My recent post on ‘Where writers write’ revealed all sorts of weird and wonderful places writers have found themselves putting pen to paper. And interestingly, as Sue Terry of Whispering Gums pointed out, when inspiration strikes most writers still seem to favour the pen over any kind of digital device, even in places where paper is a hindrance. In the bath, for example. In response to my post, Jen Squire tweeted, ‘I was just given 5 packets of AquaNotes for my birthday because I’m always writing in the shower and the swimming pool’ (evidence pictured). Jen is not the only one partial to writing in baths, as you’ll find in this second installment. Enjoy!
Tracey Hawkins: Many years ago my late father was in a High Dependancy Unit for coronary care, waiting for a heart bypass operation. I sat on the floor beside Dad’s bed, carefully placed between IV lines and electrical leads to heart machines and monitors, and tried hard to engage him in my creative work to keep him alive and interested in life (he did survive his operation). I was writing a murder/mystery at the time; he had been a police officer for 25 years and knew his stuff. Albeit, perhaps not appropriate to write about death in a room full of very sick men on the very edge of dying. I tried to keep it low key and even though I whispered thoughts/plots and motive to my Dad, the other men often heard what I was talking about. They soon became intrigued in the mystery and before I knew it, they looked forward to my visits and were very keen for updates on the work. At one point I even had the Sister doing the drug/medication round offering suggestions for a powerful poison (I was needing a good poison to use as the murder weapon).
During the weeks I was there, I finished the mystery. The time spent creating was two-fold — the men looked forward to my visits, and I, too, felt I offered them something outside the square that took their minds off the severity of their health issues, if only for a short time.
Karen Viggers: I find that my best ideas come to me in wild landscapes far from comfort and people. One of my special spiritual places is in the snow, and several times I have braved blizzards and freezing fingers while cross-country skiing in the Snowies to jot down the perfect line. Solitude and harsh places stimulate my muse and allow me to tap into my deepest creativity. Writers write everywhere … I never leave home without a notebook.
Nicole Hayes: When my second child was born, the only break from my demanding toddler often came during the midnight/early morning feeds. I remember sitting by my infant daughter’s crib, one hand cupping her head while she breastfed, the other scribbling barely legible words on a notebook propped on the arm of my chair. I wrote an entire novel in the first year of her life, about half of it in that very position.
Kirsten Krauth: I don’t choose to write in strange places, but my writing chooses them, usually in moments when I don’t have access to paper, pen, screen. When I’m driving on the freeway from Castlemaine to Bendigo and can’t pull over is common. Or while I’m lying in the bath. I’ve got the kids in bed. It’s freezing. My head submerges in the warm water. Time to relax. Then my brain powers up and all the connections that I’ve struggled for during the day come together and I fight them, hoping I’ll remember in an hour’s time, because writing them down now means having to get out of the bath.
Jack getting a haircut on deadline
Rebecca Lim: On a laptop balanced on a pack of toilet rolls in the car in the school car park. A nine-pack will work but a 20-pack is better!
Jess Knight:In bed 59 of the kidney ward at Royal Melbourne Hospital. With a needle in one arm and a flirty old man in the bed next to mine.
Jack Heath: I write six books per year, and the tough deadlines aren’t always conducive to consistent grooming. But I can’t show up to an event looking like Chewbacca, so my wife has been known to cut my hair while I type.
Katie Taylor:Last year I went on a trip to New Zealand. I didn’t take my laptop, but I did take a notepad. One night I went to a rather nice pub in Christchurch, which was called Strange Co. It was a Saturday night so the place was very busy and noisy — we’re talking wall-to-wall drinkers, plus pounding music. Even so, I sat down by the bar and scribbled away over a pint of White Rabbit. Finally a tipsy patron came over and asked me what I was doing. My deadpan reply was, ‘I’m writing a story about a guy who can turn into a phoenix exploring an ice cave full of sentient polar bears.’ Every single word of that is true, I swear. It’s just too bad I never finished the story; it had potential.
