Tell us about your most recent publication.
Order direct from Kesta!
What do you enjoy most about writing?
I love words—the way they sound, the way they can be used to evoke feelings, to communicate facts and ideas, to connect with people—and as a writer I get to play with words every day. I love the buzz of having created something new. There’s something very mysterious about how the writing process happens, and the how of that process is hard to put your finger on, but the end result—the story or the poem or the play—is very tangible indeed. I love that!
What is the hardest aspect of writing?
There are two ‘hardest parts’ for me. The first is actually making myself sit down and write. I know this sounds crazy when I’ve just told you how much I love playing around with words and creating something new, but when I have something I’m ‘supposed’ to write, as I do at the moment (book 3 in the Marlow series), there’s a part of me that wants to run in the opposite direction. Perhaps it’s the perverse teenager in me that doesn’t want to be told what to do—even if the only person applying the pressure and telling me to sit down and write is … myself!The other ‘hardest part’ is the perseverance required to get work published and staying positive through a process which can take years. As a writer, while I love the writing and creating part, I ultimately write to communicate—to tell a story. And a story needs an audience. It needs to land somewhere. Sticking with your story all the way through the writing, and then all the way through the submitting, waiting, rejections, acceptances and publishing process until it is actually in the hands of those you’ve written it for, is hard. But perhaps the thought of not having it reach that audience is harder still and the very motivation for my perseverance.
How much research goes into your work?
It depends on the kind of story it is, and whether I’m writing about something outside my own field of expertise. With Magician in the Making I started by interviewing two practising magicians now in their early twenties, who had both been inspired when they were friends in primary school by a magician at a birthday party. I wanted to know all about the sorts of things that could go wrong, the funniest things that had happened during performances, how they got into it and why they continued. The more they talked, the more questions I had! Not everything they told me fitted into my story, but it informed the whole story telling process.
In a story like Magician in the Making, although fictional, I also want it to be realistic and feasible, so I do quite a bit of fact checking along the way. For example, the story begins with Marlow and her ever-present doggy companion, Rockstar, at a showground. So, I needed to find out if dogs were ever allowed at shows. It turns out it depends on the show. At the royal shows in major cities dogs are not allowed, but at smaller shows like the Kingscote Show on Kangaroo Island, it seems they are. That was all I needed.
Other than writing, what else do you love?
Although I don’t do enough of it these days, I love outdoorsy, adventurous activities like skiing, hiking and camping. I also love travelling, reading and good long catch-ups with friends and family. And I love my dog. Nelson’s personality is a bit like Marlow’s dog Rockstar’s, but he’s a Brittany spaniel so he doesn’t look the same.
Have you ever had a fan moment and met somebody famous? Tell is about it.
I’m not sure it was a ‘fan’ moment as such, but when I was about seven my brother and I accidentally met Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. We were hot, sweaty, excited … and bare footed! We were also unaccompanied by our parents who were up in the belfry of St Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide at the time, ringing the bells to welcome the Queen and Prince Philip to a service. Being the seventies, we were far less supervised than children are now, and we were whiling away the time playing chasey with a couple of other bellringers’ children in the spiral stairwell leading from the cathedral porch to the bell tower. We happened to pop out the little wooden door at the bottom of the stairs just as the Duke and Queen were entering the church. The Duke looked down, and with a face of concern mixed with humour, asked us if our feet were cold. I’ve often wondered since, if he thought we were street urchins!
Writer's are sometimes influenced by things that happen in their own lives. Are you?
I certainly am! In the first Marlow book, Marlow is smitten by the idea of becoming a scientist after seeing her uncle’s experiment on bean plants with a substance called gibberellic acid. ‘Uncle Q’s so cool!’ she tells her parents. ‘He’s turned all his dwarf beans into gigantic beanstalks. He feeds them tablets!’ Gibberellic acid is a plant growth hormone and when I was doing biology at school, I did an experiment on dwarf beans using gibberellic acid tablets supplied by the CSIRO, just like Marlow’s Uncle Q. Admittedly my results weren’t quite as dramatic as Uncle Q’s, but that’s where the idea came from.
How can we learn more about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment