SO  YOU  WANT  TO  BE

A  WRITER,  HUH  ?

 It may not happen overnight, but....

  Of all the career options available to us, writing would have to be one of the most difficult to plan for.  Not only is it hard to forecast economically, but committing yourself to it demands great personal confidence in yourself and your talent.

  It may be easier for people intending to take the non-fiction path, such as journalism, because there are conventions about how to structure the material and solid job opportunities available.  But what of the fiction writers?  The ones who rely on imagination and ideas and, most importantly, other people's interest in them. It is a more uncertain career path, but there is help available.

1.)    Have you always wanted to write?

No, not always. When I was seven I wanted to be a nuclear bomber pilot. As I got a bit older I wanted to be a sports person, either a cricketer or a footballer, then in my early teens I wanted to get a job in advertising, and after that an actor which lead to me wanting to be a writer. In the drama classes I did at school we always had to do improvisations and write short plays. I enjoyed writing the scripts more than acting in them so that’s how I started. I also broke my ankle at the end of 1993 and had to have an ankle reconstruction, so I had to sit around for six weeks not doing anything and that’s when I started writing short stories.

2.)  What books, if any, inspired you?

Lord of the Flies, it didn’t inspire me as such, but I wanted to rewrite the ending to it. A book that opened my mind as to what constitutes a story was a book called Praise by Andrew McGahan, it’s a story about a guy living on the dole in Queensland, nothing much really happens in it but it’s one of those books that you can’t stop reading.

3.)  Is it hard to focus on writing fiction, as opposed to say journalism, when there is no guarantee of career or income?

Not really, I never had any desire to be a journalist and to be honest there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a job as a journalist anyway. In both fields there’s a lot of people looking for jobs or a contract but not many going around. With journalism, even though all journalists would strongly deny it, they’re told what they are aloud to report on and how they should represent certain people and business. While there’s still restrictions in what publishers will publish regarding fiction, in my opinion, the author still has more control than the journalist.

4.)  Given the above, do you write some material with a specific market in mind, or is it always a form of personal expression?

When I first started writing it was only an act of expression, but the longer I write and the more I study and read about other writers the more I write for a specific audience and market. For the last year all my longer work has been aimed at the young adult or teen market, with my short stories and poems being aimed more at the adult market.

5.)  You have spoken before of a need for an agent. Isn’t that for performers?

Writing agents have been around for a long time, especially in America, but it’s only been recently in Australia that they’re starting to become a necessity. All the major publishing companies are looking to save money and like every other company they’re downsizing their staff, so they’re cutting down on the number of editors they have and outsourcing the work to agents. It just means that once you’ve finished writing your manuscript you send the first three chapters to agents instead of sending it to a publisher, and an agent will take ten percent of what you earn from the manuscript, which for a first time author is usually around ten percent of the cover price of the book; so you finish up with nine percent.

There’s still a few publishing companies that will take unsolicited manuscripts, but not many and they usually limit it to certain genres.

I finished a manuscript in April of this year, I contacted ten agents and only one of them was willing to look at my manuscript. Since then I’ve sent it to three of the major publishing houses who were all accepting unsolicited manuscripts at the time in my genre, the first two rejected it but the third is currently looking at the entire manuscript with a view to publishing it. Obviously I have a bit of a negative attitude towards agents because I couldn’t get any of them to look at my work but I’ve managed to get a publisher interested myself.

6.)  Are writing courses a good idea?

They are as long as you get good teachers, sounds a bit obvious, but some teachers are so wrapped up in themselves and their own work that there is little than can teach you apart from themselves. I was lucky enough to attend RMIT’s Professional Writing course and had some great teachers who really helped me to change my writing style to what I wanted. It sounds stupid, but often people aren’t writing what they want because they don’t feel they’re good enough to or they simply don’t know how to. Good teachers will see what you’re trying to do and recommend people for you to read that might help you along.

7.)  What would be your advice to other young people wanting a career in writing?

To be honest I wouldn’t recommend doing a writing course directly after highschool, that’s what I did and I regret it a little. I’d recommend doing a course in IT or something like that and writing as much as you can while studying that and then do a writing course down the road a bit. The most important thing with writing is to actually write, try and do it everyday, which I think you can do, even if it’s only a little bit a day, while studying something. Basically you want to study something that you can get a decent job with, with minimal stress so you can still write and work on your stuff.   

Educational institutions such as RMIT or Swinburne, and the  not-for-profit Victorian Writers Centre offer a variety of courses that help create, shape and promote your work.

While the universities have a broader approach, offering courses in creative writing and short story structure, the Victorian Writers centre [www.writers-centre.org/] focuses on all aspects of  writing and development