Tomboys, jazz and the importance of imagination

This is an excerpt from an interview on the Billie B Brown series that will be published at www.kidslife.com.au at the end of November. I have just pulled out my favourite bits.

KL: Is Billie’s name, and the spelling of it, intentional?

Yes. In writing books for children I love to create strong girls and sensitive boys. For me, this is a very efficient way of creating a well-rounded character that doesn’t slip into stereotype.

I studied painting in China for several years as a young adult and I am still very interested in Chinese philosophy, particularly its dedication to creating balance in life. The term ‘Yin and Yang’ is bandied about a lot these days, and the symbol is used on everything from Chinese medicine to surfboards, but basically it illustrates the balance of life ie; that in all black, there must be a touch of white, and in white there is always a touch of black.

So, for me to create a well-rounded character, I like to make sure that my boys are in touch with their feminine side and my girls have a little bit of boy in them. ‘Billie’ was the perfect name for

my character because obviously it makes you think of ‘Billy’, the boy’s name, first of all, but then it also might make you think of Billie Holiday, the beautiful, strong and gorgeously feminine jazz singer from the 1940s and 50s.

KL: How does Billie differ to the accepted stereotype of girls her age?

To be honest, being a mother of three boys, I haven’t read many books for girls published recently, but I could tell you anything you want to know about Spiderman!

However, I am keenly aware of how girls are treated in the media and, I have to say, sometimes it turns my stomach. I am a strong advocate not only of desexualizing young girls but also for allowing kids to stay kids for as long as they need to be. Childhood seems to get shorter and shorter and with that also disappears the terribly important ‘doing nothing’ time where imagination is allowed to flourish.

As an author and illustrator, imagination is one of the key aspects of my job, but, if you think about it, imagination and creativity are essential to all areas of life, whatever your job or interests are. I believe that the seeds to developing a strong and healthy imagination are planted in our early life and this grows best by simply allowing children regular opportunities for unstructured play. Once kids break through the ‘I’m bored’ barrier and are left to their own devices, that’s when their imagination really starts to kick in.

Creativity and Doubt

So, if Peter Carey can doubt himself: here and even the great Eric Carle can have an attack of creative crisis: here, I guess it's just something that I have to accept as part of the job!

Here are another couple of inspiring speakers who talk about these very same things. The wonderful Sir Ken Robinson, who has written a book about finding your passion: here and Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love (which I am yet to read) here.

There is something so vulnerable about making your creative life your professional life, as if your job demands you to turn yourself inside out, all your tenderest most intimate thoughts and ideas on show for all the world to see and judge. But would I have it any other way? There have been times when I have wondered. But then the realisation that I am in the incredibly rare and privileged position of making a living from something I am passionate about, in a situation where I am working almost every day doing something that I love, overrides all the possible downsides, and, once again I am grateful for what I have.

After your first novel - then what?

I have been working on my current novel for three or four years now (I've lost count) and it has been a grueling process. Recently I have been thinking a lot about something Antoni Jach, teacher and mentor of countless writers all over Melbourne, once said: 'You get your first novel for free.' At the time I didn't completely understand what he meant by this but now I think I do.

When I think back to when I wrote my first novel Chenxi and the Foreigner, in my mid-twenties, it's like I am different person (other that I am obviously much older and alas not always wiser). I'm not saying that my first novel was any easier to write - I still had to slog out numerous drafts over several years - it's more that I wrote with a kind of weightlessness that seems harder to conjure up the more I am published.

I am definitely a more professional writer now; more aware of what I am doing and why I am doing it, who my audience is and even the kind of book I am writing. I edit my work better, I plan better, structure better, probably even write better, but by gaining all this control over my writing, I lose a certain enviable out-of-controlness that comes from blindly finding your way through your first novel.

As an art student, I loved the unpredictability of printmaking. Unlike drawing (unless you draw blindfolded or with your left hand) with printmaking you could never be one hundred per cent sure of what the outcome would be. I guess that's the closest analogy I can think of to describe the difference between writing my first novel to writing the one I am working on now.

I remember once listening to Sonya Hartnett talk on a panel with a hip young first-time novelist and at the time thinking how weary and cynical she sounded. The hip young novelist had so much fire and excitement and enthusiasm and was comparing writing his novel to riding a bucking bronco. Sonya rolled her eyes and said something like, 'That's because you're still a virgin. Just wait til you try to write the next one.'

Even though I would hate to ever feel weary or cynical about my work, at times it definitely does feel tamer. I carry more weight and I know well the hard road ahead of me. I'm also more likely to dismiss my work as crap whereas in the beginning I was overjoyed just to string a few words together and to watch something be created from nothing.

These days I can still have moments like that. Little breakthroughs like cracks in a wall where the light gets in (thank you Leonard Cohen for that beautiful analogy). This weekend I had a good weekend, an uninterrupted long weekend perfect for writing. My partner and I both work from home and take turns looking after our youngest son so the other can work. I wrote in the mornings then walked along the Merri Creek with my son in the afternoons. With him, I can often rediscover that sense of childish awe about the world, that slow daydreaming time so essential to creativity. Then in the evenings I would read through the day's work. I didn't hate all of it. I was amazed to discover that some of it I even liked.

I don't want to jinx myself or count my chickens before they hatch or let the cat out of the bag or any of that other proverbial nonsense, but I'll just say that my novel has changed considerably over the last three/four years. From starting out as an angsty teen novel about identity and acceptance (yawn), I think now it is beginning to simplify and crystallize into something younger, lighter and more full of awe. While I began with something complex and complicated and convoluted, now I have decided just to tell the story of a bunch of kids who find an angel in the creek.

Picasso strove his whole life to recreate the simplicity and lightness of his childhood drawings and, like him, it may take me a lifetime to do the same. But perhaps the more time I spend walking along the creek with my young son, the easier it will be for me to get there.