One lifetime is not enough, for all my words – Koraly Dimitriadis

Christos Tsiolkas on Faith

December 11, 2009 at 8:57 am (Creative commentary, Interesting stuff) (Christos Tsiolkas, Emerging writer, Emerging Writer's Festival, help with writing, mentoring, The Reader)

This is an compressed version of an article I wrote which was published in the Emerging Writer’s Festival’s The Reader. It can be purchased from Readings and online at www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au. If you are an emerging writer or just starting out, I recommended buying a copy of The Reader – it is a comforting and educational read. The article I wrote was based on an interview I did with Christos which I recorded and I may be putting this audio on my website so stay tuned(Follow me on twitter or facebook for updates). It was such an inspiring interview. We sat outside on a sunny spring day, sipped our hot drinks at a small cafe and talked writing. Christos was honest and sincere, as always. Much more was covered in the interview than I ever could have put in the article. Here it is:

Don’t get into this if you’re looking for celebrity, don’t get into this if you’re looking for status, don’t get into this if you kind of like the idea of being a writer, do this if writing is the one thing you must do in your life, and if that is the reason you are continuing to do it, then you will find a way of developing.

- Christos Tsiolkas

‘Christos, why are you mentoring me?’ I asked this in the midst of writing despair. It was one of those days we all experience – no news from anywhere, dwindling motivation. And of course, his hearty laughter resounded through the café. What strikes me with Christos is how different he is from the characters in his novels. Although his work paints a sometimes bleak picture of society, Christos is grounded, courteous, and not afraid to crack a controversial joke.

I approached Christos for guidance a year ago, not only because we share similar backgrounds, but because my writing is also bleak, and doesn’t shy away from graphic descriptions of sex.  ‘The first time we spoke I was struck by your passion for writing’, he tells me. ‘When you sent me part of your work I heard a distinct voice and wanted to encourage it. I’m not apologetic about taking extra efforts with wog and working-class writers. The publishing industry in this country is dominated by an old-school, Anglo-bourgeois elite and I am tired of that voice. Your writing doesn’t sound like that at all, and that’s why I find it exciting.’ To this day, I still can’t believe my favourite author is my mentor.

Christos is continuing a legacy initiated by his own mentors, authors George Papaellinas and Sasha Soldatow. He reflects on their support with gratitude: ‘They were really instrumental in having the kind of conversations you and I are having now, looking at my work, being critical about the work, informing about how the writing world works.’ It was Sasha who took his manuscript Loaded to Jane Palfreyman, her friend at Random House.

‘In the early 90s, it was a really exciting time in local publishing’, he explains. ‘There were these amazing women who became the heads of publishing departments that were younger than the men who had run publishing for ages and were prepared to take risks.’ A week after Jane received the manuscript, Christos was offered a publishing contract.

Another reason Christos mentors emerging writers is because he believes in the importance of education. He wanted to be a teacher but realised it required the type of full-time commitment that would compromise his writing. I can just picture Christos lecturing a room full of novel-writing students on the importance of reading. ‘That is the way you learn about writing, through reading other writers’. He reminds me of this each time we meet. ‘It’s by being challenged by work; it’s how you learn vocabulary; it’s how you learn how stories work.’
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Christos never completed a creative writing course himself but speaks highly of their capacity to develop self-discipline. ‘Anything that forces you to the desk and creates a deadline is a really helpful thing.’ Writers also learn to self-edit, a skill just as crucial as the imaginative work, he says. However, what these courses lack are subjects like a “Politics in Writing” class. Christos says his Arts degree, with majors in Politics and History, deeply inform his writing: ‘There should be debate and argument and conversation about [politics and culture], because writing does not happen in a vacuum, it happens as part of a social practise.’

But it’s the space writing courses provide to workshop that make them invaluable, he thinks. Christos is part of a writing group where he workshops early drafts. ‘I trust these writers…and that can be really exciting, because they can point out things that you haven’t even thought of yourself.’ Christos presents his work to the group by explaining why they are being given a particular section, how it relates to other sections, what difficulties he’s having, and what he hopes to get out of the process.

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If only my hand was fast enough to scribble down all of his wise words! Though he shares his experience without reservation, what I appreciate most about Christos is his encouragement in difficult times. When I stumble across “What am I doing?” moments, and I’m just craving for someone to tell me that I will be published, Christos reminds me to put my writing into perspective – I am also a mother, a sister, a friend.

Being a writer isn’t only about getting published, he explains, it’s about a career. He made the decision in his mid-twenties to work only part-time to focus on his writing. He began exploring other forms –  the student newspaper, doing film reviews and book reviews – which he maintains is a great way of honing your craft: ‘every little bit that you publish goes towards your reputation, towards your long term understanding of yourself – someone called “Christos Tsiolkas” – as a writer’.

In order to do all this writing, one must be disciplined, particularly if there is full-time work or children to contend with. I write when my daughter naps and Christos writes every morning, except on weekends. But often, getting yourself to the computer isn’t the only challenge: ‘It’s very easy to get sucked into that virtual vortex, and you may have been at the desk for four hours but you’ve done nothing.’ To escape the internet, Christos sometimes leaves his house and writes longhand.

It’s a relief, if not a surprise, to hear that Christos too has days where he doubts his ability and is unproductive. On these days he forces himself to write something, even if it’s just notes in his journal. ‘It is work. There are days when you go to the workplace and you really don’t want to be there. But you have to, and you find within an hour, that you’re working.’ If this approach fails, he switches to another form of writing, like a play or an essay. Otherwise, he may just stop: ‘I may finish early and go and see a film… And I think that’s part of the process too – rather than flagellate yourself too much, just go out and get inspired.’ The unproductive days are more frequent at the beginning of a project: ‘When I’m starting out I read a lot of fiction. It’s important to realise that reading and watching films is part of that process of getting energised again. Once I’m in the middle of a work, then I can write for hours and I am solidly in that space, like a rush… Beginning a project is like paddling, you’re kind of testing the water, and once you’re in it, it’s like you’re swimming’.
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Writing processes aside, the most difficult aspect of “emerging”, for me, is the rejection. Christos reflects on the bad reviews that followed The Jesus Man, his second novel, when he considered abandoning it all. But dealing with failure is one of the most important lessons for an artist: ‘Failure sometimes can be the most inspiring thing in the long run… What it made me realise is that there’s nothing else in this world I wanted to do, so I went back and worked and worked at doing it better.’

He’s still affected by bad reviews. ‘But I have kind of a faith that this is the thing I can do, and I trust that faith. It’s a religious kind of sense. What is faith? Faith is trust. And you have to learn to trust yourself. And I’m fortunate that I have friends and family that trust that commitment. Faith is essential.”