AustLit
I: How did you come to be involved in the WoMentoring Project?
JC: The short answer is I responded to a tweet from Kerry Hudson when she was thinking about setting up a mentoring scheme for unpublished female writers.
The longer answer is, I understand how tricky it is for all unagented, unpublished writers to find professional mentor services, and, as a woman, I also have insight into the added challenges many women writers have on top of finding and funding mentor services: many women writers walk a mental tightrope, balancing childcare, and work with the guilt of wanting to make space and time to develop their writing. When the WoMentoring Project was set up, it provided an opportunity to offer more than empathy to women writers who would benefit from mentor services to develop their writing.
There is another reason that I was interested in the WoMentoring Project—entirely selfish—which is that, as a sole trader and a freelance editor, I am always on the lookout to connect with likeminded groups and individuals to widen both professional and social networks.
I: Can you tell me about how you first ‘met’ Emma?
JC: The process of matching editors and mentors with writers through the WoMentoring Project is that I let them know availability, and I receive several submissions from writers in return. In the Spring of 2014, I received Emma’s submission along with several others and, after taking time to consider how and whether I could add anything useful to any of the writers who submitted writing samples and writing bibliographies, I invited Emma to take up a block of mentoring ‘meetings’ that I considered could be beneficial to her novel-in-progress.
I: Can you tell me about the kind of feedback or suggestions you gave Emma about Resurrection Bay? How often were you in touch, and for how long? Are you still in contact?
JC: Emma is terrific, as you’ll have found! Emma is, and was, a dream writer to work with, in that she had a fully formed idea of what she wanted from the mentoring process. In June 2014, I sent over a suggested mentoring plan that summarised where I felt the novel-in-progress could be strengthened, which were plot and characterisation. I also explained that other parts of the storyline (setting, opening, closing, twists and reveal, tension, conflict, description, dialogue, action) would be touched on over the course of the sessions, so that, although we looked at two areas in depth, we also penetrated other areas of the novel.
We worked initially over a three-month feedback period, where we would focus on specific agreed areas of the manuscript. Emma sent over a section and I offered feedback through tracked changes and manuscript commentary, as well as notes, with a view that after this period Emma would then work on the whole manuscript and resubmit it for an evaluation later in the year. Over the months, from June 2014 to January 2015, we exchanged bits of the manuscript (scenes, character development issues, unfolding the plot, etc.) over about twenty emails. We discussed, for example, strategies for deepening emotional engagement and working on inner and outer conflicts, paring back drama, strengthening characters, thinking about how to release important back story, information placement (key plot points), and so on.
Through the to and fro exchange, I asked questions to encourage creative introspection: for example, why does Caleb have to be deaf? Once Emma felt she’d taken it as far as it would go with revisions, she rewrote it into a full manuscript and resubmitted it for a reread and further feedback. At this stage of the mentoring process, the storyline made itself visible. By this I mean it was obvious what to cut and keep for book two—by then it was obvious there was plenty of material for a series. And then it was a case of paying attention to the noise of the manuscript: turning up the volume in some places and turning it down in others depending on the effect required for individual scenes or plot turns.
Emma is an intuitive writer who also pays attention to literary effects. We had plenty of respectful disagreement and debate, but it was handled with grace and good humor. If I suggested a revision (always in Tracked Changes) that Emma disagreed with, she didn’t complain about the suggested revision; she would rewrite or recast the scene or area of the manuscript to make her point more clearly. It meant that the resulting story was strengthened and developed in a way that was in keeping with her vision for the novel.
Yes, we do keep in touch. I love hearing about her latest writing projects and seeing her writing career develop, and we often just wave across the ocean about nothing in particular.
I: Do you think there’s anything special or specific about editing crime fiction?
JC: Through JC Consultancy, I’m privileged to work with publishers specializing in crime imprints (HarperCollins Killer Reads; Bookouture crime), and I’ve also edited literary fiction and genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and romance) and non-fiction, both with individual publishers and writers who go on to publish independently. All fiction has principal elements in common: strong and unique storylines; fully rounded characters that you feel you’ve met somewhere and who linger in your imagination after you put down the book; pathos; authentic setting; believability of character, setting and plot; and good solid writing.
But crime fiction has additional qualities or ingredients: attention to pace and progression that will inject page-turning suspense in a way that is more sustained than in, for example, a work of literary fiction; building the story in waves and revealing key plot points at strategic moments in the storyline.
I: Do you see anything distinctively Australian in Emma’s work? Is there such a thing as Australian crime, from your point of view?
JC: It wasn’t part of the mentoring brief to ensure that the novel was identifiably Australian—at no time did I respond to Emma to say, ‘Make this more/less Australian’—the mentoring brief was to develop a well-written novel. I think we can all agree that Resurrection Bay successfully met the mentoring brief.
What I see in Emma’s writing is uniquely Emma Viskic: Emma has a distinctive style and tone; her writing fuses humor, pathos and social commentary along with a fast paced, well planned, thoughtful, crime story. Her writing is wry and knowing, and her characters and settings are completely believable. She makes it seem effortless. Is that distinctively Australian? Emma has the distinctive qualities of a writer who happens to live in Australia. Her settings are how I imagine an Australian setting would be. That’s the surface level, but dig deeper, and you can discern a unique sensibility within her writing, one that’s concerned with cultural difference, and community, family, and personhood. What is compelling about Emma’s writing is how she presents cultural and social division. It is a quiet rage, neither sensationalist nor oblique. She holds it up to the reader as a challenge. Her writing is saying, ‘Look at us, look at what we have done/we do to one another as human beings,’ and by us/we, she means everyone.
Irvine Welsh has said that crime fiction readers ‘crave what real life seldom delivers: the promise of resolution in a world of uncertainty’ (Crimespotting: An Edinburgh Crime Collection, 2009). And there’s a lot to agree with in what he says. Looking at the question from the perspective of Scottish fiction, […] until very recently, Scottish writers wrote within the English literary tradition […]. Australian crime fiction is similar in this way to Scottish crime fiction, and to all crime fiction—it has stepped out from the shadow of the English literary tradition and is continually reinventing itself. The research project title, then, is a good summation of Australian crime fiction as one of many ‘worlds’ within genre fiction.
What is an Australian writer? At a book event in 2011, the writer Andrew O’Hagan was asked ‘What is a Scot, a Scottish writer?’ His response is pertinent to your project question. O’Hagan replied, ‘It’s anyone who imagines they are Scottish, who puts Scotland at the centre of all their thinking and writing life, for whom Scotland and Scottishness are primary.’ So, to paraphrase O’Hagan, what is distinctive about Australian crime fiction is this: it is crime fiction that is written by anyone who imagines they are Australian who puts Australia and Australianness at its centre.
As an Australian author, Emma’s background, moral outlook, and sensibility could have an impact on her writing; it could seep onto the page. Perhaps. What is clear is that she has forged a distinctive way of seeing through the prism of a murder and a fractured seaside community.
This interview was undertaken as part of the Genre Worlds project. Genre Worlds is an ARC-funded research project undertaken by Professor Kim Wilkins, Professor David Carter, Associate Professor Beth Driscoll, and Professor Lisa Fletcher.
For more information on the project, go to the home page.