying around drinking coffee and I found this secret cache of local strangers on Instagram who seem to do nothing with their lives apart from hang out with each other, take hot photos of each other, like said photos of each other, and make interesting comments about each other’s hair.
I probably wouldn’t want to go out to dinner with them, because there are only so many things you can say about other people’s faces when you have barely met. But maybe I wouldn’t mind running into them on the street sometime? Just so I can tell them to keep doing what they’re doing, really going out there and living it up. They have been a small but memorable part of my life’s journey and I feel happy knowing they are there.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
We can do this one of two ways. I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace at sort of the perfect age to get completely demolished and rebuilt by it and fall in love. I can’t think of anyone else beyond people I’ve KNOWN-known who has so shaped – not my abilities, but my aspirations. I love how Wallace toggles between critical thinking and heart, going deep into topics but not at the expense of breadth.
The other day, though, I was listening to an Alanis Morissette song called ‘Narcissus’ and the number of therapeutic concepts in that song just drove me nuts: she rhymes ‘seeing both sides of every equation’ with ‘having an uninterrupted conversation’, FFS!
I’m working on an essay called ‘Relative Jams’ about how most of her music is about managing – without obliterating – contradictory feelings, and how that doesn’t gel very well with making good pop music even though it’s a very admirable idea. Again: she shaped my aspirations. She’s also just had a baby, and when defending her ‘attachment parenting’ style, she said: ‘What part of it is gross? … Is it you think boundaries need to be walls?’ Hero worship.
In terms of their art, she and DFW aren’t all that similar, but as thinker-feelers, they’re actually kind of close.
Ronnie Scott is one of our current Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellows. You can visit him at www.ronalddavidscott.com.
A new book, Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements, gives a fascinating peek at how famous writers were packaged and pitched to the reading public – before they were famous.
And on the topic of writerly nostalgia, we stumbled on this deliciously gossipy, luxuriously long article from New York magazine on the links and friendships between American writers like Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides and David Foster Wallace before they were famous. There’s some great writing and little-known facts in here.
Did you know David Foster Wallace had Mary Karr’s name tattooed on his arm and once threw a coffee table at her? Or that the first time Jonathan Franzen heard from a peer was when DFW wrote to praise his first novel? ‘I was desperate for friends,’ Franzen later recalled.
Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace at the launch of Infinite Jest.
New research shows that ‘fearless dominance associated with psychopathy’ could be an important predictor of how well a president performs. The analysis drew on personality assessments of 42 presidents, up to and including George W. Bush.
‘Fearless dominance, linked to low social and physical apprehensiveness, correlates with better-rated presidential performance for leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management and Congressional relations,’ concluded lead author Dr. Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory University.
In the Mad Men-era, women at Newsweek were told that ‘women don’t write here’, even though they had been through the same college educations as their male colleagues. Women like Nora Ephron and Susan Brownmiller escaped to more welcoming environments. But in 1970, 46 women sued for gender discrimination, in the first lawsuit of its kind.
When the rest of us saw that guys who graduated from the same schools without any professional experience got hired as reporters and writers over us, that’s when we decided to do something. But we were so insecure and so intimidated about trying out as writers that we asked a few guys to teach a writing course for women.
Julia Baird became deputy editor of Newsweek in 2009.
Times changed, of course. Next Thursday, Julia Baird, former deputy editor of Newsweek, will be at the Wheeler Centre to talk about media and politics in America, with Richard Fidler, Siobhan Heanue and chair Sophie Black.
Are you polishing off a story, ready to send out to magazines and journals? Well, if you are, take a look at this Indiana Review article – which has been doing the rounds of the local literary internet this week – first. Does it fit one of the three categories that make it unlikely to get past the first hurdle?
They are: ‘The Sad Garage Sale’ (Carver already did this one, better than you’re likely to), stories of epiphanies around a sick bed, and ‘Scholars Misbehaving’ (unless you’re Michael Chabon writing The Wonder Boys).
Chris Flynn is the books editor of the Big Issue and published his debut novel, A Tiger in Eden, this year. He was also guest editor for McSweeney’s 41, the Australian Aboriginal fiction edition, which will be launched at the Wheeler Centre next Thursday.
We spoke to Chris about why the internet never surprises him, why you should never write a memoir, and why his ideal dinner companion is The Hulk.
What was the first piece of writing you had published? And where?
