How has your upbringing influenced your writing? Lots of reading as a child. Lots of stories told around the large family table. Lots of sharing of stories and fantasy books between my sister, Colleen, and myself. This was the time before computers, before Televisions were on their twenty four hour cycles, when a stick or a rubbish tin lid could take your to faraway lands.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? I always enjoyed stories and story-telling. My sister and I always made up stories and games and other worlds. We both loved the Narnia Series. When I was nine, I discovered the Myth section of Local Library and worked my way through myths of all sorts. I stared with Dreamtime myths (our Indigenous people’s stories) and moved on to Norse myths (my favorite still) then Roman, Greek, Irish etc. I am still an avid reader of mythology and fairy tales from around the world.
When and why did you begin writing? When I was in form five (around sixteen) I started receiving very good feedback from my peers about the stories I was writing for English. Then my teacher (Glenda Esposito) asked me to write a large story for her (I could even take time off class to do so). That story ran to some forty odd thousand words and it was the moment I always point to and say ‘this is when I decided to become a writer.’ Of course the fact she got me out of the class so that others might have a chance to answer some questions (I did, and still do, love English) was a very clever teaching strategy on her part – what we might nowadays call a win/win.
How long have you been writing? I began that day a long time ago as a sixteen year old and then when I began studying Drama my writing really became a focus for playwriting and poetry. Lately (say the last eight or so years) I have returned to novels and fantasy. I’m fifty-five now, so that is a long time.
When did you first know you could be a writer? I never knew I could become a writer until I finally had The Tree Singer published and then I thought, hmm, I am a writer. Even though I had had poems published, a short story or two, I wrote a column for an AFL club etc, it really was the publication of that novel that settled the matter. Now, when asked, I say, ‘I am a writer’, not, ‘I write,’.
What inspires you to write and why? Ideas just come to me. Why I write is about outlets for creativity. Drama is one outlet, writing the other. Drama is a group outlet, writing solitary. They both serve different aspects of myself. Sometimes I’ll jot down a line, or an image. Sometimes a dream gives rise to a story. A novel I am currently working on started out because when my son was about two years old he had these socks that had little rubbery stars on their soles. Stories come from everywhere. The why is about self-perception. I see myself as a writer. I write therefore I am.
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Genre – Fantasy
Rating – PG
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