Writing and speaking: is it like walking and chewing gum?

As publication day draws nearer my google calendar is starting to gather a few appointments.

Interviews.

It's a decidedly odd experience, (as a new writer about to be foisted launched onto an unsuspecting world) anticipating spruiking yourself and your book for a few precious minutes to an unseen audience. You need to seduce them. Excite them just as much as you were excited about writing the book. Convince them to part with what may be the equivalent of a couple of hours pay to buy it. Promise them that the hours of their lives they'll spending reading it will be worth it.

You find yourself listening carefully to podcasts of people you know, or authors whose books you admire as they strut their stuff on The Book Show. You wonder if you can maybe pick up a few tips. Then Malla Nunn, hypnotises you with the story she tells and the way she tells it. What a gorgeous voice - she could DO radio not just appear on it occasionally. And then you hear Lenny Bartulin managing to be funny, self-deprecating, spin a good yarn and promote his book in a seamless flow of intelligent wit and charm and think "Hang on, how did he just do that?" 

You listen to the big guns, the imports who rock up for the writers festivals: Lionel Shriver being alternately withering and razor sharp, you hear Richard Glover confess to being intimidated by her. Then you hear Christopher Hitchens, who even when he's contradicting his past positions, still manages to sound as if he has never seriously doubted anything he's ever said, thought or written. 

How do they get that kind of confidence? Maybe listening to them wasn't such a great plan after all, as by now, you've sort of curled up under the desk and decided you may never actually want to come out again. You're feeling the pressure to be "interesting" really starting to build up. 

There's a reason writers write, you see. They have some facility with words. But becoming the interview subject? That means talking to an audience off the cuff, on the fly and that's like  putting your first draft out there with no editing, no polishing - no delete button. And as most writers will tell you, no one but them usually ever gets to see the first draft!

A lot of the interviews that have been lined up are for radio, by phone. Takes me back, along time ago (pre Sydney Olympics). I was a newly-returned-to-Australia-ex-cop in need of a job and I applied for a position with ASIO. They were recruiting analysts. I didn't know if I could be an analyst, but it sounded interesting and it was based in Sydney, working on Pre-Olympic stuff. I sent off my application to Canberra and scored an interview, by panel, over the phone. 

It was bizarre, Sitting on the lounge at home, hearing different voices asking the pool questions. From the echoing timbre I guessed they were sitting around a table, leaning in towards a speaker phone. I felt totally off balance, being unable to see anyone, or imagine the room, or pick up on the body language. Those anti-nervousness strategies - like imagining the interview panel naked - don't work so well when you can't see them. 

I must've done OK because they sent up some paperwork for the next step. It was a pre-screening security document and to say it left no stone unturned would be an understatement. By the time I got to page twenty-something and it needed the names and addresses of all the friends and acquaintances I had met overseas, I'd decided that I was just not that into ASIO. The thought of friends, who'd extended kindness to a traveller in Africa, ending up being subject to some kind of security screening, in order that I could land a job seemed just bit too much to ask.

So, while I'm not expecting any ASIO style interrogations, it did get me thinking. Maybe book promotion interviews do have a fair bit in common with job interviews. I guess you'll know if you got the job when, one day, you see someone sitting opposite you in the train, or beside the pool, and they are totally engrossed in your book.

I reckon I'll call that job satisfaction.

Tools of the Trade - pen, paper and places to write in

It's easy to get obsessed with the right tools for the job, a new computer, a new laptop, a new bit of software  and as you can see from my book trailer - I'm easily distracted by new software, the shiny baubles of the computer bound. Of course, all those toys provide wonderful reasons excuses to procrastinate.


In all honesty though, the most important tool for my trade is a notebook - a paper one - and a pen.


I don't go in for the expensive, fancy notebooks. They intimidate me, they're a bit too nice. I keep thinking that at this price, I better make every word count. That's not how I write. And that's why I go for supermarket cheap and fat, so that I can write a lot. I can write my way into a character, or into a scene. I can write stuff that sometimes won't survive beyond the notebook but had to be written because I had to know it, even if the reader maybe doesn't.


Now, I know I'm going to fill up quite a few of these little devils before I'm through and I don't want to be worrying about the expense. So they have to be fat enough that I can write freely, even if a fair bit of what goes in there never makes it into the final draft. And if really random stuff pops up, I turn them upside down and start writing notes and ideas at the other end.

My notebooks go everywhere with me, so they get beaten up and battered about. A notebook has to be small. It has to be tough and tiny enough to be able to travel with me, knocking about in the bottom of the bag, a pen tucked into the spiral binding, close at hand in case a line of dialogue appears that I realise is the way into a scene, or a plot twist or complication should suddenly clunk into place.


Cheap and cheerful for notebooks and the same goes with pens. I like the glidey ones that can race across the paper. When I can move the pen fast I feel like I have a better chance of keeping up with the writing going on inside the head. (Though I do often spend many frowning moments later trying to decipher my scrawl). I buy pens in bulk when the supermarket has them on special, no loyalty to any one brand, and then I try to make sure that I have them rattling around in all of the various bags I might leave the house with. I lose them regularly, so again, no fancy expensive pen for me.


