{"id":243,"date":"2012-02-02T18:47:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T07:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/?p=243"},"modified":"2012-02-02T21:24:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T10:24:11","slug":"a-vagrant-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/a-vagrant-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"A Vagrant Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, I attended an \u201cIn Conversation\u201d<\/a> between author (and my friend and colleague) Libby Gleeson<\/a> and Geoff Williams<\/a> at the University of Sydney. Libby is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Education and Social Work<\/a>, and the In Conversation canvassed her creative process as a writer of picture books and longer fiction for children and young adults<\/a>. The session was extremely interesting for anyone interested in getting an insight into how a particular writer works. I also found it reassuring, as someone who teaches a course in writing children\u2019s and young adult fiction<\/a>, that many of the things I discuss with my students were reinforced by this highly acclaimed author.<\/p>\n

So it got me thinking that I probably would do well to spend more time talking the specifics of craft with my writer friends, and if I\u2019m going to do that, then why not publish them on the blog. Old Misrule suffers a bit from the cobwebs of lost inspiration from time to time, and this might also be a good way to freshen things up a bit (thus also the new WordPress site!).<\/p>\n

So here is the first in an occasional series about writing. The title of this blog post comes from the epigraph to the novel The Shadow Girl<\/a><\/em>, by John Larkin<\/a>, the subject of this first interview. The quote goes as follows:<\/p>\n

Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought\u2014a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Mark Twain<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Do I need a name for this occasional series? I love, love, love that show Inside the Actor\u2019s Studio<\/a>, and I am hoping to do something a bit like that here\u2014including the Pivot Questionnaire<\/a> that they do at the end (except maybe without the ‘favourite curse word’ to keep it PG). Shall we call it Inside the Writer\u2019s Garrett? (I’ve made a temporary category with that name so people can search for it as I add more interviews to the blog, and I’ll add it to the post title as well if we agree to go with it.) Or is that just too silly! Anyway, if you have any ideas, let me know\u2014and if you have any questions for me or the author, you can leave them in the comments and we\u2019ll respond. (Hhmmm, I just realised I didn\u2019t make that a condition of the interview, so I hope John doesn\u2019t mind me dobbing him in like that! Also, he hasn’t actually done the questionnaire at time of posting, so I’ll add it in later, when he’s had a chance to respond.)<\/p>\n

The other thing to say is this: Here Be Spoilers. I\u2019m not going to spend ages providing plot summaries or explaining details of narrative choices beyond the basics, but there will almost certainly be spoilers in any of these interviews, so Caveat lector. (Yeah, I know that\u2019s almost certainly wrong.)<\/p>\n

Nota Bene: Please note that these interviews will not be promotional vehicles for specific titles. I will not necessarily be tying them to a particular book, although this first interview, with John Larkin, is primarily about his most recent novel The Shadow Girl<\/em>, and I do indeed hope you all go and by and read it. But this is not intended a promotional opportunity, and frankly, I\u2019d rather any writers or publishers reading this didn\u2019t approach me for an interview, as a.) I am not sure how many of how often I\u2019ll have time to do them, and b.) I really only want to do them if I\u2019m inspired, rather than feeling obligated. (For instance, I\u2019m reading page proofs of a new novel at the moment by one of my favourite Australian YA authors, and this writer has chosen a different narrative voice from their previous books, and I am quite keen to talk to them about this choice and the challenges involved in such a dramatic shift.) And similarly, I only want to talk to people if they are excited about talking about process, so if you do feel a compulsion to offer yourself up, make sure that you pitch what aspect of writing you\u2019re exploring yourself and are keen to talk about and share. And I’ll think about it. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

So, onto the first interview.<\/p>\n

John Larkin has been writing books for children and younger teenagers for about as<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Larkin<\/p><\/div>\n

long as I\u2019ve been writing about them\u2014around twenty years, is my guess, and he\u2019s published, according to his website, more than 23 books. (You can read more of his biography at the site as well.) And although our paths must have circled each other\u2019s many times, I don\u2019t believe I actually met John until I was asked to launch his collection of short stories, Bite Me!<\/em> (I have a photo of us at the launch somewhere, but I can\u2019t find it.) I also reviewed John\u2019s memoir, Larkin\u2019 About in Ireland<\/em>, for Viewpoint<\/a>. (And if I can find the file for that, I\u2019ll post it too!)<\/p>\n

