{"id":5357,"date":"2015-08-26T03:04:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T19:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/in-conversation-with-david-whish-wilson\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:07:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:07:21","slug":"in-conversation-with-david-whish-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/in-conversation-with-david-whish-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"In conversation with David Whish-Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"
We speak\u00a0to Western Australian author and Curtin Senior Lecturer David Whish-Wilson about his award-winning short story The Cook<\/em><\/a>, crime writing, Breaking Bad<\/em> and Australia\u2019s surprising link to colonial California.\u00a0Set in Western Australia, The Cook<\/em> follows an ex-methamphetamine chemist as he struggles to escape a violent past and face up to fatherhood.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where did you get the idea for <\/strong><\/em>The Cook<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One of the things I like about writing is not knowing where a story is going or what the story will become. I pretty much start with a character or a setting. There\u2019s a place I go camping where most of The Cook<\/em> is set, up at Cue \u2013 a place called Walga Rock. I try and go camping there every year. I knew I wanted to set part of the story there because I haven\u2019t seen much fiction set in that Gascoygne country. So I had a character and I had a setting and I just played around with it.<\/p>\n

How important to you is place, and knowing a place, for a story?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, it\u2019s vitally important. It\u2019s the old fiction clich\u00e9 that a setting should be as vivid and as present as a character; it should almost be its own character in the story. I try to emphasise that when I write fiction set in Western Australia because there isn\u2019t a lot of fiction set here. I\u2019m aware that many readers haven\u2019t got a stock of images or knowledge about Western Australia to draw upon.<\/p>\n

[It\u2019s different] if you set a novel in New York City, where everyone has a set of images to work with, whether or not they\u2019ve been there. That\u2019s not necessarily the case here. In fact, I don\u2019t know any fiction that\u2019s set in that particular part of Western Australia [the Gascoygne]. For that reason, I wanted to be reasonably specific about the names of things and the quality of the light and the geology. Getting the general sense of a place, for me, is very important.<\/p>\n

Is that a freeing experience, to write about something that hasn\u2019t been written about so much, as an author? It\u2019s pioneering, in a way\u2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps. All writing is a freeing experience. It just means that you have to pay a little bit more attention to the details rather than if you\u2019re setting a story in a place that everybody knows.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve written crime before. What first drew you to crime writing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been a crime reader, but for my first crime novel called Line of Sight, I was writing about the murder of [Perth brothel madam] Shirley Finn [in 1975], and most of the people I spoke to were ex-policemen, ex-criminals, ex-prostitutes. It centered upon a criminal act, a violent murder. It became pretty clear that the best structure to build around that story would be a crime fiction story and I wanted to teach myself a little bit about [how to develop that] structure.<\/p>\n

I generally write from character and let the story go where it will. But one of the good things about crime fiction \u2013 when it\u2019s good crime fiction \u2013 is you get all the vividness of character and good descriptive writing, but the structure is such that you can work with your readers\u2019 expectations. It provides not necessarily a formula but some kind of map; you\u2019re aware that your readers are looking for certain things that can tell you a story within that broad structure.<\/p>\n

What differences have you found between researching for your fiction and nonfiction stories?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The research is the same. I just cram my head with everything I need to know until I almost can\u2019t take it anymore, and then I start writing. The difference with nonfiction is: there\u2019s a contract between you and your reader that what you\u2019re saying is factually based and the quotations you\u2019ve used are factually based. It\u2019s much more freeing writing fiction. It might still be factually based but the contract is different with a reader.<\/p>\n

The primary purpose is to tell a story. I find writing nonfiction more onerous because of the responsibility towards telling the truth as it is described by your interviewees and the texts you\u2019re using. But there are still pleasures to be had in writing creative nonfiction, that\u2019s for sure. It\u2019s just a different form; it requires a different voice.<\/p>\n

