Claire Zorn is an Australian author and artist whose creative work moves between novels, picture books, drawing, painting, weaving and tapestry.
This is part of the Interviews with Creatives series, a curated library of conversations from the Creative Momentum with Meg podcast.
What interested me most about talking with Claire was the way she approaches creativity without needing to know exactly where it is going.
She doesn’t plan her novels in detail. An idea might begin as an image: a woman lying on a beautiful lawn while rain falls on her face. She carries that image around until she begins to understand who the woman is and why she is there. Then she starts writing.
Her approach to weaving is much the same. She might choose one colour and then ask herself what colour should come next. Planning too far ahead, she says, takes some of the fun out of it.
There is something important in that distinction. Claire is disciplined about making time for creative work, but once she is there, she wants to leave room for discovery.
That idea comes up again when we talk about getting stuck. Claire’s advice is simple: have small, achievable goals. If you can write a paragraph, write a paragraph. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be good.
‘It just has to exist.’
I love that as a way of thinking about creative work. Before we can judge something, we have to make it.
We also talk about the role of music in Claire’s writing, the synesthesia that means she experiences colours and shapes when she hears music, the importance of observation, and how getting out of our usual routines can give us new material to work with.
Listen or watch the podcast interview
Prefer to listen? This conversation first appeared on Creative Momentum with Meg. Listen below or continue reading the full transcript.
There’s a lovely story about Claire travelling alone to Venice while working on her next novel. She expected to be researching the Venice Biennale. Instead, she found herself fascinated by hotel breakfast buffets, watching people examine croissants, smuggle food into bags and negotiate their mornings.
It’s a good reminder that creative material is often everywhere once we start paying attention.
In this interview we explore
- Why Claire resists putting creative work into separate boxes
- How music, images and synesthesia feed into her novels
- Why Claire prefers to discover a story rather than plan it
- The value of small, achievable creative goals
- How observation becomes part of a writer’s practice
- What travel and unfamiliar places can reveal
- Why making without judging the work can be such a satisfying place to be
Read the full conversation below, or listen to the episode above.
Conversation with Claire Zorn, Author and Artist
CZ: My name is Claire Zorn. My professional creative output started out as novels for young adults. I think I published four novels for young adults between 2013 and 2021. I’ve also done two picture books, which I wrote and illustrated.
The first one came out in 2019 and then the next one will be out I think in October with Walker Books. I’ve also written novels for adults as well. I published my first novel for adults with Allen & Unwin last year, in 2025. The next one will be out next year with Allen & Unwin as well. That’s the professional side of things. I’m also a hardcore maker of stuff. Painting, drawing. I’ve recently discovered weaving and tapestry, and I’m so addicted, like fully obsessed.
MD: Which is what caught my eye when I reached out to you, because I’m always so drawn to how creatives are often doing creative work in other areas as well. You did a post on Instagram with some of the weavings.
CZ: I think I remember when I was growing up, this is going to be a tangent, but when I was growing up, my parents listened to a lot of music, and I was introduced to Joni Mitchell as a very young person. I remember learning that she also painted, and I think I learned that through the lyrics to one of her songs. She said, ‘I’m a lonely painter, and my life is in a box of paints.’ And then I learned that she actually paints as well and it blew my mind a little bit.
It’s easy to put people into boxes: this person writes music, this person makes movies, this person writes books, this person paints. But there’s a lot of overlap, I think.
I remember a number of years ago learning that Michael Stipe, the musician from REM, had taken a bit of a break from music, and was doing photography. And it’s like, oh, okay, you are actually allowed to let all of these parts of you go when you have time and space.
MD: I also think that it feeds into the other parts of our creative work anyway. I’m a knitter, and I’ve been trying to work through a tricky part of my manuscript, and so I’ll go and just sit and have a knit for a bit. I’m unknotting the idea in my head.
CZ: Yeah. I used to knit, but I can’t anymore because I got an RSI issue in my thumb but I used to have my knitting next to me when I’m working on a book. When I hit a spot, instead of picking up my phone or doing something not helpful and distracting, I would always try and pick up my knitting.
