I’ve always loved those stories about the serendipity of some unlikely twist of fate that has led to a publisher discovering a manuscript. Let’s face it, luck and publishing go hand in hand. Having recently acquired a good luck story of my very own (more on that in a moment) it seemed like a good excuse to interview a bunch of talented local authors about how luck has played a part in their own fortunes.

But first to why Lady Luck is needed by every newbie author. Slush piles are a fact of publishing. Those teetering mounds of unsolicited manuscripts that flood every publisher’s office through which juniors wade. The likelihood of being discovered amongst them is rare, though it does happen. Laura Miller sums it up nicely on her blog:

People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts … have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is … Everybody acknowledges that there have to be a few gems out in the slush pile – one manuscript in 10,000, say – buried under all the dreck. The problem lies in finding it. A diamond encased in a mountain of solid granite may be truly valuable, but at a certain point the cost of extracting it exceeds the value of the jewel … Instead of picking up every new manuscript with an open mind and a tiny nibbling hope, you learn to expect the worst. Because almost every time, the worst is exactly what you’ll get.

So that’s what un-agented manuscripts landing in a slush pile are up against, and I’ve been there. My collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward, is now sitting on bookshop shelves but it is only there through an unlikely series of events. My manuscript was one of 450 to land on Affirm Press’ desk as part of their Long Story Short series call for submissions. It was shortlisted, but ultimately rejected. In response to the rejection letter I received from the publisher, Martin Hughes, we struck up an email conversation and Hughes offered to give me feedback on the collection. I said yes please and so he went to the assessments to put together something constructive. But they contradicted each other so much that he was unable to glean anything useful from them. As a result he generously spent his Christmas break reading the manuscript. It turned out he liked the book and handed it to his associate who also liked it, and before I knew it the book had been accepted for publication. So if I hadn’t been interested in feedback (and Hughes apparently offered it to other writers who were not interested) he would never have read the manuscript and it wouldn’t now be in bookshops. A stroke of luck if ever there was one.

Knowing the perils of the slush pile, when Glenda Guest finished her first novel, Siddon Rock, she was so dispirited that she didn’t even know where to start. In an interview with Verity La she recounts how she was feeling: ‘There was so much talk around about how hard it is to get a manuscript read through publishers, or even to get an agent to read your work. And if I did try a publisher’s slush pile, which one might like it? And would I cruel my chances of finding an agent if I’d tried around the publishers (and the answer to that one is definitely yes). See how the head was working? It was all too hard!’

So the manuscript sat there for ‘yonks’ until one evening Guest was tidying her desk and a list of agents given to her by an ex-agent fell out of a pile of papers. ‘I dialed the first number – it was as simple as that. The time must have been right with all the good planets lined up and pushing me along, because Lyn [Tranter] answered the phone herself; she was in the office alone as it was late, and usually doesn’t answer after hours. I told her I’d been given her name. She asked what the book was about – such a difficult thing to answer, that – we talked, she got reluctant because of it coming from a university course, she said send me the first chapter, and I knew it was a professional courtesy to the person who had recommended her. I sent it.’ Tranter took on Siddon Rock, it was picked up by Random House and went on to win the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. And it all began with one perfectly timed phone call.

For Craig Cormick it was a chance encounter that lead to the publication of his first collection of short stories. He was interviewing David Horton, then head of Aboriginal Studies Press, for an article in the Canberra Times and mentioned that he had written a few stories with Indigenous themes, looking at Australian history with Aboriginal perspectives. ‘Being a nice guy he asked to see to few of the stories … the next thing I knew, a few weeks later I got a letter, or maybe it was an email, stating that the publishing committee had looked at my sample stories and liked them very much and would be pleased to publish my collection and I should send the full set stories to them. I nearly fell over onto the floor in surprise. Particularly since I’d only written those three stories and didn’t really have any of the others.’ Cormick wrote the collection, and it won the 1999 ACT Book of the Year Award.

Marion Halligan has a story of a different kind. With her fortieth birthday approaching she decided that she had to ‘stop thinking I was going to be a writer one day and do it now’. So she sent out three stories to Quadrant, the Bulletin and Southerly. As luck would have it they were all accepted. Some might say there was no luck at play here, just plain good talent. But Halligan’s next 23 stories were all rejected. Halligan says that if she’d received the rejections first she ‘might never have persevered’.

As Nigel Featherstone says, ‘Everything about writing is luck. Everything.’ The publication of his first novel, Remnants, is a good luck story of the very best kind. At a colleague’s suggestion he met with Ian Templeman, then head of Pandanus Books, the academic publisher at the Australian National University. Nigel recounts: ‘Over lunch Ian told me how he’d read a story of mine, “Song of Excess”, in Overland and would love to read the manuscript for my first novel – what luck he’d read that particular issue! A month later, I received a letter saying that Ian enjoyed the work but as Pandanus was primarily an academic publisher of non-fiction they couldn’t accept it; I should, however, again make contact with Ian. More than confused, I rang Ian. He said that he would like to publish Remnants, but he would have to establish a special imprint to do so, and this would take ‘some time’. Ian was true to his word, and in 2005 that little novel eventually saw the light of day through Pandanus Books’ Sullivan’s Creek series. Which would fold within a year because the ANU was adamant about focussing on the academic, not the fictional.’ It doesn’t come luckier than that.

As writer Christina Dodd says, ‘Every writer faces a moment in her career when she realises that a good part of success has nothing to do with skill or planning, and everything to do with pure, dumb luck.’

[My thanks to my fellow Canberra writers – Adrian Caesar, Craig Cormick, Nigel Featherstone, Marion Halligan, Jack Heath, Ingrid Jonach and Kel Robertson – for sharing their good luck stories with me. Unfortunately I was unable to include them all.]

We’re holding a competition to find two bloggers to write fortnightly for the Meanland project. The winners will receive a one-off prize of $200, and be paid $75 per week to blog and tweet. One runner-up will receive $100 and have their entry published online.

Meanland, ‘reading in a time of change’, is dedicated to looking at the ‘what’ and increasingly the ‘how’ of the digital revolution and its impact on publishing. Issues we’ve covered include: the collapse of the distinction between readers and writers as more people become involved in creating content; the cultural and political impact of the unparalleled monopolies emerging in the digital landscape; and the psychological consequences of reading and writing online.

To enter: Email .doc entries for one of the topics below to Meanjin’s Deputy Editor Zora Sanders with Meanland blog entry in the title.

Prize: Two winners will receive $200 each. The winners will become Meanland bloggers, to be paid $75 fortnightly from then on. Plus, one runner-up will receive $100.

Deadline: 5pm 16 May.

Word limit:1000 words.

The topics:
• Digital writing, which uses linking, video and commentary, is a return to oral storytelling traditions
• The Internet has not impacted upon my reading habits in the slightest
• Speaking of paywalls…
• Creative solutions to old media problems: what will reading be like in the coming decades?

So, get your boots on and start writing!

Want to help us promote the position? Download the comp pdf.

Unfortunately, in the case of poetry, the requisite talents are not so clear-cut. If only there were an equivalent So You Think You Can Write; we could all just turn up at the cattle call audition and have our hopeful hearts broken by a Simon Cowell-esque judge wielding a quill and a dictionary. Even then though, there’d be those few tragics left staring forlornly but defiantly into the camera whining: ‘What would he know? He wouldn’t know a decent poet if they smacked him in the face with their next manuscript. My MUM and all my mates LOVE my writing, and they should know, they’ve read it ALL.’

Noetry is one of my pet hates. I write noetry a lot. Probably sixty percent of what I write, I’d consider to be noetry. I don’t mean poetry that people don’t like. I mean bad poetry. I mean Oh-no!-poetry.

I don’t particularly like Sylvia Plath’s poetry: I think most of it is angst-ridden self-indulgence. But it’s not really bad poetry. I mean, it has literary merit and I can see why other people might like it.

But what if you’d like to be a professional poet and you’re just not up to it? What if all you write is noetry, and you desperately want to be a published poet?

Do you have critics brave enough to tell you your writing sucks, and are you ready to hear it?

Are you going to insist your poetry is misunderstood genius, self-publish your work and force your (secretly bewildered) family and friends to buy all fifty copies?

With time, and workshopping, and honest writer-friends and editors, I’ve become more able to recognise my noetry. I shelve it, trash it, burn it and delete it. I cross out line after line, cringe at keyboard after keyboard and curse a lot. And I’m starting to write noetry less and less. (Uhhhh … I think.)

