Fiction writing is all about inhabiting other lives for a period of time, so for this month’s Writers Ask Writers we’ve put a twist on this concept to ask ourselves the question: If you could jump into the life of another author, past or present, for one day, who would it be and why? Joining our Writers Ask Writers group this month as our guest blogger is Kirsten Krauth, author of Just a Girl and writer of the popular blog Wild Colonial Girl. Thanks for getting involved, Kirsten!

I’ve had great fun considering my answer to this question – although the day to be experienced is perhaps as crucial as the choice of author – I’m not sure I’d want to be anyone else on a low-key pyjama day or end up spending the afternoon with their accountant. So, presuming I can pick a day, who should I be? Should I be Margaret Atwood, who seems to have great fun developing interesting projects and whose imagination and literary genius I greatly admire? Or could I be Kate Morton, who is always off on interesting research projects, or Alice Walker and discover more about possessing the secret of joy. Perhaps I could go back in time instead, and become Virginia Woolf on a day when the Bloomsbury set were coming to tea? Or find out if Jane Austen was lonely, and how she managed to write and edit full length manuscripts by hand? I could be a Bronte sister, lost in my imagination while wandering the desolate moors, or perhaps Wordsworth, walking in the Lake District, which would certainly inspire me with my current book research. I could even be Lady Anne Clifford, diarist and celebrated patron of authors in the 1600s, on a day when one of her more exciting visitors – Ben Jonson or John Donne – came to call. However, I think for sheer intrigue I will go back to a day in 1990 on a crowded train and become JK Rowling  the moment she met Harry Potter in her imagination for the first time – apparently without a pen, so with hours to simply sit and think through what would become the defining book series of a generation. Rowling says she started writing The Philosopher’s Stone the same night, but that those first attempts bear no resemblance to the finished book. How I’d love to see what that very first draft looked like! If you could jump into an author’s life for a day, who would you be and why? Here’s what my fellow writers had to say: Our guest Kirsten Krauth beautifully channels a songwriting genius. Dawn Barker would travel back in time to the shores of Lake Geneva, while Amanda Curtin would have a taste of the life of a prolific WA writer. Both Natasha Lester and Annabel Duckworth-Smith would journey to the US in the mid twentieth century, while Emma Chapman would also love to peer into the mind of one of the giants of US literature.col-md-2

I write in the lounge room, in my bedroom, at the dining table, at the cafe, at the library, on the train, sitting outdoors, sitting indoors, swinging in the hammock, and very, very occasionally in my designated writing space, aka our study. The main reason for this being that the study is directly off our kitchen/lounge area, which is often busy and noisy.  However, I admit that I can’t access my preferred brain food – hot chocolate and/or cake – so readily from my study, hence the local cafes all know me well. Sometimes I prefer quiet surroundings, while at other times I like writing with a hubbub of people around me. I have fantasies about a studio – a room of my own, with wall-to-wall bookcases, and inspirational images and quotes all over the walls. However, while I’m working on that I have found that good things can come out of being nomadic – sometimes my location, the weather, or something I witness can really influence a scene.

Pictured are a few things in my study that are there to inspire me, in life and in writing.

And now on to my fellow writers, Annabel Smith, Emma Chapman, Dawn Barker, Amanda Curtin and Natasha Lester. Can you guess which writer I’m referring to below? Visit their blogs to find out more!

Which writer has a beautiful new studio decorated with Florence Broadhurst wallpaper? Find out here.

Which writer wrote her first novel in the domed reading room at the State Library of Victoria? Find out here.

Which writer likes to bake with loud music on to get her into the zone? Find out here.

Which writer has crayons and a fairy doll on her desk? Find out here.

Which writer’s studio was once the storeroom of a shop? Find out here.

 

 

 

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This is my first post as part of a new collaborative venture with five other fantastic Perth-based writers, in a series we’ve called Writers Ask Writers. Each month we’ll be sharing our thoughts and experiences on the same topics, beginning with our writing process. However, before I get on to that, let me introduce you to the others:

 

 

Dawn Barker is the author of the widely praised novel Fractured, which was published earlier this year by Hachette. She is currently hard at work on her second book.

Emma Chapman’s first novel, How to Be a Good Wife, has already  been published in the UK and Australia and sold in the US and and across Europe. It has received extensive praise, including a fantastic endorsement by Hilary Mantel!

Amanda Curtin has won numerous awards for her fiction and short fiction, and is the author of a collection of short stories, Inherited, and two novels, The Sinkings and Elemental (the latter will be on sale in seven days – and Amanda is busy counting down with teasers on her blog!)

Natasha Lester won the TAG Hungerford award for her first novel, What is Left Over, After, and released her second book, If I Should Lose You, late last year.

Annabel Smith is the author of two novels, Whisky Charlie Foxtrot and A New Map of the Universe, which was shortlisted for the West Australian Premier’s Book Awards. Her third novel, The Ark, will be released as an interactive digital app later this year.