It was such a long time ago now, but I think it was a film review for a now defunct magazine in New York. My long-term memory is shot, I’m afraid.
What’s the worst part of your job?
I’ve spent the last 20 years writing on the side whilst working all sorts of (often awful) jobs and now I work solely as a writer, so there is no worst part anymore. The worst part is over, hopefully.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
This changes with each new significant moment. Last year? Having my first novel A Tiger in Eden signed. This year? McSweeney’s issue 41, but there’s still four months left.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
The best advice was given to me when I was 20 and living in France. A writer told me to go off and live, and worry about writing novels when I was older.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself?
Nothing surprises me on the internet anymore, but I often get linked to jobs I have no intention of applying for. My (latest) stalker also occasionally has odd ideas about me.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Working in a bookstore, which is what I did a few years ago anyway. Though if bookstores go under, I’m not sure what I’d do. Get in shape and go back to posing nude?
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I certainly couldn’t do it, but I know good people who do.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
Write a memoir only if you have been to the moon, served as President of your country or climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro after losing both legs to a Mako shark. Otherwise, use your imagination and make something up.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I get sent a lot of physical review copies, so on the rare occasion I buy a book, it’s for my eReader.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why?
Bruce Banner/The Hulk. When that guy says he wants dessert, you don’t argue.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I know the movie version, John Carter, is corny but that series of books probably helped my imagination blossom as a kid more than any others. They helped me understand that for writers, there are no limits.
Chris Flynn was a guest editor for McSweeney’s 41, the Australian Aboriginal Fiction Edition. Join Chris, McSweeney’s managing editor Jordan Bass and contributors Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Ellen van Neerven-Currie for the launch, at the Wheeler Centre on Thursday 13 September, 6.15pm.
In this week’s Working with Words, debut author Kristy Chambers speaks to us about writing her memoir, finding the humour in nursing (via Sedaris) and why being offered a contract was like winning the lottery.
What was the first piece of writing you had published?
The first piece of writing I had published was a story about a one-night stand. I was paid $60, I think, and it was published in a university magazine. It was cool to buy groceries with money made from writing, even though I cringe at the thought of that particular piece. It was shocking.
What’s the worst part of your job?
Writing isn’t my job yet; I have a ‘real’ job that takes up most of my time, but the worst part of writing is trying to find the power to stop procrastinating and just get started. Self-discipline has never been my forte. Chores I am usually forced to carry out under duress suddenly seem appealing; my house is never cleaner than when I’m supposed to be writing. Once I do get started, I don’t want to stop, and I can easily lose an entire afternoon without noticing the time. I love writing, but I hate the internal battle to begin it.
What’s been the most significant moment in your writing career so far?
The most significant moment in my writing career was being offered a contract to write Get Well Soon! I was stunned, and still am, really, because it had always been a dream of mine to be a published author, and then it actually happened. I felt like I had won the lottery.
What’s the best (or worst) advice you’ve received about writing?
My friend Ben told me to disconnect my internet while I was writing my book. I never did, but it does seem like sensible advice. And then there was the instruction ‘Quit stalling!’ sent via Facebook from my publisher, Alex, when I posted an update about my procrastination.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever heard or read about yourself or your work?
The most surprising thing so far is the positive response I’ve had for the book, which is about people’s bodies and lives going horribly awry for the most part, and that people find it funny rather than confronting. It is quite dark and sad in parts, but I’m happily surprised that people find it amusing overall.
If you weren’t making your living by writing, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
I wish I made a living from writing! If I weren’t a nurse trying to make a living from writing but actually making a living from nursing, I would get a dog, open a cafe and make every day ‘Take Your Pet To Work Day!’ Dogs and coffee are two of my other favourite things in life.
There’s much debate on whether creative writing can be taught – what’s your view?
I think that studying creative writing is a good thing, in that it forces you to write, but I think it’s probably necessary to build on inherent natural ability. I could take a lot of tennis lessons and improve my game, but I’m just not blessed at tennis. I think continuing to write is the most important thing. I dropped out of a creative arts degree after six months, but I was writing before that, and continued to write after. Maybe I’d be a better writer now if I had persevered with my arts degree, but I’ll never know.
What’s your advice for someone wanting to be a writer?
I’d recommend that you always have a pen and paper to scribble ideas down as they come. I write memos on my phone if I’m out without stationery. I also think that persistence is key. I worked on a novel, on and off, for 15 years, and while the book will never see the light of day, I think working on it helped me write a lot of rubbish out of my system and enabled me to discover the style of writing that comes more naturally to me. I’m not a fiction writer – it just took a decade and a half for me to realise it.
