Friday 4 November 2016

Writers in Action Blog 5: Wrap Up


As Write Around the Murray 2016 drew to a close, all that was left was to reflect upon a fantastic weekend of inspired seminars, interviews, panel discussions and interesting conversations with even more interesting people. Having come in to the festival with slight apprehension about being out of my depth, not having been actively involved in creative writing for a number of years, this was blown out of the water on the first day in the way the content was handled and organised by Sue, our fantastic tutor (no brown-nosing here).

Despite sending out thanks in each one of my previous posts I still feel compelled to give a final thanks to all involved in the construction and organisation of Write Around the Murray 2016. Thanks again to all of the fantastic authors that gave up their time to deconstruct the notion of ‘Unsettling’, the event organisers (especially the tireless co-ordinator Ann-Maree Ellis), my fellow students and session attendees for some fascinating discussion and of course our tutor Sue Gillett, who by all accounts doesn’t actually sleep during a writer’s festival! I look very much forward to seeing as many of you as possible at Write Around the Murray 2017 for another weekend of vibrant discussion.

Writers in Action Blog 4: The Making of a Memoir Part 2


In a previous entry I described a workshop with Anson Cameron focusing on the process of conceptualising and writing a memoir. In this entry I will continue this discussion by looking at a panel discussion that took place between Biff Ward, Benjamin Law and Helena Pastor. These authors were all at Write Around the Murray 2016 having recently released their own memoirs, Ward’s ‘In My Mother’s Hands’, Law’s ‘The Family Law’ and Pastor’s ‘Wild Boys: A Parent’s Story of Tough Love’.

This panel discussion focused on motherhood and the role it had to play both in their stories and in their decision to have their stories penned and retold. Ward’s memoir focuses on her mother’s battle with mental illness and the impact of this on her family growing up. Law’s memoir – generally more light-hearted – takes a look at the struggles of growing up as an Asian-Australian and his oft quirky relationship with his mother, while Pastor’s memoir at times shows her relationship with her son in touching detail. The three discussed individually the impact of motherhood upon them, not necessarily of experiencing it (as Law so kindly pointed out, he’s not a mother) but rather having been touched by it. The decision to write the memoir was a memorable point of discussion, in which Ward states “Some people write a memoir and then do years of therapy. I did 35 years of therapy then wrote a book”. This was related to the deeply emotional subject matter of her memoir, which features some difficult to read moments when describing her mother’s, and therefore her family’s, struggles. Ward raised the point that writing the memoir was almost therapeutic in itself, a contributor to her decision to do so. On the other hand is Law, a story not without heartache – when his father finally travelled back to his homeland to meet Law’s grandfather, Law’s grandfather had a stroke on the dock. His story however is one that is told in the most light-hearted of ways, a testament to Law’s views on the power of comedy and the feeling of embarrassment. Despite divorce and being attacked by zoo animals, Law manages to take a positive outlook on all the events in his book as having shaped him, and chronicling this story seems to have been a major motivating factor for him. Pastor’s memoir almost reads as more of a love letter to her son, showing the power of a memoir to not only be therapeutic or to remind one how they’ve made it to where they are, but also to say for us what we may not be able to find the words for.

Big thanks go out to Biff, Benjamin and Helena for their insight, along with the hostess, Sue Gillett and of course the organisers.

Writers in Action Blog 1. The Making of a Memoir Part 1


Memoirs and their making were given particular attention at Write Around the Murray 2016. Anson Cameron, author of ‘Boyhoodlum’ and Biff Ward, author of ‘My Mother’s Hands’, helped to shed light on the process behind the making of a memoir. A workshop with Cameron and a panel discussion with Ward, also featuring Ben Law and Helena Pastor, gave a broad and varied view of the process behind the decision to write a memoir and how to bring the content to life.

During his workshop, Anson spoke about how memories change ever so slightly upon each recollection, and noted that “as memories recede into the past, they ultimately become more exotic”. This played a part in his decision to write a memoir. Looking back over his life, he admits that while his surroundings in the Victorian town/city of Shepparton didn’t seem so at the time, he now – perhaps somewhat nostalgically – views them as exotic. Cameron likens his childhood setting to that of Twain’s Tennessee, with a sense of reverence that begs us to view the past and present as two separate worlds, albeit connected through a string of memories. This string of memories doesn’t go without knots, some series of events appearing as more of a flipbook in an indeterminate order, similarly to the aforementioned blurring of the lines between reality and fanciful recollection. Perhaps this too compelled Cameron or other authors to document their life in such a way. Others attending the workshop can attest to this. A lady in attendance shared with the workshop one of many stories she had heard from her Uncle, who had fallen ill. As he was always reluctant to be recorded sharing his life’s stories, and had a penchant for being wise to a hidden recorder, she expressed her desire to document his many tales and triumphs before she could no longer recall them herself. This was all told as a lead-in to the question of: how do you decide what to include? Cameron then goes on to describe a wedding, where the mother-in-law is seen “waddling” alongside the pond, “what does the reader want? They probably want me to walk over to her and push her in”. This was Anson’s own unique example of what he calls “turning up the volume” on your retelling, finding the balance between the unembellished version of events and the one the reader needs in order to remain engaged with the content.

I would like to thank Anson for a wonderfully entertaining workshop, my fellow attendees for their contributions to some fascinating discussion on the topic of memoirs and of course the festival organisers that made it all possible. The second part of my two part ‘Making of a Memoir’ series can be found in Blog 4 of the larger series covering WAM 2016 as a student of the Writers in Action subject. This will cover the aforementioned panel discussion between Biff Ward, Benjamin Law and Helena Pastor.  

Writers in Action Blog 2: Unsettling

An underlying theme throughout Write Around the Murray (WAM) 2016 was “unsettling”, which was brought to the fore in one of the festival’s first sessions. A guided tour of a number of pieces at the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) was led by the director of MAMA, and focused on the subtle hints of disturbance or unsettling hidden within them. The first piece, from Bill Henson, is a photograph of a young boy. In the photograph, Henson uses lighting to convey a sense of quiet contemplation. The boy is photographed without a shirt, leading the viewer to take a somewhat cautious stance on the true nature of the photograph. The boy gazes out into the darkness, with an almost ghostly lack of pigmentation contrasting with the darkness to create a sense of conflict.

The next piece, Heart Attack from Tracy Moffat, showed a young girl with a man in the privacy of a bedroom. In this photograph, the viewer is placed outside the room and viewing the subjects from behind, almost as though they are peering through the door. This gives the viewer an immediate sense of voyeurism, creating the feeling of unsettling. As the man is without clothes, and appears to be grabbing the young girl, the viewer becomes more unsettled. Of course a simple, innocent explanation for this may be that this is a father-daughter relationship and the father is helping the girl change clothes. Whatever the case, the imagery presented truly does unsettle the viewer.

The final pieces, a two painting series, present a therapy session. These two paintings form a series, and again create a sense of unsettling throughout subtle imagery. From the man’s forlorn look in one piece to the sense of grief inspired by the women in the other, these pieces appear to detail a troubled relationship. Perhaps this man has had an affair, the two women being his wife and her sister. Are they simply going through marriage counselling to address early difficulties? Or maybe this man is seeking help to deal with mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression or a substance abuse disorder.
Once again, these pieces are all connected through an underlying theme of unsettling. This sense of disturbance is created through subtle visual cues, and is done in such a way that it makes it difficult for the viewer to put their finger on exactly what is causing the sense of unsettling. Thanks go to the MAMA director for giving an excellent guided tour of these pieces, MAMA for putting on the exhibit and the organisers of WAM for making it all possible.

Writers in Action Blog 3: Meeting the Authors

As a part of Writers in Action (WiA), we were fortunate enough to be able to have a somewhat private meeting with two authors of the festival. On Friday the 9th of September we met with two authors featuring quite different texts joined by an underlying theme. Fleur Ferris and Anson Cameron’s latest releases are a fictional novel aimed at young adults and a memoir, respectively. Ferris was to launch her latest novel – ‘Black’ – that evening at the Albury Library-Museum, while Cameron’s memoir – ‘Boyhoodlum’ – had launched prior to the festival. After brainstorming some questions the night before our rather casual ‘group interview’, we settled in to the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) boardroom. Turning up slightly late left meant I was ripe for the picking, and since I was greeted by name by my classmates, this gave Cameron a name to use in later workshops when things fell quiet: “Josh, you’re never short of a word, what do you have to say?” Be punctual.

Several of the questions asked the authors their thoughts on writer’s festivals, in a hope to gain primary sources for our later research project on “What makes a writer’s festival?” In response to this question we got two different answers, and it became clear that Ferris and Cameron shared different ideals and views of the writer’s festival and its purpose. While Ferris noted that “meeting fascinating others” is a big draw card, Cameron took a more distant view by commenting on the overall atmosphere as one of a rock concert, citing the impassioned crowds and “great flow” to make his point. More clearly demonstrating the difference between the two authors was their response to the question of: “What do you get out of the festival as a goer rather than an author?” While Ferris expressed interest in sharing with/meeting young adults (largely her target demographic) and learning from other authors, Cameron appeared disinterested in using his time in such a way. This did not seem cold, but rather an honest summary of his interests and immediate goals, albeit one revealing a demonstrable difference in the motives of the two authors. With a sort of baseline set in terms of their motivations around and thoughts towards the writer’s festival, we naturally moved on to more general questions about the star of the festival, the writing itself. Questions around craft and the writing process came up, with Cameron likening it to driving at night “It lights up in front of you, but only so far”, his advice being to try and get involved in the story and lose sight of the big picture. Ferris offered a similar modus operandi, to write the story as a series of scenes before linking them up as one, also showing a tendency to write from within the story. Lastly, when asked which authors they would like to be compared to, both Ferris and Cameron showed slight reluctance to being likened to anyone. Despite this, Cameron listed off Twain, Dickens and Austen in an attempt to give some form of answer, while Ferris insisted that it was hard to list influences on her writing as she doesn’t “try and make it something it’s not”. This would go on to be in conflict with a comment at Cameron’s memoir writing workshop the following day. In this session Cameron claimed that you are – voluntarily or involuntarily – an amalgam of the writers you have experienced. This view was almost echoed in a panel discussion between Biff Ward, Ben Law and Helena Pastor in which there was agreement between the three that a great deal of us will subconsciously write the story we’ve always wanted to read.
I would like to thank Anson and Fleur for their time during what was surely a busy period for them, as well as our tutor Sue Gillett for organising this great opportunity.