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Not the Plot
Conversations about books, art and living a creative life.
Not the Plot
Andrea Goldsmith - The irresistibility of story
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Critically acclaimed novelist and essayist Andrea Goldsmith discovered the wonderful world of reading as a child and as soon as she learned that books were written by real people, she decided that was what she wanted to do. Her first novel was published 35 years ago. Her ninth title, The Buried Life, was released recently, and is a story of love and friendship, faith and fundamentalism, subtly underscored by the power of poetry and music.
In this episode of Not the Plot, Andrea chats with host Teena Raffa-Mulligan about her pathway to publication and writing process, the importance of storytelling, and why writers need to read more than they write.
- Visit Andrea’s website at https://andreagoldsmith.com.au to find out more about Andrea and her publications.
Thank you for listening.
Find out more about Not the Plot host Teena Raffa-Mulligan at https://www.teenaraffamulligan.com or follow her FB author page https://www.facebook.com/TeenaRaffaMulligan You can also sign up for her occasional newsletter at http://bit.ly/2gqsJz3
Hi, and welcome to Not the Plot, the podcast that seeks out the inside stories on the creative lives of writers and artists. I'm Tina Ratha Mulligan, a lifelong reader, writer, sometime artist, and a daydream believer. I've always been interested in finding out what inspires writers and artists to create what they do and how they navigate the inevitable highs and lows of their creative life. Let's find out what today's guest has to say. Critically acclaimed novelist and essayist Andrea Goldsmith discovered the wonderful world of reading as a child. And as soon as she learned that books were written by real people, she decided that was what she wanted to do. Her first novel was discussed by 135 years ago, and she had 15 shortlisted for the Mel's First Literary Award for the Prosperous Space. And was awarded to the 2015 Melvin Class Literature for the Memory Cast. Andrew's essays have appeared in Reagan, Australian Book Reviews, Best Australian Essays, The Monthly, and Numerous Anthologies. Andrea's nice novel, the very last, released recently, is a story of love and friendship, faith and fundamentalism, subtly underscored by the power of poetry and music. Andrea, thank you for joining me this morning. Welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00I'm very pleased to be here, Tina. Thank you.
Teena Raffa-MulliganNow, in a recent interview you did for my blog, you said that you kept your desire to be a writer private for quite a long time. And that interested me. So would you like to explain why you chose to keep it so close to you?
SPEAKER_00When you want something really, really badly, accompanying that is also the very real knowledge that it might not happen. So my desire to be a novelist, and that came to me when I was eight, was balanced by my fear of failing what I wanted to do most of all. And in fact, it was so so much to see. I was quite, I was a private child anyway, very private. But my first publications were short, a couple of short stories that were basically ripped out of my hands because I sort of thought, you know, that that sense of failure was um was so great. But it then got to a stage where the not doing what you most wanted to do, which was to be a published novelist, um, that became a failure in itself. And so I took the leap. I'd already at that stage had written two practice novels anyway, um, and I took the I took the leap at an alternative was an alternative um Melbourne Cup party in the inner north of Melbourne, and I got a little Dutch courage, tossed down a couple of glasses of wine, and went and spoke to somebody who worked at Penguin. And um that's how I first got published.
Teena Raffa-MulliganSo once your first book came out, was it easier then for you to admit to people and say, yes, I'm a writer and I want to write more stories, I plan to put more out. Was it easier after that first big leap?
SPEAKER_00It's really interesting. I think that I only became comfortable saying that I was a writer, a novelist in particular, probably by the third novel. And yet that's not that's not a total position because when my first novel, Gracious Living, came out, um, I had left um the job that I'd worked in for for many years, and um one of my former colleagues rang me, had read the book and you know, congratulated me, and said to me, When are you coming back to work? And I thought, hey, hang on a minute, I've just published my first book. Um, you know, I I I'm I'm not coming back to that particular work at all. So it it was it was part of me wanted to be recognised as a as a novelist, and there was the other part of me that found it very difficult to acknowledge it.
