Australian Shorts
A monthly podcast about short stories written by Australian authors. Hosted by Karen Hollands, each episode features a short story read by its author followed by a conversation about their story.
Australian Shorts
Australian Shorts Episode 08 Cate Kennedy
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Episode 8 of Australian Shorts features Cate Kennedy. Cate writes across genres and is widely published but perhaps best known as a short story author. Her two collections, Dark Roots and Like a House on Fire have been used as teaching texts on the Victorian Secondary School syllabus for several years and she works as a fiction advisor at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program in Oregon.
In this episode, Cate reads Little Plastic Shipwreck from her collection, Like a House on Fire (Scribe) and talks about why this particular story is still mysterious to her. Cate also discusses many aspects of writing, including the value in capturing the small, ordinary details of our lives, plus fiction’s great superpower: its ability to reveal a character’s sense of interiority. She explains the power of the three layers of a character’s “self” and the richness that the gap between these provides to both reader and writer.
This episode was recorded on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbul people in Brisbane and the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people in Castlemaine, Victoria.
Australian Shorts, a podcast about short stories written by Australian authors, is produced by Karen Hollands
Hi Kelly.
SPEAKER_00Hello, how are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm well, how are you? I'm pretty good. It's had a bit of rain down here in Victoria and we're all rejoicing.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I know. It's been so dry down there. It has, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm in a beautiful um Jadawaran country here in Castle Maine and we've had a lot of fires in High Court in January, and so it's been so dry, but also we're just so looking forward to seeing a little bit of regeneration after those fires because it was quite a big um you know devastating thing for the community, really, with that damage. So interesting time to be looking as autumn starting to tip and we're starting to see a bit more chance for sort of the return and the coming back of some of those um some of those trees and plants and not just you know the natural things as well as the human scale of a disaster like a fire.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and you really need the rain to make that happen, don't you?
SPEAKER_01A lot of gentle rain is what we need. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, thanks so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. Um we'll start straight away with you reading uh your story. Um it's a going to be a short story from your second collection, like a house on fire. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so perhaps we'll we'll get straight into that and then we'll have a chat afterwards.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Okay, here we go. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Little plastic shipwreck. Raleigh went down to say hi to Samson at the start of the shift, so he was the first to realise he'd died during the night. Samson was nearly twenty five, which is pretty old for a dolphin, and as soon as Raleigh put down his hose and bucket next to the pool and saw the grey familiar shape floating on the surface, he had a bad feeling. He leaned his mop against the slightly peeling paint of the ocean world mural and crouched there at the lip of the pool, gazing at Samson, faithful old crowd pleaser, hoping he died in his sleep, if dolphins ever slept. Nobody was really sure, or so his boss Declan declared during his dolphin show spiel at eleven o'clock each day. A popular theory, he'd say in that golly gee voice he put on, is that only one side of their brain sleeps at a time. A popular theory, he'd say, in that golly gee voice he put on, is that only one side of their brain sleeps at a time. The other side stays awake and keeps them breathing. There used to be Samson and another dolphin, Giff, in the show, but that was long before Raleigh's time. If the ocean world mural was to be believed, once upon a time there'd actually been forfeit and shining dolphins leaping into the air above the aqua sparkle of the dive pool, and two girls in bikinis holding rings outstretched. Raleigh didn't think they'd bother to paint over the image now that Samson was gone. After all, it showed the stand jam-packed with summer tourists too, which was wishful thinking in anyone's books. And if Lara and Kaz, the two women who worked at Ocean World, ever togged up an out there's like the ones in the mural, there'd be a stampede for the exits, in his opinion. He wondered if he should start draining the pool now, on the slim chance any tourists actually walk through the gate and had their day ruined off the bat by a dead dolphin. After all, people sue Disneyland for less. An ocean world clearly, was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy anyway, a sad cluster of concrete pools and enclosures, surrounded on all sides by murals depicting a far bigger, shinier, aquatic adventure park like those billboards of sleek apartment blocks which were nailed up around the shabby prefab bunkers on building sites. It was only once you'd paid your money and clicked through the chrome turnstiles and properly looked around, scenting that whiff of rotten fish on the air that you realized you'd been had. When Raleigh's wife Liz had come home from the hospital, she'd walked cautiously, as if she was still hooked up to machines. She'd cast a fearful look behind her, or wait in a doorway before entering a room. They hadn't taken any of her brain out, the doctors had explained to Raleigh. They were definite on that point. They'd put her in an induced coma until the brain swelling went down, then somehow pieced those sections of her skull back together. How did they do it? Riveting? Gluing? Raleigh had no idea. He imagined them with a tiny blackened decker, a wisp of smoke rising, putting in a neat line of holes, then stitching it with wire. His imagin used to run away with him sitting there in the hospital chair beside her bed. Sorry, I'll do that again. His imagination used to run away with him, sitting there in the hospital chair beside her bed, everything toothpaste coloured, everything smelling like detail. An induced coma. Raleigh's brain hadn't been working too well itself that day as they sat him down in the special room to listen to the surgeon. That room set up an edgy little thrum in him, full of bad vibrations. The blonde wood veneer table all by itself in the bare room, a single box of tissues on it. The last thing you wanted to see when you came in. He'd been trying to listen to what they were saying while all the time he was imagining some lowly admin person there at the hospital, who handled purchasing and requisitions, making sure those tissues were always in stock. So that he found himself saying, I'm sorry, can you just repeat that? But unable to stop thinking of the meeting. That decided a bare room provisioned with Kleenex was needed, somewhere you could close the door on, and deliver the news, then walk out of, busy, blameless, relieved, leaving the person inside to think about a head being wired together. Funny what did you in, Raleigh thought. Not the shaved head and blanket stitched holding the edges of that tender scalp together. Not Liza's black eyes and a spreading bruise on her forehead, mulberry dark, radiating from the spot where the skin had been split open like someone dropping a melon on concrete. Stop thinking like that, Raleigh had ordered himself savagely. Just stop it now, forcing himself to look calmly into her eyes and not hear that wet thwack of impact. No, it was the hair that remained that killed him. Poking through bandages, still with the dye on the ends, the blonde streaks she'd paid seventy bucks for back in a time, and she looked in a mirror and still cared enough. Six weeks before. Once she got home, she had a hard time even finding the word for mirror. Sometimes he'd catch her sitting looking out the window, half a cup of tea undrunk on the table in front of her, running her hands slowly over her face as if memorising its shape. Either marvelling, Rolly thought, that was all in one piece, or else unsure that she was all there, after being helpless in the hands of strangers who could put her in and out of a coma at will. Declan swore long and low when he came over and looked into the pool. Use the chains, he said dismissively. I reckon that thing weighs one hundred and fifty kilos. Haul it out and then drain the pool. What will I do with him? Raleigh couldn't help the personal pronoun. He wasn't going to call Samson an it. Declan, during his show spill, always went on and on about how the special bond between humans and dolphins, about how he'd train the dolphins here at Ocean World, how they could divine his moods, speaking in the plural, as if nobody in the scattered audience noticed. There was just Samson cruising along the bottom, waiting for the precise moment when Raleigh would drop his hand into the bucket for the fish that would bring him slaloming through the water to start his routine. Raleigh would crouch at the edge of the platform, following Declan's repertoire of gestures and punchlines, the rhetorical questions. And do you know why they breathe out white kids? I'll tell you why. Until he reached the point in the script where he'd say, Well now, a dolphin could stay underwater for up to fifteen minutes, but luckily for us here today, Samson can't wait to meet you. And Raleigh would reach casually into the bucket, and Samson would arc up like clockwork and break the surface, his calm, loving eye on Raleigh alone. Raleigh had a theory that the reasons visitors loved Samson so much was that he was always the only creature at the aquarium who seemed to be able to create a facial expression, apart from the sea lion Rex, whose eyes were so fogged over with milky blue cataracts. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is old Rex. He's retired here at Ocean World because as you can see, he's lost his eyesight, which means he would never survive in the wild. He was like something out of village of the damned, with breath that would knock you out. Poor Rex. He'd skim upon the slippery concrete and plop back into the water to turn himself around and do it again, back and forth compulsively, like a big fat kid on alone on a slide, calculating the far wall of his pool by memory. What's he doing? Kids would ask as they watched him, and their parents would look grimly for a few moments and then answer playing. The turtles were totally vacant. They had the hateful, icy glare of an old drunk. And of course, the fish had no expression whatsoever. Just looked at you as they cruised past. A vegetable with fins. No short term memory, that's what Kaz said when he told her his theory. That's the cliche, right? she said, tapping the glass of one of the tanks. Nothing going on. You put one in a fish bowl, and they start swimming around in circles, and every time it's like look, a little plastic shipwreck. And five seconds later, look, a little plastic shipwreck. And the penguins, even the ones with the little tufty eyebrows, still had to quirk the whole heads, even to convey a response. Mostly they just looked shifty. Gimlet eyed, thought Raleigh, whatever that meant. Whatever gimlets were. Something ice cold anyway, that twisted in deep. Get the chains, Declan said again, staring down at Samson and down the barrel of an even crappier ocean world. Don't you have to notify the wildlife authority, said Raleigh, and fill out paperwork or something? Yeah, thanks. I think I know how to manage my own regulations. Just get it in the freezer room so nobody sees it when we open the gates. I'll bury him, said Raleigh. And Declan gave him a penguin look. Nah, cut it up, he said, once it's frozen. And Raleigh nodded, keeping his face studiously neutral, thinking no way in the world, buddy. He got Cass to help him roll Samson's body onto a wheeled pallet to get him into the cool room, the two of them staggering at the massive, blubbery dead weight of him. An average bottle nosed dolphin in these waters can weigh up to one hundred and ninety kilos. Sorry, an average bottle nose dolphin in these waters can weigh up to one hundred and ninety kilograms. With Kaz running for towels to cover the body, giving him a tearful smile. Remember that day in the school holidays? God, Raleigh, me and Lara were trying so hard not to laugh. Raleigh grinned, remembering the dolphin show and Declan hammering on about echolocation. That's how dolphins explore their watery world, locating objects by their echoes, he declaimed. Sound travels four and a half times faster in water than it does in air, and the dolphin can send out a series of clicks that bounce back to it in sound waves to find their prey. He wiggled his hand through the air. Now, kids, in a minute you will see on Samson's head a kind of big forehead called a melon. That's right. And Samson uses this melon like a special sort of lens to project the sound in a beam, like a laser, which transmits clicks and receives echoes, and that's why we call it echolocation. Rolly had watched Samson, slipping along under the water, waiting. Is a dolphin a fish? Declan demanded relentlessly to a few listless headshakes in the audience. No, it's a mammal like you and me. A dolphin can stay underwater for up to fifteen minutes, but luckily for us here today, Samson can't wait to meet you. Who's ready to say hello to him? Like a game show host, he'd flung out his hand towards the pool, but Rolly, and he couldn't have said why, he didn't have an answer when he was carpeted about it later, didn't reach for the fish on cue. Samson's dark shape continued its underwater circuit, and the ragged applause petered out. Well, Samson must be feeling a bit mischievous today, Declan said with a tight smile. Sorry to do that again. Well, Samson must be feeling a bit mischievous today, Declan said with a tight smile. Sometimes he doesn't like obeying commands. That does prove to us that dolphins are highly intelligent with a will of their own. Raleigh's hand moved, and Samson exploded out of the water, curved suspended and effortless above the surface, before coming down with a mighty bellow whacker. Raleigh's hand moved and Samson exploded out of the water, curved suspended and effortless above the surface, before coming down with a mighty belly whacker, which showered the first three rows of spectators. As Raleigh's hand closed around a cold fish, he heard real laughter and applause as Samson's shining head appeared and he opened his ever grinning mouth for it. Raleigh had almost got the sack that day. The one day of work at the aquarium he'd actually enjoyed. But he had apologized and submitted to being given a second chance. Where else was he going to find a part-time job to let him get home at three o'clock in the afternoon? Uh can you stop doing night shifts? Liza's rehab therapist had asked him in the second month. She says it makes you really nervous, waking up when you're not there. This when Rolly still had that well paying job at the munitions plant, managing the midnight shift. He thought about the induced coma. How it would feel waking up, remembering that's where you'd been. And put in his notice. These days he gently woke her and got her sorted before driving down to Ocean World to break shards of packed dead fish out of the freezer and get them into buckets and wipe away the wriggling lines the catfish made as they sucked their way through algae on the insides of the big glass tanks. Sometimes at night he'd feel Liz's hand land uncertainly on him and graze back and forth like seagrass on a current it felt to him, and just as random. He'd take her hand and imagine silvery bubbles escaping from their mouths, floating up towards the ceiling fan. Him keeping his breaths measured and even. A party. That's where the accident had happened. Friends celebrating the installing of the jacuzzi, except that the day was colder than expected, and people weren't getting into the jacuzzi, and so had wandered in the way groups of people unthinkingly do, out to the decking on the other side of the house, presently unfinished. They'd stepped through the sliding doors, barred pointlessly with two chairs because the thing had no railing, and his lovely, witty wife, looking for a way to help out, had taken a heavy platter out there to pass around, and turning round to answer someone's stupid question, had stepped straight off the edge of the deck, falling to the ground below, only a meter and a half, but her head struck a rock, one of three artfully arranged boulders placed there for landscaping. He recalled a strange, frozen look his friends who owned the house had when the ambulance arrived, as if they were rehearsing stories they'd be telling their lawyers very soon. Nobody's fault, Rolder kept saying, breathing fast through his mouth, panting, he couldn't help it. It's barely in a metre and a half, his host kept repeating, a friend of eighteen years, while his wife picked assorted marinated olives off the grass, and the ambos immobilized Liz in a hard plastic body brace, buckling it tight, folding her arms across her chest like it was a sarcophagus, as Raleigh gasped oxygen, and every time he circled the stun minute of what had happened, it hit him afresh, obliterating everything else, so he had to learn it again, piece by piece. Raleigh was thinking about this. He couldn't help thinking about it, as he opened the cool room doors and made his way to the pallet inside. He crouched down to rest his hand on Samson's round, perfectly evolved head, and stroked his fingers across the blowhole that if Samson were alive, would be too sensitive to touch. With a jerk, the doors were hauled open, and Declan stood there. I told you to freeze it and cut it up, he said. As Raleigh looked at Samson's grey flank, noticing the nicks and cuts on it, the marks and old scars. He thought, sick with grief, about the way his wife's fingers sought out the small secret place under her hair, where there was a tiny dent still. He laid his hand on that flank, feeling its muscle. And he heard the moment waiting and said into it You fucking do it. There was a short, boggling silence. I'm gonna pay you till the end of the week, Speck Declan, and then you're out of here. No problem. I'm going now. And he stood up and shouldered his way back out into the sunshine. He'd write a card to Kaz, he thought, as he collected his jacket and headed through the kiosk and souvenir shop. A few tourists watching him blankly as he scooped up a bunch of made in China keyrings and pens on his way through. What do you think you're doing? called Declan, who'd followed him in. And Raleigh called cheerfully, Severance Pay Smiling at Declan's wife standing mouth open at the register, as he added more worthless junk to the brimming fistful he'd shoved into his