I do find that there’s something wonderful that happens. We don’t know much about our brains, really. We know a little bit, but not very much. I’ve always found that doing something else creative with your brain, other than the problem that you’re trying to figure out, can unlock that figuring-out part.
MD: Have you found that you do that with your weaving or your artwork now when you’re writing?
CZ: Yeah. I work normally in our garage, and that’s where I have my painting set up as well. I’ve got an easel, normally, with a painting on it, next to my desk particularly in the drafting stage, just getting the meat of the story out, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not doing anything else. But I do find that during the editing, the copy-editing phase, it’s really nice to do a little bit of work on the manuscript and then just have a little look over there at the painting, and maybe do a mark here or there on that. That’s a really nice way to work.
Creative Routine
MD: Tell me, do you have a routine for your creative work, your writing or your weaving?
CZ: I suppose I started to take the writing really seriously when my son was about 12 months old. He started having a regular nap in the afternoon, and I trained myself that when he was asleep, I would write. And that kept going into school. I have two kids now and once they were out the door, just after nine, I’d be at the desk until three. That’s not my natural creative time. I find that I’m much more creative in the late afternoon, which is the worst.
MD: It’s time with kids.
CZ: Yes. Stuff works. There’s a whole retraining of my brain.
MD: So does that routine change when they are on school holidays?
CZ: Yeah, I stopped trying. It gets really difficult, though. If a publisher’s schedule, particularly over the Christmas holidays, has been, ‘Here are the typeset proofs. You need to proofread these.’ That’s really, really hard. I would often rely on my husband to really help me carve out that time. Now the kids are older, they’re 14 and 18, and it’s a whole different ballgame. I can be like, ‘No, I need to work for a few hours, please leave me alone.’ And they’re generally very respectful of that. But when they were younger, no, school holidays was off. I just wouldn’t work in school holidays.
MD: Yeah, I agree, because I think when you do try to, you just end up annoyed with them and start snapping. Well, I did. On a typical writing day, is there a routine to your day? Do you have rituals?
CZ: I like to have breakfast while the kids are getting themselves ready. I then spend 20 minutes, half an hour, looking at Pinterest. My Pinterest algorithm is just colours and shapes, and it’s beautiful. It’s like a lovely bath and then often I’ll go for a quick swim. I’m lucky enough to live on the coast, so I’ll go for a cold swim in the rock pool, and then I try to be back at my desk by 10. Because I’m not really a morning person, it takes me a really long time to get everything going, so I find a swim, the cold really helps. It wakes me up.
Then I’m pretty good. I can stick with it for quite a number of hours. I try not to break for lunch. If I eat lunch, I’ll eat while I’m working. Then I’ll generally work pretty solidly until about 3.30. Just at the desk, with music as well.
Each book has always had its own playlist of songs, and then there are specific songs that I use as the theme song for the book. That helps me get into the right headspace to be writing the book. There’ll be specific songs that are for specific scenes, and that helps you get out of the everyday mindset into the imaginary world.
I find leaving the house, even though I’m just walking out the back door and into the garage, seems to be really important for me. Because otherwise, I just get distracted by stuff, cleaning, I don’t know.
It’s much easier to just pretend, no, I’m going to work. This will have to wait.
Creative Process
MD: Tell me, do you have a process of going from ‘I’ve got an idea’ to ‘I’ve got the thing done and it’s ready to send’?
CZ: The idea generally has to sit for quite a while, I’ve found. If I rush it, it doesn’t quite work. I don’t generally plan the books, plot-wise or anything like that. But I generally start with a sense of a character, who a character is, and it’ll be a character in a scene.
I think very, very visually, so it plays in my mind like a movie.
My last book that came out last year, Better Days, started with just an image of a woman lying on a really beautiful green lawn. She’s really well dressed. She’s looking up into the sky and it’s starting to rain, and she’s just letting it rain on her face. She’s not getting up, not moving, she’s just looking up into the sky.