Susan Johnson: Well, the difference between writers and aspiring writers — or wannabe writers to use a possibly less flattering term — is that writers write. Writers write when they have no money or are shot full of fear or when they are on holiday or when they can only write between the cracks of doing another job. I’ve written when my head was exploding with terror about running out of money, or full of pain from a broken marriage, or when my eyes could barely remain open because I was so tired when I was a new mother. I had a new baby, and a temporary colostomy, when I was writing my memoir, A Better Woman. Writers write to get the book written, often at the cost of marriages and friendships. Ideally, I write best alone in a room — any room, with or without a view, but preferably in France or Greece or by the beach in Australia — but I’ve also written at kitchen tables in small, dimly lit flats, at desks in the corners of bedrooms. It’s my love, my curse, my job.
Belinda Murrell: I have a beautiful office at home, full of books, with a fireplace and a view over the garden so ideally I prefer to do most of my work there, with a cup of tea at my elbow and my dog, Rosie, at my feet. But then with three children life is a constant juggle — so I’ve been known to work cross-legged on the floor in the corridor outside the orthodontist’s office, in the car waiting for sport pickups, at the kitchen bench while also making dinner, and poolside during kids’ swimming lessons. Far more inspiring, were the many beautiful and wild places I wrote while I was away travelling with my family for two years — in the Kimberley in far north Western Australia, in the Scottish highlands, on the verandah of a friend’s cattle farm, on remote outback stations, in a beach shack at Margaret River, in an 18th-century Parisian apartment …
Melinda Smith: I keep a notebook with me all the time and write wherever I can, whenever I have the headspace. When my kids were younger this meant writing in the parent’s waiting chair outside therapy appointments for my eldest son, who has Autism Spectrum Disorder. I have also started more than one poem at the parents’ tables at Kid City in Mitchell.
Of course before kids I wrote in all sorts of exotic places, including in a deckchair at the Orchard Tea rooms at Grantchester near Cambridge (former haunt of Rupert Brooke and some of the Bloomsbury set, including Virginia Woolf), and on a beach on Ko Lanta Yai in southern Thailand (many years pre-tsunami).
These days the headspace and time often coincide more often when I am ‘on the road’ going to a writers’ festival or an interstate launch or reading event. This means I have written in Murray’s Buses, on trains from Sydney to Newcastle and Blackheath, and in any cafe anywhere I can scrape together the cost of a soy latte. I have started many drafts in the Arthur McElhone reserve just down the hill from Elizabeth Bay House (because it is the closest park to the CWA in Potts Point, where I like to stay when I am Sydney. Goodness knows how I will manage when they cease operations at the end of this financial year!). I have polished drafts at Tamarama beach and in the cafe at Bondi Icebergs and at Gertrude and Alice bookshop. One poem I recently finished was begun in the fourth-floor cafe at the Museum of Contemporary Art (pictured), and polished up many months later at Strathnairn Gallery in the utter west of Belconnen. I do tend to find that for me first drafts and polishing work better if they are done in different locations. A great deal of my book First… Then… was written in Harvest cafe in Civic (first drafts) and just up the hill in the Library of the ANU School of Art (polishing).
One place I find it quite difficult to write is at home, although I do a lot of my ‘admin’ from there. I am such an inveterate procrastinator I need to put myself in a position where there is literally nothing else I can be doing. Home, with its clothes-drifts and dirty-crockery-formations, definitely does not qualify.
For part 1, ‘Trees, trains & hospital trolleys: where writers write’, featuring Brooke Davis, Rosanna Stevens, Susanne Gervay, Tania McCartney, Craig Cormick, Lee Kofman, SJ Finn, Paul Daley and Alec Patric, click here.
I do all the standard things: scrawl notes in the middle of the night, while I’m out walking, when driving in the car (I pull over, of course, often bunny-hopping to my destination). I’m forever using the back of receipts or whatever I can lay my hands on (I’ve always been disorganised with notebooks, even though I’m always buying them).
Cafes are hands down my favourite place to write but I’m not fussy. I’ll write any time, any place. This has included in the back of a tuk tuk in Chiang Mai as it veered all over the road, in a tent in Tanzania with the sound of hyenas scuffling outside, and in a hospital while I miscarried. It’s possible that only writers will understand that last one.
