Resident wordsmith
Whether you’re a poet, novelist, non-fiction author or a combination of all three, where you’re most productive is often a matter of personal taste. While not many would have a retreat like Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye in Jamaica, your place of work is still important.
However you choose to work, a writer-in-residence placement can be a valuable experience for writers at any stage of their career, and there are also a number of benefits for the academic institution and its students.
Recently, Indigenous author Anita Heiss took on a month long residency at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) – funded by our own Cultural Fund. For the Sydney based author, this was her second writer-in-residence placement, the first being in 2004 at Macquarie University.
So how does it compare with working at home?
‘The residency was truly a gift to me as a writer,’ says Anita.
‘Working in an academic environment with all the energy and traffic that brings is very different to my usual writing routine. In Sydney, I write in a completely quiet space, and in blocks of time over the period it takes to write each book.
‘For instance, for both Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming I wrote with focus for five to six hours a day, seven days per week for around eight weeks, to complete a first draft. Here, my day is broken up with various other activities – a lecture, a meeting, students dropping by etc. But each day at QUT brought with it more ideas, characters (including a roaming bush turkey) and designated time to pull together my storyline.’
There’s also a wealth of resources at your fingertips which comes in handy, especially if research is involved. The novel Anita is currently working on,
Tiddas, is set in Brisbane, so the time spent was a perfect opportunity to get to know the local landscape, thereby creating an authentic world for her characters.
The novel follows the lives of five 40-year-old women from Mudgee living in and around the city of Brisbane.
‘I’ve done an enormous amount of research while I’ve been here, learning about the histories, demographics and urban myths related to the locations my characters live in: West End, The Gap, Paddington, Kangaroo Point and Upper Brookfield,’ Anita explains.
And while QUT’s students benefit from being close to a writer in action – Anita’s also learnt a thing or two from them.
‘I spent some time with creative writing students who reminded me of the benefits of learning the craft of writing as opposed to my own method – just jump in the deep end and swim – so to speak. I also worked with trainee editors studying here at QUT who showed me alternative ways of considering some text I’d written on my forthcoming memoir Am I Black Enough For You?’
Part of the residency requires Anita to give a lecture which summarises her work while being a writer-in-residence – a review that lets her know how productive she’s been in the placement.
‘It was a valuable process for me to consolidate the work I’d done to a keen audience, many of whom generously gave ideas of what I could also include in the novel,’ she says.
‘I am enormously grateful to Copyright Agency and QUT for the opportunity to write for a month in a beautiful location, and I have blogged much of the journey here:
http://anitaheissblog.blogspot.com/.’
Anita is due to complete
Tiddas in 2012.
Photography by Richard Birch.