Fibro Q&A: Kylie Ladd on why the writing shouldn't get any easier

Kylie Ladd, one of my very favourite 'acclaimed Australian authors', launched her third book Into My Arms this week. I met Kylie on Twitter in my very earliest weeks, and she was and is all of the good things: smart, funny, engaging, friendly. I read her first book After The Fall soon after, and was hooked.

Last time she visited the Fibro, we talked about characters and voice and lots of other good writing stuff. This time, well ... read on.

Now that you have your third book, do you think that the writing gets easier or more difficult as you go along?
Kylie Ladd: "It should be easier, and in some ways it is, because I have the psychological crutch of knowing that I have done this before, a number of times now, and thus there’s no reason I can’t do it again. But really, every book is different, and every book should be harder if you’re also pushing for it to be better than your last (and if you aren’t, why not?), so the short answer is no, not at all. They’re all their own individual forms of hell."

Do you finish each book with an idea of what the next one might be about?
Kylie Ladd: "Thankfully I do. It’s never a clear, fully-formed idea, but usually as I come into the final 20 or 30,000 words of whatever I’m working on I can sense something glimmering out of the corner of my eye. The trick is not to look at it directly - for one, I might scare it away. More importantly, though, it’s not a time for playing with new ideas - I need to keep my eyes on the horizon so I can steer the story I’m telling into shore.

"It is a comfort to have it there though. I’m not one of those writers who has a thousand ideas before bed each day - usually I only have one every few years, and then I have to make sure I can make it last the length of a book. I’m at the 75,000 word mark of my next (hopefully, fourth) novel now, and I can just feel something beginning to take shape at the edges of my brain. I really hope it’s a new novel, and not a migraine."

Relationships of one form or another are at the heart of all your books – what's the most difficult thing about writing about relationships?
Kylie Ladd: "Keeping them real. Having my characters do and say things that real people do, and not what I want them do to move the plot along or work in a nice piece of exposition or what have you. I also get a bit nervous about writing male characters, in case I get the voice wrong, but hopefully I’m getting over that. At the end of the day we’re all people first and foremost."

You're an author who doesn't blog, FB, pin or all the rest – though you do Tweet. Do you agree with Charlotte Wood that 'branding is junk'? Or is there another reason you don't get too involved?
Kylie Ladd: "Oooh, I didn’t know Charlotte said that. I like her even more now! I can definitely see the importance of branding to some extent, but I’m not sure it would be worth it for me. I don’t really think I’m all that interesting… but hopefully my novels are, so that’s what I’d rather work on and put my effort into.

"The other reason I don’t get too involved, as you say, is time (see next question!) and, to be honest, that thing I mentioned above about my general dearth of ideas. I have blogged in the past in a paid position (I know! But not paid much) and while I enjoyed it and am proud of what I produced in that year I found that it didn’t leave much in my tank for my fiction; that I was using insights and ideas and quandaries that I normally would’ve explored or addressed in a novel in my weekly column instead, and then I wasn’t much interested in them anymore or felt I couldn’t go over them again. Also, the pressure to always have something fresh and new and well-punctuated coming along did my head in. (NB. I do actually Facebook. Clearly not that well though!)"

How in the world do you fit being a successful author around being a parent AND a part-time job as a neuropsychologist?
Kylie Ladd: "By not blogging. Seriously though, it’s about discipline- it’s about setting aside time to write and refusing to let myself be talked into going out to lunch or seeing a private patient or even meeting for coffee on those days. It’s about keeping them so sacrosanct that one of my kids would have to be in the ER before I got up from the desk. It’s about allowing myself a bit of time to muck around on Twitter but then unplugging my computer and going to work in the kitchen or backyard if necessary so I can get something done without being lured astray by the siren song of the internet. (We don’t have wireless so I can accomplish this. My children believe we are living in the stone age.)

"Reading back, this all sounds a bit obsessive, but something I always say to my creative writing students is that the first rule of being a  writer is to write. They all look at me like I’m nuts (Write. I paid money for this?), but it’s true. When you can write - and for most of us, that time is limited - the writing must come first."


Visit Kylie at her website, or say hello on Twitter (or, apparently, on Facebook!). You can buy Into My Arms here or - wait for it - you can enter the Fibro competition to WIN a signed copy! 

All you have to do is to leave a comment below, by 5pm Sunday May 12, answering this question: Have you ever fallen in love at first sight? Winner will be most creative answer, as judged by me, and announced on Monday May 13.

Fibro Q&A: How to create characters (and give each their own voice)

I first met Kylie Ladd on Twitter about 18 months ago. At that stage, I was unaware she was a novelist - I just had a girl-crush on her ability to be funny, witty and personable in 140 characters. When I heard she had a book - After The Fall - I simply had to buy it, to see how she went over a longer format. 

