Welcome to State Library Victoria's Tablo community – we're here to support emerging Victorian writers and provide a space for readers and authors to connect.

A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists by Jane Rawson: 9 Feb, 2017

It's 1997 in San Francisco. Simon and Sarah are on a quest to stand in every 25-foot square of the United States at least once. Decades later, in Australian, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River. She’s sick of being broke and alone. Caddy’s future changes when her friend, Ray, finds some well-worn maps—including one of San Francisco. Their lives connect with those of Simon and Sarah in ways that are both unexpected and profound.

A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists was the winner of the Most Underrated Book of 2014.

Jane Rawson will join us for a Q&A on Thursday, 9 February between 8 and 9pm. Please leave any questions you have below. (And discuss the book at your leisure!)

Want to buy A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists? Receive 10% off when purchasing it from Readings at State Library Victoria. To receive the discount online, enter the promo code BOOKCLUB in the promo code box during online checkout. To receive the discount at our State Library bookshop, simply mention the Thursday night book club at the counter.

  • Created
← Currently viewing a single comment. Back to the whole discussion.

These questions came from Eva Lomski on Twitter:

"yr process for this novel vs process for yr short stories? Why write both?"

https://twitter.com/EvaLomski/status/829290905123356673

Hi Eva, hmmm, good question. I started writing ‘A wrong turn…’ in 2007 so I reckon my recollections of my process are not entirely solid, but I can talk more generally about writing novels and short stories, both of which I’m still doing. Really, my process for both is kind of the same. I usually leap in with a vague idea of what this thing will be about, start writing, and see what happens. When I run out of ideas, I stop and reflect for a bit. Then I keep writing. At the end, I rewrite until it’s either good enough, or I decide it will never be good enough and throw it out. This is a bit simplistic of course, but in general terms it’s true – I don’t know much about what I’m going to write when I start writing, whether it’s a novel or a short story, and I write to find out more about what it is I’m writing.
I think I write both because some ideas are short and some ideas take a few more words to flesh out. My short stories tend to be pretty short – 800 words feels like my natural length – and the kind of idea you can write about in 800 words is pretty different to the kind that takes 50,000 words or more. For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to get started on a novel about an alternate Australia where Anzac Day is the national religion, but a few months ago I tried writing it as a story instead and it turned out I could do the whole thing better in 800 words than I could in 60,000. That’s the other good thing about short stories – they’re much quicker to write (for me, anyway. Those people who write brilliant, complex, nuanced short stories probably take absolute ages over them).
And probably the other reason I write short stories is sometimes I just feel desperate for attention. You can write a short story and send it out to people and have them tell you what they think of it, sometimes in the course of a day. Even if you send it to publishers, it might only take them three months to let you know what they think of it. With novels, there are long breaks between being praised (though also long breaks between being ignored/derided, so maybe novels are better...)

Reply arrow green
  • Anonymous