But sometimes people ask me to read their poetry and tell them what I think. And sometimes … I lie. I know, I know. I shouldn’t. I’m not doing them any favours.

But what if someone you know quite well presents you triumphantly with a notebook full of poetry that they’re convinced is sheer genius, and looks at you with hopeful, expectant eyes waiting for you to confirm they’re the next best thing since Shakespeare? Can you take the ‘well … it’s a matter of opinion …‘ route and weasel out, or are you going to break their heart?

When I was studying poetry at university I had the pleasure of being taught by Alan Wearne, poet and verse novelist extraordinaire and one of Australia’s all-time poetry greats. During my time as his student, I workshopped a poem called ‘Slogan on the Moon’. It was probably the first political poem I ever wrote. It was about something I read in the newspaper about Pizza Hut wanting to laser beam their logo onto the moon as a marketing stunt.

When it came time to talk about that particular poem, Wearne grabbed at his head, clearly in pain, and told me (in front of the class) it was ‘Just awful … it’s hard to believe the person who wrote those other poems wrote this I mean it’s just SO bad.’

I wasn’t devastated, but furious. He obviously just didn’t get it. It was one of the most insightful poems I’d ever written. Just because he didn’t like it, didn’t mean it wasn’t a brilliant poem. After all, that was just his opinion.

I found ‘Slogan on the Moon’ recently in an old writing portfolio. I wanted to shrivel up and die. It is, quite possibly, the worst poem in the history of mankind.

When the voice of noetry reason comes to visit you, will you tear out its vocal chords, or swallow your pride and listen?

Cross-posted from Slam up.

Oh dear. I’d been sprung. I had to admit that I don’t really get what Twitter is for if one is not overthrowing a dictatorship or having a steamy affair with Liz Hurley. I’m just not into it. And before anyone starts banging on about a generation gap, wait for it ‘peeps’, I’m a member of Gen Y. (Just. Hand me my knitting needles and show me to a Smokey Dawson Easy Lift Recliner.) The more I think about it and the more I attempt to harness the useful forces of Twitter, the more I feel it is to the detriment of that delicate stage for my writing that lies between the first seeds of inspiration and the actual setting of words on a page – the thinking bit.

Don’t get me wrong I am abreast with the current publishing upheaval: the demise of traditional booksellers, the precarious position of print journals. (Then there are those who stand waiting for the novel to die so they can take their pickings of the estate like your second cousins at the deathbed of Great Aunt Nell – the ones who had already popped stickers with their name on all the good furniture.) I have read the articles that assert that if emerging writers are to ‘make it’ in this shiny new cyber age they must create and maintain a strong online profile. But it is my opinion that the process of tweeting steals from the process of writing, and writers can easily spend so much time building their online profile that they can’t get anything written.

Much of this ground has already been covered by Cate Kennedy on this very site (and more recently Jacinda at Meanjin). I agreed with much of what Kennedy in particular wrote on the subject – but it also now occurs to me that she has an advantage which I do not: she already has the attention of publishers. And it is no secret that the portion of those who bask in the warm glow of the attention of print publishers is shrinking. Add to this the fact that I found myself on a shortlist for a certain Fellowship, and have discovered that few of my ‘fellow’ shortlistees have Twitter accounts. Ah ha, my opportunity to strike! To gain a little advantage, perhaps, since publishers are so very concerned about this online profile bizzo.

So, after this recent prompting I attempted to revive the lifeless carcass of my Twitter account. The initial stages of this were quite enjoyable: I re-designed my profile page, a process which reminded me of that bit in Tony Hawk’s ProSkater II where one could design one’s own skater dude. (Take that, whipper snappers!) Then I filled in a few bits about myself in the bio. Then, I humbly attempted to formulate a tweet. Immediately I was met with the question, ‘Is it possible to Tweet humbly?’ The very premise of Twitter relies solely on one factor: that the 140 characters in one’s head are worthy of proclamation to the whole world. Or, in this case, my nine followers. (Hi guys!)

‘Ah, yes,’ you may say. ‘But you call yourself a writer. This itself depends on the fact that you believe you have precious thoughts in your head that deserve to be read by others.’

Well, yes. But the process of getting these thoughts onto a page is a long and tortured one. I am not Stephen Fry. I find it difficult to instantaneously think of pithy statements of 140 characters or less. I also don’t spend enough time on the netasphere to come across lots of interesting links. (This could be because I spend so much time thinking of new names for the internet.) And there are already people who do this so very well. (Hi Jeff!) But, just like those lucky few who find themselves in the background of a Channel Ten weather update, I felt I must make the most of this opportunity and at least attempt a few handstands.

So, what first? ‘Think, woman! Think!’ Nothing. No pithy statements leapt from my skull. Instead I spent half an hour looking for an article I could pop a link up to. (Thank you, New Yorker.) Half an hour I could have spent writing, or thinking about writing. For inspiration I thought I might see what other writer-folk were tweeting about. Maybe I could mix up the syntax and steal a few. (Already reduced to plagiarism after half an hour.) So I had a look for my favorite writers: Craig Silvey? Nothing. Sonya Hartnett? Nothing. Jonathan Safran Foer? David Sedaris? Reif Larsen? Nothing. Zadie Smith? Three tweets, six months ago. Annie Proulx? Nothing. (Maybe I spelt her name wrong.) What does this mean?!

And guess what happened while I was searching for these people? I got distracted by people who are on Twitter, following all sorts of fascinating links, yet only filling my head with more noise. Substantial noise, nonetheless, but still noise.

Perhaps it really does come down to a time thing. As the mother of a toddler, minutes of time to myself are very few. I have to maximise their productivity. I must wring out whatever time is left after eating and sleeping if I am to get any actual writing done. This isn’t to say that I don’t spend any time nosing about webblytown, of course I do. I just don’t feel compelled to broadcast my findings yet. Usually because someone with more clout than I already has done so. (Unless the said finding is a design for Robbie the Robot with built-in espresso machine. That was awesome.)

Nor is this post intended to take aim at those who enjoy a regular tweet and find it to be a productive use of their time. Rather, perhaps what I am saying is this: Twitter is another tool out there for writers. It doesn’t mean we all should use it. Just as some writers strap themselves to their chairs for eight hours a day and others only write sporadically between the hours of 11pm and 2am, some will surely find Twitter useful and some will not. Some may find that it keeps them engaged and thinking and reflecting and thus writing. Some, like myself, may find it makes them self-conscious and renders them mute, second-guessing every word they write.

Thus, for the moment I think I will stop trying to fake it. Unless I come across any more interesting robot designs.

I smile, wondering the exact same thing, and shuffle my three-month-old daughter into the red sling strung across one shoulder, eager to hear Fadzai’s response. One of the baby’s eyes opens suspiciously but she ultimately succumbs to sleep. Still Waters doesn’t seem, to me, to be an obvious christening for this newly formed storytelling sister-circle. Water is such a life force – so all-powerful in its movement and strength. Water floods, drowns, devastates, replenishes and revives. Water slides land, washes away foundations and even erodes stone. Still Waters seems somehow helpless, ominous, melancholy. It makes me think of stagnant ponds and lifeless children, of time standing still.

‘Still Waters, because they run deep, but there is no movement,’ says Fadzai. ‘Still Waters because we are constantly struggling to make waves. Still Waters because there is so much potential, right here just under the surface.’ A knowing nod circles the room and all of us are in agreeance. Still Waters. Amen to that. Suddenly, an old spiritual I haven’t heard for years rises up, deep and rumbling, in my ears:

Wade in the water
Wade in the water / children
Wade in the water
The Lord’s gonna trouble the water

I wonder, am I the only one to hear it.

Writing the ‘other’ Black Australia, I tell the sisters of the newly established storytellers group, has been a long and lonely, if productive, road. Particularly in the notoriously monocultural Australian poetry scene. Paving a path as a young black female poet writing intensely political, and at times heavily criticised, work about the experiences of African descendents in the ‘new world’ has not been easy. But perhaps the most difficult thing of all has been the absence of sisters whose solidarity would surely have made the road less rocky.

Yet here they are now, gathered with me on the couches, cross-legged on the polished wooden floorboards of this small room in North Melbourne: Zimbabwean model and writer Teurai Chinakira, writer Tinashe Pwiti, artist Abby Osia-Ogada (an Australian of Kenyan and Italian heritage), writer and group founder Fadzai Jaravaza, fashion and events co-ordinator Salamawit Mekonnen (of Ethiopian heritage). The group’s supported by Australian lawyer and facilitator Annie Davis, theatre and dance expert Liza Freddi, radio personality and journalist Namila Benson (PNG), and journalist and filmmaker Rachel Maher.