John\u2019s books have been largely characterised by their humour, which is something we discuss in the interview, and by and large by a fairly straightforward narrative style and structure. He went quiet for a few years, as far as publishing went, and when I saw him at the launch of The Shadow Girl<\/em>, my first comment to him was, Hey, it\u2019s been a long time between drinks!<\/em><\/p>\n

And I know I said I wasn’t going to do plot summaries, but it probably will help if I give a bit of background to The Shadow Girl<\/em>. The book was inspired by a homeless Year 8 girl John met at a western Sydney high school he was at as a visiting author. He didn’t get very much information about this girl, other than she more or less lived on the trains, but her story, sketchy as it was, stayed with him and became the inspiration for this novel.<\/p>\n

And because The Shadow Girl<\/em> is such a departure for John, in every way\u2014tone, content, structure, even the age of the intended readership\u2014I was keen to talk to him about how his writing had developed over the years and some of the choices he made for this novel. I started by explaining that I wanted to talk about\u2026<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

…process and craft rather than content, although content sometimes comes into it as well.<\/p>\n

Well, they\u2019re intertwined<\/p>\n

Because I am interested in some of the plot choices you made, because I think they were risky, but I think you pulled them off\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s nice to know!<\/p>\n

So I wanted to start off talking about structure, because it is the one thing I have the most difficulty understanding\u2014well, not understanding. I\u2019m really interested in it. I did my masters in narrative theory* and I\u2019m really interested in the mechanics of it, but I find it the most difficult one to work with students on. Largely because most of them don\u2019t have a draft they\u2019re working on, so I have to talk in really broad terms about the \u201cbig picture\u201d elements of structure. So I\u2019m interested in learning more about and hopefully communicating about it better. So tell me how you came to having the dual narrative.<\/p>\n

How that came about\u2026 like a lot of stories, you let it percolate for a few years. Structurally, I originally started it in the third person, and I always intended to write it in the third person, past tense. Because that\u2019s mostly what longer narratives use, it\u2019s the general go-to narrative voice. I\u2019d written pretty much the first chapter and I felt distant from the main character. And I didn\u2019t want to reveal what she looked like, I didn\u2019t want to reveal her name, so I thought the only way I can really do that is looking out through her eyes. And how could I make it even more immediate\u2014by writing in first person, present tense. But that brought up a raft of new problems, because I wanted to move backwards and forwards through time, and the way that came to me to do that was to have me interview her. She\u2019d had this life-threatening event, circumstances, and she was now looking to tell her story, and that\u2019s how I came up with the idea of the caf\u00e9 chats. The idea was I would interview her, do exactly what you\u2019re doing now, have the transcripts typed and up and have them published. The other point of that was then have her be a less than reliable narrator. Occasionally she was going to tell me lies, the big one towards the end, where she let us have the denouement of the story when she was lying. I questioned her, believing she was lying, and she was convincing enough that I believed her, but then she felt guilty and came back and told me what really happened. So it was kind of fun to probe that kind of narrative voice and also to have a narrator who was economical with the truth.<\/p>\n

But then that\u2019s layered too, because the story is not written by her, it\u2019s written by the fictional you.<\/p>\n

Correct. And it also gave it a heightened sense of realism, because many people believe that those transcripts are real.<\/p>\n

Really. Are you getting that kind of response from people?<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

Why\u2014what do you think it is? This happens from time to time with fiction. It happened with Gary Crew<\/a>\u2019s Strange Objects<\/a><\/em>, it happened with Tony Eaton<\/a>\u2019s Into White Silence<\/em><\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

And Life of Pi<\/a><\/em>, as well.<\/p>\n

Really? What do you think it is, this impulse that readers have to want it to be true? That blog<\/a> you sent me\u2014she wondered if the transcripts were true. That would never have even been a question for me.<\/p>\n

I suppose in more recent years there\u2019s been an increasing blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction and this is taking that to the next level, I suppose. People are writing non-fiction that\u2019s turning out to be fiction.<\/a> So I\u2019m writing what is clearly fiction and people are then reading it as non-fiction. Because it does say \u201cinspired by a true story\u201d. And I was clear that I wanted inspired rather than based on a true story, because I think \u201cinspired\u201d clearly lets us know that this is a work of fiction. But there are certain post-modern techniques that authors will use to try and have the reader think, this is real, isn\u2019t it? This is true.<\/p>\n

