olives in the process of being preserved

There is something primevally satisfying about bringing in the last of the olives from our trees each year.

We were lucky enough to inherit two olive trees, but the third and most prolific one has grown all by itself from a seed. Dropped by a bird? Or spread in the compost we regularly put on our garden? We don’t know. It was almost fully grown before we even noticed it at the back of our garage. Now it produces huge crops of black, flavoursome olive sauvage, without any help from us. Being big olive eaters we would have thrown hundreds, perhaps thousands, of seeds into our compost bin. Often the seeds that do germinate when we spread the compost are mistaken for weeds and pulled out. The odd one we have recognised has been carefully dug up as a sapling and given away to friends or neighbours. But obviously this one had other ideas. It proceeded to grow, hidden away there behind the garage. Over the years it grew and grew, refusing to die, until now it provides enough olives to feed our whole family for at least a year.

It reminds me of story ideas. There are some that absolutely refuse to go away, no matter how often I say ‘I can’t possibly write that!’ Somehow the idea perseveres, refusing to be ignored, until I put in the time and effort of harvesting and finally reap the rewards.

Long may those robust ideas continue to thrive in all of us.

Leaving no Footprints invites the reader in and give them control of the ending.

Someone Like Me – revealing and withholding strategically

One of the things that fascinates me about other writers of fiction is that we all approach the task differently.

Among carpenters, electricians, scientists, historians there are basic rules and guidelines governing their professions. Whereas the best writers of fiction make their living by breaking the rules – their own and other people’s. Across all the different genres within the broad category of fiction, writer’s livelihoods depend on uniqueness. They must step outside the usual boundaries in order to bring freshness and originality to the stories they have to tell. Sometimes it’s this freshness itself that will highlight an age old truth for a reader. Fictionalising reality often gives it a deeper meaning.

In all the world, it is said, there are only seven tunes. The rich variety of music available in all cultures comes from variations on those tunes. In fiction there are even less basic plots. And yet, from all over the world we have thousands of ‘new’ stories being told in movies, plays, poems and narratives each year. Why are we still writing them? Because telling our own stories is such an integral part of our human nature that we could not stop, even if we wanted to. So we have to make each one uniquely different. To make the story interesting we create a word-play between what is revealed and withheld. We draw the reader in to the story using suspense, humour, anxiety, laughter. We create new worlds with their own sets of rules and invite our readers in so that, together, we can break those rules all over again.

What fun!

Shaun Tan is a storyteller who doesn’t need words. Asked to talk about his book, The Rules of Summer, he said, ‘This is not a linear story. It is a collection of images from which stories can be made by individual readers and viewers.’

The book is about two boys who interact with each other during their long summer holidays from school. Perhaps they are brothers. Perhaps not, according to the way you read the book. Their body language, the colours used in the art work, the various environments the boys are placed in, all have the potential to mean different things according to the life experiences the viewer brings to

SCBWIs in the stacks at SLWA viewing the Peter Williams Collection

the ‘reading’ of the book. Shaun describes this process as ‘leaving gaps’ and I for one believe that every story needs them. These gaps serve to invite the reader in to the story and allow them to make it their own, to apply their own personal interpretations and meanings. In the same way Shaun places anomalies and visual question marks within his pictures. He juxtaposes odd images and out-of-place creatures in the scenes leaving little puzzles to be solved – or not. Whether or not readers notice these metaphors and symbols doesn’t matter. The core image is enhanced, not diminished, and that particular reader will bring other meanings to the story. Meanings that are more relevant to their own needs. They will expand the story in their own way and make the experience more satisfying, not less.

It takes a certain type of genius to do what Shaun Tan does. I feel privileged to know him and have access to his work.

Creating family stories

‘Families. Where would literature be without them?’

When I first read this line from Stephen Romei’s column in Review magazine (The Weekend Australian, 13-14 April 2019, p21) I thought, ‘Not another family history.’ In the past these tended to be self indulgent, long winded and needing some slashing and burning by a professional editor. I had forgotten just how far this genre has come and how many of our best authors have been able to mine their family stories, reshape and burnish them until they have become absolute gems of Australian literature. For example Kate Grenville’s Secret River and Amanda Curtin’s Elemental are two of my all time favourite books.

