Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
But first, I must declare that AFL (Australian Football League)
football, also known as Aussie Rules or just plain footie, is without a
doubt the best and most thrilling game in the world. The players are
the fittest, buffest specimens of blokedom you have ever laid eyes on,
and what's more they wear tiny little shorts and sleeveless jumpers.
The eye appeal, I assure you, is out of this world.

The centre of the Aussie Rules universe is Melbourne, where both my
partner Phillip and I grew up, and I am delighted for <die die must
try> that she has this opportunity to dwell in the heartland. 

Growing up with Aussie Rules completely ruins you for any other sport.
The weekly newspaper the Melbourne Times has three footie columnists,
two male and one female, and the page on which they thrash out their
opinions is headed, "Religion".

Amen.
  

    

Hmm.  I wonder if any of the many cable channels I get carries AFL.
  

    
Linda, I'll ask Phillip to post on that.
  

    
BTW - as I'm still on my trainer wheels with Inkwell, please
everybody, do feel free to give me tips and pointers, eg I still
haven't got the log-in name vs. pseud thing down, so, apologies if I
mis-address anybody, and do let me know, eh?
  

    
Now then, where was I?  Oh yes, Linda asked about
"the scene with the book club where the 
assigned book was your first one!  I thought that was a scream.  Was
it 
hard to write that kind of dialog about yourself?"

Glad you enjoyed that scene, I had a lot of fun writing it! When you
ask if it was hard to write, I guess you're asking if it was hard to
write put-downs about my own first novel, right?  

The answer is, no, not at all. In fact I stole most of those comments
from reviews on sites like Goodreads and Amazon, which btw are much
more used in the US than in Australia.  Some of them were so inane they
were ... amusing.  Or at least, I found them amusing. I guess if I
hadn't got such excellent reviews in Australia, from all the major
papers and journals, I might not have been quite so sanguine.

 
  

    
Kate, this novel has a kind of false happy ending, in which Gerry and
Susanna work out some substantial part of their problems with
sexuality, only to reveal much worse problems behind them, problems
that eventually break the marriage. Why did you write it that way?

The effect on me was of the narrator saying "You think this is the
problem, don't you, and that this is one of those books in which good
sex fixes everything? Nope. I could do it that way, but, look, sex is
not the real problem here." That seemed interesting and appropriate to
me.

However, it left me wondering why, if they could get (mostly) past the
sex troubles, they couldn't get past this next conflict too. It seemed
like if things had bounced just a little differently, Gerry might have
taken this next step too. 

Is this my own idiosyncratic take, or did you have something like this
in mind when you told the story this way? It certainly looks like you
had designs; you tell it like a basketball player faking one way and
then going another.
  

    
Wickett, I'm really pleased to have somebody sticking up for Gerry.

"Gerry didn't seem to travel all that often, and I can't imagine that
he 
scored each time, so, in my view, he was rather restrained and
protective 
of his family."

I like the guy, myself.

You may be interested to know that my sainted editor made me do a lot
of work to "warm" the character of Gerry up.  This was also the case
with the my first book, with the character of Rose, the mother was
walks out on her family. I thought she was quite likable and her
reasons for doing a runner were perfectly understandable, yet (as per
those reviews on Goodreads and Amazon) even after the warming-up work,
a lot of readers found her behaviour "unforgivable". 

I guess my tolerance level for questionable behaviour must be pretty
high!
  

    
Will get back to <ckridge>'s interesting question about the "false
happy ending", and <debbie>'s (who I think i was miscalling earlier by
her pseud - sorry 'bout that!) about how I got started with
novel-writing, at the other end of the day. Meantime, the sun is out,
the sky is blue, and despite the unsettled political situation, I've
got a compost heap to build!
  

    

well if/when I move from Sydney to Melbourne, I'll have to embrace Aussie
Rules, but I have to say I find League players to be sort of stocky buff and
also they wear short shorts, and the manly sea eagles are pretty darn hot.
  

    
Compost heap built, I'm back.  Australian election result will take
some days to be finally resolved, but I have to say it's been hard to
take my mind off it all day.  Me and millions of other Australians ...

But to return to the wonderful world of fiction (sternly refusing,
Debbie, to get diverted by a debate about the relative buffness of
Aussie Rules players vs Rugby League) ...

<ckridge>, who comments that
"this novel has a kind of false happy ending, in which Gerry and
Susanna work out some substantial part of their problems with
sexuality, only to reveal much worse problems behind them" -- I do
love this notion of a false happy ending, kind of like a "false
positive" in a medical test.