But perhaps the most bizarre experience was going into labour with my third child while writing a grant application for The Invisible Thread anthology I was editing. The deadline was just around the corner and I knew that if I didn’t finish it right then and there it wouldn’t happen. So I kept going, pausing every ten minutes to breathe through the contractions. I managed to finish the application and submitted it (cursing the absence of a special consideration category for completed-while-birthing-a-small-human). I shut down the computer, called my husband, went into hospital, and 90 minutes later had my little boy in my arms. Oh, and we got the grant.
After posting this more benign tweet, fellow writer Kaaron Warren suggested I collate a post of the strangest places writers have written. So I put the word out to my writer friends and their stories came flooding in, so many in fact that I’m going to split them into two posts. So here goes number one (you’ll see that hospitals emerge as a bit of a theme).
Brooke Davis: As a kid, I wrote sitting in a favourite pine tree, and in a paddock full of long grass, and while watching the tennis at the Australian Open. As a teenager I wrote on long car trips around Australia with my family. I had to hold my notebook above my head and almost write upside down because that was the only way I wouldn’t get car sick. As a uni student I once tried to write at Oktoberfest in Canberra. It was the kind of experiment you do in your 20s: What level of genius will I come up with when drunk? You probably know the answer: No level of genius in any way whatsoever. These days, I’m writing on lots of things that move. Ferries, buses, trains, cars, bikes, my own feet, planes, trams. I like how the movement gives me the feeling (i.e., tricks me into thinking) that my writing is moving. But to be honest, the older I get the more boring I am about it. These days, I crave places where I can hole up in a corner somewhere and think I’m invisible while I look at all the weird and wonderful people, like a creepy ghost with a laptop. This mostly happens in cafes and pubs and parks. Maybe I should go back to climbing pine trees?
Rosanna Stevens: I am currently writing in the only place that has Internet for five kilometres: I’m sitting in a garden, in the dark, listening to the shouts of women performing a fire ceremony at a shamanic women’s mysteries retreat in Las Chullpas — an hour from Cusco in Peru. I am also surrounded by puppies. Come at me, deadlines.
Susanne Gervay: Post operative after major surgery with drips and drains, I couldn’t move with pain and I kept thinking, I have to finish my novel in case I die. That’s what I did. Write my novel, not die.
Tania McCartney: Probably the ‘weirdest’ place I’ve ever written is super ordinary — my bed. Sometimes, if I wake in the depths of night with some urgent prose, I’ll fumble for my phone, set it to video, hide under the covers and whisper the text into the phone for transcribing the next day. My husband sleeps right through!
Craig Cormick: That was probably on a trolley about to go into the operating theatre for day surgery, telling the anesthetist guy, ‘Just a moment, just one more moment, I have to write this down before I forget it.’ Second weirdest would probably be in Antarctica, sitting down to write some notes by the edge of a penguin colony (where you are not allowed to get closer than a few metres to a penguin), and looking up and finding all these penguins waddling up to check out what I was doing (clearly the exclusion distance rules that applied to us did not apply to them).
Lee Kofman: The most bizarre place I’ve ever written in was in my living room, this week, when I sat on the couch with both my laptop and my toddler on my pregnant lap, while my boy’s nanny sat close by my side trying to cajole him away. She wasn’t successful though. My child wrapped his arms around my neck, teary, while I kept typing away an essay I had to send to an editor within an hour. The nanny kept talking to my boy, he kept sobbing, and I kept writing, feeling trapped, guilty and loved. I really don’t know more bizarre place for me to write from than this metaphorical, yet very tangibly claustrophobic, space of motherhood.
SJ Finn: One of the more obscure places I’ve found myself writing is on a support boat for an outrigger competing in a marathon race, 72-kilometres long, in the Whitsundays. While the outrigger was a slender boat — full of women going hell-for-leather with a fat-ended paddle — the support boat (a tag-team arranged on its deck) was a large wooden affair, more like a fishing boat than one for leisure but without the fishy smell, or the equipment of nets and pulleys on its deck. As a support boat was paired to every rigger it made for a busy flotilla of twin vessels on a choppy sea. I can, however, be pretty sure there was only one writer. Head down in the beautiful wooden cabin for the entire 8 hours, I wrote as my partner coordinated the ‘changes’ (baton-relay-like) for the paddlers to get spells from the gruelling effort to get to the finish line. Head down amongst the yells and cheers and instructions (when paddlers saw their number held up they had to jump from the rigger and swim to the support boat, another teammate already swimming to replace them) I blocked all this frenetic activity out and became a little famous — at least among a bunch of very excited outrigger competitors — for doing so.
