Mirandi Riwoe and Laura Elvery - Authors

In this episode of Are You Still Working?! writers Mirandi Riwoe and Laura Elvery chat to Courtney Collins about becoming published authors and what they've learnt along the way.

Recorded in front of a live audience at Avid Reader, an independent bookstore in West End, Brisbane, this episode is packed with tips and tricks for emerging writers - from getting noticed by publishers by entering competitions, to establishing your own writers group and setting up your own writers residencies.

Transcript

Are You Still Working?!
Series 2 - Episode 8 - Mirandi Riwoe and Laura Elvery - Authors
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​[00:00:00]

Lisa: Hello and welcome to Are You Still Working? I'm Lisa Madden and this week is our first recording with an audience at Avid Reader, a fantastic independent bookshop on Turrbal and Jagera country in Brisbane. This episode has some really great information for writers, with three acclaimed published authors talking about how they get the work done. Courtney Collins, our presenter, her first novel, The Burial, was [00:00:30] published in 10 countries and shortlisted for numerous prizes. Her latest novel, Bird, was released this year. Mirandi Riwoe is the author of Sunbirds, Stone Sky Gold Mountain, The Fish Girl, and The Burnished Sun, amongst others.

Laura Elvery is the author of two collections of short stories, Trick of the Light and the award winning Ordinary Matter.  She's at work on her first novel, which you'll hear about shortly. Courtney met Mirandi at a writers festival and [00:01:00] Laura at a residency. There's a lot of talk about how useful writers residencies are here, with some sage advice from Kris Kneen towards the end. Thank you so much again to Kris and to Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane, for hosting us.

Courtney: So this podcast, Are You Still Working, exists because my grandmother Shirley would ask me every time I saw her, are you still working? And part of that was because she didn't think writing was a real [00:01:30] job. So this podcast aims to let people describe in their own words what they actually do. But more than that, what they do when the work isn't working and where that energy and resilience and, let me say grit, comes from.

Mirandi. If one of your grandparents says to you, are you still working? What do you say to them?

Mirandi: That's interesting. I was thinking of my grandma and she died about 13 years ago. She would have been [00:02:00] really proud actually. because she's a huge writer, so she would have been very supportive and just wanted to know what the next book was going to be. My dad's a different story.

My dad does joke around about me, telling stories, making up stories. That's what I do as a living, is I just make up stories. So I guess I would just say I'm a writer of fiction. And actually I guess when, you've got your dad smirking at you saying you, you're making up stories, it's not like I can argue with him 'cause I am actually just making up stories.

Laura: He says it in a nice way.

Mirandi: He does say it at night, so he's joking [00:02:30] around. I would talk about what I'm trying to bring to the stories too, I guess. he's Chinese Indonesian. My mum's of Irish stock. So I would probably discuss it. It's about finding that space for your Asian, voice and stories. Yeah.

Courtney: Thank you. What about you, Laura?

Laura: Both my mum's parents died before I ever thought becoming a writer was an option. I was a teacher, which is a very good job to tell your very practical parents and grandparents, and I liked doing that for a number of years.

My [00:03:00] other set of grandparents, my dad's parents, I mean, I used to be, as a kid running around, writing plays with all my cousins and lining everyone up in the lounge room to perform bizarre Roald Dahl knock offs and Paul Jennings knock offs, all those sorts of things.

So they would have known me as a real reader and a real writer. But my Dad's parents, they died before my first book came out, which was in 2018. And what's interesting about my grandparents who are, like I said, very practical. [00:03:30] Everyone else in my family are tradies, and, those sorts of things. But I've recently come into some diaries that my Grandfather kept for about 40 years and he wrote in these diaries, this is my Mum's Dad, every single day, what he did the weather, the cricket, what he did at church, what he ate, what he drank, how much he spent on a haircut, how much somebody owes him.

Who the president of the US was, like [00:04:00] big picture stuff. It was really fascinating to find these diaries because in my mind his life two generations ago is so different from my life.

He did shift work at a factory, had 10 children, no money. In my mind that's so different conceptually, that gap is massive. But then somebody said to me, no, Laura, he wrote every single day, which is literally what I do not do, every day

for 40 years it hadn't occurred to me that, oh, he was a [00:04:30] writer more than I'm a daily writer.