pockets and clutched in the crook of his arm. A t-shirt, a stuffed toy seal, a dolphin bath toy, a couple of snow domes filled with penguins and igloos. Seeing Samson's merry eye. Dolphins are intelligent and playful but busting with some private joy as he slid himself onto the platform and expelled a hard breath through his blowhole, that eye holding Raleigh's own before moving to his hand in the bucket. Full of such understanding and such forgiveness. Liz turned her head from the window as he entered. I'm Hermole, he said. Are you? She replied. Can I get you anything? he said. Emptying his pockets onto the dining room table. Watching her stop and consider. Slow as a tide turning. No, she said finally, there's nothing I want. And Rolly thought that's right. There's nothing. Want was what they'd taken out of her. That when they were assuring him nothing was removed. She looked at him with a scar across her forehead, giving her a permanently quizzical expression. As if she were raising her eyebrows knowingly. Ironically, a look long gone. Here, he said cheerfully, I got you this. He gave her one of the snow domes. And as she held it he realized she was the first person he'd ever seen cradling one and not shaking it. She just held it obediently, with an emptied, passive face, gazing at the plastic penguins inside. What they should put in them, thought Raleigh. It's a little brain, something to knock around uselessly in that bubble of fluid, as snow swirled down ceaselessly and never stopped, while some big hand somewhere just kept on shaking.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Kate. I feel all emotional. It's such a heartrending story. Um what made you decide to put the dolphin story specifically alongside the tragedy of Liz's brain injury and Rolly's grief?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well that is the that is the good question, isn't it? Because that's exactly what I was thinking about when I was wondering how to kind of zip those two things together, I guess. I was very interested in the way that sometimes there's two disparate things that are on your mind at the same time, and they seem kind of, I don't know, stickle bricks together in some way. You can't think how they connect or interrelate with each other, and yet they seem that they are. And so even though you can't logically or rationally work out why those things are going to connect like those teeth in the zip, you do put them together to see how they kind of speak to each other. And then when you cut away a little bit, you can kind of see, oh, this is where I'm going to go back to the other story. Because something, you know, you're working, I guess, Karen, to create building pressure, building duress in your in your character, in your narrative viewpoint character. So you're putting them somewhere where that doesn't make rational sense. We don't stop in the middle of something and think, oh, I'm feeling something here which is related to something else. It just comes at that time. That kind of building pressure arrives at a time. And so I didn't quite know why those two things fitted together, but the more I wrote the story, the more I kind of realized that the brain injury and the decision to walk away from that job at that moment, thinking about Samson and thinking about the brain of the dolphin, thinking about the damage that had been caused to his wife, and how he's reaching some point of, you know. I don't know, this story is kind of still quite mysterious to me. And when I finished it, I couldn't really work out why it it felt finished. Because nothing, there's no kind of climactic point except that walk away from the job. But he is something has happened at the end when he gets home and uh gives her the snow dome, and he reaches some other point of realizing, I suppose, this is as good as it's gonna get for her. This is this is what he has to accept, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it is a point of acceptance. I was thinking if there was a climax at all, it's probably when um when he realizes that she's lost her want.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that is it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, and at that point, I I well, I guess from there on he has to then just accept the situation.
SPEAKER_01And that kind of bitterness in the end when he realizes that and it's true, isn't it? When you give somebody a snowdome and they don't shake it, it's it's something is happening there that you realize that there's a disconnect happening. And then I realized I had that kind of already sort of foreshadowed in the parts where he's thinking in those sort of aquatic ways as they're lying in bed, he's thinking about them being underwater or in another element altogether, and he doesn't know what's happening in her head. But what, as you said, what has been taken away is some kind of lucidity around being galvanized by desire, by by want, which of course, when I think about it now, that's exactly what you're trying to you're groping around for to try and find what the character's galvanizing desire is in a story and why they're fighting to try and get that thing, but the fight's gone out of her, and that's for him to realise now, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, and I guess I was wondering about that in in light of um, you know, they say every story needs some sort of conflict, and I mean there is that conflict with Declan and Rowley, um, but it's this is really about that internal conflict that Rowley has, isn't it? And you know, like that that devastating moment where he realizes they've taken her want, even though the surgeon was saying, you know, we've taken nothing from her, uh, nothing's been removed. Um but and the fact that Liz desires nothing. She desires nothing at all. Um and how does that fit with, you know, when you say every character needs to want something?
SPEAKER_01I think um the character in this story is really roly. It's it's our it's our character that we're watching who's struggling to make it all kind of fit together somehow. And he's in this kind of churn, isn't he? He can't get himself out of his thinking where he's he's experienced something really traumatic himself, and he can't uh he's trying to fit it all together, but it's just uh, you know, I suppose you're looking for something in a story where today's the day where we're gonna reach the straw that breaks the camel's back somehow, and we never know quite what it's gonna be that does that. It's not sitting talking to the specialist, it's not having some kind of cognitive test and watching her in in a doctor's surgery fail that test. You know, and that's how you're looking to think how these things are gonna interlock. It's gonna be something that seems unrelated, but of course is not unrelated because he works in a crappy old failing aquarium. Uh, and that is the kind of, you know, this kind of idea that goldfish have no memory, that they or that the creatures that he's busy anthropomorphizing, you know, try to feel sorry for, or looking at the penguins, or looking at that old sea lion, or or thinking about the way dolphins think, and listening to that stupid spiel all the time, which is the kind of superficial understanding of what's happening, but of course there is no connection there with those other creatures and their their kind of comprehension of the world or the way that they're operating in the world. He's the one who he he can't get through. You know, he he really can't see that he can do any more for his for his wife, even though he's working as best he can to be her sort of advocate and carer and so on. So there's that contrast as well between the person who is caring for the animals. He's taken on his job and he's the person who does the kind of grunt work at this whole aquarium. Um but also he gets his one little bit of the job he likes, which is he and Adolphin have a special connection that the boss doesn't get, you know, or that no one else really gets. And then he's kind of going home to to try and you know get through what's happened. It's only been a few months, I suppose, that his wife's been back and something is different, something is missing in her. So I guess the change has already taken place in her, and what he's grieving now is remembering how it was before and how it was after. So the accident is the thing he is circling, like those fish are circling that little plastic shipwreck. That is his shipwreck. He can't he can't get past that. It keeps striking him afresh. And I don't know about you, but in my experience of grief, that is pretty much how it feels. You'll wake up and it strikes you afresh for a very long time with the same rawness that it did at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, and you never know when it's going to strike you either. That's so true, isn't it? Yeah. Um and I really love the way in many of your stories you have characters doing banal things in times of crisis. Because, you know, like when we've got the homeowner picking marinated olives off the lawn while the ambulance officers are putting Liz in the brace and and that box of tissues in that room. And and all Rowler can think about is, you know, who is responsible for putting those tissues there. Um and these are they're just such powerful moments, I think, because of that disconnect. Um, but it also feels really realistic because that is what we do, isn't it? So I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about that as a technique or a strategy, if that's what it is, of of contrasting the banal with the the horror of of reality.