She went well. In fact, After The Fall was easily one of my favourite books of 2010. With four main characters, multiple viewpoints and a plot about tangled relationships, the possibility was there for it all to go horribly wrong but, instead, it was an absorbing and insightful read. Not surprising, I guess, considering Kylie's background in neuropsychology.

Her new book, Last Summer, takes the multiple viewpoints of After The Fall and raises the bar even further. Told from the points of view of nine people mourning the loss of one man, it explores loss, marriage, family...cricket. Liberally sprinkled with sexual references. 

One of the things I love about Kylie's writing are the tiny composite pieces that make up her characters. The smallest details are often the most telling. It's not surprising then that Kylie Ladd's time in the Fibro  should centre around character. Specifically, how she creates such three-dimensional characters - and how she keeps all those voices straight!

In both After the Fall and Last Summer, you worked with multiple viewpoints. What is the key to keeping all those different voices straight?

Kylie Ladd: "Planning! I'm a bit of a planning addict, as you know, and I certainly love a spreadsheet or two. I use notes to keep track of character attributes, but I also keep a fairly detailed running spreadsheet that summarises what's happened in each chapter (whose point of view (POV) it was, what happened but also any particular themes and emotions I wanted to convey or develop) and I can also use to look ahead and sketch particular developments for particular characters. Sometimes with all those spreadsheets open my laptop makes me look like an accountant rather than a novelist, but whatever works... "

I know that you do a lot of work on your characters before you even begin. How do you build them?

KL: "Actually I'm not sure I do, or that I do enough... I think that while I often have ideas for characters and sketch them down before I start the novel, the character only really evolves and becomes clear to me as I get into the writing. As a result I find that the bulk of my edits are usually in the first third of the book, where I'm still figuring out exactly who I'm writing about. 

Kelly in Last Summer is one example... I had planned her first chapter, where she gives Rory's eulogy, and thought it - and she - were fairly straightforward. But then I got almost to the end, where she returns to her seat in the congregation next to her husband Joe:

"Joe reached for her as she shuffled down the pew, the arm that went around her shoulders as solid as marble. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in his scent: timber, sweat. Girls were supposed to marry someone who reminded them of their fathers, weren't they? Yet here she was holding on for dear life to someone who smelled just like her brother."

That bit just came to me as I was writing, but once it did it made Kelly, and her relationship with Rory, so much clearer to me. I went back and re-wrote the chapter, but after that Kelly was set in my mind, and her subsequent scenes were far easier. 

Something I also want to mention briefly is character names. I agonise over choosing these, but to me (rightly or wrongly) names are important, and can define a character, can give you a start on getting to grips with them. Sometimes names are attached to an important personal history, as in Trinity's case, but even if the name is as straightforward as Joe's I still think (or hope) that that conveys something - in this case a lack of pretension, of frills; a straight-shooter. That said, I have never, ever liked my own Christian name... maybe I'm trying compensate when I name my characters."

How do you get into the right mindset to write your male characters? What are the keys to keeping a man 'real' (so to speak)?

KL: "To be honest, I don't approach or even think about writing male characters any differently than I do my female ones. Maybe I should, but to me gender is secondary- we're all people first, we all have fears and hopes, regrets and ambitions, and that's the stuff that really interests me. I don't believe that deep down men and women are really that different, so I don't approach writing them any differently.  OK, men talk about cricket more - but that wasn't hard to bring to life in Last Summer because I live with one like that!"

Do you find that everyone you know looks for themselves in the characters you create? Do you ever use tics and foibles of people that you know?

KL: "Of course I do. Any writer that says they don't is lying! How can you not, even if only subconsciously? I would never model an entire character on someone I knew - that feels like cheating, somehow, as well as being bound to play havoc with your personal relationships - but I'm not at all averse to picking up the odd tic or foible, as you say. 

As a literary device, they're useful for delineating characters, but more importantly I think they also

say a lot about who a character is - in Last Summer, Kelly's habit of driving through roundabouts in third gear, too impatient to change down, or Anita fretting about letting her only child eat junk food. And yes, I'm sure people I know look for themselves in my characters... but that's the danger of being friendly with a novelist. As Nora Ephron once said "Everything is copy." She's damn right. They've been warned."

Are you working on a new novel? What was the 'spark' for it?

KL: "I am about 1000 words off finishing my (fingers crossed) next novel. After near-drowning in a sea of my own words for the last 18 months or so it's a huge relief to finally see land. Of course, this is only a first draft, so there's heaps of pain to go yet - nonetheless, I'm pleased that (until I see my editor's report, of course) I think I've achieved what I wanted to. 

I am hideously superstitious about talking about work that isn't contracted to be published, so sorry, but I can't say much... I will say though that this novel is about the different ways we make - or find - family, and whether or not blood matters. At this point it's called Into My Arms. I hope Nick Cave doesn't mind."


You can buy Last Summer here at Booktopia. Visit Kylie Ladd at her website, or go say hello on Twitter (she's worth it!).