I bought a half a dozen hard-backed notebooks a few years back but soon discovered that they're too heavy for carting about day to day. They have become the designated notebook that I use to record characters breakdowns and plot points for the novel; notes on events of the time period I'm working with; or bits of research I've done - all tabbed into different sections, with enough pages left either side to grow and add to them. I transfer these reference type bits and pieces that have occurred to me when I'm out and about from the travelling notebooks into this bible.


Once I've got a fair bit in the notebooks, I'll sit down and start to write on the computer. There's something very satisfying about dipping into these handwritten notes and then watching them grow, change and take on another life as they are transcribed into the binary world. It becomes a second draft right there and then. 


I've noticed that when I write directly onto the "screen" I'm much slower. I stop and tinker en route, fussing over word choice, fussing over sentence structure, all important of course but they do tend to stymie the flow. When I write on paper the story dominates, not the editing, the characters talk and think and feel and I tend to get out of their way. 


Then, sitting at the computer, notebook propped up on the messy desk, it is here, at the transcription stage, that the editor comes out and fiddles with the work, the first of a long series of sweeps over the material, brushing, polishing, snipping and embroidering. 


But, you want to know the very best thing about writing in a notebook with a pen?


Well, your office can be here:

North Sydney Olympic Pool

A pen and your notebook and you can swim laps, plot and plan, then take up a position in the shade and watch the harbour go by in between filling up the pages.


Or you can remind yourself how good the Bún bò Huế at Dong Ba is, spattering your notebook with spots of red broth as you soak up atmosphere along with the noodles.

And of course you can always just go and walk, sit quietly, 

..... no phones, no email, no distractions of the household 

... and lose yourself in story.

The Old School - The Book Trailer

Inside every author is there a film director trying to get out?

I don't know, but I have noticed that a lot of books these days come out with short movie trailers.

Now, as I have a slightly geeky side, a penchant for taking photos and access to a brother who knows his way around Final Cut Express I thought to myself, hey - how hard could it be?

As it turns out, quite tricky. It meant mastering the basics of what is a very, very, very cool and complex bit of software.

Now, as I'm working on the follow up to The Old School at the moment, I couldn't afford to spend too long on this. So, over the last few days I've rationed myself to a few hours of playing after putting in some solid word time.

But my goodness, it's fun! And, I can only imagine, much quicker once you actually know what you are doing.

Anyway, after a couple of hours of repairing mistakes and polishing it all up last night (the polishing and repairing done by big brother Robert - thank you) - we had a "thing" - a book trailer.

And here it is ... housed at youtube at the moment.

Enjoy.

The Old School - The Book Trailer

Highlights of the 2010 Sydney Writers Festival

As Sydney Writers Festival recedes into the rear vision mirror, here's my highlights of #swf2010. 


Lenny Bartulin and Neil Cross gave exceedingly good crime panel and were teamed up a few times over the days. They seemed to develop some good chemistry, making each other laugh as well as the audience. When it comes to giving a thumbnail sketch of the lads it's tempting to see them as source material for a potential crime-writer-buddies-sit-com; a recovering poet and an escapee from Booker Prize nomination, out do each other in finding the remotest places on earth in which to live (Tasmania and NZ) and write crime. And all this before Neil Cross even lifted the veil on Spooks.


"If something is too big to fail, it is, by definition TOO BIG". 


So said Bill McKibben, who then went on to give the speculative fiction idea that's been knocking about the back of my mind some truly frightening substance. His latest book EAARTH ought to be shoved into the hand of every politician on this poor old planet. I'd really like to see Banksy get creative with the number 350 as well; www.350.org explains why that's the number that needs to be emblazoned on our minds, in our hearts and tattooed into the consciousness of every politician in town. 


On a panel entitled "Too late to save?" but which everyone agreed should have been called - "We're screwed", Raj Patel was prepared to name names and apportion blame. When a guy who's worked for the World Bank and the IMF is prepared to name and shame and use the "C" word - Capitalism - when asked for the reasons behind poverty and hunger, then it's time to sit up and listen. He was insistent, and it's a point worth repeating, that he is not advocating a returning to mud huts or de-inventing the wheel. Rather, he is arguing for a fundamental shift in thinking about they way we humans have chosen to organise ourselves and in doing so he points out the hairy spotty bottoms of the Economic Masters of the Universe who have spent far too long prancing about encouraging us all to admire their fine and fancy pants.


On a personal note I finally got to meet and have a drink with my long-distance, long-suffering editor Jo Rosenberg, from Penguin. Released from her desk to wander blinking about in the daylight, we managed to catch up, talk a lot and get in a couple of glasses of wine before dashing off in different directions to different events. Such is the fun of the festival.


Final event for me was a visit to the SH Ervin Gallery for more wine and cheese and a peek at the Salon des Refusés before a talk by Grace Karskens and Ian Hoskins on Sydney Colony and Sydney Harbour. Then a trip to the Sydney Observatory to gaze at the Moon and Mars and Saturn.


Not even a rainy Sydney could ruin it. The crime sessions were full, the environment sessions were full,  the wharves were buzzing - lots of people still like to read it seems. 

