So you want the truth …

Many, many years ago when I had just started Year 7 my science teacher asked the class to write about what would happen if the sun stopped shining. I had learned all about photosynthesis in Year 6, so I wrote a story about the end of the world.
“Fade to black,” I called it.
I was pleased with my story. I was not pleased when the science teacher disdainfully held it up between thumb and forefinger in front of the class as an example of what primary school babies wrote.
“You’re in high school now,” he said. “You need to write science reports, not this science fiction”. And he threw my story on my desk with its mark of 1/10. This was a brutal introduction to scientific methodology and reporting. A quick lesson, remembered ever since that report writing was different to writing a story.
But while the writing mode had to be different, did truth change through being narrated in another way? My juvenile apocalyptic account of the end of the world due to the dying of the sun was true enough in that life needs sunlight to sustain it. But my science teacher required me to give it (questionable) scientific validity and describe in the form of problem, method, results and conclusion. Did this make it more truthful?
Only if you trust scientists absolutely. And you should not. Scientific fraud is not unknown. In 2006 two stem-cell research papers written by Woo Suk Hwang previously published in Science were retracted when the editors were advised Hwang had fabricated data. The esteemed medical journal Lancet also had to withdraw a paper by John Sudbo when it was discovered the patient histories included in them were invented. Researchers have also been known to report only positive results from their research, and this has led to the public release of pharmaceutical drugs whose adverse side effects have been fatal. There are many more examples, so scientific reports are no indicator of truthfulness. They can be as much fiction as, well, fiction.
Nevertheless scientists expect communication in the form of a report. A report provides a comprehensible structure. The structure is comfortably familiar, even if the contents are completely false. A false report can escape detection because it “looks right”. Most casual readers won’t necessarily check the data or the references.
It is clear from Bookscan sales data that biographies and autobiographies are popular sales categories. For the sale of trade books in the period January to September 2007 autobiographies and biographies make up the largest segment (4.5%) of the non-fiction category. Non-fiction itself represented 34.9% of trade books sold, while fiction made up only 26.8% of trade books sold. Thanks to a new Harry Potter book, children’s books had a massive 36.4% of the trade book market. So, according to the figures, if you can’t publish Harry Potter, a biography or autobiography is the next best bet, and publishers after all are betting people. Like lawyers, their business is all about risk and minimising it.
As a literary form, biographies and autobiographies traditionally have been regarded as “true stories”. But you have to question the nature of truth when a seventy-year-old, say, is writing about herself as a twenty year old. First, memory is selective. Then there are the boring bits left out because, well, they are boring. These boring bits may well be years of one’s person’s life. The resulting autobiography may well be an interesting narrative, with some matters in it that apparently “happened”, but they are as much “truth” as the drawings of a three-year old are “true” images of reality – that is, each is circumscribed by age, perception and ability. Each is not provable scientific fact, but interpretation. Hence, autobiography and biography are really and appropriately fiction, although the term “faction” might more appropriate.
Truth travels only a matter of degrees between a “true” autobiography and a fantasised story written as though it were an autobiography. The difficulty – the fraud – comes when one is passed off as the other, since each may be equally as good as each other as literary works. But is it really fraud? Regardless of genre or form, shouldn’t the quality of the writing be the final arbiter for good writing?
In Australia we are probably too rigid with our categorisations of what is fiction and non-fiction. Recently, I spoke about these issues with German author Uwe Timm, whose book In my brother’s shadow moved me greatly. Uwe insists this book is fiction, despite the fact that his includes excerpts from his dead brother’s diary, and that he writes in the first person as “Uwe Timm” about his own memories of World War II. Uwe’s brother was a member of the Waffen SS fighting on the Russian front. The diary his brother wrote there is the sort of straightforward account you might expect of an eighteen-year old – until he is wounded and reality sets in and the writing ceases. Uwe, fifty years later, wonders whether his brother felt guilt at his role in some of the worst atrocities of the war. He reflects on why his brother enlisted, how his mother and sister coped with the fire bombing of Hamburg, how he as a young child was rushed into air-raid shelters as Hamburg was firebombed. It appears to be almost all fact.
Another fact is that on one of the nights Uwe records in his book, a night when he was rushed through the streets showered with burning ashes, high above him my father peered out into the flak-lit sky from the cockpit of his Lancaster. Further back in the plane his bomb aimer lay prone and prepared to let loose the plane’s evil belly load of phosphorous bombs. The bombs were cruel weapons. My father knew that. The fact gnawed at him. The guilt had not abated even as I held his dying body in 2001. He knew he was killing civilians. Three-year-olds, as Uwe was at the time. Mothers. Grandparents. Those the soldiers had left at home in Hamburg, trusting they were relatively safe. My father was sent home to New Zealand later in 1943, sick in spirit and with bronchitis, conscious that the survival rate for the Allied air forces over Europe was only one in 2. He was merely 22 years old.
In defence of my father, Uwe argues that the phosphorous bombs were part of a desperate defence against the premeditated aggression of the Nazis, in whose tortuous philosophy his 18-year-old brother became entangled. He leaves open any analysis of the morality in such a thing as a premeditated attack on Iraq. He leaves open the distance of truth between himself at three on the ground and my father some miles up in the air at 22. He tells a story that is about truth but not “true”. He does not accept his story is memoir because he knows he has structured it as a novel. He is proud of the fugue form he has used, of the story’s rhythm, of its semblance of reality. He is proud, as he should be, of his beautiful narrative.
What is truth after all except the spaces between words?

