Event Recap: High Tea With Melina Marchetta

Every so often Better Read Than Dead in Sydney hosts high tea events with Australian authors, and yesterday they had their biggest ever with Melina Marchetta. There was so much interest they had to  move the event out of their bookshop and in to a hall around the corner. They do a great job with creating a lovely high tea atmosphere, the food is awesome, and you get to hear an amazing author discuss their work - it's basically my idea of heaven. Also tickets are only $10, which is crazy good value. Seriously, I am obsessed with how brilliant these events are. And of course yesterday's event with one of my absolute favourite authors was extra brilliant.

If you're wondering what those non-Melina Marchetta books are - I won the lucky door prize, woo!

Melina discussed everything from writing Looking for Alibrandi to the On the Jellicoe Road film script and the novel she's just finished. Some of the highlights:

• Melina left school in Year 10 and at her mother's urging did a course to learn to type. Instead of typing random things she began writing what would go on to become Looking for Alibrandi. She would write little snippets of story and pass it to the girl next to her, who kept asking for more, which encouraged her. So her very first reader was a 16-year-old girl. But she said Alibrandi went through many, many rewrites, and even after she got an agent and later a publisher it needed work. She didn't keep a record of the process, but she believes she got rejected between five and eight times before Alibrandi was rescued from the slush pile. From the time she first started writing it through to when it was published, it took about five years. Her other novels have taken about 18 months from writing the first draft through to being published.
• Her love of reading was what got her in to writing. She had never seen a character like herself or her world portrayed, and that's what really drove her to create Alibrandi. But although she created a story within her world and tied to her experiences growing up in Australia with Italian heritage, she said it's not her life story and Josie Alibrandi is not her: "Josie is much smarter than me and I am much nicer than her." 
• She said "write what you know" is great advice, but that doesn't mean it has to be exactly your story - you can use your experiences or emotions to create a fictional journey: "My own life is very boring - the highlight of my day can be getting an email or going up the road to get a coffee." Melina used Saving Francesca as an example of this - working at an all boys school, she knew what it was to be a minority in that environment, and she used that in Francesca. 
• She was very proud of On the Jellicoe Road but when it was first published, nobody was really interested in it. She even had a bookseller tell her to her face that she didn't like it. People wanted her to keep writing Alibrandi and Francesca again and again, and didn't know what to make of this completely different story. But then it was published in America, and it was really what cracked the American market for her, and suddenly people in Australia were interested in it too. Now it is one of her most beloved books.
• Despite the themes of her first two books, she was never interested in writing about multi-culturalism forever - what interests her most, and what ties all her books together, is identity.
• Melina sees Finnikin of the Rock as a companion novel to Alibrandi. It has the same theme of identity, and searching for who you are, and of people displaced from their homeland. She was inspired to write Finnikin when she was living in New York for a couple of months, and she was sitting on the subway and saw an advertisement about refugees. And as she was sitting there she realised everyone around her was talking in different accents and languages, and everyone, included herself, was disconnected from their homeland. Those two observations led to Finnikin. She wanted to write a story about refugees but she didn't want to set it in the here and now because it would be too political, so she created the fantasy world. 
• Finnikin is almost as much Evanjalin's story, but Evanjalin didn't get a POV because she's got too much to hide.
• The descriptive language was something she worked hard to get right when writing fantasy. While most of her novels undergo at least five rewrites, she rewrote scenes in the Lumatere Chronicles up to 20 times. She would write a scene, and then sit there with a thesauraus to find just the right word for each thing she wanted to convey, to create a rhythm within the prose. She said the important thing with fantasy is that there is a song that is sung through the writing.
• Finnikin and Francesca were both written as standalones, but they each had characters that wouldn't leave her alone (that'd be Froi and Tom!).
• Tom Mackee was originally supposed to be the villain in Francesca. But one comment he made in the novel - about being the first Mackee male to get to a certain age with his liver intact - stuck with her over the years. One night Melina was watching an Australian Story about Vietnam vets who were going back to Vietnam because the bodies of five soldiers had never been recovered, and she had a "mystical moment" where she felt Tom Mackee sitting next to her saying "that's my grandfather." He also said "and Georgie Finch is my aunt" - she had been thinking of Georgie as a character for another story at the time. She said she doesn't really buy into what a lot of writers say about things just coming to them, or that writing is some mystical process - "it's mostly really hard work" - but that was one of the few moments she's had like that. And that led to The Piper's Son.
• Jimmy Hailer's story is very much in Melina's head right now. He and Siobhan did not appear in The Piper's Son because she could only include who Tom brought with him, and he didn't bring those two characters, but she was aware their absence was a presence that was felt, and they were still there even if they weren't an active part of the story. She has been thinking of Jimmy in the past two days in particular, and she knows what will happen in his story, but she needs to get the chance to write it. She said she firmly believes stories are written at the right time - and she feels that now is Jimmy's time. She wanted to stress that it won't be YA - Jimmy is about 25 or 26. He is still drifting, as Jimmy does. He will get stuck in a house for three days due to a flood, with another character who was in a short story Melina wrote last year (I have yet to read that one - I need to).  There will be two other main characters, in their 40s - another woman who was in that short story, and her love interest. It will be about these four characters, but the old gang will definitely show up in some way. 
• The novel Melina just finished is unlike anything she's written before. Her agent describes it as a "literary thriller" and it is an adult novel set in London. It's about an explosion on a bus that is tied to an explosion on the London underground 14 years earlier. She said while in the past her novels have been about young people where older people play an important part, this one is about older people, where younger people play an important part. It was partly inspired by Melina's feelings over anti-terror laws. 
• Melina is currently tinkering with the Jellicoe film script. She said it has to be absolutely perfect because they're hoping to get the right backing in the new year to finally get it made. They've auditioned actors and she said if it was made tomorrow, she knows they definitely have a Jonah Griggs, Ben Cassidy and Jude Scanlon - and they are all "amazing, and hot too". But she can't say who they are because by the time the film gets made they might not be able to do it for whatever reason (Hollywood might snatch them up - "and Hollywood will definitely snatch them up" - or they might get too old, for instance).
• Melina said film scripts are incredibly difficult and complicated because there is a lot more to consider than when writing a novel. And the people who are funding it are not necessarily interested in what's in the novel. It sounds like the Jellicoe script might be quite different from the book, but she said the "six most important things" that are in the novel are also in the script. She also said that everyone who has read the script has loved it.
• Her advise for writers: just write! Melina said she meets a lot of people who say they want to be writers but aren't actually writing anything, and she understands the difficulty of putting things on the page and the fear that it will never live up to what's in your head. She said her latest novel was in her head for a year before she put anything to paper - and it ended up being even better than what was in her head. She said you need to write something every day - it doesn't have to be much, and you might end up throwing out three quarters, but that one quarter might be the hook you need to hang the next thing on. Even if one sentence out of hundreds is gold, it's worth it and that's what you need to do. 
• You should also rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Melina said people ask her how she, for example, plants something early in a book that doesn't have meaning until much later on, and she said that's the sort of thing that comes through rewriting. It's only when you rewrite that you really know the characters and can really flesh them out and add those little, meaningful details. But you need to get that first draft done as the foundation to then go back and rewrite and make it better.
• Melina is the queen of YA and it seems she will soon be the queen of adult fiction too - of course she didn't say this, but I am. If you haven't read her books you should go buy them all right now.

