Toni Jordan - Author

Originally a science writer by profession, Toni Jordan talks through the catalyst and the process that put her on track to being the acclaimed novelist she is today. 

She describes herself as someone who thought she 'didn't have a creative bone in her body',  but now the discipline and process of working on intensive scientific dossiers for 12 months or more has transferred to her creative process as a full time writer.

Transcript

Are You Still Working?!
Series 2, Episode 5, Toni Jordan
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Courtney: [00:00:00] Hello gorgeous listeners. Welcome to Are You Still Working? How to take your creative ideas seriously. I'm Courtney Collins and today I'm talking to Toni Jordan.

Toni Jordan is an internationally bestselling Australian author who has written seven novels. Her debut novel, Addition, was met with widespread acclaim. It was long listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won Best Debut Fiction in the [00:00:30] 2008 Indie Awards. The novel launched Toni as a writer who delivers great humour and poignancy, often in the same breath.

Her novels, including Fall Girl, Nine Days, Our Tiny Useless Hearts, and her most recent, Dinner with the Schnabels and Prettier if She Smiled More, endeared her to readers throughout the world. Toni was once a scientist, but now she writes full time, and I'm so happy to be speaking with her today.

Shall we begin with the, [00:01:00] question that, I guess this whole podcast pivots on - How did you learn to take your creative ideas seriously?

Toni: I think part of the trick at the beginning is to not take it that seriously.

If I'm having problems, it's because I feel the weight of things and I've lost the feeling of play in a work. So I think part of the reason that I could get started at the beginning was because It was never my [00:01:30] dream or goal I was well into my 30s by the time I wrote fiction.

I would have been one of these people who said she didn't have a creative bone in her body. So the idea that it was a playful, fun, low stakes kind of way for me to just enjoy myself was part of the reason that I could get started. And whenever I look back to projects that I've had difficulty with, and like every [00:02:00] artist I have abandoned projects, it's because I was overwhelmed by the weight of it, the weight that I had put on it myself, no one else, just my own sense of the importance of something. And the more that I realised I'm not a brain surgeon. I'm not an aid worker in a refugee camp. I am just Using creativity that we all have, that we all use in a million different ways, and the lighter that I make the project feel, for [00:02:30] me, the better, the better it is.

Courtney: Wow. So is that a process in terms of, say, you tip into that kind of heaviness and that seriousness, do you have little hacks or tricks to, unwind yourself from that?

Toni: I have a couple of little, this is going to sound very strange, but there's a couple of little things that I do and, and that also I advise my students to do.

And that is, to keep two books on your desk when you're trying to [00:03:00] get into a project And one of those books is your dream book. So the kind of book where you think, Oh my God, if I could write something half as good as this, I will die happy.

In my mind, that's something like Zadie Smith's White Teeth which is a book I come back to over and over. But there are some books that just I hold in my mind as these perfect glimmering kind of objects of That is where I wish I could possibly be. [00:03:30] And the other book that I recommend to my students that they might keep a copy on their desk is the book they think, Oh my God, if this piece of shit got published, then so can I.

So I, I like to line up those two in my mind and think, well, I'm somewhere between this and this. And somewhere on that spectrum is a place for me and what I'm doing. And I find that to be a little bit liberating.

Courtney: Well, I, I'm not going to ask you what the shit books are. In the way that you've said that you don't [00:04:00] have a creative bone in your body, what would you say to other people who reckon that they don't have a creative bone in their body? Because clearly you do.

Toni: Back then When I was just starting to write, , I would have said that but now I, I don't believe that's true for anyone.

In my work as a scientist, I think creativity is enormously undervalued the importance of it. Whenever you're solving any kind of problem, scientific or otherwise, you have to envisage a [00:04:30] solution before you can actually do the work and run the experiments. You have to have a hypothesis first and that is about creativity.

I mean, my grandmother, who worked in an ironing factory her whole life, she stood up all day pressing sheets for hotels and hospitals, she would bring my mother and uncle to work with her in their little baskets and put them under the ironing board while she ironed all day.

She would have also said, not a creative bone in her body. And when I was about [00:05:00] seven, she knitted school uniforms for all my dolls that ranged in size from baby dolls, like a foot long to Barbies. And they were all matching purple pretend school uniforms without any patterns, just knitted them.

but she still would have said. I don't have a creative bone in my body because that kind of work would not have been considered creativity in her mind and in a lot of people's minds. But really I think we all have it and we all need it and [00:05:30] it adds immeasurably to the quality of our lives because it's time that you spend alone and quiet making something beautiful with your own resources, whether it's your mind or your hands or however You choose to define it is like a kind of meditation and that process of delving into yourself to develop skills to make something beautiful adds immeasurably to your life, regardless of how you [00:06:00] see your job, your actual work.