It is early days now, and how the group will grow and change in numbers and direction we are uncertain. For now, we are all content hearing each other chant the same incantation. Though we come via different continents, have travelled different journeys and have lived different lives, we are united by storytelling and skin, and ready to start meeting once a month together, writing, workshopping and sharing our work with the world – taking back our tongues.

The Still Waters Storytelling Network meets on the third Saturday of every month at the Institute for Postcolonial Studies, and aims to tell the stories of Australian women of African descent. Maxine Beneba Clarke will be documenting their progress on the Overland blog.

Launched fittingly on the International Day of Non-Violence, the book is a collection of writing that arose out of workshops at seven schools in Western Sydney. The workshops were run, in conjunction with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, as part of the Refugee Action Support Project. Alongside the writing workshops there were forum theatre workshops on bullying, where students learned ways of defusing situations before they escalate.

As someone who works in a school, seeing the video and hearing the speeches from the RAS workshop mentors was empowering. There, in a relatively safe surrounding, people were able to practise their negotiation skills and build confidence in saying what they felt. New skills were found among all attendees; for instance, one Sudanese teenage boy proved so good at negotiating and defusing, he passed some of those skills onto the mentors.

As you would expect from a book of this nature, of young voices first-hand, the writing in Violence is raw. Yet it is for that reason that they are all the more forceful. Names have been withheld to protect people’s privacy, but that only seems to enhance the book, adding a kind of universality to the stories. When read, the effect is powerful.

The stories fluctuate through tenses like many conversations do. Shifting and stilting with each sentence, there’s a certain youthfulness to these voices. The process of writing is also highlighted, through the inclusion of many crossed-out words, or text written in multiple drafts. This concept was also illustrated at the launch when Stanley, a Congolese man of 18, read out his contribution. Short and one-line long, the story was about him as a boy in the Congo seeing a pregnant woman shot. His second story went into more detail, including the image of him running with tears down his face after witnessing the event.

As Stanley said at the launch, writing these stories down was the first time he had ever told the story to anyone; it was also the first time he had read it. He said that just to put the words to the image and voice them aloud was to get them out of his head. It hurt, but it helped.

The rest of the stories in the book are along the same line, simple but heartbreaking. Take, for example, the one in which someone is sitting at school alone. Short and sweet, it hits that feeling more genuinely then any micro-fiction could.

Westside Jnr also includes interviews with local psychologists, and Muslim and Vietnamese centre workers talking about day-to-day encounters with violence. About the stories they hear and the approaches they have for dealing with those stories.

There is also an interview with a photographer who was at the Cronulla riots. He took a photo of some Middle Eastern young men being set upon by a pack of 30 white young men. His description of the mood around that, of the violence of the pack hunt, of his failure to stop it is powerful to read and made me more frustrated and angry about the racism and violence that still exists tody, the kind that leads to inhumane and unjust policies.

The launch ended with an open discussion in which one of the sponsors of the program mentioned how beneficial these kinds of programs were; sponsors were now planning on expanding the program to other regions and cities in New South Wales. Most tellingly, he spoke of how the teachers in the program found children from refugee backgrounds were better students to teach – they wanted to learn, fit in and improve. Having seen the frustration of teachers working with kids who don’t want to work, I can only imagine the joy.

And I think it’s this that we need to remember. The main motivation for coming all the way to Australia from far away places is the desire of people to live in a world free from the violence they have encountered.

Why write?

Why not? I think if you ask yourself this question, that’s when things get messy and you start considering business degrees and nuclear families. That isn’t to say those with business degrees and/or nuclear families couldn’t write. But that’s just it, isn’t it! You write because you can. I do.

Writing is a catalyst for discussion. The author creates a dialogue not only between themselves and their readers but between readers and in communities. The writer has the opportunity to manipulate language to say whatever it is no one else wants to. She/he can use words to drive their hand into someone’s chest and take a fistful of what’s there, or to hold someone’s head and force them to stare headlong at what they might not want to see.

I write because sometimes I create a dialogue with myself, too. I write to learn and to challenge myself.

A lot of the people I look up to are writers and I think there is always a desire to emulate those I hold high regard. Of course you’re always going to (want to) come out with a strong individual style and voice, still, I want to be able to create the warm/uncomfortable feelings I get from writing that has influenced/affected me.

Does the term ‘young writer’ mean anything to you?

In the sense that I am young and I write, I suppose it has to. Perhaps I’ll just accept that I am (trying to be) one, and move on. Still, it is interesting that in almost every other profession, the term ‘young’ does not hold anywhere as much significance.

It is a double-edged sword, in a way. Publishing a ‘young writer’ and advertising it as such can be a challenge to the reader. Saying, ‘Look, Sally is five years old, and she has produced a novella with multi-faceted narrative perspectives and several intricate plotlines that resolve themselves in an earth shattering conclusion’ can be impressive. Because Sally is five. And clearly a child genius. Still, if the publisher feels as though they are taking a chance with a piece, the term can act as a disclaimer of sorts.

‘Sally’s novella was terrible!’

‘Mate, she’s only five.’

What in your view are the biggest barriers facing young authors in Australian publishing?

I’m not sure – if the writing is good enough – that these barriers exist. Perhaps there are difficulties in that a nineteen-year-old person’s manuscript may not be taken as seriously as someone who is forty years old … But even in writing that, I’m not sure I wholly believe it. The mass market of mainstream publishing houses I think also puts pressure on the young author. All of a sudden pace and drama become the drawcards of a ‘good’ novel. Then again, I really do believe that with a strong enough voice, quality writing and a smart pitch, any good writing will find its place. In my (potentially painfully naïve) opinion, at the moment in Australia there are more opportunities than barriers.

Malcolm King argues creative writing courses are untheoretical, inhibitively and unjustifiably expensive, commodified and potentially unethical with their promises of fulfilling a student’s potential all the way to publication. He calls them ‘dream factories’. What do you think of creative writing courses? Have they assisted you? Are they teaching you craft and self-expression or are they symptomatic of a culture that promises much (at a great price) and offers very little? What are your experiences with studying creative writing and your opinions of it?

My first problem with the ethics of creative writing courses lies with the student who goes into a creative writing course with the core intention of being published. Yes, it is a nice goal to have and in pursuing a career in writing, publication is one end to the means. Still, I am not necessarily sure that the courses themselves promise publication any more than the student enrolling in courses bring publication with them as an agenda.

I think there are students that become very passionate about their work and go into creative writing courses seeking confirmation, as well as introductions to ‘industry types’. When a course has had some success stories they will advertise that. It would be silly not to. If writers that have gone through their course have made it all the way to publication, that point can be exploited as incentive for new writers to enrol. Still, I think the student has a responsibility to be realistic about their opportunities and situation.

The course I am currently involved in has assisted me greatly in some ways but also created and confirmed disillusionment in the bureaucratically structured-university systems. I have met some fantastic teachers who really care about writing as a craft, a craft that requires context and understanding. Then again, there is a general culture of self-expression, with which I don’t particularly agree. That may sound contradictory in terms of previous comments I have made, but I believe to get to a point of creating a dialogue with a reader, there needs to be a deep understanding of the finer mechanics of writing. Of course this can mean hardcore theoretical study, but also, something as basic as language and editing skills – both of which have been mostly absent in my course to date. There certainly have been gaps in my experience, but I suppose that raises the question of how we institutionalise creativity and ‘teach’ it.

I think there is a culture of wanting to breed creativity within the institution rather than give students the tools to control it. I think being around other aspiring writers is extremely helpful and there is always, always, always something to learn in a classroom. I think as far as paying money or accumulating a student debt with great aspiration of publication and glory is unrealistic. If a student feels as though their course promises a happy, published, established ending, then they are completely delusional and need to take responsibility for themselves and get back in touch with reality. I don’t think creative writing courses are necessary. I think whomever you have the pleasure/displeasure of encountering throughout a course can have a great impact. I don’t think there is enough focus on critical theory or the finer mechanics of producing good, contextual writing. If I hear the term ‘self-directed learning’ one more time, it may result in suicide.

He was interviewed by Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.

Why write?