Note-Worthy: The Silvey Experience

Warning: Excessive and incoherent fangirling ahead.

You guys, you guys. You guys. This week I met Craig Silvey. The person who created one of my favourite books of the year - nay, of all time.

When the lovely Eleanor Rigby alerted me to the fact that Craig Silvey would be in Sydney promoting his new novella The Amber Amulet this week, I literally squeeed out loud (squee-ed? Squeed? Whatever, there was lots of squee). The Husband looked at me as if to say, "What is it now?" and when I explained between gasps and squees that Craig Mother Effing Silvey was going to be in our city in a matter of days, he raised his eyebrows and nodded as if to say, "You're kinda cray but I kinda understand". He loved Jasper Jones too so he was keen to come along, although not quite as excited as me.

We got to Shearers Bookshop a little early and decided to grab a light dinner at the cafe there before The Silvey Show was due to start at 7pm. It was about 6.30pm and I was minding my own business, munching down on my ham and cheese croissant as The Husband talked to me about something - I can't for the life of me remember what it was now - when over his shoulder I spotted none other than the Jasper Jones author himself. He was chatting casually to the owners of the bookshop. I think I must have cracked some sort of goofy smile because The Husband asked, "what's so funny?" I tried to communicate to him, while keeping my squees on the inside, that ZOMG CRAIG SILVEY IS LIKE TWO METRES AWAY RIGHT NOW BUT DON'T TURN AROUND IT WILL BE TOO OBVIOUS AND ZOMG IS THIS REAL LIFE... The Husband turned around, not very subtly, and took in the sight. His conclusion? "Hey, he's wearing pretty much the same outfit as me." Yes dear, he is. I already noticed that. I love you a little bit more now.

