Bec Stafford Interviews Alison Croggon (Pt 2):

Saturday, 4th September, 2010, Midday.

Hilton Hotel, South Wharf, Melbourne.

Alison Croggon is a Melbourne writer. She has published several collections of poetry, for which she won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes, and was shortlisted for the Victorian (twice) and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her most recent collection is Theatre (Salt Publishing, 2008). She is the author of the Books of Pellinor quartet, a fantasy series that has been published worldwide to critical and popular acclaim, to date selling half a million copies in the UK and the US alone. She runs the influential review blog Theatre Notes and is Melbourne theatre critic for The Australian, for which last year she won the Geraldine Pascall Prize for criticism. She has written several works for theatre, including the operas The Burrow and Gauguin with the composer Michael Smetanin. They are currently working on their fourth opera together, Mayakovsky, which will be produced by Victoria Opera in 2013. This year she co-wrote Night Songs, a music theatre work for young people commissioned by Bell Shakespeare, with playwright Daniel Keene, and finished her sixth novel, Black Spring. She has three children and is married to the playwright Daniel Keene.

The line-up at AussieCon4 was nothing short of spectacular. Writers from a vast array of disciplines converged on the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre in the first week of September to talk science fiction and fantasy. I had the great privilege of speaking with Alison Croggon: poet, author, playwright, opera creator, and esteemed critic. A couple of hours with Alison will leave you feeling greatly inspired (and incredibly lazy!). Despite her many achievements and awards, she’s not one to rest on her laurels: for Alison, every week brings with it new opportunities for absorbing, engaging with, and creating art. Pretty remarkable, don’t you think?

B: Do you feel that young adult authors have a responsibility to educate, or to moralise, when they write?

A: Not moralise, no. I think moralising is… Uh, I never like it in books. I never did as a kid, I hated being patronised. But I think that education, in a broad sense, is absolutely important.  I mean, it was a big driving thing behind my books, which sort of emerged. I mean, I started writing for young people after the Serbian bombing in 1999…uh…so, sort of before 9/11. But I was doing a lot of reading–a lot of in-depth reading–and when 9/11 did happen, I wasn’t at all surprised. Oh, shocked, but you know, not surprised. If you’re at all politically aware of the world, and if you’re at all concerned about the environmental catastrophe that’s happening right now, and have any kind of public engagement at all, you can end up feeling very despairing about the adults in this world. And one of the things behind the books was just that–oh, it sounds a bit vainglorious–but I just wanted to talk to young people about things that I thought were of value, or about values and ethics. Things that I thought mattered. And one way of speaking to them was by writing stories. But I did not want to moralise. I mean, the things I wanted to explore in the books were ‘what does it mean to be Human?’ … ‘What is not Human?’. You know? ‘What is the natural world?’ ‘What is love? What does love mean?’ ‘What are our responsibilities to each other?’ So, I wanted to look at those things, and dramatise them, I suppose.

Bec Stafford Interviews Alison Croggon (Pt 1):

Saturday, 4th September, 2010, Midday.

Hilton Hotel, South Wharf, Melbourne.

Alison Croggon is a Melbourne writer. She has published several collections of poetry, for which she won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes, and was shortlisted for the Victorian (twice) and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her most recent collection is Theatre (Salt Publishing, 2008). She is the author of the Books of Pellinor quartet, a fantasy series that has been published worldwide to critical and popular acclaim, to date selling half a million copies in the UK and the US alone. She runs the influential review blog Theatre Notes and is Melbourne theatre critic for The Australian, for which last year she won the Geraldine Pascall Prize for criticism. She has written several works for theatre, including the operas The Burrow and Gauguin with the composer Michael Smetanin. They are currently working on their fourth opera together, Mayakovsky, which will be produced by Victoria Opera in 2013. This year she co-wrote Night Songs, a music theatre work for young people commissioned by Bell Shakespeare, with playwright Daniel Keene, and finished her sixth novel, Black Spring. She has three children and is married to the playwright Daniel Keene.

The line-up at AussieCon4 was nothing short of spectacular. Writers from a vast array of disciplines converged on the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre in the first week of September to talk science fiction and fantasy. I had the great privilege of speaking with Alison Croggon: poet, author, playwright, opera creator, and esteemed critic. A couple of hours with Alison will leave you feeling greatly inspired (and incredibly lazy!). Despite her many achievements and awards, she’s not one to rest on her laurels: for Alison, every week brings with it new opportunities for absorbing, engaging with, and creating art. Pretty remarkable, don’t you think?

B: So Alison, you came to Spec Fiction around 2000? Is that right?

A: Yeah–about then.

B: How did that come about?