Do you buy your books online, in a physical bookshop, or both?
I love actual books and real bookshops. I only buy books online if I can’t get them in Australia, otherwise it’s bookshops all the way. I like holding a book in my hand, and I spend so much time on my computer that I really don’t want to look at another screen, although e-books are brilliant for travel. I’ve left a lot of books behind all over the world because I was sick of carrying them, but I don’t want to lie in bed at night and read from a screen.
If you could go out to dinner with any fictional character, who would it be and why? And what would you talk about?
I’d go out to dinner with Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, although I don’t think he’d be too thrilled to be having dinner with me. He’s probably my favourite book character of all time. I like his attitude, his honesty and his guts.
I don’t imagine there would be a lot of talking at dinner. He would order drinks, get drunk and sloppy and tell me to go to hell if I said, ‘Holden, I think you’ve had enough. And besides, you’re underage.’ But I’d still enjoy it.
What’s the book that’s had the most significant impact on your life or work – and why?
David Sedaris’s book, Holidays On Ice – and in particular, his story ‘SantaLand Diaries’ – has probably had the most significant impact on my own writing. The recollection of his wretched day job as a Christmas elf at Macy’s encouraged me to write about my own work life, and to find the humour in nursing, a job which can often be fairly unfunny.
You can read an extract from Chambers' novel Get Well Soon!: My (Un)brilliant Career as a Nurse in yesterday’s Dailies*.
Get Well Soon!: My (Un)brilliant Career as a Nurse is Kristy Chambers' first book – and it’s just right for readers with a taste for black humour (and a strong stomach). In this frank and often funny memoir, she tells why nursing is not a career for the faint at heart … though possibly perfect for budding writers looking for material. Her stories range from the sadness of watching patients you’ve bonded with die, to the kind of strange-but-true medical details you shouldn’t read over lunch, and a series of hilarious and often touching encounters with her patients.
In this edited extract, we meet Callum, a thief and junkie from a bad family, with surprisingly strong morals.
Callum had blond hair, blue eyes and was almost six feet tall, a gangly 18-year-old who looked sweet and innocent, but this choirboy had some serious track marks on his arms and burns on his neck where somebody had held lit cigarettes to him. He had been robbing houses since he was 12 and started using heroin when he was 15. His dad was his dealer and was one of the first people arrested for importing heroin from Asia in the seventies, Callum told me, a little proud of his family’s infamy. I guess it is nice to know that your dad was a trailblazer, even if it was for something like heroin trafficking and he wasn’t good enough at it to avoid getting caught.
Callum had just been released from a juvenile detention centre where he’d spent some time courtesy of holding up a corner store. He was charged with stealing, instead of armed robbery, because he had asked the cashier, ‘Could you please give me the money?’ and hadn’t demanded it.
He gave the cashier a choice, his barrister said, and she chose to give him the contents of the till. It had all been caught on CCTV, including the bit where Callum had apologised while he was holding her up, saying, ‘Sorry to do this to ya, love, but it’s just bad luck that you were working today. You’re not too traumatised, are ya?’
‘No, I actually feel quite relaxed,’ the girl had replied.
‘That’s good, love.’
Callum said that there were ways of doing things and just because you’re a thieving bastard and a junkie doesn’t mean you have to be a rude prick, too.
‘I guess that’s where having good manners really pays off,’ I said.
‘Dead set.’ He nodded. Next time, though, he was going to grown-up jail, guaranteed.
Antiques were Callum’s favourite things to steal.
‘I’m really into antiques. I love ’em,’ he told me. I asked him how he knew where to find antiques worth taking, how he knew which houses to hit.
‘I’ve got connections,’ he said mysteriously.
‘What kind of connections?’
It turned out he had a pretty sweet arrangement. His friends were real estate agents and insurance salesmen. They gave him the address and descriptions of the valuable stuff, he did the breaking and entering, and they split the takings 70/30. Callum was taking the bigger risk so he got the bigger cut.
He gave me the benefit of his knowledge and expertise in burglary and advised me how to best safeguard my home from people like him.
‘That Crimsafe mesh is shit. Proper metal bars on the windows, that’s what you need. And forget about any kind of rolling door locks. Unless you’ve got a dead lock with a key, any other lock is a fucken waste of time. It takes me four seconds to get in, max.’
