Ahead of her workshop Plotting and Structure, award-winning author Katherine Brabon reflects on how her writing practice has changed since welcoming motherhood, and discusses the authors who, in one way or another, have been an inspiration.
Katherine’s novel Body Friend was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Body Friend is an intimate, Melbourne-set psychological exploration of chronic illness and the relationship between the body and the self.
Her latest novel, Cure, acts as a companion piece to Body Friend, shifting the focus to generational illness. The story follows an anxious mother, Vera, and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Thea, who share the same chronic affliction. Together, they embark on a pilgrimage to Italy’s Lake Como in search of a rumoured healer. Cure is a tender depiction on their relationship.
Our members often say their biggest challenge is finding the time to write. How do you fit writing into your life?
Since having a child and returning to work, I have very limited time to write. This actually helps me be productive when I do have time: it’s now or never! From that I think there’s a good lesson: to try to find discrete chunks of time and work then, rather than feel like you should be writing all the time. That being said, there’s a lot that goes into ‘writing’ (reading, being inspired, living, taking notes and reflecting). See this as part of you practice too; it’s like training for the event.
What great essays, short stories or novels do you recommend people read to learn more about structure?
There could be so many answers to this question! I think reading widely, reading translated works, reading for enjoyment, reading to be challenged, all help with learning about structure. Some that come to mind: Michelle de Kretser’s Scary Monsters and Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book for subverting conventional narrative structures in novels; Jon Fosse’s Aliss at the Fire for shifting seamlessly (sometimes within a sentence) between points of view and across centuries; Claire Thomas’s The Performance and Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite for the use of a play structure in the novel form.
What is some of the best advice you’ve received that’s helped you as a writer?
This is not so much one piece of advice but more wisdom by example: lately, I have been thinking about those authors who have pursued a vision over time, honed a voice, worked against or beyond trends and their work has eventually found the right readers, and then many readers. Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume brought these thoughts to mind recently, as she pursued this project over many years and self-published decades after her earlier works. And WG Sebald, a longtime inspiration of mine, published his first prose works in his forties. I think a lot of emerging writers – me included! – feel the need to get work out straight away, to always be pursuing the next thing, to have found ‘it’/our voice straight away. Sometimes I think of writers like this and it’s like taking a pause, a breath. If their wisdom by example could be distilled into a takeaway line it might be: take the time you need to write the work you want to write, in the voice that is truest to you.
Without spoiling your upcoming workshop, what advice would you give to writers who want to explore plot and structure further?
I try to encourage workshop participants to take a step further in their understanding of their aims for their work-in-progress. Often, articulating a challenge or struggle with structure, pacing or plot helps the writer to see how that issue is connected to what they want to say. We spend a lot of time discussing each other’s work, because there’s so much to learn from someone else’s challenge or artistic pursuit. Maybe the novel needs another character’s point of view. Perhaps the story needs to start here instead of there. We can get caught up in planning and not be writing, or we can be writing and need to take a step back to see the work as a whole. Discussion and reading other works can help to work through some challenges and inspire some writing momentum in participants.
How has Writers Victoria helped you as a writer?
Writers Victoria has always been a hugely valuable resource for me, for advice that an emerging writer can trust, and to learn about opportunities available to writers – it can be hard to know what’s out there, particularly when you’re just starting out. More recently, I’ve had the opportunity to run workshops, which has brought me back to teaching after a number of years. I always learn so much myself when I’m working with other writers.
Enrol in Katherine Brabon’s online workshop Plotting and Structure on 16 August. Place are limited. Book now to avoid dissapointment.