That diligence and that record keeping. Why would he have done that? And I find that really interesting, so that's what I'm exploring for another project now.

Courtney: Is that your new novel can you go there?

Laura: Yeah, I'll go there really briefly. I tend to overshare before projects are ready, and then I've been listening to a lot of other writers say they absolutely don't do that, but here we are. So my mum handed me this bag, like a grocery bag. She was like, Oh, you might be interested in these.

And I'd already [00:05:00] been thinking of somehow writing a story that was connected with my hometown, which is Toowoomba in regional Queensland. And in the way that a lot of our writing comes together, it was like this converging with this, like smashing together

Courtney: Yeah. Thank you. What are you working on at the moment, Mirandi?

Mirandi: at the moment I'm about three quarters of the way through a novel about a Eurasian family again. And it's years, so it starts in 2050, goes back to 1850. And it's set in [00:05:30] four different eras, like years, 50 years, 50 years, 50 years, going back to 1850 when an Irish woman has a child with a Chinese man but it it sort of goes backwards so we see what happens.

One of the characters from Stone Sky appears in it, but yeah it's interesting because I am finishing this and I've, done a lot of research and I know where it's going but in my mind I'm already into the next two or three novels, yeah, it's just like all over the shop.

Courtney: So Laura has said that you don't write [00:06:00] every day, what is your practice?

Mirandi: So I've written seven novels and my practice used to be that I do all the research and that could take a year or so you know do all the research and I love a whiteboard I set it all up and I'd plan it out and then I'd get started and then I would do 500 words a day, including the weekends, 500 words a day. I wouldn't let myself go until I'd done that. Now I'm so much more loosey goosey. I am all over the but we have Contracts, so you get the work done. I know I will [00:06:30] get the work done.

I've got a residency coming up soon for three months. Residencies are so good because you're not distracted by family and, housework and just visiting friends every day for a coffee and lunch, every day something comes up. and I will, I'll go back to my 500 words in the morning, go find some lunch, go for a long walk. Yes, I'll go back to this.

Laura: It's in Paris. 

Courtney: How fantastic. Laura, can you tell us about your practice? So you don't write every day, I've got that. But what does it look like?

Laura: Very different at the [00:07:00] moment. have a job which I have to go to four days a week.

Which I really enjoy. But it's a bit harder. I don't have a regular practice at all. I don't think I ever have. Even when we were doing the PhD, every day was different, every week was different. I have Wednesdays off and we're here at beautiful Avid Reader. And on Wednesdays I write here for a few hours.

With a friend. And we just sit next to each other andIt really works. She likes it when I'm there. I like it when she's there. We [00:07:30] talk for about half an hour when we see each other and then we put our headphones in and we just try to get a few hours done.

Mirandi and I sometimes do a night time write. We haven't done that for a while, so that's why she's laughing. It's hard if you have a job and other commitments or caring commitments, those sorts of things. Most people know that.

But at night time for a while, during the day, we'd say 8 o'clock, let's meet together, not on Zoom, wouldn't look at each other, wouldn't talk to each other, just text and sit down at our desks in our houses at 8 o'clock and say let's [00:08:00] write for an hour.

And something about that is very effective because even if you staff around on the internet, that's your business. But at nine o'clock we'd say how many words did you write? How did you go? A couple of friends have done it with us, haven't they?

Mirandi: Sometimes we'd swap things.

Laura: Or we'd swap a line or a little paragraph or something.

But it was just knowing that somewhere out there my friend was writing at the same time and you knew that I could get to 9pm and

Courtney: Sprint.

Laura: Yeah, a little sprint. So that works for me sometimes. Also residencies. [00:08:30] They are beyond compare for how much I can get done.

Courtney: I love this thing you've invented. companionship writing? The night time thing. What tweaked you to that?

Laura: I thought, children are in bed. And I can do an hour

Mirandi: Just encouraging each other.

Or let's just get on and we'll do it together and just get it done. Yeah. And that's how it started.

Courtney: you both have done a PhD, and you shared an office. Yes.

Mirandi: Laura loves to work like in a cafe or in the office or here, with the friends.

