The National Writers’ Conference was held at the State Library of Victoria across June 23-24 2018. This year was particular exciting for lovers of Australian fantasy, because one of the patrons was Isobelle Carmody.
If you have never read Carmody’s writing, you should remedy this immediately. She is beloved for her Obernewtyn series, which she started writing when she was only fourteen years old. But she has also written a variety of other books and series which are adored by readers, such as the Legendsong Saga, The Gathering, and The Gateway Trilogy.
At the conference’s opening event, Carmody offered some ‘rules of writing’ she had gleaned during her writing career alongside fellow ambassadors Melissa Lucaschenko, Ellen van Neerven, Michael Mohammad Ahmad, and Stuard Grant. She was also on a panel alongside C.S. Pacat and Marlee Jane Ward, which delved into the nuances of worldbuilding in writing, and finally she graciously hosted an ‘ask me anything’. After rapturously attending all three, these were the nuggets of truth and insight which I took home.
Writing As Working Through Experience
Growing up in a housing commission as the eldest of eight children, Carmody was more often than not caring for her siblings. Obernewtyn first emerged as one of the stories she would tell her siblings to keep them entertained. Carmody’s comment about her writing was that she used writing to work through and understand some of the very difficult things she experienced during her childhood; her father was tragically killed when she was reasonably young, and her sparse comments about the housing commission in which her family lived paint a dark portrait indeed.
Trust In The Creative Process
If you happen to be a fan of Carmody (which obviously you should be), and you have been tortured by the experience of waiting for her to release the next novel in one of her series (hello Legendsong, the Gateway trilogy and until 2015, the Obernewtyn Chronicles), there may be moments when you have wondered what on earth has taken her so long. There seems to be a reason.
Carmody is a self-confessed ‘pantser’ (as opposed to the type of author who plans out exactly what’s going to happen in a book before they start writing), and will allow her ideas to dictate the story. When she reaches a point in the narrative where the resolution isn’t immediately apparent, she will wait “sometimes for years” for the solution to present itself to her. Her advice to writers is thus to trust in the creative process and the ideas that are generated within her own mind.
She elaborated on her experience that story ideas could “percolate” in her mind sometimes for years during which she would perfect them, until she feels she is ready to start writing it down.
Allow The Characters To Drive The Worldbuilding
There are several divergent approaches when it comes to worldbuilding for fantasy writing. Carmody’s commented that she allows the characters to dictate the elements of the world, noting that she prefers to start a story with a central character and build the world around them. Her comment was that when writing a scene, parts of the world with which the character will interact and in turn, reveals features of the novel’s setting. She tantalisingly revealed a scene she wrote in a forthcoming book in which her protagonist was walking down the street and being watched. Only as she wrote that did she realise that the world had mechanised observers to track the movements of its people—making it a semi-dystopian setting.
This character driven approach to writing was something about which she commented that a piece of advice she often gives in any writing masterclass she takes is to stop a scene and then introduce an unexpected event such as a thunderstorm into the writing. The manner in which the characters on the page react to this kind of insertion can then offer insight into them, which of course informs how the story can progress. Moreover, Carmody delineated that the character should drive the exposition of the world rather than to simply put slabs of exposition within a chapter.
Enjoy The Space Before Being Published
Carmody is the first to acknowledge her good fortune. Obernewtyn was accepted by the first publisher to whom she sent it. As such, her experience actually differs from that of many writers. Nevertheless, it means that for almost the entirety of her writing career, she has been subject to the expectations and pressures of having a publishing contract. For this reason, she advised her audience to enjoy the freedom offered by not being beholden to a publishing contract. Her explanation was that a publisher inevitably places demands upon the time of authors in terms of deadlines and publicity. She gently pointed out that publishers’ interests do not often align with authors, given that they are operating on a profit motive and as such, they want the next book as quickly as possible, with concern of quality not being as high a priority for them as it might be for the author. A self-confessed perfectionist, Carmody spoke of the tension she often encounters with her publisher who want her manuscripts, often before they are at a stage where she is willing to hand them over. Passionately, she told her audience to make publishers “take it from your cold, dead hands,” and only hand it in “when you’re ready.”
Truly, it is this attitude, this belief in the creative process, and approach to character-based narratives, which give her stories their intricate nature. And it is the willingness to say no to her publisher so that she is satisfied with the writing she produces that has made her one of Australia’s most well-regarded authors.
If you want to hear her speak on the experience of being an author, you can listen to Carmody’s interview on The Garret Podcast here.