Then I thought about Parallel, the new manuscript I have been working on for the last few of months and … ‘Wait a minute. Didn’t that idea originally come from a casual comment my daughter made about one of our own ancestors?’ I have fictionalised the story of a sixteen year old girl, living in England in 1819. So much so that it is almost unrecognisable. And I’ve linked it to the parallel story of a contemporary girl. The girl’s stories take place two hundred years apart. The challenges faced by both girls are very different, but human nature basically hasn’t changed. Hopefully, when I have finished the book, readers will be able to experience the lives of both these young women and see how they face similar challenges in their very different worlds.

Meanwhile, Clara Saunders is still making her presence felt in the stark desert world of the gold rush of 1892. Stay tuned.

Reading is my secret power

I have sometimes wondered why, as an avid reader of everything, I couldn’t get as excited about reading fantasy as some of my friends do. This week I found myself in a position where I needed to analyse and explain, mainly to myself, exactly why this is and has always been the case. Having read a currently popular fantasy novel rather quickly the first time around, I thought that a careful re-read might help me appreciate what everyone else was on about. Instead I found it just as difficult to relate to the characters as I had before.

Although the book was well written, the plot tight, the action fast paced I didn’t ever reach a point where I felt the necessary empathy with the characters to care deeply about them. They were interesting enough and the action often placed them in mortal danger, but I couldn’t shake off the knowledge that whenever something incredible threatened them their array of magical powers would come to the rescue. There was not the deep emotional engagement on my part because I already knew that, no matter what sort of incredible monster threatened the main characters their powers would be stronger than those of the monster.

I admire the hard work and imagination of writers of fantasy. They build their own incredible worlds and live within the rules they have created. However, I do find I relate much more easily to Magic Realism. The characters live in our world and the every-day events that happen to them are entirely  possible. It’s just that the writer allows the character, and therefore the reader, to see those events in a different way. For example it is entirely possible to see a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow on any ordinary rainy day. Perhaps a pot shaped rock happens to be lying at the end of the naturally appearing and disappearing arc. Suspension of disbelief is not so difficult, for me at least, because I know that within the laws of physics such a thing can happen. But whatever the problem that character was planning solve using the gold from that pot must now be accomplished in some other way. Or perhaps not at all because the pressing need for the gold, which was creating the narrative tension the writer needed, has been met in some other way. Fantasy, on the other hand, demands a much greater suspension of disbelief. The writer can simply abandon all pretence at logic and simply wave their magic wand. Of course fans of fantasy novels would say that the writer has already woven a magic spell by creating their own world. But for me it is the deeper human emotions that are not so easily stirred.

Certainly there is a place for fantasy as a genre. It has a huge following and all those readers can’t be wrong. I would like to be one of them, but I suspect I am a lost cause.

Our old dog, Munch, close to death

Making them cry relies on the reader feeling a deep personal empathy for our characters, which in turn relies on knowing and caring about them ourselves. For me, getting to know my characters is the fun part. I begin by getting to know them, making friends with them, or in the case of the villains finding out what makes them tick. There comes a point when I find them running around in my head most of the time. Even when I’m busy doing other things I know they are there. When I relax they become much more demanding. It’s like catching up with a friend I haven’t seen for ages, talking to them and listening to what they have to say. And it’s not always the sad things that make me cry. Sometimes it’s hearing about, or witnessing an act of great courage, the return of a loved one after a long absence or the birth of a baby against all the odds.

I’m renowned for crying – in movies, while reading books, even songs will make the tears run down my face and my voice refuse to work. Sometimes I am left exhausted by the depth of feeling I have experienced. At other times I feel refreshed and uplifted by stories of ordinary people performing extraordinary acts of bravery or simple, thoughtful acts of kindness.I still cry.  It’s a spontaneous thing.

Just as there is no recipe for making people laugh, there are no rules for what makes us cry.

Was it something I said?

Making our readers laugh and cry, engaging a range of their emotions, making them care about our characters, these are all essential ingredients in successful novels. Firstly, let’s try making them laugh.

Humour is such a personal thing. What makes one person laugh out loud can leave another staring blankly in total bewilderment. For me, humour needs to be subtle, ironical and often self deprecating. Sometimes a bit of slap-stick works, but only if there is a real surprise for the reader embedded in it. Forced humour, like forced rhymes in poetry, is the absolute pits. Really there are no hard and fast rules about how to make someone laugh. Even face to face it is hit and miss. Sometimes during workshop presentations the audience laughs when you least expect them to. When that happens it’s like a gift from the gods. You grab that moment with both hands and try, later, to work out how you did it so that you can do it again. And if it’s difficult face to face, how much harder is it going to be translating that moment into writing on a page? Then there’s the task of making it come to life again to produce peels of laughter – or even just a giggle here and there.