Writing is often a solitary business so it is a pleasure to be part of this group, and I am already learning a lot from them. You’ll find links to their thoughts on their own writing processes at the bottom of this post, but now I will move on to telling you about mine…

 

Oh how I wish it were that easy to reflect on my writing process! I remember hearing of a very well-known children’s author who every day, without fail, writes 500 new words and edits the words written the previous day. I lust after the idea of such a structured way of working, but in my semi-chaotic life it rarely happens.

Come Back to Me, my first novel, was written over four years, back when there was no pressure of a deadline. Even then I needed to take a three-month hiatus from my day job as a book editor to really tackle and finish the story. Beneath the Shadows was the first time I’d had a deadline and I also had a new baby by my side, so a combination of adrenalin and terror saw that one through. It was also during this time that Come Back to Me was published, and people asked questions about my ‘writing process’ for the first time. So it was really only at this point that I began to reflect on it.

There are things I have always done as a writer. I have always had ideas in the middle of the night, while sipping coffee at the shops, or on a long journey – those times when my mind has been a little less crowded with the other affairs of the day. I call them ‘snippets’ – they might be a phrase, a word, something to research, the beginnings of a scene – and I write them down immediately and try to file them appropriately so that I can come back to them. Other than that, I usually hold a story in my head for quite a long time without  making any formal attempt to write it down. During this time I’m getting to know the different characters, looking at the plot, and basically seeing if this concept is strong enough to gain a hold on me. One thing I don’t have a problem with is ideas for stories – but although they come to me regularly, not all of them are enticing enough for me to want to chase them down and capture them on the page. So I like to let things sit and settle before I write.

Life ALWAYS gets in the way of writing! Sometimes I let it, because I don’t want to be too obsessive and because my books often develop nicely, and in unexpected ways, while I’m doing other things. However, during this time the core of my story is growing in my mind, like a bubble, and when I feel the pressure of it increasing I know it’s time to sit down, let everything else take a back seat, and start to write. This all sounds very organic – however, it’s not so easy when there’s a publishing contract and a big X on the calendar marking the deadline for Draft 1. So, if it feels like it’s taking too long to start writing, I speed this process up by researching.

Researching a novel is, for me, one of the greatest joys of writing. I want to try to live in my story as much as possible, which means getting inside the heads of the characters, and visiting the locations of my story – in person if I can, otherwise through books and movies, online clips and everything else I can find. Researching a book leads me towards experiences I would never otherwise have, and the opportunity to learn and observe life outside my own little sphere is a blessing, opening my mind even when what I’m looking at is difficult or traumatic – as it sometimes was with Shallow Breath.  At times it’s very hard to let the research go and start the story, and with Shallow Breath it required a short period of adjustment to release myself from an avalanche of factual information and get back to my characters’ lives. However, researching a book means I’m always learning about my topic, and gaining new ideas on where I might go with my story.

Once I’ve begun to write those terrible first drafts, I use what I call a ‘building block’ process. This means that when I have written chapter 2, I return to chapter 1 and read the whole thing together to see how it works. I do this all the time, going back over sections or sometimes the whole book, shoring up the foundations of the story as I go, so that I probably read chapter 1 many more times over than I do the final chapter. This doesn’t make my story finished when I get to the end of the first draft, but it does make the sometimes arduous editing stage a little easier. Along the way I’m usually checking all those snippets to see what might fit with the story, or inserting sections I might have written out of order because they were particularly assertive and just wouldn’t wait their turn.

Finally, with deadlines there is little time to get caught up with writer’s block, but that doesn’t stop me from getting stuck. When that happens I go back to planning – I record the outlines of each chapter on a document and try to figure out why I’ve fallen into a fug – because getting stuck is usually a signal to me that the story has gone off track. Writing became a lot easier when I realized I didn’t have to fear these moments, because writing the wrong words might ultimately point me in the right direction.

So, now you know a little more about how I work, check out what the others have to say – I found it fascinating to see how we’re similar in some aspects but very different too.

‘The most important thing for me when I write is knowing that I won’t be interrupted, even if that’s only for an hour.’ Read about Dawn Barker’s writing process here.

‘I imagine I am looking at the book through the eyes of someone I admire: a favourite writer or my agent, and ask myself what they would say about each scene, each sentence.’ Read about Emma Chapman’s writing process here.

‘Process seems to imply a series of steps—linear, organised, focused. What I do is more spidery than that. And it’s been different for each work, although there are threads common to all.’ Read about Amanda Curtin’s writing process here.

‘I try not to edit at all when I’m writing a first draft. I need to get the draft out, fill in the flesh of the story and not slow myself down by polishing words and sentences until they shine like little nuggets of gold. That can happen later, in the redraft.’ Read about Natasha Lester’s writing process here.

‘I may begin with a single scene in mind, a setting, a character. I don’t research, or make notes, or even spend time imagining. I simply sit down and begin writing and see where the story leads.’ Read about Annabel Smith’s writing process here.

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