And I've got to work alone,[00:09:00] And I used to go into the office once in a while, because you're given a desk, I'd go in and I would just like, talk and talk and talk and talk, poor Laura's got it there for the one day between babies and work, she'd be really nice, and then eventually she puts on her headphones and turns around back to her computer and that's when you know, time is over.

Laura: So yes, we do work very differently. But we both got our PhDs done. What was good about the PhD was that companionship as well. And we were there, I think, this is at QUT, at a really good time. I think we were very [00:09:30] lucky to have this shared office space. with some really terrific people.

We both had amazing supervisors who taught us how to behave professionally how to edit, how to revise over and over for, three and a half years.

How to trust your ideas how to narrow down the scope of what you wanted to do, that's really useful. it was very collegial and we made all these connections.

Mirandi: We have meetings too of all the PhD students, like sitting at home you were never [00:10:00] going to learn all these things by yourself, to do with the craft or to do with the research or to do with the teaching or to do with just getting your PhD done or, when things are due and not to panic about this or do that so it was just really a very inspiring time, and I think most of us got published, or got something out of the PhD as well, Laura said, it just happened to be a really sort of golden moment at QUT at that time.

Courtney: So you say you learned to trust your ideas in that [00:10:30] time. This is the crux of the podcast, right? When did you learn to take your creative ideas seriously? Yeah.

Mirandi: Oh, okay. I would say now.

Courtney: Yeah.

Mirandi: I think, for all of us, it was just that yearning to be a writer, to be published. You're trying to write something different, but something that is publishable. Like, I learned myself. Where my strengths lay, like I really wanted to be a crime fiction writer, but then maybe my strengths lay in other areas compared [00:11:00] to, really successful crime writers in Australia. so that's something you learn along the way, just your own, limits and what you can do. Not just limits, but also your talent. But I think the big one for me would be to find out if you can trust your idea is asking your other writer friends. I think that is literally what What I'll do is sit down and go, Now this is just a little idea, and there's this woman, and da, and da and just see if, So you're testing it out.

Yeah, from the other, that's how I would test myself first.

Laura: Yeah, I [00:11:30] think one way that I know to trust my ideas is that I have family, partner, writer friends and other friends who really have no idea what I do, but are very supportive. With time, you just get more confident, like you said, Mirandi, about what ideas will stick, because I have lots of ideas, but if they just, evaporate, you're like that wasn't for me, or that have legs, or I'm not interested in that, even though I was for one day.

You learn to trust that a little bit. If your mind keeps going back to [00:12:00] an idea over years or a number of months, even if you haven't written a word, that's when I know it's legitimate for me.

Courtney: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think of it as the things that won't lie down, over time. Just won't lie down. Can you put yourself back in a place where you had the realisation that for whatever reason the work was not working? Perhaps you'd, written yourself into a corner or in a hole, however you experienced that. What did you do to [00:12:30] move from that place?

Mirandi: I do remember one, this Ruby short story I wrote.

I don't do, like a lot of people write copious, Number of words, and then they cut back and throw out that whole section and start again because they don't know where they're going to.

I just will not waste time on that. Like If I was actually sitting down and just getting down as many words as I could, they, they actually would be rubbish. But Ruby, I do remember I had that one short story about Ruby and I don't know why I was so wedded to it, but I had the beginning and I remember running it by you [00:13:00] cause Laura, when we were in a writer's group and it was great.

And Laura's very good at that, you were saying like Toni Jordan says write down how many endings? 20 different things that could happen or how it can end. I think also a lot of stories are like, oh, I really want to write about this, but I don't know where it's going, or how it's going to end, And I think you just have to give them time in your notes.

And over time, because you're thinking about it a lot, you're like, oh my god oh okay, that'll happen to her, or she likes that, or she's a cook, or you know, [00:13:30] like, whatever.

I think time, and maybe consulting someone else.

Courtney: I love that.

Laura: How do I know when something isn't working?

I am very different from Mirandi. I'm very happy to write a bunch of garbage and then edit it later. Although I might change my approach for the next book, because it is time consuming. And the reason I throw words at a wall one, one there is something to be said for getting a bit of word count up, especially in the initial stages. My book Nightingale one of the [00:14:00] characters is Florence Nightingale. And so that's what I've been working on for five years and I'm in the final legs of that right now.