There were two other writers on my street growing up. One was Frank Walker, a retired journalist for both the Sun and Sydney Morning Heralds, who wrote self-published maritime novels, which didn’t look very appealing on the shelf and even less so in hand. And then there was a wunderkid up the road who had staged a successful version of Romeo and Juliet by the time he was fifteen. Sort of a Max from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Like Max, though, pretty much everyone hated him. He had scolded one of the mothers on the school’s P&C for calling him Shakespearean, when he much preferred the term Elizabethan. In writing, I am consciously trying not to be like the other two writers on my first street. They led the way, though.

This street was Sunrise Avenue in Budgewoi, which is on the Central Coast. The cesspit between two cities (Sydney and Newcastle), as a too clever uncle put it. Lisa Pryor writing in the Sydney Morning Herald was kind enough to call the Central Coast a ‘cultural wasteland’ and that had a particular sting in it when it came out. But now I think, what does a voice sound like from a cultural wasteland? I think it would sing in a way that other voices might not be able to – to hit certain unheard notes. That’s what I’m interested in exploring.

Does the term ‘young writer’ mean anything to you?

I probably would have shied away from the ‘young writer’ tag when I was twenty. There would likely have been a certain impatience with the term, wanting to be just the ‘writer’ already. I have written before about my queasy relationship with the young writer tag. In 2008 I applied for a grant to edit something called The Best Young Writers. It was a pretty pathetic move on my behalf to assert myself but they gave us the grant, so I think there might be a problem with the term in the wider culture – an over-eagerness to define and categorise. Best Young Writers was to feature writers under twenty six, but it ended up mutating into Cutwater and our oldest contributor was ninety-six, lending us his story about being the first cyclist to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I’m still not one hundred per cent okay with the young writer tag but learning to be patient though. The piece I have written for this issue of Overland is four thousand words long and took my the better part of seven months to get to a first draft, and then another three to revise. I realise that I’m very, very slow at this and that I actually find it very difficult too.

What in your view are the biggest barriers facing young authors in Australian publishing?

I’ve been lucky enough to be published a few times in literary journals and magazines. I can imagine it would be a struggle without the confirmation that comes with publication, but it’s a struggle either way. I recently published an essay – Don’t Get Me Down – in the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s Reader, which detailed my experience with depression and writing. I think the main point that I wanted to get across in that essay – considering it was going to be published in a journal aimed at emerging writers – was that young writers tend to create unrealistic expectations for themselves. I was terrible at this and put myself through a lot of unnecessary pain in order to achieve at a level higher than which I was at.

Of course the other side to this is that young writers can be overconfident too, and impatient. The biggest barrier facing young authors in Australia might just be a sense of entitlement – an unwillingness to read and participate in a greater cultural conversation, or to simply be grateful for publication (after say the first or second story). The late Barry Hannah wrote in an essay, Why I Write, ‘I do believe that as you write more and age, the arrogance and most of the vanity go. It is a vanity met with vast gratitude: that you were hit by something as you stood in the way of it, that anybody is listening.’ I look forward to that feeling. I can feel it coming on a little now.

Malcolm King argues creative writing courses are untheoretical, inhibitively and unjustifiably expensive, commodified and potentially unethical with their promises of  fulfilling a student’s potential all the way to publication. He calls them ‘dream factories’. What do you think of creative writing courses? Have they assisted you? Are they teaching you craft and self-expression or are they symptomatic of a culture that promises much (at a great price) and offers very little? What are your experiences with studying creative writing and your opinions of it?

I think that this question is very much tied up in the previous answer. I fear that the overconfidence of young writers partly stems from doing a Creative Writing. The really critical part of this problem is that there are enrolments for these kinds of general Creative Writing degrees to teenagers is part of that problem. I say this as someone who started their Creative Writing undergrad at eighteen. I was following through on what I really wanted to be doing, but I had a little boy’s voice without anything to say. I no longer think that’s a good age to start studying writing. I think that’s a good age to start a Bachelor of Arts and do as much reading as possible – to bury yourself in piles of books and attempt to lose your life in a library. This should really be the writer’s training ground – reading. There are many students in the Creative Writing programs who are unwilling to do the readings assigned. The level of reading necessary to be able to write well needs to be stressed and this may take a few years, before the writing even comes into it. No one is going to give the student of a medical degree a go at the surgical knife in first year.

I agree young writers need support and maybe the Creative Writing degree is the environment for that. But maybe not. Maybe Creative Writing degrees need to focus less on the workshop and producing work than being about reading or publishing a journal or not doing anything for a while and feeling okay with that. It actually would be fairly easy to negate the whole creative writing degree entirely anyway. The basis for most Creative Writing classes at a tertiary level is the workshop, based on the Iowa model. This is usually run by a tutor where participants (not really students) split up into groups of say four or five and read each others work and then give constructive criticism. How hard is it to set up one of these on your own? Not very, I’d suggest. If you’re interested in writing, chances are you know other people who are interested in writing, and who says that they are any less capable of reading and assessing your work than a paid tutor. I’m less interested in mentors who you find in a classroom environment, and have to pay good money for, than one’s you find in the everyday interactions as you try to work things out on your own.

No matter which side of the debate you fall on, however – whether you see writing programs as sluggish gulags or productive hives, say – you’ve got to admit they work for some people and they do create creative hubs. I was very lucky to be at UTS at the time when I was there. There was a really strong group of students, all of whom were equally dedicated and open to collaboration: poets Tim Wright and Astrid Lorange, philosophy nuts Tom ‘Fred’ Lee and Nick Keys, current Reader editor Aden Rolfe, comic artist Pat Grant. That all these people were in the same room together – often on a weekly basis – is a testament to the Creative Writing degrees ability to introduce like minds. They became quite close with the more established poets Martin Harrison, Peter Minter, Kate Fagan and Michael Farrell, all of whom are beautifully warm and engaging people, happy to help younger writers. I write about them here – and give their names – because I think that is the best of what a Creative Writing degree and culture can provide, a sense of support and community and an acknowledgement of what is going on around you. Maybe they’ll get their own Generation 68 tag, or at least have their lives sucked up into a Savage Detectives style fictional bio of the times. Their personal lives probably don’t warrant it – to the best of my knowledge, none of them is planning to disappear in the drugged heat of Juarez any time soon – but the quality of their work does. That’s all that counts in the end.

Today, we are featuring Rebecca Giggs. Rebecca is a Western Australia writer of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Her story in Overland 201 is ‘Blow In’.

Why write?

Bertolt Brecht once wrote that ‘the word is the thing’s dead body’. I cannot agree. My ideas are never pre-formed, sub-surface things to be trawled up and given expression. In writing, I am always trying to solve something for myself, to push air into a feeling. Perhaps I have a sense of significance or an aesthetic interest first, and then I record one line or two in my journal, but it is often not until I sit down to work that I hit upon what I’m writing towards. I might do a whole piece in fiction before a line snags, and then I see that what I’m actually working on is an essay or a poem. That will be frustrating, of course, but usually I can bring myself to extract the line and start again – perhaps after two months, or six, of concentrating on something else. I work on a lot of different things at once, which means that I don’t work fast (much to the distress of the few editors who have been kind enough to read my writing). Here is one of the reasons that I write: to take something from inside and see what it becomes out there on the page, and how in turn the writing might function to further clarify my motivations. Often there is a grey and un-writerly explanation for whatever it is I’m worrying at but I don’t see that as a lost opportunity. And then occasionally the thing kicks a little on the page. One of the skills to develop as a ‘young writer,’ I think, is to be able to recognise when that kick is the writing taking its first breath, and when it is the shudder of an idea rattling to its demise. Either way, you have to be careful with what you’ve made then, and give it time and space enough to be able to discern the living parts from the withering ones. It is my hope that if I get that step right, what it is that I’ve been wondering about or fixated on will become something that resonates with readers. And that’s a sense that I try to develop, every day.

There is another reason that I write and it has to do with self discipline. Specifically, the persistence and fortitude that is required to sit with yourself, making things (join) up, day after day, in solitude. Not because this kind of discipline might improve my writing but because it is an end in itself. Working through something mindfully, deliberately, slowly (not being dilatory but focused), enlarging what you are capable of thinking about and talking about, seeking the energetic core of a phrase, an idea or a situation – the process itself has become an almost radical act in a culture that is accelerating and dividing. Rebecca Solnit has compared synthesis of this kind to resistance (and sections of the interview linked here are stuck with yellowing tape to the ledge that overhangs my desk). But also, it is more personal than that. I have a jumpy, hungry sort of mind – as I suspect many writers do – and the practice of writing disciplines me to think narratively, or at least to build connectedness between stuff rather than falling into a deep multiform miscellany of abstract concepts. An apt metaphor might well be diving. The deeper you go into the place outside you, the more acutely you become aware of yourself – as a diver does, hearing their own breath, pulse and heartbeat amplify as they descend. So often in writing I am trying to slow myself down and become more aware of my impulses, as well as where I am, experientially, in relation to my ideas. A friend recently pointed out to me that the high-altitude perspective has become a common trope in my fiction writing, and that perhaps this has something to do with a desire to ‘get above’ a problem and map it, or show how it fails to map. There is something important in that statement that I’m only just now starting to unpick.

