Sunny Garden

Interview questions: Laura Miller

Do you find it difficult to find inspiration?

If things work the way they're supposed to, inspiration finds me. I used to think a worthwhile story could only be inspired by some big idea, and I tried to work out ways of hunting ideas like that down. Now, the stories build themselves from very small parts, and I'm much better at recognising those potential parts for what they might be.

So, small ideas come along, if they interest me I play with them, and sometimes bigger things come of it. And if they stopped coming along, that'd be fine. I'm sure I could find plenty to do. Most of the time, the greater difficulty is holding off from writing and giving all the ideas their turn.

Writing in first person narrative, is it hard not to think 'what would I do in this situation' and make the character like yourself, or somebody you're close to?

Since the characters, like the ideas, piece themselves together over time before I write, I usually have a fairly distinct sense of them as individuals when I'm writing. As far as I'm concerned, the story's about them and not about me, so if bits of me creep in and work for them and the story it's not a big drama. Strangely, it's my own identity that feels hazy during the writing process, rather than theirs.

Is is difficult to get motivated to work when you have no-one to tell you what to do?

It took too many years for me to work my way into this position for motivation to be a problem at the moment.

Plus, I have a surprising number of people telling me what to do. Or at least asking, in a polite but really clear way that's as good as telling.

The manuscript I'm working on now has publication dates scheduled in three countries, so I can remind myself of that on slack days.

You get flown around the country to speak publicly, you must have had some interesting experiences on these trips?!

Sure, that's one of the reasons to go on the trips. Plus, I could become really socially dysfunctional if I stayed in this little room all the time.

Sometimes it can be really interesting taking work way beyond its geographic origins and seeing how people deal with it elsewhere.

Last year I had the chance to tour India, which was fascinating. I was doing live shows, featuring mainly material from Headgames, and the last show - in Chandigarh - was the best. The story Green (from Headgames) was the centrepiece, with its socially challenged adolescent, his friend with the poise of a matador, his seriously embarrassing coloured drink choice and his perennially interfering but well-intentioned mother.

Afterwards, an actor (a woman in her 50s) from the movie Bandit Queen approached me to ask about the Indian rights to tour the show. The professor of commonwealth literature at the university of the Punjab came up to me and said, 'I liked that Green story. It's very post-colonial.' And a civil engineer who lived down the road from the venue came up to thank me. He said there'd been a time when, in a pressure social situation, he'd had to order his first drink in a pub, and it hadn't gone well. It had, he said, turned out to be a drink of a very foolish colour, but he felt much better now.

When you think that so much is made of the differences between people in different parts of the world, I found that really reassuring. I think we share more than we sometimes realise.

So there we go - that's something I got from travel with work.

Have you ever read a book (or one of your books) and found a character and thought I wish I was that person'?

All the time when I was younger. If Harry Potter had come out 25 years or so ago, there's no doubt I would have wanted to be him.

I haven't had it so much lately. I'm telling myself that isn't because my capacity to imagine these things is diminishing, it's just that there's a lot in my life that I'm pretty happy about, and not much I'd change.

In 48 Shades of Brown and After January the teenage characters were, in a way, sad but oh so true. How were you able to enter the mind of somebody twenty years younger?

I can remember my own real-life version of 16 and 17 all too well, so I guess I extrapolate from there. I also do school events and have contact with people across quite an age range, so I don't feel completely disconnected from teenagers.

Another part of being able to do it was taking the pressure off - convincing myself neither of them had to represent all teenagers. They simply each had to be one convincing kind of teenager (each a convincing character in their own rights) and I'd be okay. They'd hopefully connect with someone.

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Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls, Penguin Books and Random House Australia. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz

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