He was very enthusiastic about his craft. ‘Oh, yeah, and if you’re gonna do a ram raid, you’ve gotta head out of the city,’ he continued knowledgeably, before instructing me on how to break bulletproof glass and outsmart sensor alarm systems.
‘I love crime,’ he said, happily. ‘I don’t even do it for the money anymore. But I’m getting too cocky.’
He said that he felt bad stealing stuff sometimes, like when he and his mate had broken into a house to get an antique sword that had just been valued and insured. Callum could tell they were poor.
‘Everything in their place was shit. Like they had this tiny television and all the furniture was old, but not like antique old, just crap.’ He had an argument with his mate, who wanted to take the sword anyway, and Callum told him he could do what he wanted but he wasn’t taking it and climbed back out the window. His mate had followed him, reluctantly, and as they were walking back home at two in the morning, a police car had pulled up beside them.
‘What are you doing out here?’ the cops had asked.
‘We’re looking for a lost dog,’ Callum said automatically.
The cops split them up, and Callum told them he was looking for a labrador named Lucky and his mate said he was looking for a blue heeler called Chad.
‘You’re looking for different dogs, you haven’t even got your stories straight!’ the cops said when they brought them back together.
‘We’re looking for two dogs,’ Callum said, without hesitation. Lying was a reflex.
The cops searched them, found nothing, and had to let them go.
‘We know you’re lying, you little smart-arses. If we see you out here again, we’re taking you to the watch house,’ the cops warned them, and then drove off.
‘See?’ Callum said to me. ‘If we’d robbed the sword, we would have got done for it. That’s fucken karma,’ he continued. ‘You don’t steal shit from poor people.’
I looked over at the clock. ‘Dude, pick up the pace! We haven’t got all day. Hurry up and finish your food,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah.’ He grinned at me, then reached for his first bowl of banana cake and custard and told me another dog story. He was a good storyteller and I was a good audience for him. It was a much more entertaining lunch supervision than most.
He had wanted half an ounce of weed and his dealer wanted a pedigree boxer puppy for her daughter’s birthday so Callum had arranged a swap, and told her he would get her a dog in exchange for the weed. He looked online, found a breeder and called him to ask if he could take a look at the new litter. The guy gave him his address, and Callum asked how much he was selling them for.
‘Five hundred each,’ the breeder told him.
‘I’ve only got a hundred …’ Callum replied and the guy laughed at him.
‘Tough luck, then,’ he said, and promptly hung up.
Callum called a taxi and when they pulled up to the breeder’s house, Callum told the driver that he was going in to get his grandmother’s puppy back, because someone had stolen it.
The taxi driver wasn’t keen on having a dog in the car. ‘We only allow service dogs,’ he had said uneasily, and Callum started crying.
‘But they’re going to sell it!’ he protested. ‘Please, you’ve got to help me! I told my grandmother I’d get her dog back! Please!’
The driver relented, taken in by Callum’s crocodile tears and seamless bullshit. ‘Oh, okay then…’
And Callum ran into the backyard, grabbed a brindle puppy and jumped into the back seat with it.
‘Go, go, go!’ he said, and the taxi driver went.
‘That’s a very nice dog,’ the driver commented, as Callum nursed the puppy on the drive home.
‘Yeah, he’s worth a lot of money, that’s why they took him. My grandmother’s gonna be really happy.’
He got dropped off a block from his dealer’s house and carried the tiny puppy to its new home. She gave him his half-ounce and he gave her the dog. Three days later it died of parvovirus. The dealer called Callum and demanded he get her another puppy.
‘No way! I already got one. It’s not my fault your dog died,’ he told her. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘She paid $300 for the immunisations and everything. Unreal.’
When Callum left the hospital a few days later, he gave me a hug goodbye.
‘I reckon you’ll remember me when I’m gone,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’ I told him. ‘It’s been educational.’
He was going to start an apprenticeship as an electrician if his interview the next day went well. He was a smart kid, now seven days clean, but he was going home to his dad’s place, and his dad’s heroin, so his future wasn’t as bright as it should have been.
The next time he came into Detox, about six months down the track, he didn’t have the same enthusiasm for getting clean, or telling stories, and only stayed for a day and a half.
This is an edited extract from Get Well Soon: My (Un)brilliant Career as a Nurse by Kristy Chambers (UQP, 2012), published this week. It’s now available in all good bookstores.
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