Teena Raffa-MulliganAnd how do you feel now? Because as we mentioned earlier, that first book was published 35 years ago. There's been a lot of changes along the way in the publishing industry, but also in the way authors are perceived now, you're expected to share so much of yourself, which can be very difficult for people who consider they like their privacy. But it seems to be very much part and parcel of being an author now. So how do you feel now?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I've I mean, I'm a writer and I and and I have no um issues about saying that's what I am, whether it's on a census or to people that I meet. In terms of how you present yourself publicly, in actual fact, the writer has total control. What we don't have control over is what people say about us. But when I'm having an interview or an in-conversation or I'm at a festival doing whatever I'm doing, I choose to say what I want to say. And I mean, people might ask me um a very personal question, um, I don't know, whatever it might be, and I can choose to answer it in whatever way I want. So, in actual fact, I mean I filter the information that I let out about me. Others don't, but I do.
Teena Raffa-MulliganI I feel that we all do that anyway, as authors with our social media, because it depends what level of privacy we want and how much we share. And how we share it. So there is that element of control. How do you respond if readers or just people you happen to meet in passing respond to your work in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable or threatens your sense of yourself as a writer?
SPEAKER_00I I don't think anybody could say anything that would threaten my sense of myself as a writer. Um, in terms of people seeing things in my books that I did not intentionally put there, um I really, really like that because um, I mean, I I see reading is is is is it's a great intimacy, and you bring to a book all that you know and appreciate and don't like and all of those sorts of feelings. And that's what you bring as you engage with the characters that I have written. And so I mean, I really like the fact that readers respond um according to where they're coming from, and often they surprise me with what they what they see. I mean, I'll give you an example from again, I'm gonna go back to my first book, um, Gracious Living, and it had I think it had, you know, four or five, four main characters. I mean, most of my books have four main characters, and the team that I had worked in had 12 members. And um, the same person that said to me, Are you coming back to work? Al said to me, Well, we've all read your book and we've all found each, you know, which one, which, which, which uh, you know, which character we are, except one who's very, very peeved. And I'm thinking, what did they double up? You know, it's it's it's people people find people find things that their own experience um dictate when they read books. So, no, I actually welcome differences. I mean, it doesn't mean that sometimes someone will say something that's absolute that I think is outlandish. Um, but the fact is they have read my book and I'm grateful for that.
Teena Raffa-MulliganYes, uh, that's one of the hardest things as writers, isn't it, is finding people to actually read our work, especially now when there are so many books out there, so many people writing stories of all different kinds. So we never know whether our stories are going to reach the readers that we would like them to, do we?
SPEAKER_00You know, the people that have read my sort of novel, they've always been in a minority. Um, I mean I think we we sort of forget that. I mean, in the in the the decades when magazines um were were so big, the Women's Weekly and the Women's Day and all of those sorts of magazines, more people read magazines and the readers digest um abridged books than they did what we would call literature. So in some ways, you know, okay, yes, people are you know trawling on the web the whole time, um, and and attention spans are different than they they were. But um I I still think that people are, and and I'm talking young people too, in a minority, yes, but they've always been in a minority is still reading what we would consider to be good literature.
Teena Raffa-MulliganThat's affirming to know, isn't it, that we will find readers. It's not necessarily how many readers, but it's the fact that we will find the right readers for the stories that we write. Now, speaking of writing, do you have a particular writing process? Are you a very organized writer?
SPEAKER_00I'd love you to see my study. It's just a mess. Um, but a year years and years and years ago, I came across a little graphic which said that a tidy desk is a sign of a tinty wincy mind. So um it gives me an excuse to be terrible untidy. I am fortunate to do what I most like doing, which is to sit alone in a room reading, writing, and thinking. And when I leave, um the other thing I like to do is I like to walk, like many writers. I like to walk and I sort of, you know, muse and and I think, and then I come back to my room. So I've never had an issue with discipline. I mean, I'm doing what I most want to do. I'm very fortunate.
Teena Raffa-MulliganWhen it comes to deciding what you're going to write about, where do you find your greatest inspiration?