The Final Cover has landed ...

..... and, just quietly, I reckon it looks pretty fine.

What's even finer is discovering what a generous mob of writers are out there. 

When you consider that reading a book is not something that you can just knock off in a bit of spare time between lunch and arvo tea, you realise what a big ask it is to have someone agree to read the work of an unknown writer. When the people you are asking to donate a big chunk of their time to do this are people who have their own books to write, stories break, and deadlines to meet, then you can only say with sincere gratitude - thank you.

I have been lucky enough to have garnered three "you can quote me"s for The Old School, from Graeme Blundell, Matthew Reilly and Andrew Rule.

To three very good blokes indeed,  let me say - thank you. I hope to be able to buy each of you a rather large (insert drink of choice here) one day very soon.

George Pelecanos got it right when he said ...

There is no solving murders, you know. Not unless the dead are going to rise up out of the earth. Once somebody is killed, it's forever for their loved ones and their family and the community.

George Pelecanos http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum100.html

That quote, from an interview with George Pelecanos, forms the epigraph to The Old School. Though it may seem redundant to talk about grief in a crime novel, it is surprising that in fiction that deals almost exclusively with sudden and violent death, grief is an emotion that is often conspicuously lacking. Psychologists and health carers use terms such as “complicated grief” and “spoiled memory syndrome” to describe the complexity and severity of the impact of murder on the friends and families of victims.

Yet within crime fiction all too often the focus is primarily on the processes and procedures, the puzzle aspect, of an investigation into the violent termination of human life. We rarely see the consequences of violent death on those most affected by it: the family and friends of the victim.

These characters are sometimes sighted in brief sad scenes when they are informed of the murder. These are often just set pieces to allow the detective to display their compassion and empathy or conversely to stress how damaged and hardened they have become due to the horror of their job. Any real sense of the family’s grief and the on-going impact of violent death tend to be relegated off-stage. The grieving relative sometimes reappears at the successful conclusion of an investigation, in order to show their gratitude to the protagonist for providing them with justice, revenge or ‘closure’ and provide a poignant moment of closure. However, if family and friends of the deceased appear as suspects then any grief they display is harshly interrogated as a falsity.

But the grief that follows a ‘real-life’ murder is intense and real death ruptures the lives of those left behind. There are some writers who explore this dark territory. It is a constant theme in the novels of George Pelecanos, and one which he brought to the acclaimed TV series, The Wire.

Dennis Lehane’s, Mystic River is an elegiac meditation on the grief and destruction wrought on families and communities by two crimes decades apart.

Emotionally wounded and grieving characters abound in Ian Rankin’s, The Naming of the Dead; a daughter grieves for her murdered mother, a family for a raped daughter, a sister for a battered sister and a mass gathering of people who witness the shattering of their optimism as the G8 protests are swamped by a terrorist bombing.

In The Broken Shore Peter Temple’s protagonist, Joe Cashin, is also a grieving and guilt ridden character, carrying the responsibility for the death of a young colleague and family guilt relating to his Aboriginal cousins.

Each character in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost is in a state of grief, for the loss of love and the loss of lovers. In Sri Lanka Ondaatje suggests that love is being murdered by war. Ananda has taken refuge in alcohol to blot out the pain of his “disappeared” wife, while the brothers Sarath and Gamini are estranged from each other, immersed in work and wrestling with the grief and guilt about their love for the same woman, now dead by suicide.

To each one of these books, George Pelecanos’ words could apply.

A sense of Place

Great sense of place ........ that's become an expected element of crime fiction. Rebus is Edinburgh, VI Warsahwski is Chicago, George Pelecanos dissects Washington.

In The Old School, I was equally determined that Sydney would be more than just a backdrop to a story. I wanted it to be central, an important character, an old, old player, ever present, holding the secrets and the clues. Here's a glimpse of just a few of the places that inspired some of the events.

I stumbled across this wall carving in the cafe on the country platforms at Central only a couple of years ago. It has been there at lot longer than that, but on the few occasions I'd been in there I'd never raised my eyes to the walls behind me. It encapsulates so much about Sydney's past, and about the way we have told that past to ourselves.

Central Railway Station cafe, Sydney

The scene on the left is dated 1787, and the "noble savage" iconography is pretty clear; a simple happy life, but tough, the bare essentials, even just the struggle to make fire occupies two men. The next scene is dated a year later. 1788, and there is no trace of those original inhabitants. They simply disappear, swept away by the progress of the next scene. Interestingly there is no sign that these industrious, hearty and healthy looking men, bringing ashore barrels (of rum?) from the ship riding at anchor in the harbour behind them, are actually convicts, transported for life. No sign of a chain, or a lash, or scurvy, or despair at being transported to the modern day equivalent of the moon.

There are still a few places around Sydney Harbour that allow us to glimpse how Sydney once appeared. These are the places Ned Kelly goes running, passing the middens and rock carvings of the first inhabitants of this beautiful place.

Sand and stone on Berry Island, Sydney

A view of Berry Island from Greenwich

Beach on Berry Island, Sydney