But for a number of years I'd been writing this third character in Nightingale and I would just sit down at night for these hours or whatever and just be like oh my god this could be a scene that Jean is in and I would just write a scene with Jean in it.

And I did that for quite a while. And I remember showing my writers group this whole backstory of Jean. [00:14:30] And they were like very kind about it, but sort of like a question. Do you think you need that? Anyway, maybe months later, it just wasn't working. The book. It felt really false on the page.

Anyway, one morning I just highlighted 8, 000 words of her backstory and put it in a little document and I thought it's always there.

And I felt so good immediately. And then I told two people in my writer's group, her Scroogey friend, Mirandi and Emma, and I said, guess what I've decided to do?[00:15:00] All of that stuff is all gone, bar the things I needed to know from those 8, 000 words,

And they both looked at me and said, we did tell you that 18 months ago. but you needed to get there yourself and you needed to do all of that work and none of it feels like a waste So thinking about the ideal conditions to write, and a studio in Paris for three months sounds pretty dreamy, Have you experienced this?

Mirandi: What you would say are ideal conditions before,Okay, so my ideal time ever [00:15:30] writing was, I had another residency in Shanghai in a little studio for two months, I was writing Stone Sky Gold Mountain. And while I was there, I just wrote the Brother Lai Yue's part.

Because usually I'll just write A to Z, like the story will be A to Z, and that's how I'll write it, but Stone Sky's got three characters, and I knew with Lai Yue, I wanted his trajectory to get tenser and tenser.

And it was perfect because I think there were twelve other writers from around the world there as well. [00:16:00] And so I'd write all day. I was there with Josephine Wilson, but she was doing a lot of research in Shanghai herself instead of the writing.

And she'd want me to go with her, but I was very committed to getting my 500 words done a day. So I would stay hunkered down until I did my 500 words. And then I would let myself out at 5pm.

This is my ideal day. Writing, da da da, 5pm, race around the corner to a bar that had Australian wine to meet the New Zealand writer.

And that was like every day for two months. My family came and visited [00:16:30] me at the four week mark which was nice because all the other writers there were so homesick by the fourth week. And it was just, yeah, that was, perfect just to get the work done.

Laura: For Ordinary Matter, my book here which is 20 short stories and each short story is about the first 20 times women won a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences, up until 2020. I had five to go.

I'd written 15 and the manuscript, was due a week after. I was at Varuna one time, different [00:17:00] time from you Courtney. So the ideal scenario, which I look back on really fondly, was this massive pressure. No time to waste. I had to get it done. I knew I would get no interruptions, so I was there for a week and I wrote a story a day for five days.

That seems ridiculous that that would be ideal, but I'd come down at dinner, and everyone talks about what they're writing, and someone would be like, Did you write another one? I was like, I think I did. But it was fun because I was filling in these five gaps and I just had to sit in the [00:17:30] morning and go pick one and see if it will work today. And I really enjoyed that because I'd done all the research there was no other option except to write. No interruptions, these people cheering me on at night, and I could get it handed in the next week, and that is a really nice memory.

Courtney: I love the idea of desert island in the day, dinner party in the evening, works well for me.

Varuna the Writer's House. Is in Katoomba, it's a beautiful historic house bequeathed by Eleanor [00:18:00] Dark, a writer, out of her generosity and belief in writers and their need for space and time that we have all benefited greatly from.

I was just in a, convent in County Carlow in, in Ireland with Keegan, Claire is an Irish writer and Claire said, so many great things, but she said, don't be afraid to go into the loss.

I was working on something and I needed to hear that at the time. So what I'm getting at [00:18:30] is, have you heard another writer or, someone you respect and admire say something that you felt has opened a portal in you or has added years to your life in terms of what this is about for you and what your intention is for the work.

Mirandi: I don't know if this is what you mean, but I was writing my crime fiction. I'd done a Masters and I'd written a crime fiction set in Indonesia. So I guess by then I'd already decided I was going to write about I guess the Asian [00:19:00] aspects of my life.

But it was a crime fiction set, and then my PhD was going to be on the Eurasian Courtisan in the Victorian period. But like I said, I was doing my PhD, meeting all these wonderful people. and learning about the literary world, as an industry in Australia.