SPEAKER_00It always starts with ideas, not a character. And um, the ideas with the buried life were two fundamentals about we humans. One is that we're all going to die, and the other is that our human lives are shot through with uncertainty. Both these fundamental, there are other fundamentals, but these are truly fundamental. Um, both these cause quite a lot of discomfort and indeed fear for so many people. And that's what I wanted to explore. So once I've got the ideas, um, yes, I start to read, and and and I read quite I start reading widely, and then I start to hone in. And after a while, the first character will start to emerge. And in the case of the buried life, my first character was um, or is actually, um, an academic, a scholar called Adrian, um, whose area is the um social and cultural influences of death. So he's a death scholar, which is actually an area in the social sciences. So he came first, and the lovely thing about characters is that few of them live in a cave, and so then other characters have to come in. The other thing that again um was a beginning point is my I I'm very interested in music, and music is in a lot of my novels, and I hold with the very very old-fashioned um view that art can open up our minds. Um I'm not going to say it changes lives, but I think it probably in many cases it it can. Um, and so my Adrian, who is a a temperate sort of fella and not at all musical, um, fairly early on in the novel, um, he hears a piece of music, and I don't it it's never stated explicitly in the novel, but it's as if he, this very temperate man, is open to a more passionate existence after he hears this piece of music. So music was the other starting point for me. So it's ideas first, character second, and of course, story attaches to people.
Teena Raffa-MulliganYou've been um writing for a long time, and does that mean that each book becomes easier for you to write, or does it never change?
SPEAKER_00You know, if only. I'll tell you what becomes easier. You know the process and you know the pitfalls. You know that your first draft is going to be shit, and many first drafts will just you know end up in the rubbish bin. You also know that your best friend is the rubbish bin. You also know that your best friend is the draft, so you know, you expect, you know the process, you expect to do 12 drafts, and then you'll have something worthwhile. So I know the process much better. I don't, I don't get, you know, if I'm um if I'm stuck, I I know what to do. If if a piece is bad, um I mightn't initially throw it out, but I will put it aside knowing that um if I rewrite and I revise, or in fact, you know, write an entirely new section, it will be better. So it's the process. But you know, you you the the same old darts are always there.
Teena Raffa-MulliganDo you already have a publisher lined up, or do you not still not know once you complete a manuscript that you're happy with that your publisher will be happy with it? Do you have an agent?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. So look, I've been very fortunate. I and I would recommend this to any any um emerging writer. I deliberately wrote two practice novels and I knew they were practice novels. The third practice novel um I did actually send out to um the publisher I wanted at the time, which was McPhee Gribble, it shows you how long ago it was. And what happened was they called me in for what's known in the trade as a very good rejection. And basically, they said they said that this book would be published, it could be published, but did I want this to be the book that launched me? I'm quoting them actually, launched me on the literary stage. And at that point, I had already started what became Gracious Living. So I thought, okay, it was good advice. They also gave me coffee and biscuits, which is an even better rejection when they actually nourish you. Um and I put aside that initial called Body and Soul. I put it aside, and I thought I can come back to it after Gracious Living, and of course, I never did. I never did. And from then I have been very fortunate. Um there's uh The Buried Life is my ninth novel, and um I've always had a publisher, so I've been I've been fortunate, not the same publisher because things have changed. And I mean I started with Penguin, and my latest novel is with the small, independent novel poor Penguin hardly exists anymore. My latest novel, The Buried Life, is with the small, independent, fabulous publisher, Transit Lounge, that have a focus on what we would consider to be, you know, good fiction.
Teena Raffa-MulliganSo as you were saying, there have been a lot of changes over that time. What do you think has been the biggest change for writers in the time you've been a published author?
SPEAKER_00The whole infiltration of the digital landscape. It's a it's it's it's really, really changed everything. And there are some authors that have managed to publish online in the right space and um you know are making are making a living um out of it. I mean, people like me are not, I mean, I'm back, you know, still still got my feet in the olden days, um, and I'm gonna want to publish it. But it's the the whole digital world. And also it's changed the way people read too. So that's a very big change. So for example, my first books had chapters but not chapter headings. I now will I have chapter headings, I have more section breaks than I would have had. You know, there are some writers I know that put headings, lots and lots of headings within what once would have been um a chapter. I mean, just just you know, attention spans have changed. Attentions have changed. I shouldn't say spans, it's just that you know, people jump from from here to there to everywhere. Having said that, um, there is a backlash. And um I know a number of people who, like me, um, take digital Sabbaths often. And it's a good thing to do.
Teena Raffa-MulliganYes, I do the same because we can get overwhelmed by all of the technology and and the access that we have to so many different things. And we have changed in the way we present our work because we know audiences have different expectations now. And I'm sure that change will continue because the younger people are, the more common it is for them to be very attached to their screens, to their social media, their technology. And I'm sure brands have changed along the way in the way we process what we're being exposed to.
