The question is, why do I write? Where did that impulse arise? How? Why? I don’t think that’s something I can ever know for sure, and probably it’s not one thing that has led me down the path of writing, but rather a combination of things thrown into the pot together have made me the man I am – and the writer I’ve become.
One of my earliest memories is reading The Shaggy Dog Story. I was reputedly three going on four at the time, and that was the first book of thousands I’ve gone on to read. My mum encouraged me to read. She’d been a singer once and had a creative bent. I inherited her love for music and reading, which we would share in the years to come.
I had an Aunt who was likewise a great reader. I’d receive a parcel from her containing books every Christmas and birthday. I was a rugged, tree-climbing boy who played sport with my mates and rode my dragster around the neighbourhood, but none of that stopped me from becoming an avid reader. In these early days – between, say, six and nine – I read a lot of Enid Blyton, particularly the Famous Five series.
The other influence on my reading habits was my grandfather. He was a gentle, quiet man whose greatest pleasure was sitting down with a good book. As a boy, I can recall going to the MCG with him to watch a test match – and on many occasions, he would stop into a bookshop, from which he’d invariably leave with another couple of books to add to his collection.
He had bookshelves full of books on every topic ranging across genres: fiction, non-fiction, history, philosophy, poetry, and so on. As I got older, I would range across his shelves and pluck something out to read. Often, it would be an old paperback with yellowing, brittle pages that no one knew anything about.
You can say then that I was steeped in a culture of reading. I couldn’t imagine not reading, and pity those who never learnt the pleasure of it.
None of that makes me a writer, though it’s good preparation for it. When did I first set pen to paper? Why?
At school, occasionally, we would be given creative writing assignments. Perhaps because I had read so much, I found I had a vivid and original imagination. I found delight in coming up with these plots and in the reaction to them. Still, I had no thought then of ever making anything more of it.
That only came after I left school and then by accident. I’d travelled to Sydney from Melbourne and stayed with my aunt in a great apartment in Watsons Bay. The sun shone, the beach was nearby, there was an alluring woman I fell for, and life was laconic.
One day, I just started writing. I don’t know where the notion came from, but it was a story touching upon the second war – I’d been a military buff – and it had philosophical elements, probably quite pretentious. From there, I began to write erratically with months in between and one or two occasions, probably years. I did it, but I didn’t see it as a profession. In any case, I had found myself with a career wearing a white collar.
It’s different now. Probably for the last fifteen years, I’ve been convinced this is what I’m meant to do. That’s the thing: you can’t stop yourself from writing. The words pile up in you, demanding to be written. They gotta get out somehow. As I said in my opening post, there’s mystery and wonder in this because I can never really understand how it works that way or where the words come from. I’m grateful, though.
To answer the question I started with, you must be curious about everything to be a writer. You walk down the street, you get on the tram, you catch up with your friends – whatever it is – there’s a part of your mind always observing, always ticking over, always asking questions.
The answers to those questions aren’t always readily available, but that’s where imagination plays a part. Curiosity breeds imagination, I think, though it doesn’t always take. On top of that is life experience. Combined all – curiosity, imagination, experience – and you have the necessary elements for creativity, and you can begin weaving worlds in your mind.
That’s as good as I get to explaining this right now, but I’m happy to get your viewpoints on the subject.