And around that time, I remember I was in the library with you, I think, and I picked up the Maxine Boniba Clark short fiction. You'd read it because she was across everything. so it was Foreign Soil by Maxine Boniba Clark that made me realise, what I wanted [00:19:30] my work to do which was looking at sort of being other yes, and other aspects that weren't in fiction. So yeah, I would say her work really opened up for me what I could do with my work. 

Laura: When I was writing, this Nightingale book, the thing that really opened it up for me was something that Mirandi Riwoe said to me about historical fiction, because Mirandi's written some exceptional historical fiction. 

One night, I had to get rid of a couple of characters who were real people in Florence's [00:20:00] life that did not serve my story and hindered the story that I wanted, the plot that I wanted. And Mirandi just said, they were part of her story, they're not part of your story. And that was so useful. And the other thing which is very interesting in these last stages when I keep researching her life and keep finding fascinating things, this is Laura Jean McKay, our other really great writing friend, who wrote The Animals in That Country a few years ago, the amazing book.

And she said, Oh, I'm still researching that book and it's [00:20:30] been out for a number of years because I found something else and I'm just like, I have to stop finding these interesting things. And she said, It's okay. Just keep researching after it's published. And those things also aren't part of this story but they could be part of somebody else's story and that's so helpful as a historical fiction author of this book. 

Courtney: Thank you. I'd love to open to the audience for questions, so if you If you do have a question, just pop your hand [00:21:00] up.

Question 2: Thank you. That was really fascinating. What would your advice be, this is a question for all three of you individually, to a new emerging writer? Of how to make their way in the industry. Given your history and the way you have done further education, say someone's done a Bachelor degree, what would your advice be to them?

Courtney: My experience is that all about relationships. And you want to find, gravitate, magnetise people you [00:21:30] enjoy hanging out with, quite simply. There's not enough money in it to hang out with idiots, is the short story. 

There is no certain path, and you absolutely make your path and you make your path with your integrity and your relationships and then I would say the way will be open, but I think strategizing about the industry is so clunky.

It's so clunky, it's ever changing. It's propped up with scaffolding most days. [00:22:00] People fall off, people jump on. Yeah, find your people in that, I think is the way. 

Mirandi: My big one would be, enter whatever competitions you can Penguin and Hachette have their emerging manuscript things.

Queensland, the QLAs, Queensland Literary Awards, have an emerging manuscript competition. And I actually think they're probably an easier way to find a publisher as an emerging author, and there are quite a few, so be across them, and all the Writer's Centres, follow all the Writers Centres actually around Australia because they've [00:22:30] all got workshops and advice, weekly advice essays on, things in the industry. And also do the workshops. I know Queensland Writers Centre or, AVID does it too, and Brisbane Writers Festival. If they have workshops the other thing I think is, be across the literary journals. And I think it is important to have your own little community, because you're going to hear hints from the other people going through the same thing as well.

Our writer's group, four of them, The five of us have been published now, and another [00:23:00] one's happily gone off into another career, quite happy to not be a published author. So writers group, that's my other one, is a writers group that helped us a hundred percent, didn't it?

Laura: Yep

Mirandi: You were talking before about the perseverance, like when I started writing, knowing me and what I'm like, I would never have thought I'd have the perseverance be published, cause there are so many knockbacks, there are so many knockbacks that I would have thought knowing Mirandi, 20 years ago, she would have just walked away after the first knockback and to this day, would you say, Krissy, we're [00:23:30] all like published authors and you're still getting knocked back so you just have to like harden up as well. So all of that 

Laura: I would also say perseverance is so important. I remember I got published in a journal that I had been desperately hoping to get published in and the time I got published was the 20th submission to them and maybe the same as you I probably would have thought that I maybe wouldn't have stuck at it that much and it wasn't until I added it up that I thought oh that was the 20th time.

And so it's about defining [00:24:00] what's enjoyable for you and it might not be about getting published. It might not be about publishing a novel. It might be about something completely different, family history, whatever it is, that's the actual goal. the goal is not the same for everybody, but sticking with it when it's a bit hard, but also really enjoying it as much as you can.

Question: Thank you so much for sharing your stories. It was really cool to listen to how you've gotten to where you are. I was just wondering about the residencies, so what they involve, [00:24:30] how you apply for one, and at what stage throughout your writing journey would you recommend to look into something like that?

