Briefly tell us about your book.
The Very Last List of Vivian Walker is about a woman who still has to finish her list of things to do even though she’s dying. It’s not a bucket list of extraordinary life-changing activities, instead it’s all the things she never managed to get around to finishing like tidying up the toy room or cleaning the fridge. Her list only gets bigger when combined with the added burden of having to choose inappropriate songs for her funeral and a statement-piece coffin. Unfortunately, her hapless and often useless husband continues to be completely incapable. It’s a love story about all the frustrating and annoying things we will miss most about our irritating family members when they are gone.
Tell us about your background and what led you to writing this book.
I’ve lost over ten people in the last ten years, not because I am careless but because they died, so I guess I had death on my mind. I also couldn’t help thinking about all the hilarious things that happen when people refuse to become spiritually enlightened or behave appropriately just because they are dying. One of my friends, Rebecka Darling Darren (nee Delforce), was particularly funny. When she found out she was dying, she wanted me to make sure I told every person we were dealing with, whether that was the chemist or the grocer, that she was dying as she figured – why not use it to her advantage! She helped me to look at death differently and was keen to do pranks wherever possible. She even made us watch an episode of the comedy Miranda about a funeral, while she was in palliative care, as she thought that would be hilarious.
What’s your daily writing routine like and what are you working on at the moment?
My daily routine changes on a daily basis but generally involves dropping my child to the school bus stop then sitting down at the computer and starting to write. After about two minutes I then generally get up to do the washing up and possibly hang out the washing. This is quickly followed up by some self-flagellation for procrastinating, followed by a cup of tea. Then I generally like to take an unsolicited sales call and stay on that for as long as possible before re-opening my laptop and searching for youtube videos of cats. I then like to attend to another domestic task that I never do unless I am supposed to be writing. Luckily, I have also been writing a soundtrack to go with my book, so if I can’t find another way to procrastinate, I head up to our music studio. My husband is helping produce the album, so I use my precious time to tell him everything he is doing wrong, before laying down some vocals and heading back to the house for some more avoidance techniques. Hopefully by then it’s time to collect my child from the bus, but if not, I will usually resort to calling a member of the family who likes to have two-hour long conversations about which pegs are the best ones to use and their benefits and cost analysis. After I collect my child, I give him something totally lacking in nutrition, let him watch youtube videos of cats and then we all have dinner. After a productive day in the office, I then generally sleep soundly until I wake up in a sweaty panic about an impending deadline at one am, at which point I usually write at least one hundred words before deciding to vacuum and wake up the entire household.
At the moment I am working on not finishing my second novel anywhere near on time. It’s about an old-school Tuckshop Lady whose world is turned upside down when her traditional menu gets challenged when the vegans, paleos, gluten-free and lactose intolerant parents invade her turf. Despite her years of service, her flabby triceps are no match for the tightly toned arguments of her archnemeses. Its working title is The Tuckshop Lady and I am hoping it gets me a lifetime ban from ever having to do any more tuckshop duty.
What’s the easiest and most difficult parts of your job as a writer?
The easiest part is that I never plan anything I write – I just sit at the computer and wait for inspiration to come. The hardest part is that I never plan anything I write – sometimes I write just to be writing but that is never the good stuff. The best writing normally comes in the most inconvenient places at the most inconvenient times. My best work is done when I am too sleep deprived to let my brain get in the way of a good story.
If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?
Don’t do it! No seriously my advice would be not to listen to any advice and to just write the way you write. Everyone has a different process and creativity is surprisingly creative in the way it chooses to show up. I think the most important thing is to live your life and look for clues along the way. Write about what you love but remember love is always more important than what you write. Hopefully one day we will all love each other enough that we will no longer need books to explain away our neurosis and human weirdness, in the meantime embrace your quirks and write about them. Tell us all your dirty truths because we all want to read about someone more screwed up than we are, even if it’s just so we can feel good about ourselves. Be honest with your readers and let them love your unique way of stringing a sentence together. If you give them all your openness honesty and truth and they don’t love you back – block them from your Facebook account.
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