A: Well actually, my first ambition as a kid was to write an epic fantasy novel.

B: How old were you?

A: About 10. I’d read The Lord of the Rings. I loved it. *Loved* it. I was obviously a precocious reader. And I did, in fact, write about 100 pages of a fantasy that was almost exactly the same as The Lord of the Rings, which I later threw away. At the lofty height of 14, all my juvenilia was thrown away, which I’ve regretted ever since. I’d actually done maps, poems, stories, and things to do with this world I’d invented. Then I sort of grew up and was writing poetry and doing other things. It was when my son started reading fantasy–and these books that I’d loved as a kid–that I read them again and remembered how much I loved that stuff. And I remembered that thing I’d always wanted to write.

B: Do you feel that, for writers, the creative instinct is always there?

A: Yes. I think it is. I mean, apparently, the first thing with me was poetry. Always. I was a well-known poet before I did anything else. I’ve written poetry for as long as I’ve been able to write. Apparently, but I don’t remember this, I wrote a poem on my first day of school. Some little rhyme. Oh, I loved school at that point. Yeah, so, it’s just there. For a long time, it felt like a kind of deformity. You have this itch, or this desire, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Quite often, there are times that I don’t write for a while. Well, actually, I’m writing all the time because I do all of these different kinds of critical writing…but when I don’t do the creative writing, which is the kind that demands the most of you emotionally, often it feels like this huge relief.

So, I wrote the four Pellinor books. I finished the last one in about 2008 and I’d started them in 1999. That’s a long time. They’re long books!

Bec Stafford interviews DM Cornish:

Friday, September 3rd, 2010 4:30pm. Hilton Hotel, South Wharf, Melbourne.

D.M. Cornish was born early enough to have witnessed the very first Star Wars film and, full of the glee of such a wondrous spectacle, has been making up secondary worlds ever since. When his publisher – for whom he was at the time illustrating picture books – discovered one of his many his notebooks containing his thoughts and ponderings on his own creation – the Half-Continent – he was quickly set the task of turning said notes into a story. This he promptly did and the result was the Monster Blood Tattoo series: Foundling (2006), Lamplighter (2008) and to be released in October this year Factotum (2010). He as also contributed a shorter tale (“The Corsers’ Hinge”) to the most excellent Legends of Australian Fantasy, edited by Jack Dann & Jonathan Strahan.

At this year’s AussieCon4, I was lucky enough to have a chat with the multi-talented, engaging, and all-round nice guy, DM Cornish. Those of you who’ve read his amazing Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy or been blown away by his phenomenal art work will no doubt be curious about what inspires DM and how he became the creative powerhouse he is today. Read on and wonder no more…

BEC: The art on your website’s amazing. You’ve got this incredibly striking illustrative work and then you’ve done impressive commercial stuff, too. Your background’s in commercial art initially, right?

DMC: Correct. I trained as an illustrator at university. Drawing’s always been the thing. ‘Oh, David’s good at drawing’. For me it was quite natural, though not very well thought-out… When I was getting towards finishing year 12… When people would ask ‘oh, what university course are you going to do?’,  I’d think ‘I don’t know!’… So my parents stuck one of those books in front of me… One of those course guides. And I thought ‘Oh, illustration! There’s drawing involved, so I’ll put that at number one’. My Dad’s an art teacher. My parents were really encouraging about that. It was always ‘whatever you find your hand to do, as long as it’s not wrong, go to it.’

BEC: What’s your Dad’s artwork like? Did you learn from him and then develop your own style? Or do you just happen to share the artistic gene?

DMC: It’s funny. My Mum plays with language. She plays with people’s names all the time. So I think I’ve picked up a certain playfulness from her. Dad’s very much more technical. He’s often trying to encourage me to do more technical things. So, Lego was definitely an expression of my creativity… making Lego. And he would say ‘make things with gears and cranes and stuff.’ And I’d want to make space ships.

BEC: Ah – It was always speculative fiction, from early on!

DMC: Star Wars! It was that whole thing. I wanted to do that… And the thing that was always driving me, and still drives me now, is this idea of ‘why’? So I’ve made a spaceship. But why? What’s its setting? What’s its context? It’s got these kinds of devices on it. But why? And Dad taught me a lot about perspective and tricks to drawing. Deliberately, but casually. It wasn’t ‘ok- I’m going to sit you down and teach you things’, but in the process of hanging out together and him showing me things, by the time I got to uni I already knew how to do perspective.

BEC: What was school like?

DMC: Ohhh, I was the pariah in school. You know? The outcast. The bullied one.

BEC: Oh, I’m beginning to think that happens to creative people in general.

