Interviews with Creatives | Author Trish Bolton on writing into fear + making the invisible visible

In this interview, I chat with Melbourne novelist Trish Bolton on gardening as painting, procrastination as fear, and why the big ideas never happen in front of the screen.

This is part of the Interviews with Creatives series, a curated library of conversations from the Creative Momentum with Meg podcast.

Trish Bolton is a Melbourne writer whose debut novel Whenever You’re Ready was published by Allen & Unwin in January 2024. Trish came to the novel after decades of writing in many other forms: garden journalism, newspaper features, political essays, academic publications, press releases and a PhD. She never called herself a writer until she had a book.

Whether you are someone who has been writing for years without quite claiming the identity, someone trying to finish a first novel in a new chapter of life, or someone who needs reminding that the big ideas come away from the desk, this is the episode for you. Trish is warm, funny, searching and completely unafraid of telling the truth about where she is.

This is a generous, wise and gently funny conversation about what it means to have been a writer all your life, and to only just now be saying so out loud.

Listen or watch the podcast interview

Trish Bolton – Author

Introduction

TB: I’m Trish Bolton, a creative writer. I had my first novel published about two years ago but I was thinking about writing and how long I’ve been writing. It wasn’t until I actually had my book published that I even thought to call myself a writer. If someone said, what do you do, I would never have said, I’m a writer. And yet, if I think back, I have been writing for so long in so many different ways. My first piece of writing that was read out was a poem on 3AR, which gives you an idea of how long ago that is because that’s now Radio National. Most people will never have heard of 3AR. Then I went on to write, and I’m a very keen gardener, which is part of my creative life.

I’m not someone who goes and pulls out weeds, but someone who loves to paint pictures in the garden with plants and texture. I was always making up little stories in my head about what I was doing in the garden, and I decided to put them on paper and got quite a few of those published, in The Age when it was quite different. The stories weren’t about how to look after a plant, but more of a story.

I’ve just done all sorts of writing that I hadn’t really thought about when you pull it all together. When I was doing my Honours year, my supervisor said, you’ve got to get this essay published. I had it published in a political journal. Then when doing my PhD, I was told I should get my proposal published, which I did, and then research submissions in my work, hammering out press releases, editing other people’s work, and writing a few features.

I can’t paint, I can’t sing, I can’t play an instrument, but I love painting pictures in the garden.

MD: I love that so much, Trish. Gardening writing was also my first foray into writing. I’d never thought that I was going to be a writer.  One of my neighbours stopped by while I was gardening and she said, you should write about what you’re doing. At the time, I was planting local natives and trying to work out how to make them into a beautiful garden. And so I started writing a column for our local paper.

TB: Oh, there you go, isn’t that amazing? I got work with a garden journal years ago. I think it was Yates. I never sort of saw these things as being really important or, wow this is terrific. Whereas I would now think, wow. That’s amazing to get that sort of piece of writing work. I’d sent in a story to Yates I’d written about a rose and he said, oh, we don’t publish that sort of literary garden writing, but would you like some work? There was no internet then, and he would send me pages of pictures of different things that he wanted me to write about in the mail. I took on that job, and it was really fantastic. I actually earned more money in that year than I’ve ever earned from writing since. Then I lost the job because, absolutely knowing nothing about journalism and nothing about writing for a magazine, I wrote some negative things in a piece about the carpet rose, not realising that they were the major sponsor, and I never got any work after that.

MD: Oops!

TB: There you go, you’re always learning along the way. So many writers do garden. I can just think of any number now on Instagram whose gardens I love to look at. It’s really a lovely place to go to, a sort of meditative place to go to and to get away from the writing, and just to have that time to think. So, I find that really very calming, and very meditative. It gives me that break, gives me that time to think, and I don’t feel any pressure there. My partner says, I can’t work out if you’re a gardener who loves to write, or a writer who loves to garden. But I often think I’m most myself in the garden.

Creative Routine

MD: Do you have a routine for your creative writing, or your writing work?

TB: Well, I do. When I worked, because I don’t work in paid employment anymore, I would get up very early and would work two or three hours before I went to work. I would also write at night. It was in those early days when you first start and feel that joy of getting words on the page. I just hammered it all out. I didn’t really quite know what I was doing then either. But I tend to procrastinate now quite a bit and I think the procrastination is actually not procrastination, but fear of approaching the work on that day.