To me, creative nonfiction is a more literary voice. You don\u2019t have the time [to flesh out a story like you would in a novel]. For example, Perth<\/em> is a very small book: it\u2019s only 50,000 words. Creative nonfiction was the perfect form to capture the sense of Perth as a place and what it feels like to live here \u2013 its specific history and architecture and art and landscape. Because rather than exploring things in great breadth, you take a kind of impressionistic approach. You\u2019re choosing certain details, which hopefully stand in for all the things you can\u2019t say. It\u2019s more similar to the short story form. You\u2019re hoping there\u2019s a certain amount of compression and a large amount of suggestion.<\/p>\n

What kind of research did you do for <\/em>The Cook?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Without going too much into it, I know people like [the characters featured in The Cook<\/em>]. I lived a reasonably interesting life as a younger man. As a writer anywhere, really, it\u2019s just about keeping an ear out for good stories, and to me these people are interesting because they are a little bit outside the law, and may or may not have their own kind of code.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about crime and crime fiction is this idea that, behind the charades, there is stuff really going on that people tend to turn away from. And that whole idea of looking behind the fa\u00e7ade or the truths we tell ourselves, and exploring characters who know what\u2019s really going on because it\u2019s not in their interests to be known is really interesting to me.<\/p>\n

Methamphetamine seems to be everywhere at the moment. It\u2019s on every second front page of the newspaper.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah, it wasn\u2019t when I wrote that story, funnily enough. I guess it\u2019s an intergenerational thing. When I was younger, at the age of the son in this story, heroin was cheap and you could get it anywhere. And lots of people I knew were into it. It\u2019s just a different generation now. I guess that\u2019s the father and the son, spanning those two different generations.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not so much that society\u2019s changed or more people are using drugs, but that it\u2019s just a different drug?
\nI think it\u2019s just a different drug, yeah. There have always been high-functioning heroin users since the drug was invented, but that\u2019s probably less the case [with methamphetamine]. You look at the way certain drugs suit certain aspects of society: [for example, some people] take meth or speed to achieve more at work. So it fits in with our busy society where people are working and you need to do a certain amount before you can knock off and relax.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t going to bring up <\/strong><\/em>Breaking Bad<\/strong>, but I can’t resist… What do you think its impact has been?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very good series. Breaking Bad<\/em> talks about the violent criminal background [of illegal drugs] and the way organised crime works through fear and intimidation, but also it\u2019s about ordinary people taking recreational drugs.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s honest in its representation. On one level it\u2019s just great entertainment and it\u2019s a series that\u2019s all about structure. It\u2019s about suspense and turning points in each episode. But at least it portrays the whole thing reasonably honestly: the idea that there\u2019s the narrative about drugs destroying people\u2019s lives, but on the other side a lot of people take drugs and live perfectly normal lives. To me, you can\u2019t have one truth without the other.<\/p>\n

How do you think the crime genre has changed over time, if at all?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it has changed as a genre. I think what has changed is its reception, and that has to do with areas of study like cultural studies. That binary between high culture and low culture has pretty much dissolved. It\u2019s taken a while for that to happen in terms of newspaper reviews and what have you, but now it\u2019s just accepted that good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing. And because of series like Breaking Bad and The Wire and so many others, it\u2019s accepted that some of our best writers are crime fiction writers. Guys like Richard Price and so many others are telling interesting stories about contemporary life. It just happens to be in the crime fiction genre.<\/p>\n

All of the strengths that we associate with other forms, such as quality writing and great characterisation are all there, so I think the way crime fiction is received has probably changed. There have always been great crime fiction writers: it\u2019s just that they were writing at the margins in a kind of niche, unappreciated form. That\u2019s changed and now it\u2019s much more accepted.<\/p>\n

It seems people have always been fascinated by crime, throughout history, and will probably always continue to be fascinated with crime.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah, that whole idea of human deviance is interesting to people.<\/p>\n