Parts of this article first appeared in the April 2008 issue of Australian Author. Copyright © 2008 Jeremy Fisher/Australian Society of Authors.

Professional authorship: The key to living from writing

I am often asked to deliver a guest lecture or a seminar to university and TAFE creative writing classes, or a workshop at a writers’ festival. I am always happy to oblige. What I usually talk about is often considered boring – copyright, contracts and conditions. However, my audience doesn’t seem to think what I have to say is boring, since it relates closely to their ability to make a living from their writing.
They ask me detailed questions about the clauses of contracts, rights, subsidiary rights, what they need to do to obtain permission to use third-party works, how they can avoid defamation, the term of copyright in Australia, whether work published on a website is copyright, what is a standard royalty and a myriad other things with which they have never before had any connection in their course, but which they want to know. I hope I do my part.
The reason I am asked to speak, of course, is because I probably know more about these issues than most teachers of creative writing. I’m not a lawyer, but I can assist with the legal practicalities that are very much part of the professional practice of writing.
But it seems a shame to me that this sort of basic professional knowledge does not form a part of creative writing studies. Journalism courses, in contrast, have mandatory legal strands. They may also cover basic accounting practices for journalists who are freelance. Surely, since most creative writers are entering into what is essentially a freelance career, similar knowledge needs to be given to creative writing students to best equip them for the small business world of the professional writer?
I say this as a constructive suggestion for the evolution of creative writing as an academic discipline. As a graduate of writing classes myself, and some very good ones too, but with a background in publishing and an understanding of copyright, I feel strongly that writing students are missing out on a vital part of the skill set they needed to prosper as writers when they are not offered some legal and financial knowledge to help guide them as writers. The ASA is always happy to assist in the regard.
Another area that does not seem to receive much attention in creative writing at present is a sense of the market for writing. It is unfortunately true that the market for Australian “literary’ (I abhor that word) fiction is particularly dire at present. That doesn’t mean Australian fiction isn’t selling. As I write this, there are four Australian works of fiction in the top ten bestsellers: Matthew Reilly’s The Six Secret Stones is at number one, while ASA members Di Morrissey (Monsoon), Monica Mcinerney (Those Faraday Girls), and Judy Nunn (Floodtide) are at fourth, sixth and seventh place respectively and it is terrific to see them enjoying such success.
But students in creative writing classes ought to be aware that their chances of having non-mass market novels published right now is slim. Does this mean that they should not write them? No, but they would be better prepared for life as a professional writer if they had some knowledge of the dynamics of the publishing industry and the market for books in Australia. I try and provide some perspective on this for those who come to listen to me. I show the dismal statistics and break down sales into genres and categories. My information may not be what my audience was expecting to hear, but at least it provides them a degree of reality regarding their chances of succeeding as a professional writer in their chosen area.
One of the other things I suggest to beginning writers is that they should have more than one arrow for their writing bow. The skills of the craft of writing can be used in more ways than one. One of the suggestions I have put forward to the Literature Board of the Australia Council is for a program of residencies for writers within industry. I’d like to see creative writers learning the skills and craft of writing annual reports, press releases, and internal communications. At the same time, they could be sharing their creative writing skills with other employees. If they were employed on a half-time basis, say, they’d have some income to underwrite their own creative writing as well as the ability to learn other writing skills that can assist them through other lean times. I tend to think we have become too specialist as creative writers, particularly with regard to fiction. My November 2005 plenary address to the Australian Association of Writing Programs expands on these issues and can be read here.
