Josephine Rowe is a Melbourne based writer of
fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her recent work appears in Best
Australian Stories, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, The
Iowa Review and Harvard Review. She is the
author of short story collections How a Moth Becomes a Boat (Hunter
Publishers, 2010) and Tarcutta Wake (UQP, 2012).
Is writing in the short-form
something you plan or is it more organic than that? Is there a reason for the
brevity? Can you describe your process for me?
A lot of my
fiction is poetically-influenced, and in some ways my methodology for fiction
writing—the polishing of fragments, the assembling followed by the endless
paring back—is not dissimilar to the way I construct poetry. But I’d consider
myself as a fiction writer foremost, whereas poems for me are mysterious
creatures that come largely unbidden, and I might only write a handful of them
a year.
That fragmentary element is a constant, whatever form I’m working in
(non-fic included), but beyond that, the processes differ depending on the
piece. Within my shorter stories, or those strange beasts that exist in the
space between poetry and fiction, it’s what I call ‘cold drip’ writing; a slow
filtration process where the end result is very dense, very sensory; ‘overfull’
(‘Atlantic City’ might
be a good example).
More recently I’ve been writing longer stories (long for me is a few
thousand words), and I think that in part, the length corresponds to how deeply
the story is rooted in a particular landscape (‘TarcuttaWake’, for instance). Something about that geographical grounding invites
sprawling. I’m thinking of the root systems of trees here, their relationship
to the canopy.
As for brevity, I’ll be honest and say I don’t know the reason for it
beyond instinct. Perhaps it can be narrowed down to two basic things: a dislike
of waste, and a dislike of condescension—I can’t stand fiction that
overexplains.
Raw. Honest. Exquisite.
Emotional heart. I’ve read your work and in my opinion these are all accurate
descriptions. When you sit down to write are you writing for yourself, for the
sake of the story, or do you have an audience in mind? Do you have an ‘ideal’
reader?
‘For the sake of the story’—that’s wonderful, I haven’t been given that
option before! For the sake of the story, always. A question that’s often asked
is ‘what should a good short story do?’, and I don’t believe there is a form-specific function, or if there is, it’s so broad as to
be meaningless (to entertain, to move, etc., etc.). The beauty of the short
story as a form is how open and adaptable it is, and I think readers are more
willing to go into unfamiliar territory—be it stylistically, linguistically or
thematically unfamiliar—purely because of that brevity. Look at Eudora Welty’s
‘Where Is the Voice Coming From’, which is an incredibly brave and troubling
story told from the p.o.v of a thoroughly reprehensible ‘other’. No way would
you want to spend a whole novel with that narrator, but to spend those few
pages with him, that’s manageable.
In regards to readers, I’m mindful of ‘a’ reader, that the story has to
be communicable. But no, I don’t have a particular audience in mind when I
write, nor an ideal reader.
Do you ever suffer
self-doubt? How do you deal with/push through it?
My self-doubt is highly-evolved, and has the astonishing ability to
adapt to any environment. Did I say the
right thing? Do I actually take X up
on her invitation to drinks/dinner/etc., or was she just being polite? Is this
the right brand of tumeric to buy? It’s a running joke, old enough to be
funny despite the real and measurable setbacks.
When it comes to writing, it is certainly the biggest inhibitor. A bad
morning or a bad day is small change; I might try to shake myself out of it
with a walk, a phonecall to a friend or a visit to a gallery. Or I’ll put on
some music or the radio and try to do boring admin things, so at least
something productive gets done (again, that dislike of waste—what was it that
Hemingway said about wasted days?)
But sometimes that doubt proves unshakeable, and it might settle in for
a week or even months. I’m getting a little better at riding those dry spells
out. They used to terrify me; I thought I’d never write another good thing. But
the older I get—well, ha, I’m twenty-eight but please humour me—the older I get
the more time I feel I have, the more time I feel I can and should take, and
any urgency comes from outside; from deadlines, commissions and such. I
sometimes see those unproductive periods as almost a sub-conscious
intervention, a kind of opening up to let the rest of life in.
Do you think there is still
a market for short stories? Give your reasons.
Are we talking about the Australian market or the global market? We do
seem to have it a bit trickier here. I certainly think the short story is still
valued in Australia, but ‘short story market’ is something of an oxymoron.
Nobody puts out a short story collection in response to the demands of the
market—rather, the market demands to know why you aren’t writing a novel. But
short stories are still being written and published and read, and will continue
to be written and published and read. I do two of those things avidly, and I’d
do all three if I had the funds. My advice is to ignore the market and write
for the love of it. Let the marketing folks worry about the market.
What are your thoughts on
the publishing industry at this time? Indie vs Mainstream? Paper book vs ebook?
I haven’t known the publishing industry at any other time, so I don’t
have the strongest grounds for comparison, beyond what I’ve read and what I
know from older writers and artists. But I get the sense that the same crises
are on something of a rotating roster—the novel has been dying for decades.
There has never and will never be a market for short stories. There has always
been a treacherous smoking chasm between industry standards of pay and actual
pay*, so why don’t we all just burn our manuscripts and take up law?
As mentioned in the last question, I don’t think all that much about
markets and the state of the industry (which can’t be all that miserable if million dollar book deals are becoming passé). I
just write as well as I can, and try to maintain some perspective—nine years of
writing, that’s an eyelash. I plan on sticking around long enough to be
painfully embarrassed by everything I’m writing now.
Recently, I came across a quote from Dorothy Hewett in a 1998 interview
with Overland: “…there will always be little presses, I believe
this. There will always be people who believe in us, in creativity, who set up
with virtually no money and just enthusiasm and idealism, to get out books.”
That’s still very much the case, fifteen years on.
I don’t see paper books as being in competition with ebooks; the two are
simply different platforms for the same content, both with their own
limitations and possibilities. I am a paper book buyer and borrower, and
imagine I always will be. But I appreciate that ebooks allow for greater
accessibility, so I’m not going to launch bottle rockets into the e-camp. It
doesn’t have to be an either or.
Name the last five
collections you have read. Which was your favourite and why?
Alice Munro The Love of a Good
Woman
Ali Smith Free Love
Stephanie Vaughn Sweet Talk
George Saunders Tenth of December
Chris Somerville We Are Not the
Same Anymore
Let me clarify/fess up by saying that these are the five collections I
am currently jumping between. It’s rare that I’ll read a short story collection
straight through, unless it’s for review, or it’s my sole companion on a
long-haul flight, or I have to give it back to someone very quickly. All the
abovementioned authors are wonderful, but George Saunders… I think anyone who
has read or is reading Tenth of December
will appreciate my hesitation to talk too much about him here, lest I gush. So
I’ll just say that this is the best collection I’ve read since Alistair
MacLeod’s Island, and that it is
nothing at all like Island, except
inasmuch as both works show astounding generosity and humanity, even when
dealing in the devastating and the mediocre.
*actually, if there was less of a treacherous smoking chasm between
industry rates and actual rates of pay for writers, that would be great.
Jennifer Mills has a great post about it here.
Learn more about Josephine here.