What is your own creative process? What kinds of things do you do to help you write?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been doing it long enough now that I don\u2019t worry about any of that. I live a pretty busy life: I work full-time, I\u2019ve got three kids and I\u2019m asked to do a lot of small writing gigs for people. So when I do get time, I just sit down and write. I\u2019ve been doing it for a couple of decades now, so I just trust that when I sit down the ideas will be there, and so far that seems to be the case. I just try to carve out time for myself. Basically I\u2019m too busy; I don\u2019t have time to worry or have any anxiety about writers block. I don\u2019t have time to procrastinate. I just have to do it.
\nPressure is definitely a great motivator.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I just wouldn\u2019t get anything done if I wasn\u2019t like that. It\u2019s not necessarily the best [method]. I\u2019m aware that I\u2019d be a lot more productive if I had a lot more time to write. There\u2019s nothing like writing every day. You go deeper into a story. But that\u2019s just a luxury I haven\u2019t got at the moment.<\/p>\n

Have you got an idea for your next major piece of writing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got another crime novel with a publisher at the moment. And I\u2019m working on another novel at the moment. I\u2019m about half way through it. It\u2019s set in San Francisco in 1849. So that\u2019s a completely different kind of research. That\u2019s going to involve going there [to California], looking in the state library, doing a lot of interviews and that kind of thing. It\u2019s a little known fact that California\u2019s first crime gangs were mostly Australians \u2013 ex-convicts \u2013 who left when the gold rush started in California in 1849.<\/p>\n

They ran San Francisco for a couple of years. So I\u2019m writing about that background, that whole idea of the convict diaspora. Afterwards, lots of them came back to Australia when the Australian gold rush started. But a lot of them stayed.<\/p>\n

At the time when I am setting my story, in 1849, San Fransisco had a population of about 30,000, and somewhere up to about 15,000 of them were Australian. So there\u2019s a strong and I think unacknowledged Australian background to California\u2019s history. Largely because they [the convicts] were despised because they were thought to be violent and criminal in the same way that Italian crime gangs have been critiqued and marginalised.<\/p>\n

Where did you find out about the Australian-Californian connection?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Again it was just something that was told to me by a friend. He said: \u201cDo you know about this?\u201d And I hadn\u2019t. So I just started researching and playing around with characters.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re writing something, do you tend to talk to other people about what you\u2019re writing about?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Not really, no. I don\u2019t know any writers who do that. It\u2019s good if you\u2019ve got a group of friends that you can trust and you\u2019re work-shopping stuff. I tell people about the story as I\u2019ve just described it to you, but it\u2019s all so intangible and delicate. Lots of writers will tell you a manuscript is a house of cards until you\u2019ve actually got it ready to show someone.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the sense that it can all collapse around your ears, and sometimes it does, so for superstitious reasons I guess I don\u2019t talk about it much in terms of characters. But I\u2019m also not quite clear in that first draft about who is who, and what is what, and where it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n

Do you get frustrated when you write?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I probably get frustrated more by the lack of time than what I\u2019m writing about. Thus far, no, I don\u2019t get frustrated. I kind of treasure the time that I get to do it.<\/p>\n

The words come out naturally enough?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For the most part. But again, I\u2019ve been doing it long enough that when it doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s no reason to throw my hands up in the air. It just means you try a different approach. You come back to that passage which is poorly written.<\/p>\n

The best thing about a first draft is you know you\u2019re going to make mistakes; you know it\u2019s going to be flawed. It\u2019s just part of writing a first draft. And so rather than becoming frustrated about it when things aren\u2019t going your way, you just accept it\u2019s going to be like that and trust yourself to come back and fix it up in the next draft. That is quite freeing. It\u2019s always a bit of a balancing act.<\/p>\n

For me, writing is all about anxiety and energy. Getting the balance right between the anxiety of not writing and the anxiety of writing. Still, every morning when I sit down, I feel quite anxious about whether or not there\u2019s going to be anything interesting. But the anxiety of not writing is stronger than the anxiety of writing, so that pushes me forward.<\/p>\n

Anxiety\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. It is a kind of fuel, though it can be paralysing. I know friends where it becomes too much [for them]. You\u2019ve just got to find ways to manage it. For some people it\u2019s drinking, for some people it\u2019s exercise. Everybody\u2019s got a different approach.<\/p>\n