DMC: Exactly. I’m just part of that tradition. So that gives me credibility, I hope. It was only when I got to uni that people around me started growing up enough, and I grew up enough, to realise that I can be liked. And that was important. That was when the whole Half-Continent really began – at uni.

BEC: So there was a combination of a lot of support at home and the bullying at school. Then, in the midst of that, you always had your art to escape into… It sounds like it was a bit of a rollercoaster you had to weather. But your family was your rock?

DMC: Somewhat. Home life wasn’t amazing either, as for many people. Parents are human and go through their own crap. I don’t think you can make something like the Half-Continent and not have a list of issues as long as your arm. You know what I mean? It comes from real pain and it comes from me learning, really early, that I could escape to my own head, my own right brain, my own inventions. It’s the usual thing. They were safe and I had control over them. I wouldn’t deliberately work things out. I wouldn’t get the bully and beat them up. I followed archetypes, because humans naturally do that, it seems. So this ability to tell a story… and the Lego… and the drawing… and playing with plastic soldiers… and that sort of thing, came from early on. I’d be in my room a lot, making stuff up.

“I’ve been writing stories all my life, even when I should have been doing other things, like studying Algebra. My first paying job was as Chuck E. Cheese. I worked in theatre for years, and now I’m writing full time, which is my dream job, because I get to work in my pajamas and take a break every afternoon to play Guitar Hero.”

1. As you know, I really loved The Splendor Falls. Sylvie Davis was such a memorable, well-drawn character. How did you so effectively capture the adolescent psyche and what sort of reception have you had from teen fans?

The “how” is a tough question, because it’s not something I consciously think about. It’s not so much about what kids are into these days (texting and YouTube and boys and popularity and whatever) and more about the point of view. I’ve always been drawn to characters who have to prove themselves, who are taking a big step from the known, safe world into a strange, new scary world. Basically that means I was destined to write YA or fantasy. Or both. 

Writing a teen protagonist, like any other, is about getting into character: trying to remember (or imagine) what it’s like to look out from her eyes, making decisions and viewing events from her perspective rather than mine. Ironically, I was one of those 13 going on 30 kids: responsible, well-spoken, rarely got into trouble. And you see that in my characters: even though they’re teens, they’ve got responsibilities and big life goals and in some cases, a very healthy sense of perspective.   I think where some authors get into trouble is they don’t give teens enough credit for having those things.  In fact, they often have big huge dreams and goals, because life hasn’t taught them about Contingency Plans yet.

I’ve had great reception from teens fans–and their mothers!  I love getting multi-generational emails. 🙂

2. I read in an interview that you wrote your first novel, Prom Dates From Hell, in six weeks, found an agent in six weeks, and sold the book in six weeks. Do you usually work that quickly? How would you describe your creative process, generally?

You know, when you write a book before it sells, there’s a lot of freedom. Freedom from pressure and deadlines and, most of all, from expectations. I’m not complaining about my current situation. (I’m so lucky to get to do what I love!) But it was a LOT easier to turn off internal editor and the Greek Chorus of Doubt that lives my head. (And, to be honest, that was a brief time in my life where I had a lot of freedom from non-writing obligations.)

My writing process is longer now, but my books have gotten longer and more complex. I have a lengthy gestation period. Prom Dates was the exception, but I used a lot of ideas from the “going to write a book someday” file.  I think, I write random scenes, character studies, I cast my character and locations with pictures, I vegetate and cogitate. I usually write the beginning slowly, rewrite the middle several times, then when I get to the end I dive in and work without stopping until it’s done.  It’s not a very efficient process; with all the rewriting and detours and second guessing, I write and throw out a LOT of words. I keep saying I’m going to stop doing that, but… I’ll let you know  how that turns out.

3. You undertook a lot of research for The Splendor Falls. Did you find that process satisfying and is it something you think you’ll continue to do for future books?

Research is one my favorite parts of writing. I LOVE  when one thing leads to another thing that ends up being the perfect thing you need to tie everything together in your book. I have to rein myself in, both on the gathering of information and how I work it into the book.  Research (and world building are like an iceburg.  Only 10 percent should show. Some books more, some books less.

Plus, writing a book, you get to “be” whatever you want. Ballet dancer, archeologist, magician… This is really a great job for someone who couldn’t decide what to be when she grew up.

4. Which of your fictional characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

This is a hard question. The protagonist of my Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil novels is probably my favorite character to spend time with. She’s quirky and resourceful, loveably insecure but brave enough to put her fears aside in a pinch. She’s a heroine you’d want by your side in a fight: in D&D terms, she’s Chaotic Good, capable of breaking rules for the right reason, but her loyalty, once earned, is unshakable. Plus she gets to say all the things I think about the world but am too nice to say.

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