Words Out: some same same, but different

I started Words Out: plotting Melbourne's future literary map, as a place to celebrate two of my passions - Melbourne and stories.

So far it's taken me to cafes, a convent and a whisky bar. Sounds about right for Melbourne writers. Each time I've come away from a conversation feeling inspired, grateful and excited about the opportunity to promote writers whose work that I believe deserves to leave a legacy in Australian literature.

From the five conversations that I've had there are some interesting similarities, and contrasts, and I've acquired such an interesting and diverse reading list that I wanted to share it.

Else Fitzgerald and Mark Brandi are inner-urban residents who both grew up in rural Victorian towns, and while they write fiction the places and people from their background have a strong influence on their work. Of course when I shared the details of the Olga Masters short story award with them, a competition for stories about Australian rural life, Mark told me that his current short work is set in Collingwood!

Mark and Angela Meyer both exercise regularly and believe that keeping fit is a really important part of their writing routine. Lee Kofman confessed that she has a love-hate with her gym, and at times with writing, but she genuinely loves her work as a mentor and tutor for other writers. Nicole Hayes also juggles writing with teaching, editing (and barracking for Hawthorn), so her dedicated writing time at the cafe 'Santucci's' is precious. She goes there laden with her laptop, hardcopy editing work and "just-in-case" files, and doesn't mind where she sits or how busy it is because it's her time to focus on her work.

Both Nicole and Lee took me to the cafe they enjoy using as an opportunity to escape from domestic or family commitments. Else, as well as being part of the 'Carolina' family, will often be joined there by her mum (who plays a key role in her editing), and Mark, who goes to the Abbotsford Convent to escape from his writing study, often takes his parents there for lunch.

While the places these Melbourne writers have taken me to and the 'writing reasons' that they go there varies, there's one universal thing that these conversations always include: celebrating other writers and their work. Here's their list of recommendations, re-reads and influences for you to enjoy:

goawayimreading.tumblr.com

Else Fitzgerald: Sonya Hartnett and Margo Lanagan have been big influences, she loves Annie Dillard and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver is one of her all-time favourites.

Nicole Hayes: 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy made such an impression on her that she briefly stopped writing after she finished it. "I'd just read the perfect book. Why even bother when I knew I couldn't write anything as powerful."

Lee Kofman: 'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov is her favourite book and she's read it many many times. It influenced her as a writer to "trust her readers' intelligence and believe they'd appreciate literary originality".

Angela Meyer: was reading 'Black Rock White City' by A. S. Patric when we met and was bursting with praise for it. Otherwise she's well known for her Kafka (and Bowie, and movies) love.

Mark Brandi: Fascinated by writers who are humanists, exploring life's philosophical questions, 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus is a book that he re-reads, and his "gift" to me, the story that he insisted I must read, is 'Bullet In The Brain' by Tobias Wolff. He was right, and you should read it too.

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Words Out: plotting Melbourne's future literary map

What I Loved: Love Begins In Winter

I'm not surprised that according to Goodreads I've been "currently reading" Love Begins in Winter (Simon Van Booy) for a year. It is a collection that whispers, 'Take your time. Savour me.' It's subtle, considered, and I stop all the time when I'm reading it.

"Grief is a country where it rains and rains but nothing grows. The dead live somewhere else - wearing the clothes we remember them in." 

I have to stop and think and appreciate prose like that.
And this...

"Los Angeles is a place where dreams balance forever on the edge of coming true. A city on a cliff held fast by its own weight."

And that's just the first story.

In the title story each chapter could stand alone as a short short - they feel complete - so it's almost a bonus that they flow to build the story they do. That the POV shifts feel natural but not contrived. This is a writer I will go back to again and again and notice new things each time.

I feel like I need to absorb each sentence that van Booy gives me, and it makes me want to write myself. He makes me want to strip whole paragraphs, pages even, right back to the essence that is poignant, significant and provoking.

As I was reading I was reminded of Vienna, thinking that was where I first started this book. I was alone sitting on a bar stool on a busy Friday night, and at one stage I ordered a drink in Spanish. The Austrian waitress answered me in fluent Spanish as though it was natural. When I'm away and alone there is marvel in everything foreign - supermarkets, train stations, a menu. I started Van Booy in Austria, but his observations and simple, succinct language helps me to see the details where I live with the same wonder.

