Writer in Residence

Man, you made me panic. I just had to look up the spelling of “pyjamas” in case I’d managed to get it wrong 4 times. But no, it’s ok. In England (and I think in Australia…) we spell it with a “y”. You Americans have done some most puzzling things with spelling, indeed. What we find particularly infuriating is when Microsoft Word automatically switch words from Australian/English spelling to American spelling and then half way through the document there will be a color (cf colour); a jail (cf gaol) or something has turned gray (cf grey). I might suggest Bush start his “hearts and minds” war at Microsoft HQ.

Well, here we are: The Last Blog. How did that happen? There I was, with so many plans and then like any good holiday it’s all over before you’ve even got half way through the ice-cream flavours at the local shop. I have really appreciated your feedback, though and I’m thrilled so many of you have logged in from overseas.

I thought I’d finish up my giving you some of my favourite contemporary Australian writers. In addition to those already mentioned in the blog, I really think Margo Lanagan (especially Black Juice), Sonia Hartnett (especially Thursday’s Child) and Ursula Dubosarsky are wonderful and some new-comers to look out for are Lisa Gorton who has written a beautiful novel Cloudland and Christine Roden who has one coming out with Allen & Unwin next year.

If you are in New York or Toronto in July, keep an eye out for me. I’ll be the tourist heading in exactly the opposite direction from whichever icon I am trying to reach. Feel free to point me in the right direction.

Please take care and thanks again.

K

Haddy-la asked whether I find it difficult to assess my own work — or whether people respond to my work differently from the way that I do. I would have to say yes. Sometimes I have written things that I think are dreadful and I find people want to publish them. Perhaps not in the exact form in which they were submitted, but they are happy to develop the ideas. Other pieces I think are nothing short of brilliant — like the one I wrote for my friend who died — and yet 10 years on they are still in a drawer.My Australian publisher thinks this is because sometimes we write things that are just out of fashion and we have to wait until times change and the works become popular. It may also be because they are read by readers who are looking for specific things, who don’t find the work funny or are simply tired at the end of a long boring day of manuscript assessment. Or perhaps the pieces are just crap.

The thing I find really interesting about writing is how it can change if you sit on it for a while. The best advice I got from my teacher when I’d finished my novel and was convinced it was the Next Big Thing, was to file it away for 3 months. And quite right she was too. It was only when I went back to the draft that I realised how deeply flawed it was.

Thanks for your comments and Jess, of course I am fascinated that you are would be a pomegranate. A pomegranate is such a beautiful fruit although it makes very ugly juice. I buy bottles of the stuff and it’s as brown as our muddy Yarra River with a thick layer of sludge at the bottom. It is, however, absolutely delicious and, like most things that are brown, very good for you too.

What is the best perk to being an author?

Everyone I know always says “being an author is great because you get to write in your pyjamas”. That’s true if you’re That sort of person but it all seems a bit slovenly to me. I mean, when it comes down to it, there’s nothing really forcing us to get changed out of our pyjamas whether we’re authors or not. When my friend Alice and I lived in our fairly slovenly share household we had a wonderful collection of pyjamas most of which matched. We wore them inside all the time but then we got frustrated that nobody else saw how magnificent the collection was. We had one-piece pyjamas with feet from Canada and rubber ducky pyjamas that came in their own special bag and ghost pyjamas in red and purple and pyjamas with matching slippers and pyjamas with matching eye masks. So we took to wearing them to the movies and then to our friend Priya’s dance recital at the concert hall and I even wore them to university with a windcheater over the top. It just felt so daring, so wonderfully free of all social constraint to be wandering around the supermarket buying recycled loo paper and yoghurt in blue spot pyjamas with a matching wee-willy-winky cap. Of course, now I think we were either crazy or exhibitionists or probably a bit of both.

By the time I hit third year university, I decided I was sick of being slovenly and I have returned to my 3/4 wasp roots and try and look relatively decent whenever I leave the house. This may sound dull, but my life is heading that way. I found myself test driving a Volvo yesterday.

