Inspired By Others

Yesterday, I spent well over an hour listening to Helen Garner read from her work and talk about writing. It was a great afternoon that began with a series of tiny writing workshops - tasters - run by us teachers from the VU professional writing course. Then we all gathered in the bigger space to listen to Helen. It was such a pleasure, not least because she is a very good reader, with lots of variety and intonation in her voice. No matter how good the writing, listening to a droner destroys the experience. I loved her piece about her two sisters and her with their ukeleles, playing songs while watching the Sydney Olympics.

She is a writer who focuses on the real. She has written a lot of nonfiction, and said her weekly column for the Age newspaper was one of her favourite writing "jobs". Her word limit was 770, and every week she made sure the piece was exactly 770 words, no more, no less. It was a great exercise in paring down and making every word work. She talked about writing every day, and also said (before she read from The Spare Room) that in hindsight she wished she hadn't called the main character Helen, because she got sick and tired of constantly defending the book as a novel and not a memoir.

With the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers' Festivals coming up soon, this session was a good reminder of how simply listening to a published writer talk about their work, their ideas and how and why they write can be so inspiring. Writing means spending a lot of time alone with your computer and your own tortured (sometimes) mind as you wrestle with what needs to come out onto the page. You can forget that it's not just you - that most other writers feel the same way, have the same experiences, and find ways through it all to the end.

I wish there were more sessions at both festivals on fiction writing/fiction writers. I've whinged about this before, I know! But there are many writers who find those sessions, especially the Conversation or Spotlight ones, act like a real spur for your own writing. You attend a good session, you listen, you think, you talk about it with your writer friends, and you go back to your own work with renewed excitement and determination. I often come away from a session with an idea for a poem or a short story.

On the other hand, I'm going to be on the other side of the microphone this year. I'm doing an Artplay session on Sunday 30th August in Melbourne (it's where kids get to have their own writer's and illustrator's session and make their own books too). My partner-in-books that day will be Shaun Tan. And in Brisbane, I'll be doing some sessions on the Schools Days, two of which will be online with remote schools. Yes, I've already started preparing, and trying not to feel nervous, but the kids are usually fantastic and we all have a great time. (And of course, both Festivals have their own Facebook fan pages!)

Writing Alone

I'd heard a strange noise out in the backyard several times, and thought it was machinery, or a squeaky door. Then I realised it was these two, sitting in my apricot tree, pigging out on what was left of the apricots. And having a good chatter together while they were at it. Probably thinking they'd better eat up before dusk and the arrival of the fruit bat (who can't be photographed because he's fast and dark).

I've been thinking a lot this week about writing alone - or why writers need to be alone when they write. Kristi Holl commented on headspace and thinking space. What happens when you're on a deadline and have to give up precious thinking and planning time, simply to get the words on the page and off to the editor. Or whoever is waiting for it. To me, this really is the difference between full-time and part-time writers. Not the writing time, which is often typing time, but the hours you get to spend just thinking about your story and all its possibilities.

I used to kid myself that I could write when my husband was in the room. He wasn't talking to me, so I should be able to block him out and write. No. I might have been typing words into the laptop, but I wasn't writing, not really. Mothers talk about waiting till their kids go down for a nap and then racing to the computer. People talk about waiting until everyone in the house is in bed before they can truly write, or getting up at 4am. It's about silence and solitude.

Not the physical silence (who has that these days?), but the silence inside your head. The quiet space that opens up when you no longer have to answer questions, fetch or find, or just be present for someone. The solitude you feel allows new people to enter the space - your characters. They might hover during the day, they might nudge you with a new idea, but they won't truly appear until you are alone, and belong totally to them.

It's taken me a long time to realise the difference between writing - because I have an hour or two and I know what comes next in the story - and writing alone, just me and the story. It's like being out in the middle of a huge field, flinging your arms out wide, breathing in the air and sunshine, then folding it all inside yourself, creating a space that becomes a world that becomes filled with your story and your people. Your people. Then the writing truly happens. The story is allowed to inhabit you, you can hear what the characters think and say, how they feel, who they are.
Unfortunately the experience only makes me want to throw in my day job, run off to a desert island (with power, of course) and write 7 days a week. I guess that's why I keep buying Lotto tickets!