Nicole Hayes shared a writing prompt with Writers Victoria recently: to write your way out of not writing by writing what you're not writing about. I've used this and found it really helpful for getting me  back on track with something that's stuck. And now I have Van Booy to help me start when I have no idea what I'm not writing about. I read a few pages and look at photos on my wall or people on the tram or in the cafe and I'm in the creative zone where everything is art and deserves to be captured and I want to be the one who does it.

I've just realised that I spoke Spanish in Innsbruck, not Vienna. And though I have now read the Love Begins in Winter collection,  I don't think my status on Goodreads will ever change.

If you need more convincing to get your hands on a copy, the Praise on IndieBound should help.

Oh okay, you can also read a hearty extract of the title story thanks to The Guardian, but you really should get a copy.


What I Loved - work I have read and must share

Sitting in - Melbourne voices

Last week I had a few where-am-I flashes. My front door confused me, because it wasn't my London front door. I saw a woman I vaguely knew, but I couldn't work out which city I knew her from. I went out for a coffee to the same cafe I've gone to nearly every morning for nearly 6 months, and was surprised when I got there that it wasn't the same cafe I'd gone to nearly every morning for over 12 months in London.

But yesterday well and truly anchored me.

My Monday morning writing group, led by Nicole Hayes, is the ideal way to start the week. We're a mixed bunch in terms of ages and backgrounds, each working on very different projects. Yesterday we read an extract of a novel set in Melbourne in the 70s and 80s, captured brilliantly through the POV of a teenage girl desperate to be on the stage. In a plea to her father to take her to the ballet, "he can't bloody well miss the Richmond vs Collingwood match to watch a bunch of poofters prancing on a stage," can he.

Brilliant. We know where we are and when.

Driving home I stopped at the lights by Dairy Bell. And remembered. Getting off the train at East Malvern to go and get an ice-cream after school / delay going home to Glen Waverley. Walking from my old apartment, down Belgrave Road, holding hands with my nephew when he was young. I kept driving along Malvern Road and saw the buildings of my old school up on the hill, turned down High St, passed Harold Holt where I've swum more kms over the last 30 years than I could count.

So I was in a pretty contemplative mood when I arrived at the Malvern library for the Tales Out Loud session with Sofie Laguna.

The small group of us were taken to a room upstairs that looks out over the oval I walk the dog on most mornings. We were offered coffee, tea and biccies, and a choice of listening to Sofie reading from her new (not yet published) book, or Q&A, or a bit of both. She started reading.

Sofie's trained as an actor, so it's wonderful to hear her read with Jimmy's 6 year-old energy, and an intensity that doesn't seem quite right from the start. The Eye of the Sheep wastes no time and in our session we're firmly placed with the Flick family in Altona and Laverton with Holdens and Passiona. We've got Dad retreating to Merle Haggard with a bottle of Cutty Sark, and Mum doing her Doris Day - a brilliant balance of comedy, tension and a hand placed on the heart getting ready to grip.

The official launch is on Thursday night at Readings (Hawthorn). I'd get there if you can.

To cap off a Monday of sitting in with fantastic Melbourne writers/ing, I started reading Nicole Hayes' first novel, The Whole Of My World. Another thought I'd had driving home was how come I haven't read this before? Every week Nicole is fresh and keen to listen to our latest work. She has that rare talent of giving valuable feedback and suggestions after just one read, and I haven't read her first book yet! She's already finished writing her second!

It's my first YA novel as an adult, and even though I like footy I wasn't sure that I was going to really enjoy it. I mean, I'm a long way from the target demographic. Shelley, with an e, is a Glenthorn Football Club fan who tracks more footy stats than the professionals. Starting at a new Catholic girls' school, she's doing her best to stick to her dad's saying: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to position.

After just a few pages I was thinking I need to buy it for one of my dearest friends (from old girls' school days), and I'll get Nicole to sign it, and I should turn the light out now, I need an early night, okay just one more chapter.

I read the pre-season (about a quarter of the book). I turned the light out and put an eye mask on. I thought about my day, the writers here, how there's so many opportunities to meet them, hear them and learn from them.

I knew I was in Melbourne.