Anyhoo... I was debating whether to choke down the rest of my croissant and ambush the poor author, or go hide in a corner to avoid embarrassing myself, when he and his entourage slipped away upstairs (spoiler: it would have been the latter option). So I finished my meal with dignity before buying a copy of the gorgeous little The Amber Amulet. We then grabbed our seats to wait for the official arrival of The Silvemeister (as I have decided to call him, coz I'm presumptuous like that). He finally appeared on the mezzanine above us, which formed a nice "pulpit", as Silvey commented. To start things off, he did a reading from The Amber Amulet, which was brilliant, and then he discussed where he got the inspiration for the novella from. It was fascinating to get insight into the way his mind worked and the process through which his idea developed;  especially how he could get the story of a little boy who roams his neighbourhood as The Masked Avenger from thinking about carbon and oxygen and diamonds and physicists. It sounds random, but when Silvey explained it, it made complete sense. Basically, it's about how we're all connected - quite literally, we're all made of the same stuff. Stardust, to be exact - in reference to Lawrence Krauss. It wasn't just the ideas he was discussing that were interesting though, it was the way Silvey put them; he has a completely engaging manner and a wonderful way with words. It gave me goosebumps.

After he had finished the audience was given the chance to ask questions. I was too chicken to ask any, but one man asked if Silvey had had a good teacher that inspired him to read and write, to which he answered no, his English teachers were pretty crap, but there was a local writer who became a mentor to him after he sent him his first ("terrible" - as if!) manuscript. He said he was always a big reader because, growing up in the country, there wasn't a lot to do or see, so reading was his way of accessing other places and adventures, from the safety of his home, of course - important, he says, because he was a big coward (so nothing like The Masked Avenger, he reckons). He said he didn't have much guidance in terms of what he read - he pretty much read anything and everything, though this caused a slight problem when he was scandalised upon reading A Clockwork Orange at the age of 12 - he'd been enticed by its bright cover.

Silvey also mentioned that The Amber Amulet was meant to be a short story, but he kept writing and it turned into a novella. He said in terms of word limits, every story should be "as long as it needs to be" and he doesn't like to aim for a particular number or limit himself. Someone asked about Jasper Jones, and Silvey said he still couldn't quite get his head around its success. When Jeffrey Wu was mentioned the audience breathed a collective sigh of appreciation - it seems he's a fan favourite, as well as an author favourite. Silvey explained that, when writing the cricket scene, it was one of the only times his affection for a character has changed the story. Initially, the scene was meant to end very differently for Jeffrey, but Silvey said, "I just couldn't do it to the little guy." Judging from the audience's reaction, I'm not the only one who appreciated the triumphant ending of the scene. It's one of my favourite parts of the book.

One lady asked, quite rudely I thought, whether Jasper Jones was "as easy to write as it was to read" and whether Silvey would write something that good again. Silvey laughed and said he's glad it reads that way, and that he hoped The Amber Amulet had the same effect. To which the woman called out, "but it's too short!" I cast her a sideways bitchface for daring to question the greatness of The Silvemeister; he, meanwhile, didn't seem to know what to say. The lady then confessed she hadn't even read The Amber Amulet, and he basically said she should and that he hoped it had the same feel and heart as Jasper Jones.

On that note, it was time to line up to get our books signed. I held my brand new copy of The Amber Amulet and gave The Husband our copy of Jasper Jones to get signed. We were third in line and I totally wasn't prepared. I handed The Silvemeister my book and, my mouth completely dry, squeaked out "great speech!" He thanked me and said he was relieved because he wasn't sure anybody else would find it interesting, to which I responded with something dazzlingly articulate like, "Oh, no, it was real good." He looked at me questioningly and I realised I hadn't told him my name. I did, and then, feeling like a total dork, I spluttered out a request for a photo. He said, "of course" and I thrust my phone into The Husband's hand and jumped around the table to Silvey's side. The Husband explained that he was, in fact, my husband, and not a random stranger I'd handed my phone over to without so much as a "would you mind?". After he took the photo, he handed over our copy of Jasper Jones and told Silvey to make it out in my name too, coz I'm not a crazy fangirl at all. I awkwardly suggested he address it to both of us because we'd both read the book on our honeymoon. Silvey laughed and said, "I'm glad I could be there", and my heart just about stopped. Nearly a week later, it's slowly returning to its normal rhythm...