My routine is that I will write almost every day if I possibly can. I’ll write for about three hours. This is when I’m doing the first draft, so I do have very different patterns of writing for the first draft, and then when I finish that first draft. I have written a couple of other novels that didn’t get published, so I’ve been through this process a number of occasions and the first draft can just take me absolutely ages. So, this time around with the piece of writing I’m working on now, I decided that I would try and do the thousand-words-a-day thing. It really did get me going, and I did end up writing this first draft in just a few months. But about halfway through, I started to feel so concerned about it because I’m a pantser, and I was thinking of all the changes that were happening — I was changing names, and I was doing all these different things — and it was making me really stressed and I just had to go back and fix it all up. I didn’t end up continuing with a thousand words a day, but it really got me started, and I’m glad I did it. I will write anywhere. I don’t have a room dedicated to writing, so I’ll write anywhere around the house. Basically, I’ve got my laptop and I’ll sit on the sofa here in this room. I’ll sometimes go to the bedroom. My partner’s a classical guitarist, and we share a little room at the end of the house, which mostly I let him be there if he’s home. I used to think that I had to have hours to sit down and write, but I’ve learned that I can write in snatches, and have found that quite productive because you can sit down and think you’re just going to put down that idea, and because there’s sort of no pressure on yourself, you end up writing a few hundred words really quickly.

MD: Did you find that when you stopped working and were still writing, there was a transition of, when do I write now that I don’t have to write before work?

TB: Yeah, that’s really true actually. I really do like to write early in the morning, and I had that opportunity then to not get up so early but still write early in the morning before my brain switches into gear. I’m very much a person who takes information in all the time and that’s not good for your writing. So, I would write sometimes in bed for a couple of hours, but in the end, unfortunately, lifetime habits take over. I’m that person who has to have everything done in the house. I’m very easily distracted by things that need to be done or should be done, and I can find that hours have passed. So, I’m trying to be more disciplined about that and get to my writing about mid to late morning, write for three hours, stop for a little break, and hopefully come back to it in the afternoon.

MD: Did you have to put any structures in place to say, that’s enough of the house, it’s time to sit down and write?

TB: I do give myself really good talkings to every now and then, Meg, but I certainly don’t put my writing second because it’s just about the most important thing in my life, apart from the people in my life. But it’s that lifetime of habit, so I do tend to put other things I want to do ahead of the writing and I’ve always got good excuses, but I can never enjoy anything until I sit down and do the work that I’ve actually got to do. I’m still talking to myself about it, maybe. I’ve been listening to some of your podcasts, and I hear these writers with these amazing structures and this self-discipline, and I’m thinking, honestly, they’re much, much younger than me, they’ve got many more things going in their life than I do, and I’m really in awe. I do think I was like that at one stage, and now I’m not. I should give myself a little pat on the back, though, because when I’m editing, I’m obsessed, and you can’t take me away from the computer. I’ll work very long hours and I can just do that for hour upon hour upon hour. But it’s the first draft that I procrastinate terribly.

MD: The reason I was going down that pathway was because I’ve been having conversations over the last week with some women who are now retired but and finding time to write becomes harder because they’ve got bigger gaps of time and will do it later. I know this for myself as well. I actually wrote more when I was busier than when I was less busy.

TB: Yeah. It’s so true. Well, I think I’m a lost cause, but I do the work and I absolutely love a deadline, because I’ve written for newspapers, I’ve worked in politics, and there are deadlines. If I’ve got a deadline, I’m absolutely committed to the deadline, and I always say to an editor, give me a deadline.

MD: Do you give yourself a deadline for writing a first draft?

TB: I did do it this time. I was going to write my first draft last year, and it was a very busy year and I wasn’t able to do it. I was away from home quite a lot. So in November, I had about maybe 10,000 words, probably less and I decided I was going to get a first draft done by March. Well, I didn’t make March, but I did make May and that was because I did that thousand-word limit, and that made me get started. So, I’m quite pleased that I did that.

Creative Process

MD: Do you have a process of going from idea of what you want to write about to getting it all out? Do you follow a process? You did mention that you’re a pantser, which I think is a spectrum. From fully pantsing to fully plotting.

