Today I saw a Visible Ink reading- the compilation put together by RMIT writing students. I was at RMIT in 1996 and from my classes a handful have had novels published. Margaret Bearman and Maria Hyland were in my classes with excellent novels with second ones to come.
Today it was poetry and I saw Angela Costi and Tom Cho read. Angela Costi was lyrical, with arresting images, and Tom was his usual sardonic humourous self.
Today I’d thought I’d write a little about writing process. Ursula Le Guin says that stories have to come to you, that she has moments or little whiles of silences before they come- which other writers might call writers block. She has a fantastic inspirational book out called The wave of the mind which contains some essays about writing and reading.
I have had writers block. Robert McKee says the answer is research. Julia Cameron calls it creative U turns. Nathalie Goldman suggests writing your way out of such spaces.
I think I have had to gain insight into what I write about. Why am I writing? Why am I writing such a story? What is it that I can give that is new and revealing?
I’m working on two projects at the moment. Dream Mapping about a survivor of a shooting who has a psychotic episode for the Australia Council Grant I have, and Digging up the bones for my Phd. Both have moments of silence in them, and I wonder how to express this in a novel.
Critical self reflection periods for all my characters occur when they are alone.
I worry sometimes that these books are too much internal monologue, not enough external world. But that is what the novel you could argue is all about.