SPEAKER_00I I think there's no doubt about all of that. But I would say one thing. Since the beginning of time when human beings could talk, the story has compelled them. The story has been part of a family life and community life, the story has been irresistible. So, what I would say is that it is beholden on us, in we writers, in these days to tell really good stories with very, very rich characterization. Because, of course, in these days of social media, everybody's terribly, terribly interested in everybody else. Well, that's what story's all about. Writing characters that are not your own, that are not yourself, sorry, that are not yourself. It's a way of plunging, it's a form of social media, it's a way of plunging into lives. Fiction's Always been a way of plunging into lives that are not your own. Fiction has always taken you to places and people that are outside of your experience. And it still does. And it's beholden on we writers to um, I suppose, market ourselves like that.
Teena Raffa-MulliganWell put. I've never heard it expressed quite like that, but I really like it. When it comes to your reading, what do you enjoy reading when you're not writing?
SPEAKER_00Oh no, no, no. I I always read more than I write. Always, always. When I start a novel, or just before I start a novel, I read very, very widely. I start to hone in once I've got my characters. So for example, I've got my main books above my desk that help me with the buried life. And there are books on music, there are books on death, there are books on coercive control, there are books on fundamentalist religion. And oh, and there's an each up there. And of course, I also have a ton of poetry. No matter what I'm doing, I read poetry, and at the moment above my desk, I've got Rilke, I've got Zymborska, I've got Keats. Oh, and I've oh gosh, I've got Zavignew Herbert and I've got D. H. Lawrence. They were ones, and the Lawrence one's very fat. Um, so they were the ones that I actually used as a oh, and um um Zagajwski is another one, but I've taken him downstairs. Um I always read poetry, I always have a novel on the go. At the moment, I'm reading, it's really good. Um, a 2009 novel, for some reason I missed it, by Sonia Orchard called Virtuoso. It's a terrific, terrific um novel about a pianist. And I also always read nonfiction, and my major nonfiction book at the moment is Um Harari's big book, um Nexus, which is on information technology. So I have poetry, I have fiction, and I have um non-fiction. Always, always.
Teena Raffa-MulliganI think when we are readers, that's always an extremely important part of our everyday life, isn't it? I don't know about you that I can't imagine a life without stories in it in one way or another. So it's um it's just as you said, we are storytellers from the start. And in whatever way we get those stories, it feeds us.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I I must say, I mean, I I I I'm have always taught, you know, I did a lot of teaching of creative writing, and I always made the point that if you're not spending more time reading than writing, then you're doing something wrong. You've got to read more than you write. Because where do we learn? We learn actually not from creative writing courses as much as from the very wonderful people that have gone before. And we're fortunate that um our best teachers are as close as the nearest library, or if you've got the money to bookshop. We're lucky.
Teena Raffa-MulliganWe are very fortunate. And uh certainly we're exposed to a lot more choice now than we would have been. We're lucky in Australia because we don't have fastest street censorships that we're seeing happening elsewhere in the world now. We're then starting to look at books that have been published in the past and say, no, these shouldn't be read. I cannot understand that approach because surely adults in particular can make up their own mind about what they read.
SPEAKER_00Yep, I I mean I totally agree, um, totally agree. I meant to to actually judge on today's um values or or or or fashions, you know, what someone wrote in 1920, I think is absolutely crazy. I I think the same thing about you know taking down paintings and things in galleries. What I like to see is I like to see extra things added to you know in the picture. So for example, if it's a painting of a a or whoever, um, you know, I think we need to add to our knowledge rather than actually take away. And if you take it away, then the oppressive times of the past, people actually forget. We need to know our history, not stay in an ever-present seems to me. The other, the other reason why we're also very lucky, um, I think, is because we have independent bookstores. Um, you know, it it we are so lucky. Hard to find an independent bookstore in America these days, and I tell you, everything's been swallowed. Well, perhaps not everything, but what used to be such a thriving, thriving area in the UK is there are now just a very there are very few independent bookshops. So we're lucky.
Teena Raffa-MulliganWe are lucky, and we need to support them and our authors. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It's been an absolute pleasure. All the best with your latest publication, and I'm sure there will be many more along the way.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, all Fleet Tina. All the best.
Teena Raffa-MulliganThank you for listening to this episode of Knock the Clock. I hope you've enjoyed the conversation and will join me again as I find out the inside stories on the creative lives of writers and artists. Until then, I'm Tina Rafa Malligan saying goodbye for now and happy creating.