SPEAKER_01It's a good question. I think it I think it is all about that contrast. Uh because you know, there's a counterpoint. And I think contrasting, counterpoint, and juxtaposition, I'm always finding myself drawing on those things because that's what I find powerful in other people's writing or in a good movie or any piece of art, you know. A savage satirical song that's set to a jaunty tune, you know, is powerful, you know, because we have that contrast happening. Um so I remember listening to Albert Hitchcock being interviewed once, and he was talking about this technique to create suspense and horror. And the interviewer said, What do you mean? And he said, Well, if the if the face is saying the same thing as the mouth, that's a waste. That's a waste. Yeah. If someone is crying and saying, Darling, I'm so happy, that is fascinating, you know. And so I've often thought about this, and I find myself reaching for it, Karen, because I'm I'm sure everybody does the same thing. In a crisis, you don't know yourself. You're a stranger to yourself temporarily, and afterwards you have to kind of come back and look at yourself and consider what happened to you in a way that you didn't expect. There's that surprise where we the the gap between how we think we're going to behave in a crisis and how we actually behave, boy, that liminal space is going to fascinate me for the rest of my life. And we just need things like COVID or whatever, or some crisis, to have it proven to us again and again that we do not, you know, the stuff we pay attention to in that moment, I find myself remembering those things. Those are the moments that I I can't forget, and the marinated olives picking them off while the ambos are there. That's exactly the kind of moment that I'm talking about. That we've all had those moments where the detail is what stays with you. It seems totally I mean it's part of the horror is the is the banality of it. There's a really great writer called Richard Price, who talks about this in terms of specificity. Um, he he's a great researcher and a great screenwriter, and he was giving a talk one time and he said, just on this point of don't be big and generic, be small and specific. And he said, You don't write about the horrors of war, no. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road. And I heard this years ago, and I thought, oh, that is like short fiction in a nutshell of a masterclass. How do you find that burnt sock? The thing that haunts you, the little thing, it's not it's not the big thing, it's the small thing. So, of course, like everybody, I have a storehouse of those things that I am haunted by. And I open up that little file or that morgue or whatever it is, that that that little section, and think, when did I feel that intense raw feeling of jarring juxtaposition? And how am I gonna give that to a character? Knowing that a reader's gonna say, Oh my god, that's what I have felt like too, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yes, that's great. So when you were I just want to linger for a bit longer on the the marinated olives. So when you were writing that, do you remember like were you um were you picturing like the scene in that kind of filmic way and thinking, what could she be doing? Or you know, how did that come to you that she might be? I guess because I know Liz was holding the platter and that would have come down with her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but it's such a great little detail. It's so powerful.
SPEAKER_01Everything is so normal and middle class and kind of and and you know, it's got that, it's the people are powerful. Well, you know, we we think we have everything under control. We think we have, you know, the deck's done, and we're we've got a great new house, and we're celebrating our new and new, you know, renovation, and we've got this platter of lovely aspirational food that we're passing around, and suddenly it doesn't matter. None of those details matter how good your cheese is or how much you've paid for your rent or whatever, it doesn't matter because a small thing, the landscaping boulder is going to be what you know what gets and it's the same as the table and the box of tissues in the room. Like if you've been to a hospital and been ushered into a room for bad news, I don't know about you, but my brain goes elsewhere. I think I wonder who chose this carpet, you know. I I I wonder where they've what what um what sort of um uh where the person is who gets to buy these folders and and pens and papers chooses this, or where's that poster been put? Whose job is that? I just can't help it.
SPEAKER_00Self-protection, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, you'll do anything not to be in the raw state of being in that room about to receive that news, you know. You'll just your mind goes elsewhere. So I guess, you know, thinking about the olives, that's the kind of I'm giving that to a character to notice that, you know, he's not noticing the wood they've used or the plants they've planted. You go to the small thing. I remember many years ago I was involved in a car accident and uh we were sitting on the side of the road. I was sitting on the road working out how much shock I was in or how, you know, being at a stranger to myself for a little minute, and I was looking down at ants. Ants on the on the soft edge, and there was little crushed bits of glass and gravel, and the ants were kind of cruising around in their world, and I was like right down into that micro world, yeah, in order not to be in the macro world that I was in, thinking, oh, other accidents have happened here before. There's bits of other windscreens here, you know, there's bits of I wanted the ants are thinking you I just can't. I'm a I'm a short fiction writer, so I love the zoom, you know. I love the but zooming into something little because that's exactly what my mind does in order to cope with the uh the larger, I would call them ineffable things, the things which we don't have any detail or language for. My brain just kinks over into this little thing here. I wonder who bought those tissues, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I I think that's really common. It it's just a way of dealing with that tragedy. I think it is.
SPEAKER_01I think we all have those things. I I'm trusting that I'm an ordinary person and I feel like when I'm saying I'm gonna endow a character with this very ordinary response, I don't think it's weird. I think probably most readers would think, oh, that's what I would do as well. Yeah. And that's always my instinct to go for that ordinary thing rather than give them anything too abstract or large or generic or lofty. I'm just doing the thing which because I think there's a lot of strength in that. When you say banal, it is banal because ordinary life contains lots of those small details that for some reason are still unforgettable because they happen to us in a time when our aperture is wide open for some reason, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you write so deeply about the human experience. Um, and I just wondered, do you think we need to have that kind of breadth of experience in order to write like that? Or is it a matter of just being hyper-aware and being a great observer?
