Conversations with Bryce Courtenay

3 Dec

I try and go for a walk each day, either thirty minutes if I’m planning to go to the gym, an hour if I’m not. I don’t put on music or an audiobook, I give my brain some thinking time. I got the idea from Bryce Courtenay, the South African-Australian writer (The Power of One et al), book on writing - The Silver Moon: Reflections on Life, Death and Writing .

While doing this I’ve started chatting to Bryce, who incidentally died in 2012, as his history as an author helped inspire my own start in fiction. Bryce doesn’t answer, I’m not going mad, but it helps me frame and think about questions of writing and publishing. I’m going to use this post to keep adding my thoughts as it helps me (and maybe it will help someone else).

Oh - read the book, it’s short and incredibly insightful. Most libraries should have it.

26 Nov 2021

Interesting chat about getting that first novel published. I’ve written two and I’ve started on a third and it would be easy to keep writing and think publishing will take care of itself. Bryce, who started writing around the age 50, thought it would take him four novels to be good enough to be picked up by a publisher. He wrote ‘The Power of One’ and left it hanging behind the kitchen door for some reason. Someone kicked it and it came apart and they started reading, the rest is history.

That’s not going to happen to me, it’s hard to believe it happened to Bryce though he tells the story himself so I’ll believe him. The result of the chat was, prioritise getting the first book finished and published. Yes, I can still write my third, after I’ve worked on getting number one out into the public.

30 Nov 2021

Sometimes you can walk for miles and not a single coherent thought enters your head, at least ones you can hold on to. What would Bryce say about that I wonder, I think he may have some sterner words around ‘bucking your ideas up’, figuratively and mentally. Maybe . . .

2 Dec 2021

Bryce wrote that his goal was to write popular fiction as the opposite, unpopular fiction, would never get read (or pay the bills I presume). As I was walking I wondered how ‘popular’ is judged. Sadly, the only answer I could come up with was money. Like seemingly the vast majority of this world, money is the ultimate decider of what is good and what is not.

That creates a difficult dilemma. The most popular fiction, as it is written and published, is formulaic. I have read enough Lee Child books to know how they’re going to end before they start. Bookshops (apart from the odd independent) stock these books in piles in the prime part of their store so they can maximise profit. Fair enough, that’s why they are in business.

So to write popular fiction is not to create, it is to imitate then duplicate. And while money acts as judge, that’s unlikely to change.

5 Dec 2021

I can’t remember if Bryce has a special place he used when writing. It is one of those aspects of writing that seems very personal. For myself, I’m struggling to find places to write, I tire of them and have to move on - the nomadic writer.

My office, while resembling a library with books and even a piano, I find a difficult environment in which to concentrate. Being at home makes me feel I should be doing the washing or repairing the weatherboards that no tradie is interested in doing because they’re all building houses for millionaires. Night time or the very early morning is easier, when the world’s asleep.

Cafe’s are okay, but I need to have classical music up loud, and libraries are often ideal but can be loud. At the moment, I’m in a disused lecture theatre. I hope it won’t stay disused, an educated society needs fewer prisions.

20 Dec 2021

“It’s more rewarding to kick against the pricks”

— Bastardised

To be fair, Bryce didn’t say this (at least I don’t think he did). In fact I imagine that Bryce, having spent most of his working life high up in business, would view an authors path to publishing as well-trodden. He didn’t answer when i asked him which is still a good thing, I’ll keep you informed.

What I want to do is create popular fiction and, by definition, that means getting it into the hands of a lot of readers. But what I don’t want to do is allow blood-sucking companies, like social media, in on the action. My attitude to them is ‘fuck them’. But am I cutting my nose off to spite my face (I know the sentiment but have never got the literal drift)?

Currently I’m plotting a guerilla (not to be confused with a gorilla) marketing plan but today, for the first time, I put a question mark next to ‘Social Media’. I did then write ‘not FB’ so I’m not sure where that leaves me. I guess I’ll find out in time.