Commentary on Editorial to Issue 4: Gillian Polack

Gillian Polack

Never contradict an editor. This is the first lesson.

I argued on Deborah Biancotti's blog (http://www.livejournal.com/users/deborahb/52872.html) that we couldn't assume a culture of writing mediocrity in Australia, that there were other factors we needed to look at before judging. This all arose from reactions to the editorial in Ticonderoga 4.

I'm not going to rehash my arguments from the various blogs here - they are online already. I just wanted to point out that it is my own fault I have been asked to do a guest commentary and warn you about the dangers of disagreeing with anyone who has the power to assign words.

Let me state upfront that I think Australia is doing rather well on the speculative fiction front. More and more Australians are seeing their fiction reach print, and less and less of that print is amateur. A surprising amount is outstanding.

However, comments on the industry are time-slices: writing as it is perceived at that precise moment. Splice moments together and we find that the industry is all very Red Queenish: we all run harder and harder to remain on the same spot. Doing well now doesn't mean happy ever after.

The comments made in Ticonderogaonline 4 were a problem for me because they had too broad a target, not because they were entirely wrong. Asking if our writing is getting better is more a goad than a gentle encouragement. Some writers need goading; some need nurturing; some need to be left alone: we are a set of communities with an acutely high level of individuality. In other words, different writers need different types of support to keep running.

Right now a lot of us seem to be very self-aware. How we write, why we write, how we publish, where we publish, what we publish, what terms we give all these things: these are all burning questions. Some commentators say we live in wondrous times (eg Bruce Gillespie in Steam Engine Time Issue 4, January 2005) and some say that we are looking at fool's gold, that we share an abundance of mediocrity. At its worst, this introspection can cripple the industry. At its best, it help us improve our writing and understand the contexts of writing. Editors with limited experience can use the dialogues being engaged in to speed up their learning. Writers, likewise, can learn about writing, learn about the industry, learn about audiences. For me, obviously, learning is the key, not goading.

As I see it, there are five main sources of learning.

The first is living and working. Daily life counts.

The second is one that has always been around: reading the work of other writers. The more intelligently we read the more we will understand.

The biggest limitation for us as writers learning through reading is we are only as good as our capacity to analyse a text. Writers need tools to be able to dissect a story, take on board what works and why, then translate it into their own idiom. They may never use the methods Jane Austen uses to indicate irony, but having that tool in their toolbelt gives their craft more solidity.

One thing that we currently lack (though the Clarion workshops have gone some way to remedying the deficit) is a shared language of criticism. This means that most of the craft-development is done individually, which means that development of an understanding of basic tropes and writing techniques can sometimes be painfully slow.

The third source of learning is editors. We listen to them even when we hate what they say. We read the fine print in our rejection slips. Sad, but enlightening. The better our editors, the better our writing.

The fourth source of learning is workshopping and shared critiques. This can either spread ordinariness around evenly, or help a group of writers into a positive learning cycle where their work advances more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. A good example of this latter is Clarion.

The last major avenue for learning is probably the most underutilised. The writer/reader interface is an assumed, not a given. Those of us who teach have more of an interface with readers, I suspect, but not every writer can or ought to teach.

There are more ways writers learn than I have covered here. What I wanted to do in suggesting learning techniques was reinforce my understanding that writing in Australia is not wonderful forever, automatically, just because it is identifiably good now, and that we have to actively look for ways of developing our writing and the work of our writing colleagues.

Where writing in Australia moves to from here is not a given. We can progress, we can regress, we can go round in little circles: it's all up to us. The better we are at learning, the less we emulate the Red Queen.

Gillian Polack
21 September 2005

Gillian Polack has written several books. Illuminations (described by one critic as "fantasy with footnotes") was published in 2002 and The Art of Effective Dreaming in the very near future. Everything else is either forthcoming or controversial. Occasionally she writes short stories. Recently they have appeared in Encounters (a speculative fiction anthology, released August 2004) and online in Antipodean SF . One of her short stories won a rather minor literary award. She writes a great deal of short non-fiction, especially material about the Middle Ages for enthusiasts and novelists. Currently she is working on a couple of larger projects. The most interesting concerns bringing together and sharing the types of information writers need to get a solid Medieval backdrop for their fiction. She is part of a small team directed by Tamara Mazzei of Trivium Publishing and teaches components of the project through the Australian National University and through writers' centres. Gillian was recently awarded a Varuna Fellowship.

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