Were you consciously\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh yeah. I was consciously saying, let\u2019s blur these boundaries a bit. Yes, I\u2019m telling a story\u2014and I tell some real\u2014there\u2019s some really clearly obvious works of fiction in the book, and that\u2019s for me to remind the reader that you are reading a work of fiction. Sometimes that might be stretching credulity to breaking point, but I think it\u2019s also important to let the reader know, don\u2019t forget, yes it\u2019s based on someone\u2019s life but only very loosely.<\/p>\n

So talk to me about the fictional you.<\/p>\n

The fictional me was simply that was me put in that caf\u00e9 situation. I asked the questions I wanted to reader to want to ask. If I told every aspect of the story that I wanted tot write, that book would be 1000 pages long. Having the fictional me in the caf\u00e9 interviewing her certainly cut it down to a manageable 400-or so pages.<\/p>\n

So it allowed you to leap certain things\u2026<\/p>\n

It allowed me to leap backwards and forwards through time. And what questions would the reader be asking at this point? So I was able to have those things as questions rather than narrative moments, because it would have just gone on and on and on. It\u2019s tempting to write a 1000 page novel, but how many of us got through A Suitable Boy<\/a><\/em>? It\u2019s a big commitment for a reader. So cutting it down was also to help the reader get through it.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just a dual narrative, it\u2019s a layered narrative. There\u2019s a fictionalised you in there, there\u2019s a fictionalised girl inspired by a real girl, and then the fictional you takes the real girl in the novel and tells her story using fictional techniques, narrative techniques. There were a couple of things that struck me. One thing that struck me\u2014when I\u2019m talking to my students, we talk a lot about finding voice, and about writing dialogue, and about how good, strong dialogue shouldn\u2019t need a lot of tags, because we ought to know who\u2019s speaking and all of those basic principles, but what you can\u2019t always say to them, what you can\u2019t ever teach them, is how to do it well. That\u2019s just practice\u2026<\/p>\n

Practice, intuitive. And trying to reflect real dialogue as well.<\/p>\n

Uh-huh. So how do you do that?<\/p>\n

The conversations that take place are as real as the conversation you and I are having now. So it\u2019s not as if I\u2019m actually making things up. Those things really happened. And that might sound bizarre, but\u2026 At one point, I bring her here, to the Macquarie Centre<\/a>. I don\u2019t name it, but this is the mega-mall in the ivy belt. And she goes to a caf\u00e9, having just survived the encounter with her uncle. Now, she\u2019s sitting in the coffee shop, and she wants to get a sandwich and a hot chocolate, and the waiter who comes along was supposed to be a dismissive, arrogant young man, who thinks she\u2019s cute, wants to ask her out, and realises she\u2019s so young, wants nothing to do with her. That\u2019s how I wanted to write him. He didn\u2019t come out like that. When he turned up, he started being nice to her. And I\u2019m going, I didn\u2019t expect you to say that at this point. And that\u2019s where creativity lives. It\u2019s almost as if the writer is along for the ride and all I\u2019m doing is sort of mopping up, writing down what my characters say. And that\u2019s where fiction truly lives. When I\u2019m not even controlling what the characters are saying, this stuff is happening and I\u2019m just taking notes.<\/p>\n

But there other things you are conscious of, you make conscious choices and conscious decisions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s more to do with structure. So each chapter I\u2019ll have an idea, OK, where\u2019s she going? She\u2019s coming from here to here, and there are a few dot points along the way. The rest is creative\u2014let it go.<\/p>\n

Do you plan those dot points out in advance? Do you plan the whole shape of the action?<\/p>\n

I have a shape for the entire book. I have the opening line, the closing line, and a kind of loose structural breakdown of what each chapter will do and a few dot points of what may happen along the way. Sometimes you\u2019re taken off course.<\/p>\n

Have you always written like that?<\/p>\n

No. Sometimes I just have an opening line, a closing line, and I just go for it. This one, because it was such a big story, I felt I had to keep a bit of a tighter rein on it. Stick to the story plan, but still allowing some room for creativity to roam.<\/p>\n

