How to Become a Writer

And other madness

Writing is often long periods of inactivity – waiting for a response from a publisher, waiting for interview subjects to get back to you, waiting for feedback on draft manuscripts. The fallow periods are then followed by intense bursts of activity as deadlines loom – finals checks of proofs, responding to the fact checking of subeditors.

This week I had two deadlines coincide, one for an article I have coming up in the Good Weekend magazine on 15 June and the second for my new book, which went to the printers yesterday, and will be released on 30 July.

The editing process for both these projects has been intense. But I like that. It gives me comfort knowing that the work that is going out into the world under my name is the best it can possibly be. That only happens because of the hard work of people behind the scenes, people whose names will never appear on the work itself. This is something that all readers should keep in mind; the sentences you read in the finished book of your favourite author, are never the same words written by that author in the first draft.

All of this is to say that I have been quite busy and have had no time to write for this newsletter. But I have been reading and I wanted to share a few articles with you.

In a previous post I touched on this article about Tree Clocks. Since first reading it a few months back I have found myself often thinking about it. The article explores the question of time and how we measure time, and if we would not be better off throwing away our clocks and watches to instead measure time by the world around us. And it makes me wonder, if we did do that, if our sense of time was linked to that of the trees and the birds and the fish and the moon, would we not care more for the world around us?

With my new book coming out I am looking forward to getting out and speaking about it. Talking about the book is much more enjoyable than writing the book. One question that inevitably comes up at writers’ festivals and panel appearances is “how do you become a writer”. I usually take the traditional approach to this question, following a well-worn path of authorial tradition, that is by answering it with meaningless platitudes. But now I have a new answer, thanks to this article by Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer.

This from Le Guin: “Honestly, why do people ask that question? Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me—how should I become a tuba player? No! It’s too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and to tuba performance. And then you sit down and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can—if you desire—play the truth on the tuba.”

I take it she got that question quite a bit.

Artificial Intelligence. I find myself putting this subject into the same basket at the back of my mental cupboard that also holds topics such as what if an asteroid hit the earth and am I really drinking too much? It is complex, hard to think about and I may not like the answers.

This article in the New Yorker was an interesting read. It doesn’t provide any answers to the big question of whether AI will save us or wipe us out. What it does do is look at the people who will most likely decide that question, or in some way shape it. My takeaway was that nobody has any idea at this stage if AI will be a force for good or evil, and that if indeed it does have the potential to wipe out humankind, then our future is in the worst possible hands. The people are bonkers, or at least they come across as bonkers in this article.

Finally, this from Elias Greig, who I believe to be the best essayist currently writing in Australia. I cannot get this piece about growing up in regional Australia (and so so much more) out of my head. It hauntingly captures the madness and loneliness of finding yourself on a piece of land that you neither know nor understand and how the very land itself tears at the bonds of family in an attempt to rid itself of human presence.

You can leave your thoughts on any of the articles in the comments below.