TB: Imagine planning a novel. I just can’t. I have, I wish I could, in a way, especially if you’re a crime writer perhaps you do have to do that to some extent. I’m very spontaneous. I’ll get an idea and really run with it and try it out on the page and see how it goes. If it’s not quite working for me after a few chapters around voice and around what tense I’m writing it in and what perspective, and so on, then I’ll try something else. But I tend to write things that are very uppermost in my mind. I find they come out on the page when I don’t perhaps even intend to write about them. So, for instance, with Whenever You’re Ready, I was thinking a lot about my own ageing and that was just uppermost in my mind. That was the idea that stimulated that book. It went to a whole lot of other places as well, but that was the initial idea. In all my writing I have written a lot about social justice issues. There’s always something I want to say about those sorts of issues. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about women and homelessness, I think a lot about gender issues, and they tend to always come out on the page. I don’t set out to write with an agenda, but I find the things that are worrying me, the things that I’m thinking about will always end up in what I’m writing.

MD: Wre you starting with an idea, or just a concern that you have, and writing into it?

TB: Usually, yes. What’s on my mind at the moment, on a lot of people’s minds, is climate change, and I’m thinking about that a lot in terms of my grandson, who’s about to turn six. Although the work I’m working on now isn’t really necessarily about climate change, I find that coming into the story and I’m running with it, thinking of how I might incorporate it into this story that I’m telling. I get ideas from lyrics, from a piece of art, or a conversation, or I might just hear something on a tram. I think public transport is a great place to get ideas. It might be just a voice, the way that someone speaks, the way they express themselves. Sometimes that sets off an idea, or might be an idea for a character. But I am really curious and really interested in the complexity and the contradictions of human behaviour. There are examples of that everywhere: in yourself, your family, your community, public transport, everywhere you go.

MD: Are those always the things that have caught your eye and interested you with your writing? I know you did the RMIT course at one point. Has that been a theme throughout your writing, these things that inspire you?

TB: Yeah it has, whether it’s non-fiction or fiction. You see patterns. You don’t know until you sort of look back and see what you’ve written. I can see patterns. I’ve always been interested in women and gender issues. When I was a single mother, that was something I wrote quite a bit about in a bigger, broader picture, looking at policy around that, or the way single mothers were treated. That became something I wrote about quite a bit in newspapers. My background, being brought up a Catholic and all the difficulties I’ve had with that, and leaving that faith a long, long time ago, became part of the writing too. I don’t set out to do that. I don’t use it as fodder. I don’t necessarily try to exploit my life for my writing but I think they say that when you look at a writer’s body of work, you can see themes running through it that the writer hasn’t been aware of, and I can really understand that.

MD: Whenever You’re Ready really puts women at the front, and ageing women, and I think you’ve been an amazing advocate for these stories, for putting the invisible woman at the front. Has that grown with you over your body of work?

TB: Yeah, very much so. I wasn’t even quite sure I realised I was doing it, but it was something I was thinking about and it’s exploded now. There are so many writers writing about it, but when I first had the idea it was 2017, and there was very little. It’s wonderful to see that being talked about, discussed, and getting some air. Getting lots of air, really. I’ve always been interested in gender issues, because women are invisible in different ways at all times of their life but arguably no more so than when you’re older. When I talk about being invisible, I’m not talking about being visible in the way that you look a certain way, or you look great for your age, or you don’t look great for your age, or you want to be seen, or you want to be attractive to others. It’s not about that. It’s about being. If you’re invisible, then the issues that are a part of your life are also invisible. I think we only need to look at the Royal Commission into Aged Care to know what happens if you are invisible. If you’re not seen, then your needs aren’t met, your voice isn’t heard. So, I wanted to address all those sorts of things. Again, not as an agenda, but just things I’d thought about quite a lot.

MD: And I think you did it so well in Whenever You’re Ready and I agree that since then, there have been so many other books bringing women and the issues that women face that men don’t have to even think about.

Creative Wisdom

MD: Trish, you’ve touched on some beautiful pieces of wisdom for people who are writing or creating. Is there anything else you would want to share with someone who is either thinking about going into writing at whatever stage of their life, or having a wobbly moment?