So coming back to voice. Those transcripts, the interviews\u2014you don\u2019t use tags, there\u2019s not even a visual clue, you don\u2019t use different typefaces for the different speakers.** And yet it\u2019s always completely clear all the way through who\u2019s speaking. Was that something you had to work at, or did you hear her voice so strongly\u2026?<\/p>\n

Just heard her voice so strongly. And if this is meant to be a true transcript, these are how they are typed up. And sometimes she would speak over two or three paragraphs, but you had to know it was her. Her voice was so string to me. And now that dialogue tags weren\u2019t allowed\u2014the convention (of transcripts), I just couldn\u2019t do them, in those transcript chapters, but I had to make it quite clear who was speaking.<\/p>\n

But you could have prefaced it with initials\u2026<\/p>\n

I thought of that, but the idea is, it\u2019s a secretary, it\u2019s a typist listening and writing down what\u2019s she\u2019s hearing and putting down a new paragraph where there\u2019s a change of speaker or an obvious pause.<\/p>\n

But then you had to take her voice and take her back a couple of years, so she\u2019s younger in the narrative chapters, and channel it through your fictional author voice, and there is a definite difference in the transcripts and the other chapters.<\/p>\n

Well, in the transcripts, she\u2019s almost 18, when we first meet her in the actual story, she\u2019s just turned 15, when we meet her in the house. But then he wants to go back further, so we meet her when she\u2019s in Year 3. So she must be the same character and she must have a similar intellect, but she must of course be more na\u00efve. And all I had to do was think of this girl, put her in a Year 3 school tunic, often visualising my own daughters, and she was there. And again, I\u2019m just then writing down what she\u2019s thinking. And she\u2019s still feisty as a young girl, but she\u2019s still na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

So, the \u201cinspired by\u201d. Did they give a lot of back story at the school?<\/p>\n

Not a lot. Just enough to break my heart. I mean, how is she surviving? Not only surviving, she\u2019s prospering. And she was so intelligent and so eloquent. And it broke my heart to see her in this situation. And they weren\u2019t prepared to reveal a lot to me, because in some ways the teachers were a bit complicit in what she was doing, because they turned a little bit of a blind eye to her travelling the trains, but she felt safer on the trains than she had done in foster care. Because she\u2019d been subject to a certain amount of\u2014I don\u2019t know how much abuse she\u2019d gone through, but what was happening in her life made her self-reliant, so I wanted a girl who was very, very self-reliant.<\/p>\n

So that brings me to what I was talking about before, about the risky plot choices.<\/p>\n

Right! OK! Fire!<\/p>\n

So you didn\u2019t go down, perhaps, what might have been the expected route, with her family context and all the rest of it. It wasn\u2019t just a case of an abusive family she might have escaped, or been thrown out of, but, a crime family. So why did you make that choice?<\/p>\n

I wanted the bad guy to be quite layered. I don\u2019t know how he comes across to the reader, but I wanted him to have aspects of kindness to him. I didn\u2019t want a stereotypical mafia hit man.<\/p>\n

But why have a criminal (family) at all?<\/p>\n

It just spoke to me that way. And he\u2019s only a small-time criminal. He\u2019s not a major player. He wants to be bigger than what he is. For me, it just suited the character, that he had these shady deals happening around her, and it also spoke to the darkness of the corners of her life, that there\u2019s things going on there, in her mother\u2019s background, in her father\u2019s background, in her aunt and uncle\u2019s background, that you might call the dark shadows in the corner. I wanted not to completely reveal what was going on there, but I wanted to hint that this was a very shady man, but not quite as Tony Soprano as he wanted to be.<\/p>\n

Because you could have gone down the \u201cpoor abused child\u201d\u2026 and then I suppose, the risk in that direction is that it becomes the issue novel about\u2026<\/p>\n