Why did I write it this way? To tell the truth, I didn't know what the
ending was going to be until I got there. I had high hopes of Gerry
and Susanna being able to resolve their problems and go on to have that
rare thing, a truly successful marriage. And you know what? I think
it's possible that if the blow-up had happened another ten years down
the track, when Gerry would be in his sixties, it might have been
possible. Might. But alas, Gerry at 53 is still too competitive. 

It's really a huge part of his nature, that competitiveness; because
if it, he feels that if he's not beating someone, then he's losing.
(The fact that his business partner Marcus is gay is one of the reasons
they've been able to be friends and partners for three decades: Marcus
never competed with him for women.) Susanna has let him "win" in a
thousand small (and a good few large) ways throughout their marriage,
which has lessened the danger of conflict but not reduced Gerry's urge
to compete and win.

It became clear to me as I wrote that it was not Gerry's infidelity
that was going to prove the insurmountable problem to the survival, let
alone success, of their marriage, but his competitiveness. Similarly,
it was not Susanna's lack of sexual adventurousness, but the fact that
she could no longer deny her artistic and creative impulse.

Darn it.  I wish good sex COULD fix everything!
  

    
Now, to <Debbie's> earlier curiosity about how I got started as a
novelist: 
"did you
write the whole book and then send it out? did you have an agent?"

Yes, I did write the whole book (my first novel, published in Aust in
2006 as "Listen" and in the US in 08 as "Without a Backward Glance".
I'd taken myself off to Bali for 5 months in 04 after a truly horrible
year in which my marriage ended, my father's worsening dementia had
caused him to be hospitalised, and my dog died. Having had the idea for
the novel a year before, but been too preoccupied to write anything at
all, I wrote the entire 80,000 word first draft during that stay in
Bali.

Then, I sent the entire manuscript to three different agents. The
first one hated it, in detail; the second one sent a polite refusal;
the third totally adored it. I did a second draft, and my agent (it was
such a thrill to be able to say "my agent"!) offered it to Penguin
(who are btw a much bigger publisher in Aust than in the US) and they
snapped it up.

Everything that's never meant to happen with a first novel, happened
with that book. I had astonishing good luck. I also had good writing
genes: both my parents were journalists, and my younger brother's first
book (non-fiction) came out the same month as mine did. We even got to
interview each other onstage at the Melbourne Writers Festival, which
was a hoot. 

And my second novel? A classic case of "second novel syndrome":
incredibly difficult to write. If it weren't for my sainted editor, I
would have thrown in the towel and gone for something easier, like
training to be a brain surgeon.
  

    

wow, fascinating! thanks.
  

    
How interesting that you found out how it was going to go by writing
it. And I see about Gerry's competitiveness. His daughter has a piece
of it, the drive, and it gives you a sense of how big the whole thing
must be. He just couldn't stand that Susanna should win two in a row.
  

    

> [Australian Rules Football] ... players are
 the fittest, buffest specimens of blokedom you have ever laid eyes on,
 and what's more they wear tiny little shorts and sleeveless jumpers.
 The eye appeal, I assure you, is out of this world. <

Absolutely, both on:

http://www.newlyold.com/images/australian-football-rules-high-mark-fly1.jpg

and off the field!:

http://www.hotmen.ws/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Brodie-Holland-16.jpg

When I lived in Australia I was too busy with other things in my life to
pay attention to Aussie football, but I can definitely see the appeal now.
heh heh





Kate, I'm intrigued by the possible differences an author might
encounter between writing a first and a second novel, particularly when
your debut as a novelist comes in your 50s, not your 20s or 30s. I
mention the age thing because I kinda assume that aspects of the
first novel would have percolated in your bones for years, whereas the
the second novel wouldn't have had a lifetime to develop. (or maybe
authors carry many unwritten novels in their heads, just waiting their
turn to be put onto the page, I could be totally wrong)

Anyway, you wrote:

> To tell the truth, I didn't know what the ending [of "Trust"] was going 
> to be until I got there. 

And did the ending you gave it surprise you? Did you at any point try
to force it to go a different way and find that you couldn't? 

There are authors who carefully plot out every inch of their story --
essentially story-boarding their book -- and then create the text 
following the guide. You say you didn't know where "Trust" would take
you at the conclusion until you reached it.