Reading back over this, I am aware that it sounds as if I am advocating for writing as a panacea to all types of unmindfulness. I am not. The proportional and ‘right’ response to some concerns is not to write, but to act, to react, speak, or simply to think – if for no other reason than because a lot of bad writing comes packaged as polemic and jeremiad. Personally, I am interested in the kind of writing that pushes up against a silence, an inner silence or an outer one, and how those spaces might tessellate. There are many more talented writers than me who cannot put words into their silences purely because of where and when they were born. Every time International PEN set out their empty chairs at the various Australian writing festivals I am reminded that it is a golden privilege that I can even ask myself the question ‘why write,’ when so many confront the daily reality of persecution, having answered ‘how can I not write?’

Does the term ‘young writer’ mean anything to you?

That is a notoriously porous phrase. ‘Young writer’ gets deployed to mean half a dozen different things, depending on whether you’re talking with funding bodies, writing communities or individual practicing writers. Even within these contexts the definition can fluctuate – OzCo would classify me as ‘young’ for example, even though I am too old to be young according to the DCA (WA) criteria, which sets the bar at twenty-five. To the extent that the term designates a writer who has not yet settled on a set of career preoccupations, a writer still casting about for a distinctive style, a writer who has only recently begun to have their work widely published: in those ways, I don’t believe in the label ‘young writer.’ All writers should zigzag, meander and fail throughout their career. All writers should embark on infinite tasks, abandon works half-way through, try to take on the wrong voice, start in an incorrect place and finish too far after the end. Writers should definitely wander in and out of specialist territories that they are not ‘qualified’ to speak about. There is no other way that I know of to say something genuinely original.

Additionally, ‘young writer’ can be an unhelpful tag in terms of establishing disproportionate expectations of a writer’s craft. In my opinion, it is not the case that a writer ought to make an impact in their twenties or else they should give up on their practice. You do not need to have a significant lineage of publications to consider yourself a serious (as opposed to recreational) writer, only strict dedication to your talents. And writers who are young need not necessarily write about ‘youth-culture’ (there’s a phrase to raise the goose-flesh!) or the avant-garde. This is particularly so given the cults of the personal that pervade ‘youth culture’ (help, I have no alternate synonym!) at the moment. If write what you know means remaining locked into the tight focus of self, glossing up an ever brighter public reputation, then it saddens me greatly that a bunch of good writers will never get past ‘glinting,’ Peter York’s expression for sinking into one’s own publicity. Write what you know should not be construed so as to delimit empathy or remove the impetus for social conscience. If anything it should be seen as a impetus to know more, to go and find out.

I do not believe that work should be published only because the writer is ‘young,’ for the same reason that work should not be published merely because the writer is ‘established’ or well-hyped. The work needs to be good work either way. In saying that, I do not intend to imply that there should be no young writer publications or young writer institutions. Writing is a lonely, potentially narrowing activity, particularly when you’re starting out in it. Unlike most other creative enterprises – recording music or taking photographs for instance – writing is a cauterisingly antisocial enterprise. It doesn’t matter how many open-mic nights you go to, or how many festivals you attend, you’re still going to have to spend those long nights staring into the dully glowing screen, reliant on your own voice for company. Institutions like Voiceworks and over here in Perth Cottonmouth are antivenin for the kind of torpor and parochialism that can pervade your work and your life if you lock yourself away for too long. But initiatives like the one this interview promotes, Overland’s ‘young writers’ selection, can only be viable if they showcase qualitatively strong writing (which, I hope, this does). The merits of having an under-30s selection in Overland are manifold: it encourages people who might otherwise have shied away from potential rejection to submit fiction, and it permits those writers to have access to editors who are alive to the specific dynamics of early work (and, let’s be honest, sensitive to the often fragile egos of younger writers). The story that I have written called ‘Blow In’ for example, I would have resolved was too under-developed (and, originally at ~8,000 words, much too long) to submit for Overland’s consideration, but for the fact that I knew the editors were keen to work with young writers who had a ‘second to final draft’ to hand. About four years ago I did send the journal some fiction, and it was (exceedingly politely) rejected. That was the right decision – it was ghastly and messy work. But had it not been for this initiative, I would have prevaricated for much longer, unsure of whether that past rejection would count against me having fiction published here.

Setting aside all the reasons that ‘young writer’ can be considered an unconstructive brand, there are a few obvious occasions when it is beneficial to utilise age and experience as a differentiating marker of writers. One of these is in regards to mentorship. I have a lot of enthusiasm for mentorship – not the kind that involves kowtowing to reputation and influence, but in the lively exchange of opinions between a more established writer and an emergent one. These kinds of relationships seem strongest where they develop organically, rather than through the various formal mentorship programs, where the balance is likely to be tilted towards the senior writer’s authority. Mentorship should be a two-way street, and be less about the vicissitudes of publication, than about the mental-states conducive to a healthy writing life (inspiration, participation, conversation, deliberation, synthesis and so on). Peers contribute to this kind of mentorship too, and writing collectives can be hugely beneficial to young writers (I personally owe a lot to my friends in The Concrete Organisation, and to those in writing communities in the eastern states). But I am hesitant to promote the sharing of work with peers, because of the obligation of reciprocity that it enlivens. Far better to have a mentor, who does not expect you to read and critique their work in return, and whose garden you can weed or garage you can help sort as an exchange for their advice.

I would like to think that generationally Australian writers in the 20-35 age bracket are beginning to make their presence felt. I am excited to read the work of so many of my contemporaries, some writing non-fiction, others poetry, fiction and plays, and also the creative non-fictionalists, the ficto-critics, the critics, and the writers in hybridised areas like radio and screen. I am not yet sure if you can identify a common stylistic resonance, or group of settled concerns to apportion to us. There are some geographical, perhaps educational trends, but the range of subject-matter overall is astounding. And one thing that excites me is that so many of us are putting the hunt for an outer story right up against the hunt for an inwardly dialled one. Cultural cringe has been shown to be a waste of energy, and narcissism a waste of time; this kind of tumble into to the deep of things – that’s the kind of writing that leaves me dumbstruck and zinging.

What, in your view, are the biggest barriers facing young authors in Australian publishing?

Aside from the perceived bias of youth mentioned above, financial security is another major barrier to young authors, although I suspect that we are sometimes better equipped to manage that kind of pressure than our established counterparts, who are likely to have less-flexible financial obligations. But young writers are often under-educated when it comes to their intellectual property rights or negotiated rates for publication, or they perceive themselves to be in an inferior bargaining position (though many are highly educated about copyright and creative commons licenses). To that end, the Australian Society of Authors plays an important role in benchmarking rates and providing information about contractual relationships, rights and permissions, royalties and the like to young writers. While I think that every writer deserves to be treated like a professional regardless of whether they are emerging or established, there is an obligation on the part of the writer to know what they are entitled to argue for, and many young writers plainly haven’t had the time or the opportunity to do so.

Speaking from the west coast, self-promotion can also become an issue, being located so far away from most of the major publishing and literary institutions, and without an agent to speak on your behalf as many young writers here, including myself, are. This is a problem that is undoubtedly compounded if you live regionally, although I prevaricate over how much of a problem it in fact is. A few times I have pitched articles to national journals via email followed up by phone (most commonly met by voicemail) and had those pitches cursorily turned down. Part of me clings to the idea that had I in fact been able to meet with the editors they would have been drawn in by my enthusiasm, intellect and wit, enough at least to read a full draft. But perhaps I am both over-selling my enthusiasm, intellect and wit – and my bad ideas! Certainly the staff at WritingWA are conscious of the need for young writers to network across to the East coast, and provide funding pools and specialised initiatives to enable that to happen. And electronic media, inclusive of social media, shortens the distance markedly.

Malcolm King argues creative writing course are untheoretical, inhibitively and unjustifiably expensive, commodified and potentially unethical with their promises of fulfilling a student’s potential all the way to publication. He calls them ‘dream factories.’ What do you think of creative writing courses? Have they assisted you? Are they teaching you craft and self-expression or are they symptomatic of a culture that promises much (at a great price) and offers very little. What are your experiences with studying creative writing and your opinions of it?