SPEAKER_01I think that I think um it's having some sort of weirdly attenuated sort of um I don't know, is it um a kind of a radar looking? I'm not looking for it. I prefer not to have those hauntings, I suppose. But I can't stop thinking about things that happen like that. That's what kind of keep I can feel myself circling those things. That I know the things that keep me awake are going to be good to write about because I can summon them again. People talk about this as a kind of re-immersion, you know, especially people uh who are non-fiction writers who are writing a memoir or something like that, and they they're understandably very toey about re-immersing themselves as they need to into the painful source material that is going to there's gonna be the thing which creates uh um the narrative of their story. That's what has got them in that churn. They have to address their material. We're circling it all the time, and it's like that. That's your stuff, I always think to myself. So either deal with the stuff or write about something else because you're gonna, it's like you it's your fingerprints are all over it, whether you want it to or not, your psyche is gonna keep taking you back to your your hot, it's like a hot coal you're juggling. Your hot coal, that's what I think, you know. I people call it the psychic wound or whatever, the thing that everyone's carrying. Yeah, yeah, everyone's got their own material. So I feel like I'm have a very ordinary, quiet life, and not huge things, you know, global scale things don't tend to happen to me. Um, but ordinary things, I do feel them deeply, and I feel like I have quite a thin skin. You know, um, I think a lot of writers would this is almost a joke, isn't it, amongst artists that we're kind of high empaths, and we people say that quite proudly as if it's kind of some virtue. I find it uh quite difficult to uh have a very thin skin because uh I can't forget what people tell me and I feel that like it's my own. And so it's a kind of a relief or a soothing um process to uh uh bestow those things onto a character who can now experience that stuff in a context that I get to invent around them. You know, I've never been in this situation, I've been in similar situations, and I've also been to a couple of fairly crappy aquariums.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01So those things are kind of taken from I know they're real, I know that, you know, that sea lion, I have seen that sea lion. Yeah, where if I go to work in uh in Oregon, there's a really crappy old uh, well, it's an old aquarium at this place called Seaside in Oregon. If you ever go there, it's along the boardwalk, and there is this sea lion in there who's got a pull, and as you walk past, you can hear him inside there, splashing back and forth along this line, and it is uh, you know, it's awful. And I'm thinking, what am I gonna do with that stuff? What am I gonna make out of this stuff that happens to me, which is everybody's impulse when they're making art? That's what it is. You don't just live it, it's not enough just to have the feelings, you know what I mean? Everyone's got the feelings, everyone's got the memories. It's what can you make out of that in a way that's my kind of curative is to give it to somebody else, and I can stop you lying away thinking about it, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think of it like you you're just holding it all the time and you just need to put it down somewhere.
SPEAKER_01Yes, put the hot coal down somewhere, that's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I've also been to um SeaWorld when my children were younger. I took them to SeaWorld on the Gold Coast and had a very similar response and thought, oh, it was just awful. So I could really, yeah, I was there when I was reading your story.
SPEAKER_01And it's interesting because often our our compassion, the thing that's kind of opened up in us in terms of that surge of you mentioned earlier the interior conflict, and I suppose in stories you're looking for a rupture uh where that's gonna kind of be forced to the surface, I would say. So we're looking for the thing which is gonna um there's a bulwark of of resistance, and we're going through life with it, and then we think we've got that under control and it can stay under the inside where it belongs, where we can control it, you know, and carry our hot coal and let ourselves be burned and wounded all the time by it. But then something will happen where that uh there's a rupture or or a disjuncture or something where suddenly there's a crack in the dike and that thing rushes to the surface. And it's not, in my experience, it is not something you expect. It is not sitting with a therapist talking, it's none of those things, it's something out of left field that kind of smacks you upside the head, and bam, you're you're sitting at someone's wedding in tears, or you're um you can't get the car into reverse or something. It's something completely tiny that you suddenly see how you can you can put that into a work of fiction and use it as something that's actually creating a um something quite propulsive in a plot. Like, I don't know why I'm doing all that research on echolocation, God knows why I'm going down that rabbit hole. I don't know. I'm thinking about that melon thing and did way too much research on that idea of the the sort of brains of dolphins and and whales and so on. It's interesting, but I'm thinking, why am I even doing this? This is my writing day. Why am I looking at all this stuff? I'm gonna cut all this stuff out anyway, and sure enough, you do, but you can't cut it out until you put it in and you've seen where it's kind of taking you, I guess, you know. And where it's taking you is the idea of a sentience or the way a brain is working that is just gonna make it hurt more for this character as the teeth of that zip start intersecting and coming together. I can feel then the story is coalescing and amalgamating in a way, and that's what I'm always looking for, Karen. I'm always thinking every story, well, maybe once again every piece of art, is an amalgamation and something transformed in an amalgamation, yeah. Where you have all these elements, everyone's got tons of these. I know we all do, I know we're carrying all these things around. Yeah, how can I how can I see that these six elements here are going to amalgamate and make something new? Like sort of, you know, there's lots of analogies where people say it's like making mayonnaise or something, or it's like putting a cake together. It's not just the ingredients, it's the particular crucible of those elements getting transformed in a particular way. So that's why I think stories are so fabulous for touching the hot, the hot coal, touching the bruise, you know, to see it's it's doing something in a way which is embodied rather than explained, which to me is just the most fascinating thing that we can do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I love that you say you don't always know why you're putting those things together. Um, and I've there was a point towards the end of the story where the it's where Rowley was in the cool room with Samson and he's running his fingers over Samson's scars, and he's thinking of his wife's scar. And I felt that in his mind at that point um the dolphin and his wife almost became one. Um was that your intention then? To pull them together.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And I think whether or not we That as being uh consistent, it doesn't really matter because in his mind, this is where his grief is taking him. So you're always having to put this through the filter or the prism, I should say, probably, of a character's consciousness. And a character in fiction is all about limitation. So I'm not making him, you know, particularly likable or wonderful or any of those things. I'm using those things or those elements to create a character whose perception of something is limited. And with limitation, then you do have the opportunity for that internal conflict. And so the discipline of not making him the kind of idealized everyman, but making him someone who doesn't get it, doesn't get it early in the story either. Let that coalescing happen to him simultaneously as the reader is thinking about it. To me, that's like executing a kind of a double pike and then landing without falling over, you know, like it's a hard thing to do. But I think if we have that, what do they call it, simultaneity, you know, where the reader and the character are kind of something is happening in your mind at the same time as it's occurring to the character, usually that kind of moment of realization, uh, I really love trying to achieve that. It doesn't always work out, and not every story demands it, of course, but when you can create that situation where where the reader has that, you know, I often feel that the idea of like an epiphany is like a surge of energy, a surge of understanding, which feels like mental action.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, and so when you can create the character having a surge of realization as well, which of course is a moment in the story where you don't you need to be very subtle. They're the very big levers down there, aren't they, in the story? There you have to be very careful that you're not having sentences like, on that day he learned a valuable lesson. You know, like you don't want to have those sorts of things. You want to make sure that it's way on the surface where it belongs, happening to the reader on that level that I mean, and that they're hardly aware of. And I guess when I'm writing it, if I'm hardly aware of why I'm doing it, I know I'm on the right track because I know that I'm in the murky, you know, sort of world of the aquarium consciousness there. You know, we can't really feel around and think, oh, this is what this is. I just felt like that belonged there, and so you just got to kind of put that there. And I that particular story, I don't know exactly why I did what I did. I, you know, sometimes I have to go and talk to students about the stories and how they're structured and why things are where they are. And I have to say, Karen, that one story, I still feel is quite mysterious to me about how that's operating. You know, I know I can look at it in retrospect and think, oh, that fits there, that's why it's good to have that there. Pop that big back there, pay that off there. I can see how I've retro-engineered it, I guess. But it's still because we're talking about the mysteries of sentience and lucidity and the difference between a brain and a mind, maybe even is what is going on there, you know. Then I can kind of see at the end, oh, that's why it works that he works at the aquarium and I put him there rather than working in the bread shop or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That that's such a a joy to writing, though, isn't it? To that kind of discovery as you're going along or feeling your way through it. There's nothing like it.