Paul’s view in Arnhem land
Paul Daley: When I was a full time journalist, I, like most, found myself writing in some unusual places. The great thing about journalism is that it conditions you to write anywhere, no matter the degree of discomfort and regardless of noise. There’s really no such thing as writers’ block when you’re punching out words to a deadline. So I found myself writing: in the backs of cars; in burnt out hotels; on helicopters; in too many bars; in frozen fields; from police stations and court foyers; while sitting in gutters and on roofs.
With my creative fiction I’ve been more choosy. I started my last novel with a few scrawls in a notebook on a sun lounge on a remote Greek Island and while most of it was written at my desk in Canberra, it developed in cafes, the National Library of Australia and in my dreams (that’s why, like so many writers, I keep a notebook by my bed). My last published short story I wrote in one take in an airline lounge. I began writing the current novel I’m working on while staying in a small bungalow in North East Arnhem Land (the view from my writing desk is pictured here) and I wrote some of it on a boat. I’m heading back to Arnhem Land soon to write some more. Sometimes I write at the kitchen bench between cooking the spag bol, feeding the dogs and overseeing homework. I don’t need aromatherapy and dolphin recordings or solitude. But I do have a lot of false starts and a rewrite a lot in my head, especially while I’m out in the bush with my dogs.
Part 2 of ‘Where Writers Write’ will feature Karen Viggers, Jack Heath, Nicole Hayes, Kirsten Krauth, Melinda Smith and a bunch of others. Stay tuned!
* Not all of us! For some writers routine is everything. Alec Patric, for instance, wrote to me to say, ‘When it comes to writing I’m pretty boring. Can’t really write anywhere else other than at my desk, same place every day. The habit, or ritual, is the only way it happens for me.’
I haven’t blogged for some time but there’s been lots happening so I thought I’d post a quick newsy update about literary travels, events, a new editorial role, and the publication of a couple of new short stories.
Megumi and the Bearis still getting out and about, with two events in Brisbane earlier this year, including my first chance to visit Avid Reader Bookshop which has the best vibe and the loveliest staff. My reading was in the gorgeous outdoor area with perfectly balmy weather. The kids ate bear cupcakes and drank babycinos from the café, and then sat on a rug for the reading. I just loved watching their little mouths slowly falling open as they listened so intently. It was all just too cute.
Then came a reading at Harry Hartogs, a new independent bookshop in Woden. Canberra has recently seen the closure of two bookshops, Electric Shadows and Smith’s Alternative, leaving us with just two independents. It’s a sad sign of the times because Canberrans are serious literature lovers. I do hope our community can support more than just two independents. I’d love to see a bookshop pop up in New Acton, my favourite place in Canberra because it’s full of so much artistic goodness. One can only hope.
But in good news for local literature I launched the new Lakeside Literary Lounge series at Tuggeranong Arts Centre this month. I’ve lived in this part of town for 17 years now and it’s been a rarity to have a literary event in my own backyard, so to speak. What a novelty it was to jump in my car and drive just five minutes to launch this new Meet the Author series. First up was one of our local literary lights, the wonderful Nigel Featherstone, talking about his cracking third novella, The Beach Volcano. The newly refurbished space was cosy, quirky and intimate. There’s a bar (very important!) and the space encouraged intelligent and thoughtful conversation between the audience and author. It was all bloody marvellous and I can’t wait for the next in the series. There’ll be one event for each season, so if you’re in Canberra do make sure you catch the winter outing on 4 June. I hear Kaaron Warren will be plunging us into places dark and brutal.
Speaking of brutal, last month an artsACT grant took me to Elephant Nature Park (ENP), an elephant sanctuary in Thailand for rescued elephants, to do research for my next picture book. The trip wasn’t brutal, in fact it was hands down one of the most incredible experiences of my life. But before the elephants arrive at the sanctuary they have experienced a lifetime of brutality. If you want to know more, this article provides a very good summary of why we should never ride an elephant, buy an elephant painting or watch an elephant show. I’m now hard at work on my manuscript and so excited about the potential of getting into schools and talking to kids. I took a gazillion photos of those beautiful elephants (you can see a few over at my Facebook page). This is one of me with the six-year-old elephant Faa Mai and Lek, founder of ENP and one of the most remarkable people I’ve had the good fortunate to meet.