TB: Yeah, I think these are things that I still tell myself. Don’t show your work too early. You’ll regret it 10 years later, because you’ll see that manuscript and go, oh my god, did I actually show that to someone? Also, don’t get too many opinions, because it can just confuse you. Perhaps find a trusted group or a trusted person that you show your manuscript to when it’s ready. We all talk about how vulnerable we feel, and we don’t think we have this sort of self-belief, but I think actually we do have self-belief, because we wouldn’t be sitting down there in front of that screen and tapping those keys or writing longhand if we didn’t actually believe in ourselves and believe in our writing. Always remind yourself of that. I love the romance around writing, and I feel it too, but I think writing is work, and it’s very, very hard work. You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to do the work. You’ve got to sit down, or stand up, or however you work, and do it. If it was easy, well, everyone would be doing it. I know everyone thinks they can write a book. But they can’t.

MD: That’s such solid advice. Yeah, everyone says, oh, I could write.

TB: That’s right. Oh, I’m going to write a book, but I just haven’t had time. Right! The other thing is that I find that none of those big moments about my writing happen in front of the screen. You have to get away from the screen. For me, it’s in the shower. Sometimes when I’m cooking a meal after I’ve been writing all day, or when I go for a walk. I really know what’s happening when I wake up at night and I can’t sleep. I don’t give that advice to do that, but that’s what happens for me. I know that the manuscript is really starting to work when that happens. But I don’t get any big ideas in front of the screen. I do the writing, but the really big moments, where you think about a character, or about the plot, or about a beautiful line, happened to me away from the screen. So sometimes you can sit doggedly there because you feel like you’ve got to do that work, but sometimes you just have to get up and walk away, and that’s when the problem will be solved, I think.

MD: And that’s still doing the work, isn’t it, when you’re going through it. It’s doing it.

TB: Work. Yeah, absolutely.

MD: I think sometimes people get confused about doing the work, like, doing the work means you have to sit in front of the computer and write. But it’s the reading, it’s the thinking.

TB: That’s true. I’m not sure that I believe in writer’s block, but I do believe in fear of the blank page. Another piece of advice that I’m pretty sure was Toni Jordan’s advice was that if you get stuck pick up a book, any book, and just read a line or a paragraph, and off you go. You’re not going to be writing that line, you’re not plagiarising, but it stimulates an idea in relation to your own work. I’ve always found that works for me.

MD: Helen Garner said something similar: read.

TB: Absolutely. How can you write if you’re not a reader?

Home for Creativity

MD: What feels like home for you and your creative work?

TB: I think to write something that matters, even if it just matters to me. To be writing something that’s meaningful. Something that might make me laugh, and also cry. To believe in the writing I’m pulling together, to believe in that work, the story I’m telling and why I’m telling it and developing that trust in myself. N to be so focused on the end result of being published, which is easy to say when you’ve been published. Very hard to say when you haven’t been. But I think in the end it’s to write something that’s meaningful in some way, and hope it’s meaningful to others, but that it’s meaningful to you, and you feel nourished by it, I suppose.

MD: That’s great that this is what feels like home for your creative work. And I love that so much. Is it also when you are in the garden?

TB: Yeah, creatively, as a creative space, that’s a really very peaceful place for me. I really do enjoy that. I think too, with writing, and I say this with gardening as well, but with writing too, it’s a way of making sense of yourself and making sense of the world, and save you a great deal of money in therapy. It has for me. You don’t find out what you think about things. You find out what you feel about things, and you can work your way through that. For me now at my age, I can look back on a lifetime and I often think about those patterns, and who I was, and who I am, and still think about who I would like to be. Those things, I hope, are there in your subconscious, and that’s what I think when you’re in that meditative state of writing, or for me, gardening, that those feelings, those thoughts will emerge, things that you hadn’t really realised.

MD: I’m sure I read somewhere that gardeners live longer. I think it’s because we find such peace in it. We get to focus on a little flower, or the fact that we’ve seen a ladybird crawling on a rose, and are like, oh, go eat those aphids.

TB: You so appreciate nature, don’t you? I know it’s a little bit of a cliche, but you so appreciate what’s around you as you get older so much more. There are people who do that all through their lives, and that’s such a wonderful quality but certainly as I’ve gotten older, I so much appreciate what’s going on around me, especially in terms of nature, and how vulnerable it is, and how fragile it is, and how we should care for it and nurture it.

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