Courtney: In making that transition from scientist to author, feels to me that that would take tremendous courage. What, what was that?

Toni: What actually happened was, gone as far in regulatory affairs writing as I could without any kind of writing qualification. I only had my Bachelor of Science. so I enrolled in a Diploma of Professional Writing a TAFE course run through RMIT University down [00:06:30] here.

With the intention that I would do all the serious subjects that they offered.

I could kind of be a consultant And then I was sitting at the, at the dining room table choosing these subjects for this course when my husband, bless him, said to me, your favorite thing to do is to read novels. Why don't you try one of these creative subjects just for the fun of it. And so I ticked this box that said, writing a novel it was very much a spur of the moment kind of idea.[00:07:00]

And Addition was, an assignment from my first year of that subject that I just couldn't leave at the end of the year. The one thing I've got going for me is I am a completist and I could not bear something half finished.

So I continued to work on it. on it after that course had finished.

And the idea was that I would, become a freelance or consultant technical writer. And I did that for a little while, but by the time Addition got published, I was very, very fortunate in that it [00:07:30] did well almost straight away. And I was able to kind of taper down the science writing kind of side of my life.

Courtney: Were you ready for that success in, in the sense of it, you know, being your debut novel and, perhaps not knowing what to expect of that.

Toni: I think again, I was fortunate being in my early 40s by then. So I had some experience of, things changing in my life. I'd had, you know, changes in my personal life and I'd moved state and, and I was kind of like, okay, so this is now the next thing. This is the next thing. and [00:08:00] my husband now thinks he's the king.

The world's most gifted career advisor. sometimes he looks at me and he says, next rockstar. I could not be further from being a rockstar, but he, he just thinks it's funny that, he's going to plan these weird careers for me.

Courtney: on being a rockstar. So part of being successful as an author is having to do a lot of. this kind of stuff and the forward facing stuff. How do you balance that, I guess, with your urge and instinct to, to write and keep [00:08:30] writing?

Toni: I think it's what makes it possible. My natural inclination is to stay at my desk and never leave. Like I quite like staying inside by myself.

Working out these problems with these invented people. And to me, it's like playing Barbies, you know, except without the Barbies in my hand, I just like the whole process, but I don't feel it's that good for me.

And so, you know, the month, a year or month, every two years [00:09:00] where the, the job is publicity and I get to go around the country and meet wonderful readers and book clubs, visit libraries and stores. I think it is what enables the rest of it to be sustainable and for me to not turn into someone who lives in a little burrow and just sits here like a wombat.

Courtney: What, are the other things that you love about your writing life as it is right now?

Toni: I love being this far into my career now that I have [00:09:30] a, an idea about what's going to work something I know that I cannot do is plan.

I cannot plan characters. I cannot plan a story.

I'm not one of these people who sits down every day with any kind of intention when I've attempted to do that. in the spirit of experimentation in the past, nothing is any good. the, the people are no good. I have constructed them brick by brick and I can see how I've done that.

And the stories are invariably Just rubbish, they're [00:10:00] just rubbish. so every day when I sit down, I have genuinely no idea what is going to happen. What, what the plot is going to be. what's going to happen to these people, who they reveal themselves to be.

Something that I always try and keep in mind. Every day when I sit down is the job of the story is to put these characters in positions where they reveal themselves. And I never know from one day to the next what that is going to be. For me, that has a [00:10:30] couple of advantages.

For a start, it means I'm never really reluctant to sit down.

I don't have a lot of procrastinationI want to know what's going to happen to these people. 'm not interested in what's going to happen to these people, how on earth would I expect anyone else to But the other thing that comes with that is The rest of the project, all the externalities of the project have to be extremely organised.

Courtney: So I keep my word count tallies on a whiteboard next to my desk where I'm [00:11:00] absolutely, I mean, I, sometimes I'm ahead of my plan and sometimes I'm behind, but I have a planwhere I know where I have to be.the time I sit down, the word count that I aim for every day, everything else has to be rock solid Did you learn that along the way or is that something you brought to it from the get go?

Toni: I think part of the advantage was having a real job for so long. For nearly 20 years. I worked in bench research for a long time, and then after that for pharmaceutical companies in reg [00:11:30] affairs, which is like, Writing enormous drug dossiers for new chemical entities or change drug specifications or things like that.

And I think when you're writing a enormous drug dossier that takes 12 months and requires enormous amounts of research, both lab research and taking work out of journals and compiling it all together I'm very used to having that sort of structured [00:12:00] project and structured process and moving that across to fiction writing.