I tend to carry that kind of scene around with me for a little while until I can get a better sense of who she is. Why is she lying on the grass? Where does she need to be? I might have a sense that she’s supposed to be somewhere else. Where is she supposed to be? Why is she here? What has she done before that has made her end up needing this time to decompress in this weird way?
Once I feel like I have a more solid sense of who the character is and what’s brought them into that scene, I can start writing. I try to write from start to finish, in a linear kind of way. And then it’s a lot of redrafting. A lot of drafts.
Because if you don’t plan anything, you run into problems. All of a sudden, something you wrote a few months ago, this scene that you thought would work really well, suddenly that character has moved somewhere else, and that’s not going to work anymore.
So there’s a lot of rewriting, a lot of redrafting. I think Better Days was six or seven drafts. I try to let it be a very fluid thing in the early draft stage.
MD: So more of a pantser than a plotter, if you looked at the two?
CZ: Yes.
MD: And is that similar with the other creative things that you do?
CZ: Yeah, I can’t plan. It’s really hard. Something like weaving, I look at these other people with their weaving practice and they’ve got a very set pattern that they’re going to follow, or a tapestry image that they’re going to follow before they start. I’ve tried doing that, but I always end up changing it as I go.
I try to keep that kind of art practice, making stuff, that’s supposed to be my fun, even though I always take it seriously.
To me, the planning of it takes the fun out of it a little bit. I really enjoy that space of being like, okay, I’ve chosen this particular colour. What’s going to work after this colour? Oh, this colour’s interesting. What happens if I add in this colour?
Whereas I find that really difficult to do in a planning stage, with pencils or whatever first. It has to be with the yarn. And I find it more enjoyable if I just let it go.
Creative Inspiration
MD: Where do you get your inspiration from for your writing, your weaving and your art?
CZ: For the writing, it generally starts with music. Pretty much all the books have started where I’ve heard a song, and I’ve been able to picture very clearly a scene that goes with the song. I have a thing where I see colours and shapes and patterns of light and things like that when I hear music.
It’s not like I see it like a literal thing. It’s not a hallucination. It’s a very, very clear picture in my mind. I thought everybody did that. Turns out not!
Some songs tend to start scenes for me, so it becomes people. And it’s not always related to any lyrics that are in the song or anything like that. It’s more like an atmosphere. So, the stories, the novels, tend to start that way.
I think I’m just a really frustrated screenwriter. I just wish I could write film scripts. But then I’d be frustrated if the visual product wasn’t exactly what I imagined in my head. I think that’s what’s great about writing novels. You can be so controlling about every scene. You can’t control what someone imagines, obviously, but you can put so many ingredients in there. I think my novels mainly come from music.
MD: Has music always been important to you?
CZ: Yeah. I grew up with a lot of music in the house. My parents would listen to a lot of music. Me and my husband are the same. We don’t play any instruments or anything, but there’s always a lot of music.
Particularly when I was growing up, it was music that was very lyrical and very story kind of stuff, like Neil Young, and so much Elton John. And Joni Mitchell as well. I think I would get these really, really strong pictures in my mind.
I remember being quite afraid of some music. Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Bad Moon Rising’, that would frighten me. My parents had the record of The War of the Worlds.
MD: That is so good and also terrifying.
CZ: It is terrifying. And I think I could picture so well the alien invasion as a small child. So, I think maybe, just inadvertently, my mind was trained from a young age to build pictures around songs. I’ve learned a lot about storytelling and writing from songwriters, as much as novelists.
MD: I am curious, just because this was my upbringing. We grew up without a telly, and so music was incredibly important. It was the external input into my ears, and I had to do a lot of imagining from listening to it. Did you have a telly growing up?
CZ: Yeah, we did, but I don’t remember watching heaps. There was Play School and Sesame Street, absolutely. But even something like Play School isn’t like other television. There’s so much use of our imaginations. I don’t recall watching a lot of stuff on television. There was usually music and because I also grew up in the Blue Mountains, the house I grew up in had a really big bushy backyard that connected to a council reserve. I was outside a lot, in imaginary worlds outside so my imagination as a kid was well exercised.