First, a few disclaimers. I have taught creative writing both at an undergraduate level at university, and in a workshop environment as part of two extended residencies in the North and in the Perth hills. I am also very close to finishing a PhD that includes a fiction component (it is not, however, a Creative Arts PhD, as is offered by many of the other Group of Eight universities). So in answering this question I am conscious of the fact that I may be perceived to have a vested interest in perpetuating a system that supports creative writing in the academy, and that people I have worked with (students and colleagues both) may read what is written here. I have tried to make my comments as unfettered by these histories as possible – as much as they can be, being based on my experiences – and therefore they should not be extended to reflect the opinions of any of my past or present employers.

I strongly believe in a pedagogy that embraces creativity. It is a very different thing to work within the hermeneutics of suspicion that critical theory fosters, than it is to attempt to build new work that answers those suspicions. I would argue that this kind of creativity ought to be valued beyond its economic viability as a workplace skill (‘creovation™, half creativity, half innovation!’ to paraphrase the protagonist in Kellaway’s Who Moved My Blackberry). It is not just that Australia needs more creative thinkers to generate more patentable ideas, more commercial innovations and more international prizes (the very idea of ‘a patentable idea’ looks more and more outmoded). So many of the problems we face now, as communities that are local, global and dispersed simultaneously, demand creative conception. Creativity, like science, needs to be something everyone ‘does,’ on one level or another. When you think of a problem like climate change for example (the current bee in my bonnet), there is a very real way in which our encounters with climate change are founded on imaginative capacity. Here in the outer suburbs of Perth, I can’t see or sense climate change – my squashes still grow and it rains real rain here every winter. Climate change is a kind of everywhere and nowhere disaster, being both intimate (because it extends from beneath your feet in your carbon ‘footprint’) and intensely abstract (because complex scientific instruments with computational power beyond the human brain are required to ‘read’ it). The problem has no end to it, it transcends our personal deaths, and it transcends the demise of all the systems and the objects that we know, so that even after those systems are changed, climate change will still be there like a kind of inverted ghost, growing more and more material, rather than ethereal. In many ways, to be a person who believes in climate change enough to act upon that belief you have to have a good imagination. And of course a failure to imagine the extent of your material influence on the world would seem to be a basic precept of the denialist camp. But there is a hitch: the imagination can ‘bleed to death in the exhausting embrace of an infinite idea,’ when it comes to climate change (I can’t remember who said that, Kierkegaard? It sounds like mawkish old Kierkegaard!). Everything being connected can begin to feel like an advanced paranoia. So developing the kind of imagination that is able to conceive of this kind of expansiveness, without losing the motivation to act, becomes a crucial first-step in ecological awareness. But this is an argument for creativity, education and political conscience generally, not creative writing education specifically.

The main criticism that I have of creative writing as it is currently taught in the universities is that there is insufficient emphasis on developing attentive, writerly reading. Being a writer reading fiction (or anything for that matter) is, in my opinion, an entirely different approach to reading as a critic or a de-constructionalist or purely for enjoyment. Some talented young writers lack a sense of the mechanical substructures of fiction and poetry, and will not develop an ear for it in isolation. This is not a failing of skill: it probably means they are passionate readers and accustomed to suspending an awareness of structure as is needed to become caught up in narrative or style. Nor does it mean that there are mathematic forms of structure that can be unearthed from texts and utilized to achieve certain, inevitably successful ends – I would never be so proscriptive. But learning to read in a writerly way – looking for where apertures close and open in a story, how information is released or withheld, how structure disintegrates as it approaches or retreats from revelation – having a knowledge of these types of apparatuses can only improve your own writing. This doesn’t mean forcing students to read formal, highly taut prose in a classical style. Someone like Denis Johnson, for example, has amazing mechanical control in his short stories and shows how to draw a reader in, often against his or her better judgment, to a system of reasoning that holds steady throughout.

The other facet of creative writing courses in the higher education sector I have my reservations about is the meta-critical exegesis. This is often a component of an Honours, Masters or PhD qualification, wherein the writer reflects on their own creative work through the lens of a certain literary theory. I have done it before, not in my current work but during my undergraduate degree, and the experience was such that I can only offer my absolute admiration to anyone who manages it with their sanity intact. To be asked to give a critical treatment of your own work, as if it were a piece of literature written by someone else, results in a kind of contrived doubling that puts creativity and criticism on either side of a tall wall. Beyond that, it’s just cruel and often results in people working their fiction into an excessively theorised corner, in order that their exegesis can appear more sophisticated.

To temper these criticisms – and I can only speak to how things run over here in WA – I want to make clear that I have definitely built constructive practices out of all the creative writing programs I have been involved with, both as a student and later on, in dialogue with students as a tutor. For all the denunciation of the workshop system I don’t believe that anyone is genuinely seduced by the promise of publication such as to render the universities ‘dream factories.’ I never entered the PhD program because I wanted to write the manuscript that would define me as a writer (or, if once I did, I was rapidly disabused of that notion) – rather I had a stumbled into a series of questions that I considered it important to solve, and an inspirational and intellectually assiduous supervisor encouraged me to formulate these questions into a project. This relationship in particular, which is one in which I am pushed to achieve a higher level of thoughtfulness and inquiry than I would ever have been capable of without the considered counsel of my supervisor, has made my association with creative writing at a tertiary level a positive experience.

Sean Love’s smile is infectious. The grin spreads as he introduces me to the inner entrances of Fighting Words: two bookshelves which rotate to reveal secret doors, one adult, one child-sized. ‘It’s very Man from UNCLE’ he says, with obvious delight.

Inside, there are plenty of real bookshelves lining the open space: a couple of large rooms, an office, and a courtyard. The purpose-built centre was designed with play and magic in mind. This is a creative writing centre determined to foster the joys of storytelling in a whole new generation.

In eighteen months, Fighting Words has settled into a simple routine which aims to maximise the access of a broad range of kids to the programs offered. During term time, the mornings are given over to younger kids aged 7-12. So far, 12000 have gone through the program. They work in small groups. First, a teacher helps the kids brainstorm their ideas. This is written up as a collaborative story which is then put into a book format which each child can finish independently.

‘The class writes an original story which they see being projected up onto a big screen in the Fighting Words centre as they write. The children decide on the characters and plot and go through the story together sentence by sentence, editing as they go. An artist is illustrating the story as it is being written,’ the website explains.

The only rule is that everything has to be original. To enforce this, there’s a door in the wall marked ‘Editor’s Office’. The hatch leads to the admin office, so whoever’s at work that day gets to play the part of the mean editor who hates copying. ‘We stole the idea from 826 Valencia,’ Love says, ‘but the American children aren’t so tough. Here we can be as horrible as we like. It’s great fun.’

The afternoons are reserved for older kids, who work more independently in smaller groups with mentors to help them flesh out their ideas. Specialisation happens here: groups might focus on writing for genre, writing for performance, or even sports journalism.

On Wednesday nights there’s Write Club, a group for 15-18 year olds, attended by the occasional ‘real’ writer. Last year the club put out its first anthology, Fighting Tuesdays. The book is a thoroughly professional publication and must count as an excellent accomplishment for aspiring writers.

For younger children, getting a book to take home with their picture and ‘author bio’ on the back is also empowering. The possibility of becoming a writer never seems real until you meet one. Even two books in, I get an injection of aspiration myself in this place – and a little regret that nothing like it was around when I was growing up.

Fighting Words is situated in a new development in the old working-class neighbourhood of Dublin 1, near Mountjoy Square. The neighbourhood retains a grimness which the rest of the city has lately polished away. Ireland is struggling from the effects of the GFC. As I write, the 90 billion Euro bailout package is causing turmoil internationally, protests at home, and strong calls for the resignation of PM Brian Cowen. It is rescue money for a state which has spent every last cent in bailing out the banks.

When I visit Dublin, the city is in a kind of shock after ten years of economic growth ended badly. The Liffey is lined with glass-fronted apartment blocks that no-one can afford to live in. The Celtic Tiger is an extinct species.

The return of hard times has only made the workers at Fighting Words more fervent about their passion for storytelling. My visit takes place during summer camp. A group of teenagers are about to perform the musical they have been writing all week. None of them knew each other before the course but now they have formed quite a gang under the mentorship of a musician and a playwright. The show is a cynical and funny story about a sham marriage – my favourite part is when the politician father of the bride gives a shallow speech at the wedding: ‘I just want to say that this champagne is organic and I support local businesses.’