I've realized that if I have these poles in the ground where I have a very solid structure, I can then play within that structure.

Courtney: Do you ever distinguish your, say, your science brain from your author brain ?

Toni: So much. And, and I do that really quite consciously because that first draft, that playful, intuitive, unconscious first draft where I, [00:12:30] Sit down every day, not know what's going to happen. That makes a great first draft. And I love that process. Because I genuinely feel that's the way to come up with things that you cannot find in any other way.

So after I've done that first draft where everything is captured and I'm not talking about being sloppy or making ugly sentences, everything's done to the best of my ability, then I take off that hat and put on my scientist hat.

And then I really go through it forensically and I look [00:13:00] at the way the story operates in terms of arcs and in terms of tension and in terms of acts and turning points and I ask very substantial questions about what I want the reader to feel at what points but in my mind that's a completely separate job with a completely different skill set

Courtney: Was writing full time always your goal?

Toni: Once I started, yes, yeah, I just, I genuinely like it.

I taught for a long time [00:13:30] before I made the decision to write full time.

And I might need to go back to teaching again. As we all know, it's a kind of a piecemeal income.

So I've been lucky for a few years now, but that could stop any day now and I'll be back to teaching and that will be fine. But if I can stay doing what I'm doing now, that would be terrific.

Courtney: Do you have any ideal conditions of creation in terms of your space or, you know, the [00:14:00] weather, what you've eaten for breakfast, any of the above?

Toni: Nothing really like that. it's really about the timing.

The schedule of the day is important to me. Wednesdays is normally my day off. Like when I do other little things.

And so that gives me a little break. Midweek thing to get organized. I don't like things hanging over my head.

I like to get things done. But really it's more about the timing and the schedule than, than anything else.

but that level of organization is what I think frees [00:14:30] me up to, to kind of be more intuitive on the page.

In the first hour of the day, I look back over what I've done the day before. Because otherwise, You can get sucked into polishing and going over and over.

So I try and, again, I set a timer on my phone. I'm very strict. And that process of cleaning up and looking at that sentence and go, there's a better way to say that. What is it? What is it? I find that all immensely satisfying.

It's like having a job of doing the wordle or something all day, you know, it's just,

such [00:15:00] fun. I just find it a very enjoyable process. And I, I'm so fond of some of the people that I make up ,

Courtney: you hang out with them for, weeks and months and years. What character really stands out as someone beloved?

Toni: My most recent book, which is Prettier if She Smiled More the main character there is Kylie. And I'm not going to say her because she's actually the closest person to me that I've ever created.

And but I will say her mother, Gloria, who is [00:15:30] certainly not my mother. There's some really marked differences, but there are some similarities. And in creating Gloria, I was able to go back to my mother and think about the things that some of the things that were so unique about her and Steal those and give those to Gloria and one of the things that I did take from my mother is belief that men shouldn't be allowed to vote because they're too emotional, which you can [00:16:00] tell when you go to the football.

Like, they're just not up for making those kind of big decisions.

I kind of, I kind of took that idea and gave it to Gloria. So I was able to take some of her beliefs and move them across. So that was a fun experience.

Courtney: So she's been immortalised at least in part 

Toni: . In part, yeah. At least some of her sayings, some of her kind of weird thought bubbles , I was able to use those, so that's always great.

Courtney: In terms of your relationships and partnerships, I think one of the things that I've [00:16:30] noticed in working from home, writing for most of the day. I pop out at the end of the day and I'm like ready for a dinner party. And when my partner gets home, like he's into the opposite. how do you manage that working to a different rhythm than people around you?

Toni: Robbie works from home as well. So we have two studies in the house and he is in the downstairs study and I'm in the upstairs study.

And we generally meet 10.30 for a coffee. but also I [00:17:00] thinkPart of the thing that works well is that I live in a very busy area, quite close to the city, where there's a lot of street traffic, there's a cafe across the road. I feel like outside of my house there's a whirl of energy.

So anytime I want to even open a window, I feel this mass of people doing things there's a lot of galleries and there's a lot of cocktail bars and there's a lot of, I feel the connection with people. 

Courtney: Hmm. I guess to, to paint the, the full [00:17:30] picture, is there anything that you don't love about your writing life?

Toni: I'm not that great on the social medias, I should be better at that. It just kind of falls out of my head while I'm working on a project.

I love everything about it and I also spend a bit of time reminding myself how lucky I am. I cannot buy into this whole suffering you know, the pain of it. Like you're not working in a factory or down a mine. Like there are people who have genuinely difficult lives [00:18:00] and I am not one of those.