SPEAKER_01There is nothing as good as that feeling. And the more you do it, the longer you write, the more you're into that feeling of if you feel a surge of recognition and thinking, oh, that's what I'm doing. It's a it's well, it's a measurable dopamine hit for a start because you have surprised yourself. And I am always, that's what I'm looking for now in my writing. I don't, I'm always looking for surprise because surprise is the space where where there is a surge, something is changing in our heads when we're surprised. It's like, oh, and we take a different direction and we can feel that momentum. So for a stroke a short story, we haven't got a lot of time to be building up some massive external conflict in which there is external world, um, you know, salient action and important, meaningful, surging, momentous events. The momentousness is taking place internally. And if it can take place internally in my head as I'm writing Yeah, a thrill.
SPEAKER_00Double dip. Um I I just want to ask you a little bit about the structure of this story. So we don't learn the details of Liza's brain injury until quite close to the end of the story. And I know it you know it's a skill to know when to withhold and when to reveal information to keep the reader engaged to the end. Um so I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and how you did put Liz's story through through throughout that story.
SPEAKER_01I suppose there is that once again I'm I guess I was thinking about um keeping you in the limited sort of purview of Raleigh. Uh you know, when we have something that's happened and we can't stop thinking about it, we tend to swerve away from it. We tend to not go into its details very readily. We withhold it from ourselves, maybe as much as we can, or we start feeling that we're going down that track and we quickly take a detour and distract ourselves with something else, you know. Yeah. Um I I think I wanted to sort of map that out. It it wasn't a question of of creating more suspense. I think it was a question of what's the character avoiding. Yeah, so it's really why might they be avoiding this, like the the awful fact of it. Um and it's the day that he goes in, of course, and there's there's Samson who's dead, and we get this feeling that today is it's you know there's more going on for Raleigh than just coping with the dead dolphin and his boss and this dead-end job that he's in, you know. There's more that's gonna happen today, and he does take that little, there's that teetering moment, the tipping point where he decides he's had enough of the job, yeah. He knows that this is he's gonna be losing the job. So to walk out and sweep through and pick up all the souvenirs and yeah, to bring home the snow dome. And then uh it sent to me a logical, you know, as I said, that the realization that she's not gonna get any better. I don't want that to come too early for him. Because it creates fe it creates a kind of resolving moment in a strange way.
SPEAKER_00And also I think that's maybe what he's been denying. Yes, avoiding that maybe. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I didn't want to kind of make it too obvious, and he keeps telling himself what the doctors have told him, which is also what I think people tend to do, you know. We get into that little little churn of like saying, Oh, well, they said that it's all going to be this or that the numbers look really good so far, so that they said that there's it's no good, there's not gonna be a biopsy, there's not gonna be a we we kind of try and comfort ourselves with that external expertise because we are so lost and so floundering. So the floundering becomes a sort of a, I don't know, almost an aquatic image as well, doesn't it? You know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He's circling, he's going around and around, not wanting to look at the thing in the middle, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The shipwreck of the thing. That's him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, he is the shipwrecker, but then also Liz is like, you know, there was that comment about um the fish don't are thinking nothing. Yes. And yeah, so I guess she's circling around him who's the shipwreck or something.
SPEAKER_01Yes, maybe so. But you know, those with those sort of central metaphors, I don't have any control over how the reader's gonna kind of integrate those things. That's the thing about amalgamation, isn't it? You're looking for the thing that galvanizes that amalgamation of detail is some kind of um, I don't know, is it it's not just imagery, it's uh I'm very interested in um uh especially in short fiction, I think, but I'm interested in trying it in longer fiction as well. You know, we we talk about what the how it structure works and and and the the navigational devices that are that are sort of progressing a reader through the story. And I'm very interested in seeing that uh maybe metaphor itself becomes the navigational device, even if we're not aware that we're doing it, we're we're aware that we're being shown everything for a reason. So if I'm showing you something which is which is a character's psychological flux, which is full of detail, I wonder whether we can't help but see that that is serving a purpose in the story and therefore is becoming a metaphor. So while I'm doing that and making the metaphor move you, literally that's what's happening. I'm wanting to move you through the story, um uh for that sort of transformative moment to become clear, which is what resolution is. It's like something becomes clear that's being cloudy, and that's exactly what happens. We have a snowdome, it's perfect, really. And we have his business of thinking this is like we are in this snowdome, and there's God is just shaking us for no reason, you know. Like that is his point of that's his end point of that there's no going back once he's had that realization, I guess. And that's how I know that the story is finished, then, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, yeah. Um I was I had this quote here from the Canadian writer David Griffin Brown, and he says there are two pillars to effective storytelling, immersion and emotional draw. Immersion is what transports readers into your story world, and emotional draw is what keeps them there. Um I'm sure you'd agree with that. It's it's a really quote, isn't it? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's it's because it's giving you something. Yes, it's doing something for you, and you can feel that it's there for you. You know, we say what's your takeaway from that, or what did you get out of that? We do talk about this in terms of what the story is doing for us and why we even read something in the first place. Why do we even do that work of putting ourselves into the consciousness of someone who's not us? Like what yeah, why do humans waste their important doom scrolling time, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Important money-making time, important, you know, shouty time. Why do we take the time to want to experience what it's like to be not ourselves? And I think, you know, we could certainly be doing that by watching documentaries and listening to other people talking and uh reading non-fiction, but there's something about fiction which lets us step into that head in a way which no other art form really does for me. I think that in that interiority of the imagining that you are privy to what's going on in someone's mind who's not you, we don't care if that character is an invention. We'll take it, thank you. We we need that. We need to know what it's like not to be ourselves, to get out of our own heads and feel what that is. So I do love that idea of the emotional drawer. It's um it is definitely giving us something to dwell in that world, which is to not be ourselves for a little while, to know what it's like to be somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes, I agree with all of that, and I love that too about reading, but also you love it when you can kind of see a bit of yourself in, or you I'm trying to avoid saying relatable because I hate that term, but it is that that connection you feel like, ah, or you're even just thinking, what would I do in that situation?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that is the hinge of engagement. In fact, you're thinking, what are they gonna do next is really saying what would I do if that was me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah William.
SPEAKER_01Like when you were little kids and you used to go to pantomimes and you'd call out to the character on stage, you know, don't know, they're behind you, they're in the covered, you idiot, you know. We we do want to involve ourselves, and you know, that world of what would I do if that was me. I think to myself, the next question is, well, what should they do? What what what's the right thing to do? What's what's going to make things get fixed up or something? Which puts us into I often thought about the world of fiction gives us a moral universe that we also long to dwell in, where we are able to think about our own integrity and our own sense of how it matches up to other humans or creatures in the world and what it shows us of ourselves.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, it's impossible to resolve until the character has recognized that for a minute there they behaved in a way where they became strange to themselves and it was revealing. It's revealed something to them, and what are they going to do with that revelation? Are they going to double down into their dissonance and deny it, or are they going to actually, and this is where we get into this murky territory of the lesson learned or what's the moral of the story and so on. I don't like touching those things too hard in stories because I don't think we need to. I think we're reading for understanding what it can give to us, what it can do for us in terms of our own psychological flux, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. And and looking for some kind of perhaps validation for ourselves or uh understanding of the world and the way we see it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, why else are people writing so much about trauma and getting through trauma?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you have to have that space to let the reader um, you know, interpret it their way or or just even ponder it. If you tell it all if you tell it all, then it's not interesting.
