So according to new figures from the Australia Council of the Arts, seven percent of Australians are ‘writing a novel or short story’. Reassuring (I’m not alone!)? Or depressing (I’m not alone?)?
Shockingly, there’s been a whole lot of talk about writing at this year’s Adelaide Writers Week. Here’s the advice I liked best (in terms of fiction writing), for all you seven percenters out there:
Inspiration v perspiration
Prime Minister’s fiction prize winner Steven Conte believes ‘there’s no way of switching on inspiration’. ‘Just write’, he says. What counts is ‘the hard graft to make those moments [of inspiration] come about.’ ‘Writing is, in other words, work,’ as Jeff Sparrow recently put it. (Or, as one of the characters relays in Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog, quoting Renoir—you need to spend a lot of time collecting firewood if you want a blazing fire.)
Perfectionism v production
Jim Crace said writers needed courage: ‘be prepared to write a bad version of your novel’, or you may never write anything. ‘Inspiration isn’t worth waiting for. Don’t be tormented by the blank page, just scribble something down.’ (Crace himself wrote the first half of his most recent book before realising he would have to change everything from ‘baggy’ past tense to the ‘thrillingly democratic’ present tense, but at least he had something written to alter.)
Michelle de Kretser said that most days writing she thinks ‘that’s terrible’, occasionally, ‘that’s not bad’. ‘Distrust both reactions,’ she said. ‘Good looks tragically bad’ the following morning and vice versa. ‘Get to the following morning,’ she says.
Procrastination and other ‘enemies of promise’
Jim Crace mentioned Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly (that’s him behind all the books up there), which chronicles the myriad distractions, excuses, obstacles to actually sitting down to write. (And is somewhat famous for this line, among others: ‘There is no more more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.’ Hmm.)
Michelle de Kretser: ‘keep the email button off, that’s quite important’.
Be there (wherever ‘there’ takes you)
My favourite and perhaps very obvious advice was from Marina Lewycka, whose description of writing reminded me of those I’ve heard from Sonya Hartnett and from Caroline Jones, among others. ‘Be in the place [you’re] writing about,’ she said. Once you’re ‘in the place’, in the scene, as a writer, all you need to do is ‘look around’ at what you see, listen to what you hear—‘smell’, says Lewycka.
And when it comes to the question ‘to plan, or not to plan’ I’m with Charlotte Wood (and Kate Grenville, and Anne Michaels, and many others): ‘The pleasure comes not from expressing what’s on my mind but discovering what’s in my mind,’ says Wood Or, as Jim Crace put it: ‘If you plan in advance, you’re denying yourself the joys of discovery en route.’
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Tags: Adelaide Writers Week, Writing
Alex Miller was asked about his process during my session with him by an audience member – he’s a non-planner, too. So was each of the authors on my ‘Beneath the Veneer’ panel at PWF: David Carlin, Emily Maguire and Wendy James. Miller admits to accepting a ‘fictional offer’ and just seeing where it takes him! I love the idea of this, too, but I think each writer finds their own way. Wonder how many, out of the 7%, are planners, and how many are adventurers? I’m a semi-planner (very vague outline written down) or else it’s too much to hold in my mind. But I’m open to going down different paths.