I'm a very privileged person and I think having a little bit of gratitude about that.

Courtney: I love that. Is there anything that you do, Tony, that's far from writing that maybe helps you think about writing in a different way?

Perhaps it's about craft, perhaps it's about the rhythm of it, but something that you do, I guess, adjacent to writing that helps you reflect on your process.

Toni: Writing [00:18:30] and reading and watching movies is pretty much my whole life.

I'm, fortunate also that I've met some of the most remarkable people through writing. Other writers and people who are arts professionals. That's probably the thing that has taken me by surprise the most about the job is that even though we're very spread out across the country and we don't have a workplace and we don't see each other that often, [00:19:00] I feel a tremendous sense of connection with other writers and other artists of all kinds, really.

Courtney: How do you nurture that connection?

Toni: Well, festivals are, of course, the funnest thing ever. They're like school camp for grown ups when everybody's away from home and staying in a hotel or something. And that is really unbelievably good fun. You get to, you know, I listen to amazing people speak. I'm also lucky enough to be asked to interview other writers [00:19:30] sometimes and that has been transformative for me. And just generally, whenever I read the work of someone I know, feel like I'm in a community. of artistic professionals. We're all struggling with our own creative challenges. I know what the flaws in my work are.

And I know the things that I've got to try and overcome. And other people's are different.

And I feel like we're all just doing our best and it's, it's a good [00:20:00] thing. It's a good feeling.

Courtney: So we started by talking about how you take your creative ideas seriously. But I, guess at this stage that you're at part of your success is others taking your creative ideas seriously. And our good friend, Christina Pazan, I know, has certainly taken your creative ideas seriously. Can you talk about that process and, and the adaptation process of your story becoming a film? 

Toni: [00:20:30] Well, the first thing I have to tell you is that I have no background in this, in film at all, other than watching them. I've never been involved in any kind of drama. Andmy hopes for the adaptation were a bit different from what other peoples in that I kind of wanted them to make something new.

I feel like the book already exists

it's existed for a long time now. And addition has been extraordinarily [00:21:00] important in my life. And it was published in something like 17 countries and a bestseller in a number of them. And I feel like , everything that it had to do for me, it has done.

Toni: and it has reached an awful lot of people and I wanted something new to come out of it, I guess. It's almost like the feeling, and you would know this feeling, when you're waiting for a cover design, you're waiting for a jacket design. Really, not a lot of people have read it.

Probably your editor and publisher have read it, and maybe a [00:21:30] couple of your friends,

But, when you get that cover design, is the first time you see the work reflected back to you, by someone who has not been part of the process, someone who has read the finished work, without having to give any kind of feedback or fixing or anything, just reflects it back to you.

So I have given this enormous, to me it's a world, a world of these people with all these things happening. And they have gone, right, this is the part that we are [00:22:00] interested in, this bit.

And they have expanded it into something new. And that's what I was really hoping for.

And it's, it's done that. So, I'm absolutely thrilled. I couldn't be happier.

Courtney: So now that you've, let's say, crossed that threshold into that world, are you imagining stories as screen stories, as distinct from novels? 

Toni: Yeah, I think the reason it was picked up is because it's quite filmic. And I think that is part of something that I do quite naturally. [00:22:30] Dialogue has always been extraordinarily important to me. And I feel like dialogue is an incredibly underrated tool, but many novelists don't use to their full advantage because The subtext of a line of dialogue doesn't just reveal enormous amounts about your characters, but it lures in a reader.

if a line of dialogue is exactly, the meaning is exactly there on the page, the reader just reads it like they read any other line. [00:23:00] But if you can make it so there's a subtext underneath that line of dialogue or even better. The person is not saying what they mean.

Then it's a hook to really reel the reader in. They go, well that's not right, I can feel them leaning in. That's not right, what do they mean by that? What is going on there? It's a hook for engagement. So dialogue has always been something I really have always spent a lot of time on. And my goal has always been, if you shut your eyes and just read that line, can you tell who's [00:23:30] saying it?

Because, you know, characters should speak differently. And of course, you know, that's not always going to work if you've got a large, you know, group of school kids or something, they're all the same age, it's very difficult.

But that should at least be your aim, that kind of distinguished voice. and also I'm very fond of scenes I think that is what makes my work a bit more filmic.

Courtney: Are you working on a new novel right now? Are we interrupting this?

Toni: No, I'm nearly done. [00:24:00] I'm I'm at 75,000 words. So I've just got the ending to do of the first draft, which is not perfect.

