Category: History

Q&A part 4: challenges and triumphs

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Question: What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your writing career?

P. J. Moroney: Most of it’s a challenge. No one does it to get rich, though that’d be nice. You do it for love. You do it because you must. You do it because that’s who you are. It’s all a challenge, but most things worthwhile are.

But, yeah, that’s not the answer you want. Well, consider this. I’ve been writing since I was about 17. I figured it was something I wanted to do seriously from about my early twenties. I’ve been writing in all the years since and dreaming about it. I have a bagful of old notebooks with scratchings from when I was just a kid. There’s a hard drive full of stories and fragments and so on. All of that, and I’ve only just now finally got something published. You could say just persisting all that time is a challenge. I deserve a medal, and most writers do.

I guess the biggest challenge is mental. To keep going takes a fair bit of stubborn belief. You have to believe that you have something worth saying and something that people might want to hear or read. I don’t know what kept me going. Some of my early writing was awful, and if I knew it then I might not have gone on. Good thing I didn’t. But that’s the thing you have to deal with: doubt and discouragement.

I always felt the need to express myself by writing. It was like I had so much going on that I had to get it out somehow, and writing seemed natural to me. It was a way of interpreting and understanding things. What are stories but parables? Over time, you get better at it. You see and think with more clarity, and the words come more precisely. I always read a lot and loved it – loved the language as much as anything. I had things I needed to say, but I wanted to say them stylishly, too. So, you keep at it.

I’m half amazed that I published anything. It didn’t look good a while back, but I always said I would do it. Now it’s done. So, yeah, the biggest challenge is believing in yourself and staying the course.

Question: You have done it, and congratulations – but now you have, you must plan to publish more now.

P. J. Moroney: You betcha.

Question: Are stories only really parables?

P. J. Moroney: Maybe they’re a bit more than that, but not a lot in my book. Depends on the sort of writer you are, I guess. You hope your writing is entertaining and enjoyable to read, but you’re saying something, aren’t you, or showing it? And instead of saying it straight out, you couch it in the form of a story that people can sympathise with and understand without having to process it too much. It’s the old adage, show, not tell.

But that’s not true of every writer. It is for me.

Question: Can you share a particularly rewarding moment in your writing journey?

P. J. Moroney: My first interview? Maybe I do have something worth hearing.

But really, it’s probably being published, though it fades fast. It’s definitely a milestone and very satisfying, but once it’s done, it’s done. You’ve worked on it so hard for so long that it’s great when it pays off – that’s the point, isn’t it? – but then it’s finished and in the past, and you’re onto the next one. I find I live very much in the moment when I’m writing.

But I reckon I’ll be pretty pleased when they make a movie out of my book.

Q&A part 1: background and inspiration

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I had an interesting Q&A session answering a range of questions about my writing, how I got started, my routines, and inspiration and so on. What’s interesting about it is that it forces me to think about and articulate many of the things I take for granted or haven’t considered for a long time. Whether you’re a writer or not, I think it can be a rewarding and enlightening experience.

There’s quite a bit, so I’ll add the entire session over a few posts. This is the first. Feel free to ask me your own questions.

Question: Can you tell us about your journey from the corporate world to becoming a writer?

P. J. Moroney: Well, I was always a writer, I think, but it was easier making a living working in corporate, so that’s what I did. I was good at it mostly and enjoyed a lot of it. It’s an interesting question to consider as I think the split between those two options reflected different sides of my persona. And I think my writing fed off my work to a large degree.

To start with, I never considered my writing to be a viable career option, so it was easy to work a job instead. My dad was a bit of a mover and shaker and would wear a suit to work every day, so I grew up around that. I never really considered any other option but white collar.

It suited me in ways. Back when I started, it was pretty ruthless, but I took to it. I saw it as a challenge and I discovered I was more robust and competitive than I thought. I enjoyed the cut and thrust. Enjoyed the striving. I think it made me a little of who I am.

It wasn’t a bad life. We were the cliche, worked hard, played hard. I had the attitude that I didn’t want to moulder and grow old in the corner, so I put my hand up for a lot. It was more interesting that way, and it could be very rewarding. It financed a lifestyle for many years.

For a while, I styled myself as a bit of a corporate bohemian. I was deliberately out of step in ways, but much of it came naturally. I realised it was more fun doing things for the experience than the reward, though I prospered from it. I was very confident of my abilities and always reckoned I was more value giving my honest opinion than toeing the conventional line. I think I got a reputation for being blunt, though once someone said I was like a wholesome, private school type. It might sound corny, but integrity was always important to me. I was never a yes man.

Long story short, you get older, life happens, shit happens, perspectives change, and so do the times. I was pretty jaded towards the end. Stale and unhappy. Even angry. I was writing a lot more by then – I’d always written – and was beginning to think that I might make something of it. The big moment came, and I took it – a redundancy. That’s when I really started to take my writing seriously.

I’m skipping over a lot of stuff here – a few catastrophes along the way, Covid, cancer, and so on, but that’s the general drift.

I still do some corporate stuff, but freelance, minus suit and tie, working from home and only when I want to. Have to pay the rent.

Question: You said you were angry. What were you angry about?

P. J. Moroney: I’d had cancer. I felt damaged. I was damaged – didn’t have the strength or stamina of before, I was half deaf and couldn’t speak near as well. It’s hard to take. I felt diminished, and it was a long time before I could accept it. I was always too proud.

Anyway, I returned as this lesser person. I had the will for the contest but not all the tools. So it seemed – and I think, in hindsight, I thought myself more deficient than I was. In the meantime, I felt labelled, categorised, squeezed into a smaller space. There was a bit of paranoia in it, but healthy paranoia, if such a thing exists. I could have let it go, but that wasn’t my style. Here I am.

Question: That’s quite powerful. How do you use that experience in your writing?

P. J. Moroney: Time will tell.

Question: How ambitious were you in your corporate life?

P. J. Moroney: That’s an interesting one to answer. I think I was ambitious on principle, but I was never much interested in status. I took things on like they were a contest I had to win. The harder and tougher it was, the more I liked it. When I started out one of my best mates told me he didn’t want any responsibility and I couldn’t get that. I wanted responsibility. I wanted to be the man, and that was true for many years. There’s some interesting psychology in that I might write about one day. Maybe I have already.

I never wanted to be CEO or anything like that, though. It was too reductive to me. What I craved was the challenge, which is why I moved from contract to contract and took on projects, I think. I liked jobs I could score.

I was ambitious from the point of view of the challenge and the rewards, but it was all about life experience. I wanted to live fully, which is why I moved between jobs and why I travelled. I had my own business for a bit, and I’m glad I did – that was a dare I couldn’t refuse. It was lucrative while it lasted, but life moves on.

Question: What inspired you to write your first novel?

P. J. Moroney: Was it inspiration? There was no light bulb moment. I was always writing. Scraps mainly. Short stories. I figured I wanted to write a novel one day, but…

This was about 20-odd years ago. One day, I had the idea for the novel. I don’t know where it came from. Elsewhere, I’ve said Heart of Darkness influenced me. I loved that book. The theme of journeying into darkness is a killer. Very me, as it turns out. Plus, the voice of Marlowe – I wanted first-person omniscient for my novel. But is there a direct connection? I doubt it. I think that probably came later.

I loved the old film noir movies, too. They probably had an indirect influence. But where did the idea come from? Magic. Thin air. One day, it wasn’t; the next day it was. That’s the beauty of creativity – it has depths you can never understand.

Mind you, though the idea came way back, it took many years before I started to write it. I’m glad it happened. For a long time, I thought it never would.