This is not so true of creative non-fiction (which also has the largest market share of the book market at present), but often the writers who succeed at this have a journalistic background. Granted, Anna Funder’s Stasiland had its origins in creative writing classes and an ASA mentorship, but books like Chris Masters’ Jonestown benefit from well-honed journalistic skills. Over the years journalists have offered much to the Australian book industry and perhaps this has much to do with their ability to be flexible in their point of view. The leftish journalist Brian Penton wrote a couple of great Queensland novels (Inheritors and Landtakers) in the 1930s before becoming editor of Frank Packer’s Daily Telegraph in 1941 and excelling himself in emulating the outrageous industrial relations of his boss.
But let me leave the last words to the creative writers. Some years ago I was studying under the late, great Glenda Adams at the University of Technology Sydney. Glenda was a wonderful teacher who gently pushed her students towards narrative excellence. It was not her fault that I was too heavy to be pushed far in that direction.
Nevertheless a remark Glenda made in one seminar has stayed with me. Glenda remarked that we wrote, basically, because we were compelled to by our obsessions. She didn’t mean that writers were obsessive. Rather, she meant we were compelled to write because we had something to say. The point she was making was that this was not necessarily enough for our writing to meet a readership. We had to impose the discipline of the craft of writing on our obsessions so that we could most effectively communicate with our readership.
Even more years ago, at Macquarie University, Thea Astley worked hard to imbue me with an appreciation of Australian literature. In her measured fashion, she succeeded very well. Thea taught me to dissect books from the author’s viewpoint. We never discussed obsessions, but in our analysis of Voss, Maurice Guest, The Pea Pickers, To the Islands and Astley’s own The Acolyte this was the not-quite-invisible elephant in the room.
But Thea too concentrated on the art and craft of writing. The obsession was simply the kernel of the author’s desire keep refining their art and craft over thousands of pages and multiple drafts. This hard-working concept of the creative process is the one to which I subscribe. It may be that some people are born great writers, but many need a good deal of training. And all, I posit, need to understand the market they are entering as writers. The fact that a good manuscript receives continual rejections may not mean it is unworthy of publishing – it may simply mean that publishers can see no market for it. This is an unfortunate economic fact of life and we do all aspiring authors an injustice if we do not make this clear to them.

Parts of this article first appeared in the December 2007 issue of Australian Author. Copyright © 2008 Jeremy Fisher/Australian Society of Authors.

Uwe Timm in conversation

I was delighted to be invited to be in conversation with German author Uwe Timm on 18 March at Gleebooks in Sydney. This bilingual event (German/English) presented by the Goethe Institute of Sydney was a great opportunity for Australian readers to become familiar with one of Germany's finest contemporary novelists. Uwe has gained a fine international reputation for his novel In my brother's shadow (there is a link to my review of this book in the right hand column of this page).
If published in Australia, I am certain there would have been moves to classify this book as memoir or autobiography. Uwe insists it is fiction, even though "Uwe Timm" is the first person narrator and the book includes sections of Uwe's brother's diary from World War II.
I wonder why we in Australia need to make something "factual"? Nevertheless, "faction" is a good description of Uwe's book.