Okay, so if wearing pyjamas is not a perk, then what is? If I were leading a wild jet-setting lifestyle financed by my writing then I would have to say travel. Of course, if all you lot overseas buy my book and start telling your friends about my book then that could actually happen. Especially if you have friends in High Places. Friends who run literary festivals for example.

Given that my travel has been fairly meagre (Sydney, book stores in Melbourne to date) then I would say that the best thing about writing is that it legitimises my slightly odd personality. Personality has always been my downfall. I actually got dumped by somebody once who said that he was really attracted to me but just had… well, had difficulty with…with my personality. He was of course a very dreadfully dull law student who married at 21 and I’m sure now manages a business, has 4 children (two girls, two boys in a neat pattern: girl boy girl boy), goes to the gym on mondays, tuesdays and thursdays and tolerates a wife who wears navy and drives a Volvo.

But the point is that when I was just a lawyer, people would always look at me like
I had said something really inappropriate and always seemed perplexed that I didn’t quite value all the things they valued. I was somehow too loud and too brash and too flamboyantly dressed. Now they look at each other, raise an eyebrow and rather than thinking I’m mentally ill, shrug in a shrug that says well, she is an artist.

That’s of course ridiculous but it does come in handy when I forget to pay the electricity bill and the fridge ends up defrosting all over the carpet…

Okey dokey, working through those questions.

If Olive were a fruit she’d have to be something with a big seed — like a kalamata olive, an apricot, a custard apple or an avocado. She’d probably prefer to be something a bit more standard; something that could be found in a lunchbox and eaten neatly like an apple or a mandarin.

I imagine I would be something messy — something that stains — maybe a mango, but that might just be because I happen to love mangos. And figs. Both are best eaten still warm from the tree.

My favourite colour? I don’t really have one. I seem to wear an enormous amount of black and brown but then I love cream and white in summer and red has been a long time favourite.

Hardest thing about being an author? Writing. Writing is a bit like a marathon — you just need to sit down and keep going no matter how sick of it you are. I also find redrafting exhausting — especially when I get to draft 14 and my publisher says “Um, well I don’t think it’s still quite working”. While it’s fun writing bits you’ve loved into new drafts and watching something you never thought would work take form on the page, it can be lonely, boring, tedious work. But hell, next to the law it’s a trip to Disneyland.

I’m really sorry, I don’t know what is happening to my paragraphs.

I realised as I published that last blog that I should probably have mentioned that while I had never really written, I had always read. This fact is primarily due to the intolerably dull circumstances of my childhood. Every summer we were dragged to Palm Beach in Sydney for three weeks. Everybody we knew was going to Anglesea or Lorne or Portsea and there we were in Palm Beach. It may as well have been Armageddon or Auckland (cheap Trans Tasman gag). To get an idea of how extremely bored we were, my sister took to kicking people in the surf just so she could apologise and strike up a conversation.

Not only were we dragged on a beach holiday, but to make the choice even more perplexing my mother was scared of the sun. I mean we were slip-slop-slapping each night before bed. I think we were on the beach at around 7am and off the beach by 9am then on again at about 4.30pm. Anyway, the point is that this left us with long stretches of time to fill with nothing to do but talk to each other or read. Naturally, we read.

In those long stretches of hot days we sat inside and we read and we read anything. We read our Christmas books and then each others Christmas books and then our school books for the following year and then we read those again and then while my sister started on my school books for the following year, I read what mum was reading and the Berocca bottle and the pasta pack. And then, after this intense period of reading, we went to Portsea for 2 weeks where we never picked up a book (but had a fabulous time).

I am going to try and put a photo of me signing a book at the launch up. In the foreground you will see the very beautiful cover image Elise Hurst (the illustrator) presented to me on the evening. I can’t wait to have it hanging above my desk.

I had a number of other photos for you but they all seem to be about the size of those Nike posters that cover three storeys of an inner-city building.

I hope this finds you all well.