That \u201cit\u201d. That thing. The abuse. The abuse becomes the thing. Whereas, for me, the potential abuse was just part of her story. I didn\u2019t want this to be the poster book for an abused child, I wanted it to be the poster book for hope. That you can get out, that you can get help, and also that people are good. The people who are around her, the people she meets in a wider network, she\u2019s wary of them, but they turn out to be good. And I think that in our experiences in life, I think the media is so negative, it focuses on the road crash of humanity, but if you look at your own encounters throughout each day, you\u2019ll have nothing but really good encounters with people. I had a car accident recently. A woman hit me from behind. We became friends. And after that\u2014I looked after her, made sure she wasn\u2019t hurt, and then we spoke on the phone. There was no potential for road rage there from me, and in my experience, that\u2019s humanity, it\u2019s not this road crash. But because she\u2019s experienced such bad stuff, and because she\u2019s used to this train wreck of humanity, including the media, that once she gets out there and she realises that people are actually good\u2026 There are some bad people, and she encounters them, but mostly she\u2019s surrounded by good people.<\/p>\n

And people step in.<\/p>\n

People step in, because people want to help. And I think that\u2019s human nature. We do help people, and it does give us that squirt of serotonin, we do feel good when we help someone, and that\u2019s what makes humanity wonderful, and I think humanity is wonderful. And it\u2019s such negative perceptions we have of ourselves as a species, but I think humanity is good.<\/p>\n

Now, when I saw you at the launch, and I said to you, it\u2019s been a long time between drinks, John, and you said that you wanted to take your time over this book. Can you talk a little bit about that?<\/p>\n

I think previously I\u2019ve become very excited about certain projects, and I\u2019d just find this quite comfortable voice\u2014the voice of Spaghetti Legs, Pizza Features, Lasagne Brain, Goon Town, Growing Payne, we could keep going\u2026 and they were nice, little, funny novels that people read and laughed, and ah! Larkin\u2019s funny, and\u2014put it away. I feel I\u2019d got to the stage of my career, for want of another word, where I really wanted to do something that meant something to someone, if only me. So whereas in the past I\u2019d put bits of me into my books, I wanted to do something where I put all of me into it. Now, other times, I\u2019d written books and I\u2019d think, oh, that\u2019s a good line, I\u2019ll save it for that novel over there. So as I\u2019m writing a novel I\u2019m always thinking about what I\u2019m going to do next. This one, I wasn\u2019t thinking about what I was going to do next. Everything was going into this book. And that\u2019s why I took a fairly long time to write it, but also, I wasn\u2019t in any rush to get it out there. I wasn\u2019t trying to beat some deadline to get it out before (say) CBC were coming up with their shortlist. I just said, this was the book I\u2019m going to put everything into, it will get out when it\u2019s ready. And that\u2019s how I will work from now on.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean this in a way that is critical of the previous work, because those books that you have just rattled all the titles off, are great examples of that kind of writing, but you have gone to another level with this.<\/p>\n

And I was always being asked about that\u2026<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not that it\u2019s more serious in content\u2026<\/p>\n

I know what you mean\u2026<\/p>\n

Which is sometimes an assumption that we make, that if it\u2019s funny it\u2019s not as substantial and that\u2019s not true\u2014and there\u2019s plenty of humour in this as well\u2026<\/p>\n

Absolutely.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think you can write not funny.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thing. I knew that going in. But I had to pare it back a little bit, and I thought, there can be gags in here, and there can be huge moments of levity, but it\u2019s always be tempered by what was happening in her life, which was tragic. So I suppose it was always finding the right story to tell, where that would take me to a new level. My former publishers, Mark Macleod and Lisa Heighton, were always saying, you need to go to the next level. I never knew what that meant, until I did this. Having written my Irish book, I thought that was the next level, because it was non-fiction, it was funny, and serious\u2026<\/p>\n

I reviewed that! For Viewpoint.<\/p>\n

You did.<\/p>\n

And do you know what I remember saying about it? That there were points at which I wanted you to go\u2026<\/p>\n

Deeper.<\/p>\n

Yeah. That it was a little, you know, that you didn\u2019t always have to finish with a joke.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s probably been my writing. I suppose I\u2019ve always\u2014previously, the narrative has existed between the gags. This time, the humour is there to serve the narrative, not the other way round. And that\u2019s what\u2019s taken me to the next level, if I can use your phrase. The humour\u2019s there to support the story, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Shadow Girl, published by Random House Australia<\/p><\/div>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

John was featured on Radio National’s Life Matters in October 2011. You can listen to the program here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Feminist criticism, narrative theory and the fairy tale retellings of Donna Jo Napoli, actually.<\/p>\n

** Dear Blogger hopes that Dear Reader has noted the nod to The Shadow Girl’s untagged transcript in this interview.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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