From works in progress to the publication of finished works, a new short story of mine, called ‘Bus 864F’, is out in the April issue of Mascara Literary Review (have a read here). And I’ve got another new story in Review of Australian Fiction (RAF), called ‘No Story’ (you can read that one here). It’s worth mentioning a bit more about RAF because they’ve developed a brilliant model. They publish two stories every two weeks from wonderful writers like Christos Tsiolkas, Paddy O’Reilly, Frank Moorhouse, Marion Halligan, Alex Miller, James Bradley and the aforementioned Nigel Featherstone, among many others, so I’m honoured to be in their company. One of things I love about RAF is that they have no word limit. Most journals favour stories that sit around the 3000-word mark, but being commissioned to write a story of any length was freeing, and I’m really pleased with what emerged. The other thing I love is that RAF pairs an established writer with an emerging writer. And the former gets to pick the latter. So it was a real pleasure to be able to select Matthia Dempsey as my RAF partner in crime. I’ve known Matthia since I emigrated to Australia at age nine. Back then we climbed blossom trees together and dreamed of being Anne of Green Gables. We had no idea that we’d both end up as writers and editors. And as you’ll see from her story, ‘Saudade’, Matthia is an extremely fine writer. You can read both our stories for less than the price of a cup of coffee here, or, better yet, since ours is the first in a new volume it’s the perfect time to subscribe.
And finally, to editing. Although I tend to focus on my writing on this site, I’ve just taken on a new role as Editor at Inkerman & Blunt. It’s a new publisher, led by powerhouse Donna Ward, that is producing very handsome and intelligent books. I’m working on lots of exciting projects, so stay tuned.
And I also want to mention Tea and Sugar Christmas, by Jane Jolly and Robert Ingpen, published by the National Library of Australia, which has just been shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA). This picture book was such a pleasure to edit, and I’m particularly delighted at the recognition it’s receiving because it is the story of a young Indigenous girl, two categories that make sales and marketing teams nervous. ‘Girls’ because, as we are always told, boys don’t want to read female protagonists. And ‘Indigenous’ because, as you may have noticed, picture books have predominantly Anglo-Saxon characters. We need more publishers willing to take the ‘risk’ of publishing culturally diverse characters, so kudos to the National Library for doing just that. And I’m thrilled that it has paid off, with Tea and Sugar Christmas selling strongly and now receiving an ABIA nod. Fingers crossed it comes out the winner!
Well that’s it from me for now! Keep in touch over at Facebook and Twitter.
Today I had a little chat with Michael Cathcart on Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily about Australian Love Stories, in which I have a… Read More »LITERATURE & LURVE
The Sound of Silence is an anthology of 22 women’s stories of miscarriage. Described by Parenting Express as an ‘achingly beautiful collection’, the anthology has garnered praise from organisations like SIDS and Kids and TLC Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support Australia. Even Birth Psychology, the journal of the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, USA, had this to say: This book is recommended for anyone who has experienced a miscarriage, but more importantly, for anyone working with childbearing families and others in society who have not experienced a miscarriage. No one can read this book and not gain a deeper understanding the impact an early pregnancy loss can have. It is seldom ‘just a miscarriage’…The Sound of Silence takes the reader through what can often be the shadow parts of this journey in a deeply moving and honest way. We all can benefit from the wisdom and experience of the stories captured and shared here. This book is a very good addition to the library of anyone drawn to the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology.
As the book continues to help men and women through their experiences of pregnancy loss, we spoke with The Sound of Silence’s Editor, Irma Gold.
What was your original inspiration behind bringing this book together?
When I was 12 weeks pregnant with my third baby I miscarried. The loss felt huge, and in processing my grief I wanted to talk and talk and talk. But I quickly realised that it wasn’t a subject most people felt comfortable discussing. Because I’m a writer and editor, an anthology of miscarriage stories seemed like an obvious thing to do. I wanted to break the silence that surrounds miscarriage. And I wanted to offer other women some support in the only way I knew how. But something else happened, too.