K

Topaz, I had no idea you were in AMERICA! Wow. What, with Britney from New Zealand, this blog is truly international. I have liked America ever since I first saw Pringles. I couldn’t believe there was a country that was so ingenious it made its chips exactly the same size with exactly the same permanent wave through the middle and then stacked them in a tennis ball can. I knew the second I got hold of those chips that the USofA was a country I wanted to visit.
Don’t fear Topaz, my novel is coming to you with David Fickling Books/Knopf in your spring next year. It is also going to be in Canada at the same time (Doubleday), in the UK from July this year (David Fickling Books) and in Holland towards the end of this year (Pimento). So, we’ve got the globe pretty much covered unless you live somewhere tricky like South East Asia, the Middle East or most of Europe.
Now, as for those earlier questions I said I would work through systematically before I got side tracked on babaghanoosh and the CBC. How would I describe the publishing process in one word? Too hard. Give me two few words associated with the process. I think a new writer just requires tenacity. First time authors need to be able to submit their work and then wait while it is considered and knocked back and then re-submitted and rejected again. I always lament that I have a mountain of rejection letters which is seriously in danger of attracting an abseiler or other extreme sporting type. And I’m not joking. I took the scattergun approach to publishing. I submitted about 12 short stories to almost every publisher in Australia and then watched while they were systematically annihilated. After about 18 months, I had a few breaks. Walker Book in the UK rejected a story but asked me to submit longer stories for a series they were putting together. Allen & Unwin rejected everything I wrote but mentioned they would read anything else I wrote and Hardie Grant Egmont picked up a picture book. I don’t think I ever doubted I would be published — I was fairly sure I was at least as good as some of the dreadful writers on the market — I just knew it was a matter of when. This is commonly known as legal arrogance and it is what gives us lawyers such a bad name.
The other word would be luck. My timing was incredibly fortunate. The Harry Potter phenomenon meant that everyone was writing for boys (there is a fairly stupid piece of publishing wisdom that boys will only read about boys but girls will read about girls and boys. My brother certainly read both growing up, but then again he does write science fiction). Suddenly I had a book in an age group which was quite girly and literary enough and I think it’s this that has accounted for its appeal. Harry Potter also meant that some publishers had the funds to take a gamble on new authors and writing for younger people was taken seriously as Rowling showed there could be big money in it — everyone imagined it was the fastest path to a castle in Scotland. I honestly do think there is an element of luck behind any success and all of these things came together to assist me. In case you think I’m the kind of person who always draws the long straw, buys the winning lotto ticket, wins the meat-tray door prize, I’m not. That’s my friend Jane. I never win anything, but I was terribly terribly fortunate with this one and I have never stopped feeling grateful. So, if you are interested in writing, I say just write what you want and what you do well and it will eventually find a home. Even if it takes you 10 years. I was also asked how long I have written for. Well, that last paragraph probably gave it away. I started writing because my friend was dying of ovarian cancer at what will probably seem old to you — 26 — but seemed young to me at the time and seems achingly young now. Anyway, I wanted to create something that would bring her some happiness while she was in hospital. And so I wrote a small story which I thought would appeal to her as an adult listener but also to children. It started from an idea my friend Alice and I had developed on the couch in our university days when we dreamt big and achieved small (apart from some excellent fancy dress costumes), but I knew the story had legs. When Lea did die, I wanted to have something in her memory, something for her family and friends and so I submitted the book to publishers. It looks like after all this time there might finally be somebody willing to develop it with me which is terribly exciting. I’ll keep you in the loop. Thanks for your responses. Over and out.

Thanks for your posts and I’m thrilled some of you liked my book. I’m just as thrilled that those of you who didn’t have been far too polite to comment. You are obviously Well Brought Up. As for Topez, can you march in and tell your local book shop that they are a backward outpost and need to catch up. It’s almost on its second print run (and I am still eyeing those brown shoes).

Babaghanoosh (I may be spelling it incorrectly) is a yummy eggplant dip that’s sort of light and vinegary with a wonderful name even if it is a horrible colour (donkey grey). They sell the homemade version in vats along Sydney Road, Coburg but you can also get it in most supermarkets — it’s just not as good and it’s probably called something unexciting — something like Eggplant Dip.