Was it the same process writing "Listen" (later published in the US as
"Without a Backward Glance")? And if it was different, in what ways? 
  

    

Fascinating, indeed, all of it.  Nice mention of Bali and its spur to 
creative juices, both for you and for Stella-Jean.

I was disappointed with the ending, not because good sex couldn't fix the
problem, but because both partners opted for what I consider ephemera.
Susanna's art show arose from the depths during crisis:  could she continue
to draw from that well?  I'm not so sure.  She was worryingly entranced 
and unsteadied by good press.  Gerry needed to knock down some pins, almost 
any pins.  So he knocked down a comfortable marriage with a shot at 
becoming a good marriage.  Understandable, given his needs, but sad.

I opened the book at random last evening to page 159 and there were some 
of the shortcomings that would have had to be dealt with in order for the 
marriage continue.  Difficult work.

"And it's true:  I [Susanna] am an honest person.  She liked that her 
husband had said that.  The fact that she had neglected to tell him about 
the visit from Angie, or the talk with Stella-Jean about Finn, or that 
she'd put her name down for a studio, did not occur to her.  Nor did it 
strike her an an instance of possible dishonesty that she had just, for 
the umpteenth time, faked an orgasm."
  

    
Taking <Wickett>'s comment first: I guess the thing is, I like writing
about flawed people. Hell, I like flawed people! 

Susanna has spent so much of her life focused on being "good": good
daughter, wife, mother, sister, teacher, and fails to see her flaws.
But – I rather think we all prefer to see ourselves as better people
than we are: kinder, or cleverer, or more talented; better-looking, or
more environmentally aware. It's that thing I mentioned some days ago,
of how the gaps in our lives are what fascinate me.

However, I will say in Susanna's defence that I don't think she's
"worryingly entranced 
and unsteadied by good press". More gobsmacked, I'd have thought, by
the luck of the publicity that chanced her way – and which was
necessary, in terms of plot, to arouse Gerry's competitiveness and
dislike of being "beaten". 

Here's one of those odd details which may interest readers: I modelled
the TV show, "Arts Week" on an actual show in Australia ("Sunday
Arts") of which my multi-talented younger brother Michael was the
"debonair host". Only a few days after I wrote the scene in which,
because of a sudden cancellation, the Arts Week reporter and producer
come to Studio Lulu and see Susanna's work, I met a young woman who,
upon learning that Michael is my brother, volunteered the fact that a
few months earlier, because of a sudden cancellation, a community arts
project of which she'd been the co-ordinator was featured on Arts
Sunday, and the resultant publicity had made the event a much bigger
success than expected and led directly to her being offered her current
job. True story!

I'd be very interested to know whether other readers share Wickett's
doubts about whether Susanna will be able to continue to make art, or
whether her "well" of creativity would dry up once her life crisis was
over?
  

    
Cynthia, I have to smile at your observation that 
"There are authors who carefully plot out every inch of their story --
essentially story-boarding their book -- and then create the text 
following the guide."

I DID that with "Trust". In fact, I did it several times. This novel
explored such wildly different directions, characters, and resolutions,
you would not believe. Time and again I had to carve off whole
sections, tens of thousands of words, and take it back to the central
core. These characters led me up many a dark and shadowy byway, and
assumed many a different guise, before I finally figured out who they
are and what their story is.

With my first novel, the characters were much better behaved. It
wasn't that it had been "percolating in my bones for years", just that
they stayed on track. BUT – I still didn't know how that book was going
to end, either, until I got close. 
  

    
And thanks Cynthia for the footie pix you posted. The high mark is one
of the most spectacular aspects of Aussie Rules. Here's a clip which
is kind of over-the-top – but then, so's the game!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hqosNvv5E

BTW, it's also a sport in which indigenous players feature strongly,
as you'll possibly note when watching.
  

    

> I'd be very interested to know whether other readers share Wickett's
>  doubts about whether Susanna will be able to continue to make art, or
>  whether her "well" of creativity would dry up once her life crisis was
>  over?

My thought is that Susanna's well of creativity has been blocked for so 
long, that now that the top has been blown off the well, everything that 
has been kept so tightly tamped down is suddenly going to come shooting 
out.  I think her art now defines her, and continually allows her to 
support herself in a way that she might have wanted Gerry to do before.  
Also, she's going to meet someone who adores her, thinks she's the most 
talented artist on the planet, loves her kids, builds her a great studio, 
has great friends who love her, too, and enjoys how much others enjoy her 
work.  Now you know.