How do you think you\u2019ve changed as a writer from when you were younger?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When I was younger, I didn\u2019t take it seriously. I worked; I did different jobs. Writing was just a strange little habit. And I didn\u2019t know another writer. I didn\u2019t meet another person interested in writing until I was about 27. It was just something I always did that no one else did. Even though lots of my friends were actors and musicians, I didn\u2019t know anybody else who was doing any writing. As a result, I didn\u2019t take it too seriously, whereas now I just think of it as my job.<\/p>\n

What were you writing back then?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was only writing short stories in those days. I was lucky because [when] I was living in Japan and wrote stories about [when I lived in] Africa, there were a couple of Australian short story journal writers who were encouraging me. That\u2019s another thing that kept me going. If those early short story publishers hadn\u2019t encouraged me, I probably wouldn\u2019t have kept on. I just enjoyed reading, which is quite a primary pleasure.<\/p>\n

What do you tell students who are struggling with their writing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For me, writing\u2019s a craft. There\u2019s an art to it, but it\u2019s a craft, and you learn by doing. You don\u2019t expect a carpenter to make a perfect table the first time without having learnt how to sand and plain and all of those kinds of things. Even though you\u2019re first works might not be very strong, you learn where your strengths lie and where your weaknesses lie. So you work to your strengths while trying to improve the things you\u2019re not good at. That might be dialogue, but in my case it was structure. Opening yourself up to good influences [is beneficial].<\/p>\n

Reading is, of course, the best way [to improve your writing]. As many creative writing teachers will tell you, one thing that\u2019s often remarked on in the last 20 years is that many writing students want to be writers but don\u2019t want to read. You wouldn\u2019t expect a musician not to listen to music or practice. You wouldn\u2019t say: \u201cI\u2019m going to be a fantastic guitar player and never listen to [any guitar music].\u201d If you\u2019re not reading and absorbing influences in your own way, you can\u2019t really say that equivalent about writing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a case where most people can put pen to paper and so everyone thinks they can be a writer.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly the case where the more you do it, the better you get. As long as you\u2019re open to your own faults and you\u2019re open to influences. Reading\u2019s vitally important and there\u2019s nothing wrong with a bit of imitation. When you find a writer that you really like, reading their work \u2013 even reading their work just before you start writing \u2013 will allow you to channel their rhythms and attention to detail.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s a lot of pressure as a new writer to be original and come up with your own ideas. The idea of copying or imitating someone\u2019s style can be challenging.<\/p>\n

But really, all writers do it. It\u2019s about finding writers that you admire and looking at their work to see what they\u2019re doing right \u2013 and what you might not be doing right. To do rhythm and syntax right [is difficult]. Not every writer has the facility for figurative language and metaphor. Not every writer writes good dialogue, so if that\u2019s the case, you find ways to improve it. If you\u2019re not able to, find ways to structure your story so you don\u2019t have big long dialogue passages.<\/p>\n

How important is the relationship with an editor for you?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Very. At my last publisher, Penguin, I was lucky enough to have a really good editor. She taught me a lot. It always helps to have a fresh pair of eyes, but it\u2019s a very unusual relationship because it\u2019s dependent on trust. If you have an editor who you completely trust, it\u2019s a priceless lesson. Definitely having a fresh pair of eyes is important.<\/p>\n

What are you reading at the moment?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m reading a book called Sydney Bridge Upside Down<\/em> by a New Zealand writer [David Ballantyne]. And I\u2019m re-reading Cormack McCarthy\u2019s Blood Meridian<\/em> \u2013 and about ten other books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“All writing is a freeing experience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":5358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-5357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"About the author","content":"

David Whish-Wilson is a Fremantle-based writer\u00a0and Senior Lecturer at Curtin\u2019s School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts. His crime novels include\u00a0Zero at the Bone\u00a0<\/em>(2013), Line of Sight<\/em>\u00a0(2010) and\u00a0The Summons\u00a0<\/em>(2006).<\/p>\n","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":{"title":"James Rogers","url":"http:\/\/www.jamesrogersphotography.com.au","target":""},"media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/davidwishwilson-news.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-16 22:58:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5357"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=5357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}