SPEAKER_01You just can't do it in fiction. They've got to be invited into the room somehow and feel around for the lights, which on their own terms, you know what I mean? You you have to somehow create that world and that place. And I think a character is a world and a place as well that you're creating. Um, where you're asking them to not just step into a crappy old aquarium or a world where you don't have any choices or the hospital. You're asking them to step into a consciousness which is under mounting duress. And we know that what is imminent is, as I said, a rupturing of that internal duress where the world is gonna is gonna change you. You're not gonna change the world, you know.
SPEAKER_00Mm-mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How do you know when you've got the voice right, either in your own writing or in others' writing that you might be assessing?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, apart from metaphor, as I mentioned before, metaphor and voice are the two things that really fascinate me. Yeah. I think if we can work on those things, that is a way of making our writing distinctive and also rewarding to us. So we know we're kind of and we can feel that it works. It's like being like having good pitch, you know. Pitch and voice are very similar or voice is ineffable, isn't it? Yes, it's hard to define, and it's not just what people are saying and doing. As I said, about the great superpower of fiction, is it gives us this kind of sense of interiority. So you can make, you can give this illusion to your reader that they're sort of eavesdropping or listening in on somebody's unspoken thoughts, someone's often transgressive internal thoughts, and that voice is the real voice. Then there's the third layer of the character that doesn't even know themselves, which is gonna sort of come to the surface. So there's like these three layers: there's the external self, there's the internal secret hidden self, then there is the ineffable mysterious self under the surface. So I think I was gonna write a craft, it could be called the three selves or something, or the three layers of self or something. Because that's what I find myself returning to is the gap between the self that the character is externally presenting, which would be voice, their voice, like dialogue and so on, um, the what the things they're observing, the way, and then you have this internal voice, which is the things they would never share externally. Um, and that's where I think even in third person you can create something which feels like you know a character is thinking aloud or thinking to themselves, and you're you're thinking about thought processes almost, and you're kind of deeply immersed in that. That's the emotional draw, is feeling like you're privy to that world where no other art form can give us that. We're not in cinema, where we're looking at action and dialogue. We're not, you know, because voiceovers always sound a bit a bit hokey to me in a movie, which it's like trying to create this. On stage, you can't really step forward and break the fourth wall and say, here's what's really going on inside. I'm actually feeling this, but I don't want to, I'm gonna lie, you know, we don't have that, but in fiction, man, we have this incredible, you know. I always think we have this amazing budget for the psychological kind of flux, but we have a very limited budget for time and space. We have to keep it very small, you know. Yeah, we have to keep it little, we don't have all the, you know, external world building I find uh is very difficult to pull off well, but they can always be fantastic little psychological slices that can feel very true, I think, in what you were saying before about you know relatability, the word that I equally don't want to use, but that someone can think, oh, I know where I am here. I'm in I'm in the the world of someone who has who wants something and can't get it and has all kinds of reasons for keeping that thing secret. Let's go. I'm in the car, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's fascinating, those three levels. I I love that because yeah, there's the stuff that's the external and then the um the things you tell yourself that you don't tell anyone else, but then there's the things you don't even tell yourself. That's right.
SPEAKER_01So if you can I guess when you said before about why did I withhold that information about what actually happened to her, yeah, I guess that's what I'm withholding on behalf of Rolly is the stuff he would die rather than look at at the moment, but I'm gonna force him to look at them. And this is this is what you can create in a story is like whether you like it or not, you are going to have to confront this thing, and this is gonna be the the the sundering of that ball walk of your denial is going to be over by the end of the story. Yeah, brutal. Yes, I know it's terrible, isn't it? We're not nice, it's like I like people. I don't know why I do this in fiction.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Um, so do you think you can teach voice?
SPEAKER_01Um I think you can teach in a way which allows writers to feel less self-conscious and less hesitant, which creates in my experience, a lot of people who want to uh write well and want to be published and want to be recognized and want to be distinctive and have they they strain for originality, and there's nothing more uncomfortable than reading uh prose that feels uh strained or that's trying very hard to be impressive for you. Um uh it's not comfortable, and you can't really immerse yourself in that. You know, so I think what you can teach is for people to relax into what they're doing style-wise, in order to um uh stop think overthinking so hard about straining to be impressive, stop feeling so self-conscious, and actually let themselves step back and let the character be the voice through which we're listening to. Your style will come through, like your own DNA is going to come through, whether you use metaphor or not, whether you use dialogue or not, whatever it is you're doing, those things are technique questions. But if you can just get out of the way and let the limitation of character show you what it needs to show you. I often feel like that when I look at pictures of like, you know, I never got to see that stage show Warhorse, that's why, but I did look at some stills from it, and they've got these incredible horses, and in plain view, there's these two or three puppeteers on stage all the time, but not even in black, they're dressed up like you know, humans, like grooms and stuff, and they're and they're manipulating these fantastically big puppets. But I love the idea that something in our brain makes us able to stop seeing those manipulators and actually see a horse. Now, half of our brain knows that that's an illusion, the other half does not care. It does not care because of what that's that beautiful illusion is taking us into a world that we want to be in. So that vivid, continuous dream of the author's world, if we could just focus on doing this for somebody else, a story's designed to do something to somebody else. So, how can I make you have this emotional jolt that this experience has given me and get out of the way of wanting to impress you? I feel like lots of decisions about voice can be made when we stop overthinking it and just let our natural instinct for revealing ourselves and our own preocations and concerns come to the surface through a character that we can use in that prismatic way to feel like an avatar for ourselves because then it can that character feels like an avatar to the reader as well. Yeah, there's three of us walking into that bar. There's the reader, there's the writer, there's the character, you know. The writer's buying the drinks, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you have to get out of your own way. I did see that, uh, the war horse, and it was exactly that. You just didn't see those people. It was so immersive. And I'm thinking also about Charlotte Wood's play um of the weekend, which I saw in Sydney, and they had a a woman with a dog puppet on the stage the whole time, and you you just saw this dog, which was really just her head and her hand in it. Um and and some leg front legs, I think. But yeah, you just didn't see her at all. It's incredible. That's a great analogy.