So, to get back to the comment I made about the fires, and how I felt 
confused about whether or not Susanna had anything to do with starting 
them.  Was that classic misdirection, or...?
  

    

Cool!

I was stopped short by those fires, too, Linda, especially since my 
husband and I were both burned out in the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley firestorm.  
I thought it astonishingly self-absorbed and foolish of Susanna to start a 
backyard fire during such dangerous weather simply to destroy the nudes 
she rejected of her middle-aged self.  She was subsequently so 
disconnected that she didn't understand the commotion as the ICU was 
preparing for burn victims.
  

    

Yes, exactly.

Maybe the fires were a metaphor.  They were burning all around them, and 
they could see the smoke, but the damage was yet to be revealed.  Or, 
perhaps I'm smoking crack and I don't know what I'm talking about!
  

    
Castle, so sorry I had not responded to your pertinent question about
the fires. I really REALLY like Wickett's take on it: it is indeed a
measure of how unhinged Susanna is by what's gone on that she would do
something so loopy as to burn ANYTHING on a day like that. But burning
her own self-portraits is indeed a form of self-destruction -- and I
have a feeling that she had to destroy those images in order to crash
through to something she'd never allowed expression of before.

So sorry to learn you were burnt out by the California fires of 91,
Wickett. How terrible and sudden that destruction is. When the Black
Saturday fires happened near Melbourne in Feb 09, I was in northern New
South Wales, a thousand miles away, but I felt so close because it's
my home town. I had already planned the exact date of the novel's car
accident, and seriously considered abandoning the entire novel when the
fires happened. With nearly 200 people killed, many thousands of homes
lost, countless wildlife -- my own characters and the tragedy I had
manufactured just seemed so ... trivial. But instead I found a way to
incorporate the terrible real events, I hope respectfully.

And Castle -- love YOUR take on Susanna's future creativity, not to
mention life!
  

    
Am enjoying the discussion- haven't read the book yet but it's on my
list of things to buy come next paycheck- but I'm a Melbournian and am
intruigued by the discussion of footballers as a riff from the whole
aussie-bloke-as-chauvinist-bastard thing given that no one's mentioned
the seemingly endless series of recent scandals involving footballers
behaving in the kind of fashion which helped give rise to that myth in
the first instance.

There have been a distrubingly large number of rape/sexual assault
allegations and charges over the past few eyars, including a high
profile case currently unfolding in the Melbourne courts, not to
mention footballers appearing drunk on television (am thinking of Fev,
who was infamously caught on camera unrinating in public following A
Night Out With The Boys) and then there are all the tv shows,
especially those involving Sam Newman.

While such antics are not representative of all men the whole macho
bloke in blue singlet thing is still pretty dominant in mainstream
media- I was wondering if you had any thoughts Kate as to why that
particualar meme is still so popular? 

Oh:here's a clip of Fev doing interviews at the last Bronlow (its a
live-to-air televised best of fairest awards night for the AFL which,
for reasons I have never quite understood, has Oscar type status) which
is something of a contrast to the previously posted footage of the
footballers in playing mode- has a bit of swearing, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2z71kd_Ac

And Fev's antics, while not usally televised, are usually associated
with drunk blokes, especially the random shouting bits.
  

    

That clip <rje> points us to is largely un-understandable (to the American
ear) because of the heavy accents, intensified by the slurry diction. 
Reminds me of when I first moved to Australia, I quickly discovered that 
answering the phone was potential mine field. I remember putting the
phone to my ear and saying "hello" only to get:

g'dai. zz-fi'p 'eh? 

Multiple repetitions did me no good. I had no idea what I was hearing.
Only later did I learn that the person on the other end of the phone
was saying "good day, is Phillip there?"

But that's just a sidetrack. More interesting to me is that footie
and the players seem to be getting a whole lot more press, flashy press,
than was the norm back in the early '70s when I lived in Australia. 
If I recall correctly, Aussie football players didn't make a living
playing the game. They were car salesmen and bricklayers and such 
during the week; the sport was weekend passtime. 

Looks like these days, footie has taken on a whole new status and is
perhaps providing generous incomes for the teams. Is that true, Kate? 
Has footie gone Big Business? 
  

    

Oh, and also, do you think Aussie football players are ruder and cruder
than their non-player peers? Or is their reputation that <rje> speaks of an
artifact of an over-the-top kind of media attention that makes everything
they do end up examined microscopically?