This healthy cynicism is reflected in the organisation. Fighting Words is entirely privately funded, and hesitant to seek government donations given the insecurity of arts funding in the current climate. Bank debts are written off by the hundreds of millions, but arts funding has been slashed. There’s not much in the way of public education funding either. 93% of schools in Ireland are still run by the Catholic Church, which has had its own very public breakdown in recent years. But with little incentive for the Church to relinquish control over the schools, the idea of independent education is still a deeply radical one.

Fighting Words is not set up to be a school, nor to replace one. The space is open-plan, light and colourful, with no clear ‘front’. It resembles an alternative classroom or a miniature art room. In the backyard there is some donated art and a small tree covered in keys which Love tells me the children are ready to believe grow there. This week there is the addition of a few musical instruments leaning against the stationery shelves.

Love tells me they don’t teach writing, but rather make the space available to share it, and provide mentors who can offer advice. They don’t offer literacy unless the kids specifically request help. They are there to nourish stories, encourage budding writers, and open up the possibility of a creative life to a new generation. They are not necessarily looking for new talent. But the centre acknowledges a need to bridge the gap between institutional learning and an increasingly specialised creative writing industry which can end in the development of an out-of-touch creative class.

At Fighting Words, they see their work as urgent and necessary. The optimism of a decade of Celtic Tiger politics has been lost. Many Irish people I spoke to professed regret about the growth years which they now see as a rush of blood to the head, an embarrassing episode of greed. The decade of unsustainable growth is now widely acknowledged as having failed. It has certainly failed to bring the lasting prosperity it promised. Along with the horrifying persistence of Catholic sex abuse scandals, the country has suffered a triple betrayal.

‘The banks have failed us, the church has failed us, politicians have failed us. What Ireland has left is its artists and writers,’ says playwright and regular volunteer Una Kavanagh.

It’s a win-win for the volunteers, as artists, to give something back to the community and find replenished energy here. There are 300 volunteers on the roll already, but the centre is always welcoming to visiting authors. The programs are booked out 12 months in advance.

Says Love, ‘We could easily be booked out for the next 5 years. We had to say stop, to give everyone a go. It’s safe to say it’s working.’ Kids come from all over the country, as far away as Limerick, Kerry and Donegal. ‘There would easily be room for three or four similar centres in Ireland,’ says Love.

There is certainly room for more such centres in the rest of the world. Like many a good idea, the 826 Valencia format has gone viral. There are now nine or ten centres in the US and a similar number in Europe, with the newest in London and another about to open in Milan. It’s becoming clear that there is plenty of energy in the writing community to make these places work.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about the rise of creative writing programs in universities and whether their impact is making our writing culture too homogenous. Perhaps the bigger problem is that these programs are not accessible. It is not that we are teaching writing badly. It is that this possibility isn’t open to everyone – least of all the kids who need it most.

The week of my visit to Fighting Words, Dublin was recognised as the world’s fourth City of Literature. Perhaps the resources that become available will be able to aid programs like this to continue.

It’s time we started one here. It makes sense there should be a similar project in Australia – perhaps in our own City of Literature – which takes the possibilities of creative writing to those most in need of a life of the imagination, the least privileged among us. Because if we are going to foster a diversity of new voices in Australia it is not just important to support our journals and our existing emerging writers. It is essential to nourish the next generation of human beings to see themselves as creative. This model is recognition – no, proof – that exposure to art and writing can radically change the life trajectory of young people who aren’t being given the chance in school, or at home, to expand their horizons. I would be honoured to donate my own time to such a project in Australia.

But what about novel writers? We are so isolated, in our little offices, typing away. I’ve been writing novels for six years now and I have to say, it does get pretty lonely. You procrastinate a lot. Surf the net. Watch the walls. That’s why I was ecstatic when my friend told me about National Novel Writing month. The basic principle is to start a new novel and update your word count progress throughout the month on the NaNo website. The total of each region, in my case, Melbourne, is ranked against other regions from around the world to determine the NaNo winner for 2010. You can work on your new novel anywhere you like, but for those writers craving a sense of community, organisations from cafés to corporate businesses have opened their doors and allowed writers to gather on their premises, network and write. Every day there is a NaNo gathering so it’s as simple as logging on and checking where to go to for the day and off you go.

What’s great about NaNo is a writer has a place to go, for a set amount of time, say three hours, where they have no other choice but to write. Not only that, but being in the same space as other writers, and watching them frantically type away on their laptops motivates you to also do the same. At the first NaNo event I attended, in an office building, complete with ergonomic chairs, kitchen and snacks offered by other NaNo participants, I wrote five thousand words in three hours. Five thousand words! There’s no way I would have been able to write that many words in my home in three hours – three weeks maybe, not three hours. I have only been to four NaNo gatherings this month, but in that time I have written ten thousand words of my new novel. (Ten thousand!)

Writing at NaNo gatherings reminds me of trips I have taken with other writers for a few days to the coast with the sole purpose of writing. From morning to night, we sit and write and write and then have readings in the night. On those sorts of trips, I always got a lot done, and I felt a very strong sense of community. Participating in NaNo has really highlighted, for me, the importance of community in writing; how by nourishing and supporting community, we are, in a way, contributing to culture. NaNo is free to take part in, and organisers volunteer their time. But wouldn’t it be great if NaNo was an ongoing thing? If not NaNo, something similar? Being the UNESCO city of literature, surely some funding could go into holding a writing day once a month. Maybe on the first Saturday of every month, the Wheeler Center could open their doors and allow any writer to come in with their laptop and write all day. That way, writers were not only motivated to write, they would feel a sense of community, while at the same time, contributing to Melbourne’s vibrant literary culture.

What I’ve realised through writing for Overland and, more recently, with NaNo is that community is not only motivating, it’s powerful. One person doing something alone isn’t the same as a group of people doing something together. So get on the phone, log on to your computer and subscribe to Overland, so we can keep the Overland spirit going years into the future.

2.
Looking inwards is inevitable, natural, expected, required for a writer – writing being an essentially meditative activity. But prolonged navel-gazing is a selfish waste of time if it doesn’t translate into actions that make the world a better place. However, that says more about what I value and the standards I set for myself than it does about how I expect the rest of the world to behave.

Sometimes I feel like art is standing on the in-between: realism / idealism. Reality / imagination. Tradition / experimentation. Art can make the world a better place simply by being beautiful, but I’d like at least some of that beauty to be accompanied by meaning.

3.
I am in my third year of a PhD in Creative Writing by research at Monash University. I’m not in an academic institution because I thought having a PhD would make me better qualified to write fiction; I’m in one because I knew when I decided I wanted to write that new writers, young writers, ‘emerging’ writers, make very little money from their work. I am on an Australian Postgraduate Award, a living allowance paid in fortnightly instalments. I am effectively getting a salary from the Federal Government to write my first novel, even if in the end nobody wants to turn it into a commercial product – copy it, mass-produce it, sell it, profit financially from it. Even if nobody wants to read it.

I’d like both of those things to happen because I feel like I have important things to say, but there’s no guarantee of anything post-doctorate except the opportunity to wear a stupid hat and a gown for 15 seconds on a stage. But the institution, the scholarship and the degree itself are tools at my disposal. I can eat and pay rent, and I do my best to make what’s available work for me as I attempt to juggle the practicalities of living in this society while trying to critique it, change it, make it better – however clumsily.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a fight. I am frustrated by what I see as the dampening and anaesthetising of crackling-new ideas, energy and enthusiasm for change by bureaucracy and over-administration driven by concerns of money and power. I am angry that people’s lives are dismissed so easily in favour of trivialities.

4.
Last night I dreamt of an apocalyptic tempest, rust-red storm clouds snaking down from the sky, sending feelers across the earth towards a bellowing ocean. We were stuck in a cage, halfway up a tower at the mouth of a river, surrounded by a raging torrent. The only way out, you said, was to jump in.

5.
I had students for a while. I told them that their fiction ought to change the reader in some way. A shift in mood. An altered perspective. A better understanding. A different understanding. Growth. I told them that fiction should be transformative, because that’s what I believe.

I told them I wanted them to put feelers out into the world and let them snag the rough spots and the corners and the cracks and the sharp edges, because I think if you’re serious about fiction you have to be serious about living, and if you’re serious about living then you pay attention to the world and what’s going on in it. That means paying attention to politics – politics as your own understanding of the world manifests itself in morals and agendas, but also politics as the systems of negotiation and argument that result in changes to the social fabric.