SPEAKER_01And it can make you cry. That's the thing about illusion. It's like w deep down we understand that this is an illusion. Story is an illusion. It's a kind of a lie. Uh and so I think to be less self-conscious is to accept that we are we are rendering something on the page which is trying to muster up that illusion because the reader really wants to be in that immersive world. They don't want to be explained to, they don't want to feel uncomfortable or that strain. It's like when someone's a bad singer or a bad actor, it's very uncomfortable to be the viewer or the audience. Someone else's self-consciousness and discomfort is uncomfortable for the person who is observing that. So I'm always thinking, just uh be prepared to be invisible and just uh let the prose be fluid, you know, just let people speak. Get out of the way. That's right. Let the avatar do the stuff, you know. Um, and it's a it does it does take practice to do it, but it also makes you, you know, the longer you do do it, the more you kind of read work you admire and you underline and you you look at what they've done, you've gone back to it and said, How did I how did they do that? When did I start feeling that? Look at the use of that, look at the way they've done that thing. You can kind of read for that kind of style, I think. Um so when it comes to your own voice, I don't even know what I want to call it, Karen. I suppose voiciness is the closest I can get. I'm I'm always trying to think about honing my ability towards voiciness. So that is trying to create a character who feels uncannily real, if I can.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, wow. Um I I remember you s I heard you say in another interview that you like to approach writing as play. It just came to mind then because you know you just sound so enthusiastic and you just clearly love writing so much. So is is it I'm sure it's not effortless for you, but do you still have that approach that you just want it to be playful rather than kind of torturous?
SPEAKER_01I would love it to be playful rather than torturous, you know. The more teaching and editing and mentoring you do, the more you're reading for craft and learning about craft. And it's a bit like knowing how a poem is written, but being unable to write a poem. You know, you do get to that point where your analytical mind is very good at uh at it's like people who are film editors try to watch a movie and not be thinking, oh, okay, so we're having that interior shot there. Okay, now we're gonna pull out. Oh, good decision. Like you can't, you know, you want to switch that off and just be in that playful state where it's about lowering your stakes, I think, because there's a lot involved with making sure that it's um to me now. I feel like I want to write something that's to my own satisfaction, that's the way I still feel proud of and happy with, and that's that takes a fair bit of getting into that mindset again of stepping out onto that tightrope where there is nothing at stake, and that's what I mean by play, I guess. Yeah, I'm trying to do other stuff where there I have no stakes because I want to be a complete amateur at those things. So, for example, I've been taking up a ceramics class, for example, and I looking forward so much every week to that three hours of not being good at something or knowing what I'm doing, but I have this material and no one's expecting anything off me. Like that's boy, that's expensive real estate that time, isn't it? You know what I mean? It's yeah, so what I've also got on my desk now after COVID, because COVID, boy, that's a time to get incredibly hyper-focused, which is the opposite of flow, of course. We don't want hyper-focus, it's not about being really good at something, it's not it's it's being able to notice the amalgamation and being able to let everything coalesce in a way that isn't about you impressing anybody or showing off or sticking to some rules or some formula or something. So after COVID, I I find myself having to kind of shake it off a bit. I just used to keep a little ukulele on the desk. Yeah. So when I finished my Zoom session or something, or finished a particularly harrowing session of writer's block time, um, I would just switch that off, go outside. A walk is a very good thing. If it that's probably why I found this after COVID, it was difficult to get away from the desk and go for a walk without headphones on, without any stimulus, just with your own thoughts. No podcasts, no nothing, even music, just just go for a walk. Give yourself momentum. So I couldn't. So when that became psychological to create that momentum of play or low stakes, I would just pick up the ukulele and sound really dreadful and laugh at myself to get into that state of surprise if I could, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01To see what it might show me that I could make something else out of.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I know a lot of writers who who take up another hobby like um drawing or painting, yeah, for that too, because they're no good at that. And it is good to put yourself in that situation where you know you're just doing it and you're happy to make mistakes and remind yourself that you can underthink it, not overthink it, you know.
SPEAKER_01It's like people say, I'm doing I'm doing sort of mindful colouring in. It's like, really? I'm doing mindless colouring in, you know. I'm doing the opposite. Yeah. I've got way too much mindfulness happening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. What are you working on these days, Kate?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm working on a um a long project which is a screenplay. So once again, great to be out of my comfort zone, uh, to be doing something. I've written a whole bunch of lyrics and a script for a local musical that we're doing here in Casamain as part of the Casamain Festival, which has been great fun. Um, also, both those projects are wonderful because they've involved collaboration, and that's been a great state to be in. So rather than be at home, I'm not taking on any students this semester from my my uh job at Pacific, which is a fantastic job to have. I love mentoring students there, uh, but it does take up all of my time if I do do it. So I'm I'm having the time away from that in the first half of the year, and really, as I said, I'm going to pottery class instead, and I'm enjoying seeing what people are making out of my script and lyrics and letting go of the control of that, which is a great thing. Yeah, and working on the drafts of the screenplay, seeing the screenplay form also, as none of that prose is set in stone. It's like a map for other people to make something out of. So working away, I've got stuff on my on my computer in every form that I've ever worked in. I have lyrics, I have poetry, I have short fiction that I'm working on, ecrastic kind of short fiction. I find myself, you know, working on a longer work of interconnected stories. I'm still working on a a kind of fictional diary that I started doing when I was doing my PhD that I find is morphing in a really strange, interesting way that I'm still interested in now. So I'm just really enjoying. Um, I often think it's you want to somehow dance to the desk, you know, and think, what am I going to look at today? Yeah and it does take you a long time in your life to get to the stage where uh other people's expectations or paid work that you have to do or the organizing of things doesn't tend to push those little things off the sushi train that you have to look at every single day, and your things drifting further and further into the background. I that's what I really feel. Most writers, most artists are probably have that same feeling of your thing does not take priority. The thing, other people's stuff is always always pushing forward, and I do like doing some of that work. I'm you know, I'm um I'm a judge, you know, short story competition this year, and I'm doing a little bit of work for this year's uh Stellar's awards to interview some of the long list Disa. I do love that world of literary support and fun and community and collaboration, but at the end of the day, as everyone would know, uh it's just you in your room with your imaginary friends.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And hopefully a cup of tea or something, you know, to reward yourself with.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I was hoping you might say you're also working on your uh voiciness book for everyone else, your craft book.
SPEAKER_01My craft book on the three the three layers. I'm thinking that might have to be perhaps a substack, Karen. Ah, fantastic. It'd be good to do, wouldn't it, if I can just work out how to do a newsletter and make that a monthly thing, that um I would love to do that.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And I have uh a good idea for how I might do that and put that into chapters so that um once a month you might get a chapter of that. There's just so much to say about character and the psychology of creating character for fiction that I feel like there is probably 20 years of teaching that I want to somehow, you know, boil down into a new a new uh piece of work. But um whether it's gonna be something that's printed or whether that's something I'm gonna sort of make as a newsletter for writers, I think probably the newsletter might be the more dynamic way to do it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'd love that. Yes, I'll be your first subscriber. Oh, excellent.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm gonna call it, you know what? I think I'm gonna call it manicula, which is which is that you know, when you look at those old medieval scripts and there's a little hand, there's a little hand pointing to the relevant passage. A small hand, is that's what manicula means. And that's what I want to call my my uh newsletter. I'm gonna give you a small hand with this particular paragraph on this particular page.
SPEAKER_00Love it. I love it. Yes, great. I'll look out for it. Okay. Thank you so much for talking to me. That's been really enriching and uh and enlightening.
SPEAKER_01It's been lovely talking to you too, Karen. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Good luck with your writing, hey. Yeah, thanks very much, you too. Okay, okay, bye. Bye for now.