Filling the creative cup
MD: Can you tell me a little bit about what fills up your creativity cup?
CZ: I love going to galleries. That’s always been something that I find really nurturing. Social media gets such a bad rap, but I have a separate Instagram account which is just artists. It’s all artists and makers of stuff. And my Pinterest is the same. I love seeing what other people are doing. I’m such a visual person that all sorts of things, like clothes, furniture, particularly. It sounds weird, but I find furniture inspiring. I love a good homewares magazine, like Vogue Living or something. There’s something so pleasing about the arrangement of colours and shapes that I find really fires all the dopamine looking at pictures in other people’s homes.
And travel as well. I do love travelling, but it’s awful being someone who loves to travel who’s also an author. I love even just going to different places in Australia. I find everything interesting about places. I like people watching.
MD: Even just travelling in Australia, you’re watching people, listening to people.
CZ: People are weird. People are great. Just observing. I think part of being a writer is always having your ears and eyes open. It’s a bit like being a spy. You’re listening, you’re noticing. Always being alert to strange, weird, funny stuff.
MD: Being observational. We’re tuned right up, we’re noticing everything.
CZ: Absolutely.
Creative Wisdom
MD: If you were chatting with someone who might be feeling a little stuck, or is wanting to dip their toe into some creative work, what wisdom would you want to pass on to them?
CZ: I think the thing that I told myself when I was starting out, and I was starting out at a time when my time was very limited because I had small children, was to have small, achievable goals.
So if I can write a paragraph today, that is amazing. It doesn’t have to be a perfect paragraph. It just has to exist. Just try and make the thing that’s in your mind exist in the world and then worry about whether you think it’s good enough, whatever the standard you apply to it. That’s for later. But first, just small, achievable goals. Little things.
I started drawing again because I saw something on Instagram. It was an ad, actually. I saw this woman doing daily scribbles. She had a little sketchbook and every day she’d do a little scribble in a little sketchbook. I’m talking about a tiny, tiny, weeny little piece of paper.
In the evenings, often when I’d finished writing, my brain would be quite fried. I’d just be looking at my phone or scrolling through Marketplace. I’m not doing anything particularly nurturing or interesting, certainly not making anything. I remember thinking, that would be so nice to do a little scribble a day. So I got a little notebook and started doing that, and then it just exploded. It was like, okay, I think this little sketch needs to be slightly bigger. I’m going to work on a slightly bigger thing now.
I’m not doing the daily scribble anymore because I’m doing weaving every day, so it’s kind of grown. And even if I can just sit down and do half an hour, even if I just do a few little stitches, it builds slowly.
MD: Which is also a lovely analogy for writing, that if you do just a couple of sentences, you’ve grown it a couple of sentences.
CZ: Yeah. Just a few sentences. If you can only do one, just do one. But I think what always happens, I’ll just do one, and then another and then I look and think, look at this, there’s actually more happening.
MD: I love small, achievable goals. A lot of the people I work with, I get them to commit to three small actions that they’re going to take.
CZ: When it comes to writing as well, I encourage people to even handwrite on paper when you’re starting. Get a notebook. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be able to read it. I did a workshop recently, and I gave everyone these coloured pencils to work with. They were writing in coloured pencil on paper.
There were people who got really sore hands because they were pressing down, but they’re like, ‘But I can’t read it otherwise.’ You don’t need to read it. This isn’t about writing something that you’re then going to read. This is just about getting into that action of getting out of your head and onto the page. The blank screen on a computer, with a little pulsating cursor that’s waiting for you, can be really intimidating. A notebook is not because you can also pretend that no one’s ever going to see it. If I’m like, this doesn’t have to go anywhere, this can just stay here for me, that helps loosen up the writing.
MD: Do you journal as well?
CZ: I used to a lot when I was a teenager. I still have some of my high school journals. I really encourage young writers, or writers of any age, who are stopped by the idea that we have to find our voice in writing. That’s a really slow process. That comes really slowly.