I guess at the end of the day you can only be yourself. There is nothing more embarrassing  than watching someone trying too hard to make people laugh. Which, of course, is what makes it all the more satisfying when it does happen.

All four covers of the circular Eden Glassie Mystery quartet

When I made contact with my daughter in Melbourne to tell her that I had finally signed up to Facebook, after avoiding it for twenty years, she said ‘Bad timing, Mum.’ She is doing the opposite, pulling back from her long association with social media, in spite of her continuing passion for family history. I explained that my only reason for signing on was to post a couple of sentences and a link to my website each week so that I could provide a sort of shop front for publishers, librarians, teachers, students and other interested people. I quickly came up against one of her concerns.

‘It doesn’t matter if you have nothing to hide,’ she said. ‘That’s not relevant any more. The tech wizards are selling the personal data of everyone in the world to anyone who could possibly make use of it, without permission!’ New technologies have created new moral questions like, ‘How much privacy do we really need for our own protection? do we really want all this intrusion into our lives?’

The seductive benefits of social media have eroded away our protective instinct so that we no longer control much of our life, without being aware of it. Trying to set up my Author Page almost immediately brought me up against a barrage of messages from Facebook offering to sign me up for all their other offshoots. Facebook is free, right? But at every turn I was told that entering my credit card or Pay Pal details, and my mobile phone number, would enhance my presence on the internet. But do I really want that? Unlike my feudal forebears I am not illiterate peasants. I am aware of my right to dignity and the chance to live a satisfying life. So why do I get the disturbing feeling that society is circling back to the days when a few powerful overlords controlled every aspect of people’s lives. Each of the four books in the circular Eden Glassie Mystery quartet begins with a verse of the Harry Chapin song Circle. Life, seasons, relationships, have always circled around but those circles were ever expanding, not shrinking back to a darker, more oppressive age.

What do you think?

Coming from a classical music background I have never been a fan of rock’n’roll. When I have been exposed to it in the past, it has been played so loudly that I could only tolerate the assault on my hearing for a very short period. I have been aware that there are words to the songs but at that volume, and with the thump, thump, thump of the backing, I found I couldn’t hear, let alone understand, any of them. However, this weekend I finally found a rock’n’roll singer I could relate to.

Paul Kelly is a poet who sings. Listening to him perform in the music shell at Leeuwin Estate, with two supporting singers and a simple backing combo, was a revelation. His songs were sometimes sad, sometimes funny and sometimes pure celebrations of life. I could hear and understand every word, which allowed me to appreciate his great sense of rhyme, in particular. He could build up my expectation, then surprise me with a word or phrase. His rhymes were never forced, always totally appropriate, and yet they turned my expectation on its head.

Like Leonard Cohen, Paul Kelly doesn’t have a strong singing voice, but he knows how to use a dramatic pause, sometimes even a short period of silence, to keep his listeners focusing and entertained. He is such a clever performer. Combined with his two backing singers, who do have wonderful singing voices, but never upstaged him, he has completely won me over.

I don’t promise to buy his music, but I would be happy to buy a book of his lyrics any day.

Looking out over the sea – dreaming and writing.

At the moment my new novel, Parallel, seems to be writing itself. There is such a short time, during the development stage, when this happens that I am loving every moment of it.

I am working on a central idea, but other ideas just keep flowing from it, popping out and saying, ‘Hey, how about me?’ The whole story is so fluid during this time that I can stop, think about the new idea, decide whether it fits or not. When I start to write it in narrative form it either seems right – or it doesn’t. If it goes down easily onto the page and the characters start to talk, I leave it there, for the moment. If it doesn’t, I will often leave it there, but write notes to myself about it. Maybe it does fit, but somewhere else in the story? Or maybe it will be dumped during the slash and burn stage.  I really love exploring the possibilities, getting to know the characters, writing everything down, but leaving lots of notes (in brackets) on the page. It looks incredibly messy. But it’s my way of reminding myself to check out this or that little detail, check out the appropriate accents, look at the dress styles of that era.

Because about half of this novel is contemporary fiction and the other half is set in the south of England in the early 1800s, which is a period I have already researched for a different manuscript, I haven’t done the initial research that I would have done for my historical fiction. I know there will still be facts that I need to check. Which ones, though? I don’t know until I’m further into the manuscript, writing an action  scene, or a chunk of dialogue. So for the moment I am just letting the story tell itself.

The hard work will come later!