As I immersed myself in this project, as I surrounded myself with others’ heartbreaking stories, I found myself letting go. My miscarriage was over four years ago now. I had to look back at an old diary to work that out. It’s a marker of how I no longer feel sadness. But I know this is also partly because since then I have had another baby. That fourth pregnancy was tough. There was so much love and so much worry. I remember reading submissions for The Sound of Silence — so many of them — while I was pregnant with him. I was grateful to be far enough along that I could feel him kicking. Otherwise I think fear may have consumed me.
That baby is now a gorgeous three year old and I can’t imagine life without him. Without my miscarriage, he would never have been. That’s a strange thought. I find that Clare McHugh’s words in her story ‘Unexpected’ now resonate more fully: ‘There is no use fighting losses, not even fighting to understand them. Only acceptance and gratitude for the rest.’ And I do feel that. Enormous gratitude for the family I have. And also gratitude for all those strong women and men that I have met through The Sound of Silence. That’s a gift that our lost baby gave me.
What has been the most encouraging moment since the release of the book?
There have been so many; every time someone takes the time to email me or comes up to tell me why the book has been important to them or someone they know. Many readers have shared their own stories with me which has been both moving and humbling. And comments like this one from reader Charmain mean everything: ‘I have just sat and read this book from cover to cover! As a mum of two (six, including my angel babies) these stories touched my heart and soul in a way that no other books about pregnancy loss have.’
Perhaps I can share one of the many stories that was related to me. One lady gave a copy to her son and daughter-in-law who had had several miscarriages and no children yet. This couple talked to no one about their miscarriages. On receiving The Sound of Silence the daughter-in-law put it on a shelf and didn’t look at it. It wasn’t until two months later that she opened the book and read every story. She then thanked her mother-in-law for the gift — no easy acknowledgment — and asked her to pass on her thanks to all the writers. She felt unable to discuss her miscarriages with those around her, but the women in The Sound of Silence spoke to her from the page, offering comfort.
What has surprised you the most about the book’s reception?
I was both surprised and delighted when The Sound of Silencewon the ACT Writing and Publishing Award for Non Fiction. I didn’t expect that at all. A book about miscarriage seemed such an unlikely winner. But it was the judges’ comments that I found most heartening. They wrote: The Sound of Silence was the stand-out winner on every level. This book proved to be compellingly readable, boasted good production design and evidenced careful, respectful editing. Although neither of the judges initially expected to be taken by this volume, both ultimately found it absorbing and uplifting. The writing was of the highest quality and deserves a readership well beyond its niche market. In short: An inspirational book and a clear winner.
It wasn’t the praise that struck me most, though of course that was gratifying, it was the fact that both judges shied away from the idea of a miscarriage anthology (one of the judges later told me that they deliberately left it until last because they couldn’t face reading about such a sad subject) and yet when they finally picked it up they found it ‘absorbing and uplifting’. That was the real win.
I have since discovered that others have had a similar reaction. Those who have experienced miscarriage have sometimes approached the book with reservations about the way it might potentially affect them. As one reader wrote: ‘I have just finished reading The Sound of Silence. I must admit it sat on my bedside table for a couple of days before I found the courage to open it. I was anxious about the emotions it might stir up within me. It is a brilliant book, it allowed me to realise I am not alone in my grief and the feelings I experienced are so normal.’
So my hope for this book is that both women and men will continue to find The Sound of Silence when they need it and have the courage to dive in.
This interview was originally published by Rhiza Press here. The Sound of Silence can be purchased online here (e-book also available).
My recent post on ‘Where writers write’ revealed all sorts of weird and wonderful places writers have found themselves putting pen to paper. And interestingly, as Sue Terry of Whispering Gums pointed out, when inspiration strikes most writers still seem to favour the pen over any kind of digital device, even in places where paper is a hindrance. In the bath, for example. In response to my post, Jen Squire tweeted, ‘I was just given 5 packets of AquaNotes for my birthday because I’m always writing in the shower and the swimming pool’ (evidence pictured). Jen is not the only one partial to writing in baths, as you’ll find in this second installment. Enjoy!