What I discovered when I look back at those journals is that I was actually developing my writing voice there. The first manuscript I wrote was The Protected, which is a story about a 15-year-old girl, and the tone of that is really similar to the tone of the journals from when I was that age. I think that, even though I didn’t notice, I was actually building that voice.
One of my sons wants to do screenwriting, and I said to him, ‘Michael, it’s a really good idea if you could just do a little bit of journalling.’ And he looked at me and rolled his eyes and said, ‘Mum. I’ve been doing that for years.’
The book that’s coming out next year is called The Life and Work of Stella Q, and it’s about an artist. She’s a contemporary artist and she’s showing at the Venice Biennale. I had never been to the Venice Biennale, so when I was working on it I made a very rash decision to go. It was about to close, there were two weeks left. My husband was like, ‘Go. We’ll make it. Just do it.’
So I went on my own and had this weird solo experience in Venice for just under two weeks. Everything was copy. Everything was material. As soon as I arrived, even just checking into the hotel, breakfast. There are a lot of scenes in this new book that are set at the breakfast buffet in the hotel, because those places, there’s so much that happens. Someone’s picking up the croissants and examining them before they choose the right one. I was on a massive budget. I was in this hotel on Lido, so I wasn’t actually in Venice itself. The buffet had so much cake.
MD: Sweet breakfast!
CZ: A chocolate torte for breakfast. I was trying not to have to eat again the rest of the day, and also sneaking food into my bag, wrapping things in napkins and squirrelling that away. And then you lock eyes with someone who’s seen you smuggling food. There’s just so much potential once we get out of our everyday rhythms. When you’re doing the stuff that you do all the time, that observation can switch off quite easily. It’s when you get out of the familiar. I definitely wasn’t expecting to spend so much of the manuscript writing about breakfast buffets.
MD: Writers, that’s a really great bit of wisdom: get out of your normal zone to switch on your observation. It doesn’t have to be travelling. You can just go to another suburb.
CZ: Yeah. I worked in retail for a really long time, which I think helps. If you just go and sit in the food court of your local shopping centre, interesting places, the way people move around and what they do.
Home for Creativity
MD: Tell me, Claire, what feels like home for you and your creative work?
CZ: Oh, that’s a nice question. Probably when I’m in that kind of state where I’m making stuff, whether it’s writing a scene or doing a drawing or weaving or whatever, and I’m not worried about it. I’m not thinking critically about it yet. You’re just taking joy in it, like you’re lost in that kind of flow state. That’s, I think, when I feel most content. I kind of struggle to imagine how I would cope if I couldn’t make stuff.
Connect with Claire
Claire Zorn is an award-winning author of books for children, young people and adults. Her young adult novels have been awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult literature, the CBCA Book of the Year (twice) and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, amongst others. Her forthcoming novel The Life and Work of Stella Q, for which she received a Bundanon residency and Creative Australia grant, will be published by Allen & Unwin in 2027. Her next picture book (of which she is both author and illustrator) I Fell in a Hole will be published by Walker Books in October 2026.
- Website: https://clairezorn.com/
- Instagram: @claire_zorn
- Substack: Don’t Be Ridiculous By Claire Zorn
More interviews with creatives
Enjoyed this conversation?
If this story inspired you, encouraged your own creative practice, or gave you something to think about, I’d love you to share this interview with another writer or creative.
Creative Momentum with Meg, a podcast of conversations with creatives
This interview originally appeared on the Creative Momentum with Meg podcast, where I talk with writers and creatives about how and why they do their creative work.
Explore more conversations about creative process, inspiration, routines, challenges and the many different ways people bring their ideas to life.
S2E27: Claire Zorn, author, artist and enthusiastic maker – Creative Momentum with Meg
Listen or watch Creative Momentum with Meg
Want to be part of the Home Season?
I’m always looking for Australian creatives of all kinds to share their stories. If you’d like to be considered for a future interview, register your interest.
Looking for support with your own creative work?
Momentum is where writers and creatives come together to build consistent creative habits, find encouragement and keep moving their projects forward.