But that doesn’t mean politics are the point of fiction. The point is, surely, to make life richer – emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and physically – for as many people as possible. Isn’t it?

This year’s judge is Overland’s distinguished new poetry editor, Peter Minter (pictured).

Whether you’re into avant-gardism, Dorothy Hewett, the Language poets, Plath, spoken word, the Romantics, Shelley, Rilke, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, ee cummings, Ali Cobby Eckermann, John Kinsella – you get the idea – we want your poetry.

So, entries must be posted by Monday 15 November 2010. Winners will be announced in March 2011.

For more about Judith Wright’s contribution to Australian poetry and Australian life, check out Georgie Arnott’s review of Wright’s correspondence.

Entry form | guidelines | 2008 results | 2009 results |

What a shame. What a damn shame it is to come to the understanding that what you thought was your lucky country isn’t so lucky for your chosen profession. Although being an artist isn’t a chosen profession in the same way being a bank manager is, it’s what you do because without it you cannot exist. There are other options to suppressing your art, like taking anti-depressives for example, and sadly that seems like the preferred option for the government these days. We live in a country where favourable outcomes come to us only when a political advantage is to be gained: save ‘The Tote’, shut the artists up, smile for the cameras and move on.

Every stream of art is suffering. Literature is suffering. When the Brumby government revamped the training system last year, they put TAFE art courses out of reach for many Victorians. If you are a mature age student and have a previous higher qualification you are ineligible for a government subsidised place and you must fork out fees equivalent almost to that of university fees. A survey conducted by Ernst & Young found the reforms had led to reduced enrolments at more than half the TAFEs surveyed. This is a huge loss to the arts because many people don’t embrace their artistic selves until they mature into adulthood, and at a wiser age, perhaps. Most of the students accepted into RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing diploma, a diploma highly regarded in the publishing industry, are of a mature age, and because of the skills reform changes, this course is now suffering a slow and painful death.

But apparently we writers shouldn’t complain. Apparently we can just take out an exorbitant loan, bankrupt ourselves even further, and go study at university. In fact, many in the university sector see TAFE as just a stepping stone to university, places where students rejected from university go and study in the hope of eventually gaining a place at a university. Being a mature age student myself, I couldn’t disagree more. I have a higher qualification in computing and when deciding where to study writing, I didn’t even look at university. University is regimented and set in its ways; TAFE courses are fluid and suit the study of art by allowing a comfortable classroom environment where students learn from each other, creating and flourishing together (rather than being preached at from a lectern in lecture theatre on what art is). Art, I think, is self-expression; it cannot be taught.

The government is getting a little panicky though. In August, Skills Minister Brownyn Pike, in response to an Age article where Paul Keating raised concerns about skills reform, announced she would be undoing the damage for mature-aged apprentices. So if you are a mature-aged apprentice, you can count your lucky stars. You are in the professional goldmine, whereas artists, we’re not really held in the same esteem. Apprentices build things. Artists merely produce art that people can escape to. We create films so people can go the movies and relax, a book to cuddle up with, a painting to inspire. We play music in pubs or as people stroll down Bourke Street, although that’s changing now with the new laws that require buskers to have a permit .

But where would society be without the escape of art? Probably at Crown Casino playing poker machines, but I’m guessing the government would much rather people doing that so they can collect their tax on the pokies. They would much rather invest millions in the Grand Prix – and have a $50 million dollar tax payer loss – than invest in art and feed the cultural soul of Australia.

So where does all this leave the emerging artist? Well, we could apply for an ArtStart grant. But you have to have graduated from a degree or diploma to get funding for that. You could try your luck in for a highly competitive Australia Council grant, but you’re more likely to get one of those if you play in an orchestra – last year Opera Australia received more funding from the Australia Council than all the applicants from other art forms. But that’s hardly a surprise, our government is big on funding the rich. You could send your manuscript or short stories out to competitions and other organisations like Varuna who support emerging writers. But with minimal or no funding, these organisations are forced to charge the emerging writer a fee to have their work considered. Fifty bucks here and fifty bucks there, it’s difficult not to bang your head against the wall to be honest. The Tote may have been saved, but live music venues are struggling and slowly dying. The iconic Arthouse is set to close next year, Brisbane’s celebrated venue The Troubadour is closing next month. But I’m not giving up. A true artist keeps going, keeps producing art, despite the obstacles and ignorance of the government. But by no means will I stay silent in the struggle, not when the government is so blatantly unsupportive of the arts.

The festival, which ran for ten days, was themed ‘Screening the word’, and screened and showcased the words WERE on the silver Federation square wall, poems scrolling digitally across the wall for all to see. Two of my poems were selected as part of this showcase. Sitting at Federation square and observing my words drifting quietly above the city has definitely been the highlight of my poetic career.

On Monday 13 September, I attended the regular fortnightly spoken word event Passionate Tongues at the Brunswick Hotel, only this was a special Overload festival event and the pub was busy with eager poets and curious pub spectators. The two feature poets were Santo Cazzati and Josephine Rowe. Once again, Santo dazzled the crowd with his political spoken word, and had the crowd either silently concentrating or hilariously laughing. Heavily influenced by his background in classical music, Santo’s spoken word was delivered elegantly and rhythmically. To say he is a treat to watch and hear is an understatement and he is definitely one of my favourite poets on the scene. Santo hosts 3CR’s Spoken Word program once a month.

Josephine Rowe brought a calmer poetic ambience to Brunswick Hotel, and I thought it was a great decision by convenor Michael Reynolds to have the features do two small alternating sets to break up the night. Josephine, poetry editor of harvest literary journal, recited her verses calmly, with controlled emotion, and allowed her words to speak for themselves. And they did. The most memorable piece she read was a poem that won a National Gallery of Victoria competition on love, loss and intimacy. I felt it captured the human instinct we call love, and that desire to be in the same space as the person we love, even when they might not necessarily want to be in the same space as us.

The Overload poetry slam was an event I was involved in, which saw poets competing in heats at venues around Melbourne for a spot in the final. MCed by former Overload slam champion Benjamin ‘IQ’ Sanders, each heat carried with it its own mood and set of expectations by the randomly selected judges. I attended two heats, one at the Newtown Workers Club and another at the Cornish Arms, where IQ hosts a monthly poetry slam, Muddy Rivers, on the second Wednesday of every month.

I came fourth in the Cornish Arms slam, which meant I was a possible wildcard entry to the final. The final, held at the Wheeler Center, was full and the crowd was excited, many attending a poetry slam for the first time and not knowing what to expect. It’s interesting: many people I speak to who haven’t attended a spoken word event perceive it to involve a poet standing at a mic and reading monotonous verse after monotonous verse on life and love. Although there are poets that do that, most spoken word artists are lively, political and, in a sense, revolutionary, speaking words that are absent from mass media.

Although I was selected to participate in the final, I didn’t get past the first round. I didn’t mind, though; what excited me more was my poetic voice being part of the other voices of the night. The performances were diverse – each unique and special in their own way – and I enjoyed the transitions from laughter to sadness, from challenging to inspiring, from the ache of love to the sadness of death. The night was filmed by Red Lobster, Channel 31’s spoken word show (Wednesdays, 11pm). Some of the poems will also be aired on RRR’s Aural Text.

The judges had a hard task on their hands, scoring performances over three rounds, eliminating poets from a group of sixteen to five, and then three. Only a few points separated first from last. Luka Haralampou finished first, Joel McKerrow second, and Graham Colin third. Luka, originally from Brisbane, has only been in Melbourne a few months and has amazed the poetry scene with the smoothness and sleekness of his performances. Mostly preoccupied with race, religion and identity, Luka, a strong second-generation migrant voice, has the ability to reel audiences in and then deliver blunt punchlines, leaving the crowd enthralled. His final performance, which won him the slam, received a standing ovation.

Joel McKerrow also has a unique style. His performances are intense, giving new meaning to the power of words and almost leaving you breathless by the end. Both Luka and Joel make commentary about the world we live in, commentary that is usually silenced in mass media but commentary that should be heard.

Graham Colin, in contrast, has a musical, jazz element to his spoken word performance, and I very much enjoyed his piece on the union of two artistic lovers ‘Let’s get artistic’.

Congratulations to all three, and to all the poets who were part of the festival. I am already looking forward to next year. I will be interviewing the winner of the slam, Luka Haralampou, on 3CR’s Spoken Word program on Thursday 21 October from 9-9:30am. You can listen on 855AM or online at www.3cr.org.au