But it's something different altogether. It's a coming of age, which I've never done before. all my, Almost all my plots are small where, where people have very small problems, like, , the book That I'm writing now is, you know, she splits up with her boyfriend and might lose her job and her mother breaks her ankle.

Like, that's the extent of the problems. Or you know, the book before [00:24:30] that was, this guy has to landscape a garden. Like, that's the extent of the problem. I like to just see how people operate in the real world. So, part of the challenge is for me to try and make something. happen that is more than that.

Like, I'm never gonna write a murder, I don't think.

But to try and increase the stakes a bit in some of these stories, and that's something that I really gotta work on. I know that's a flaw in my [00:25:00] work.

Courtney: So with respect to the two works in the drawer and, as you've said, you are a completer. Does that rankle or do you imagine going back to them?

Toni: They're finished but they're terrible. They are completed but when I look at them I think they're just false and contorted and I don't like them now that I've finished them, which of course is the downside of my unconscious intuitive first draft method When you plan something [00:25:30] out the way people who plot do I'm speaking for them, but my impression is that they would have a great deal more confidence that something would work before they commit to the time writing it out.

Whereas I, I just consider that to be part of the price of the risk of, getting it down. And I look at those projects and I, I have nicked bits and pieces from them. I would be thinking, Oh, I think I had a sentence where I did that quite well and I can't throw it and dig it out.

So I do kind of [00:26:00] cannibalize them a little bit, they are completed, but for me, it's like making a cake, even though I've got all my ingredients and I mix it up and I put it in the oven, sometimes it just doesn't come out right, being okay to sit with that failure, that not everything is going to work.

And in fact, if everything worked, I would feel dissatisfied because I would know that I'm not experimenting the way I should be, or not, Working in a way that, that is truly challenging, if everything worked.

Courtney: I love that. I feel consoled by [00:26:30] that. you know, the upcycling this is the direct advice Part. So as well as a scientist, you were formerly a TAB operator. And you sold, I think it was aluminium door to door.

So in terms of people I guess whose roles feel, you know, Far from perhaps a thing that they feel drawn to do or that's on their hearts. what advice do you have for them? 

Toni: A TAB operator was my very first job [00:27:00] because my parents were greyhound trainers when I was growing up and my mum ran a TAB. So we didn't have any kind of art in the house, Or music my parents weren't readers. There was nothing like that. That was something that I came to at the High school and then continued kind of by myself and, and they were always enormously supportive of anything that I wanted to do.

But it was a very working class family. So the jobs that I've had, I'm so [00:27:30] grateful for now because these are all characters. And I feel like there's a, time in many writers careers where all their characters are writers because that's the world that they know.

That's the only world that they know. I think those years when you're not a writer and you are meeting people and doing other jobs and everything is material basically. And I look back on those years, the people that I met doing those jobs and the nature of the jobs and I feel very grateful for them now.

this is not wasted time. This [00:28:00] is research, the time that you're putting in now in these other jobs. This is material which you will use in your later years in other projects. It will come up when you least expect it. That person that you're working beside 

There's something about that person that will be enormously useful in your future projects, something about the work that you're doing, something about the way your muscles move or your memory of, that interaction, or like all this is, is the material with which you [00:28:30] will make your art and you're gathering it right now and you needn't worry about.

Bringing that to an end prematurely because it's doing a job for you. 

Courtney: Beautiful. Just before we finish It seems based on your productivity alone, that you are full of ideas and flowing with inspiration. what do you reach for when you hit a brick wall or just not flowing?

Toni: Generally by the time I'm in a project. If something's not working, it's because I've lost the rhythm of the project. So then I try and read [00:29:00] someone rhythm. It's enormously helpful if it's in the same point of view and same tense.

And if I can reconnect with the rhythm of how my sentences are, then one sentence will lead to another, and will lead to another. And

Thinking on the micro level is better. if I sit here and think, Oh my God, I've got to do 80, 000 words and I've got to come up with a climax where everything is enormous, enormous, enormous.

Of course you're going to be completely wedged This goes back [00:29:30] to my point at the very beginning. It's an enormous amount of weight to put on you, but really you don't have to do that. You just have to think of one more sentence after the one that you already have.

Just what is the next sentence after that one?

And, and you can proceed in that way. You can write a whole book in that way.

Courtney: Thank you, Tony Jordan. I love your brain, 

Toni: thank you, Courtney.

Courtney: I've learnt a ton. things are about to get very ordered around here.

Are You Still Working is an independently produced podcast by me, Courtney Collins, [00:30:00] and producer, Lisa Madden. We'd love to hear from you if any episodes have inspired your own project.

Till next time.