I crashed the CBC (Children’s Book Council of Australia) conference yesterday as I wanted to hear Neil Gaiman speak. The conference is held every two years and this year we were extremely fortunate to have it in Melbourne. The conference was superb. A huge number of publishers and other associated services (like Books Illustrated who sell beautiful original drawings and prints from children’s books) were all there and I just wished I’d known about it when I was starting out. It gave one a fantastic overview of what different publishers are doing.

A former RMIT student who is now an assistant editor at Allen & Unwin wound up in a Tashi costume at the Allen & Unwin booth and did a valiant job waving to the crowds under a very large papier mache head. Rumour has it that there are brand protection rules concerning Tashi such as “Tashi must Never appear without his head” and “Tashi must Never Ever appear without pants”. Now, for me, that would be an open invitation to streak around the conference centre in my undies, possibly decapitated, but luckily I wasn’t invited to model the costume.

Neil Gaiman’s address was really superb — amusing and thoughtful. He believes that young people should be encouraged to read regardless of the quality of their reading material as ideas are sown in good and bad literature. It’s certainly true that most of the novels I adored as a child haven’t stood up to a re-read, but I’ll need to mull over this for a while. My view had been that if people aren’t reading good quality stuff they would be better off watching good films, good theatre or even playing smart games. I’ll probably get thrown off this site for typing that. At the end of the talk, I lined up to have a book signed along with about 400 fantasy readers.

True fantasy readers are a funny type — fanatical really. They were there in t-shirts which said “Say No to Cryptonite” or dressed in black with heaving white bosoms and red velvet handbags. Most sort of knelt when they got to the author — kneeling at the shrine of Neil Gaimon — and a number took awkward photographs while Neil signed. It must be an extraordinary feeling to create something which has such resonance with so many people. Have any of you read Neil Gaiman? One of you bloggers wanted to know whether I am amusing in real life or just in my writing. I like to think I am particularly amusing in real life but everyone who knows me would probably disagree and say I’m actually really annoying. I do seem to spend alot of time laughing at my own jokes. Whenever I am giggling over part of a manuscript, my mother always says it’s really very fortunate that at least I think I’m funny.

Finally, no, I have never tried sitting on my computer at midnight downing a cap full of tomato sauce while listening to Duran Duran. I would like you all to think that this is because I am leading a fabulous life at wild and glamorous parties full of frothy skirts, Neighbours’ stars and drinks served in pineapples, but really it’s because I seem to be in bed by 8pm these days. Speaking of which, goodnight.

My book launch was… well quick. It really was. It was very lovely to have so many friends there, but frustrating not to have time to chat to any of them properly and then, when I had finished signing books and was ready to sit down with a drink, a biscuit and one of the 12 litres of dip my friend Alice bought for the occasion (seriously), it was time to pack up. All parties are a bit like that, but people have sent me so many beautiful flowers that I feel the thrill of it will linger as long as their stems are green.

Naturally, the day was not without incident. My friends and I went to collect the drinks. As we were driving to the launch, the traffic was so dense it would have been faster to walk the boxes through the city — probably even faster to hop the boxes through the city. We just didn’t move a single inch. Anyway, in the thick of that traffic I realised I had managed to forget my bag with my phone (pretty dire), my new lipstick and hairbrush (dire) and my speech (so dire we’re talking right up there with a military coup or pulmonary embolism). An emergency call was put through to my partner on the last of the juice on my friend Andrea’s phone and off he diligently went to battle Melbourne.

Eventually the speech arrived and people seemed to enjoy themselves, although we will be eating babaghanoosh and the 10 litres of olives Alice also (fittingly) bought for the occasion over the next year. Fortunately, I love babaghanoosh. It always reminds me of Sofie Laguna’s moving novel “Bird and Sugar Boy”. Have you read it? If not, I recommend you do.

Thank you for the posts. Oh dear, how did I end up in italix.

I will work through your questions systematically starting with Haddy-la who seeks a new screen name.

Unfortunately I’m out of suggestions, but may I suggest that you draw a circle around your computer at midnight, drink a cap full of tomato sauce (for blood), play Duran Duran (for 80s) and then sit on your keyboard to see what fate throws at you.

Sorry about the font variations and lack of paragraphing. When the posts leave my in-box they look fine. I’ll try to discover what I’m doing wrong.