Laura: I'll just go first really quickly before you maybe talk about formal residencies, Mirandi, but when I say residencies, a few of us went away for a weekend we've done that twice this year I think, just for a weekend and so when I say residencies that could be what you or the person you're talking about might want to do and we just keep to a few rules What are the rules?

We they're like Varuna rules. And Varuna is this writer's house we're [00:25:00] talking about in Katoomba.  

Courtney: Shush during the day and meet for dinner. 

Laura: Absolutely. Do not interrupt people during the day. Stay as quiet as you can. Be mindful that other people are thinking and working and writing

And then gather together at night and talk I've done a couple of weekends with friends at, an Airbnb or, someone's lends us their house. And you'd be surprised just by being around two or three other people who are working, that's very motivating.

I find that really motivating to be around them. So that's [00:25:30] sort of an informal residency that you can do. And then there's formal ones. 

Mirandi: There's Varuna that we've all spoken about. And Varuna is one that I know the first time I went to Varuna, it was for a novel that didn't even get published. So I was emerging.

I was very emerging. You apply for their fellowships and then there are the Creative Australia ones like, there's Paris and there's Rome, and then there used to be AsiaLink, that did Shanghai and other Asian countries, which was brilliant, but it just doesn't exist anymore.

And they are actually very competitive, [00:26:00] But then, like I know another friend is in France at the moment. And you see them on Instagram. If you follow one, then all the others will pop up.

But there are ones that you can pay to go to. And she's at a fancy castle on a summit somewhere in France that she's paying for. And it's actually with other writers, emerging or not, just all you need are other people who want to write during the day. And then talk about writing at night.

Because also, that's all we talk about, isn't it? We literally only talk about our writing. We must be very boring for other people. 

Courtney: They're not invited. 

Mirandi: No, [00:26:30] they're not invited. They don't want to come. So yeah, so there's all a different range. But Varun is a very good one to get into. 

Courtney: And just to answer the question about, I guess the value of it at whatever stage you're at, for me being in a residency just was taking my idea seriously, there's actual space, there's a beautiful desk, and hopefully there's a view. and, sometimes people feed you And there's time and it's really specific time. The time will end. You have to do the work while you're [00:27:00] there. There's a sense of expectation. There's a sense of someone has sat at this desk before me and had this struggle and come up with something good. You really feel the effort that's in the room, and I think that absolutely elevates you.

Moves you from being a solo kind of person bouncing around the world with a lonely idea, to this person connected to other ideas and other people and, it is a place that you can actually muster your courage. I think at any [00:27:30] stage, will enhance your life.

Kris: I'm gonna put my hand up to just say I wouldn't rely on those formal residencies because I've been a judge for the fellowships at Varuna and it's really competitive and really hard to get in. people with big names get rejected from that because you don't see who's applying, all you've got is like a page sample or a few pages of their writing and you don't know that you've just rejected someone with 20 books and a million awards. So I wouldn't rely on those residencies. I'd actually [00:28:00] organise yourself.

The most important thing is to find other writers to work with like Chris Olsen and Ashley Hay and I have just gone away for a week. Booked a week away, together we're writing. You don't need to apply and get rejected you just go, we're gonna do it, we're gonna write, and we're gonna do it together.

And that gives you the community that you need to write. So I would not rely on any of those residencies. And you have to have a publication record to apply to the Australia Council anyway, so you can't actually just apply [00:28:30] until you've got a book published, so it's doesn't work. 

Courtney: That's great advice.

We have time for just one more question. 

Question 3: Yeah, thank you. It's been really enlightening. Mirandi, you mentioned you have several novels in the works. I'm wondering if like, a painter, you do a bit of this one and then do a bit of that one tomorrow. Or do you just start to finish?

Mirandi: Oh my god, I've been all over the shop now that you've reminded me. So I wrote a few crime fiction and then I started the third one. [00:29:00] But I didn't know if they wanted it. Meanwhile I wanted to write Stone Sky Gold Mountain for an Australian publisher, for my publisher Aviva at the moment.

So I got in touch with the British publisher and I was like, do you want the third novel? Like, Hoping they'd say no. And they're like yeah, okay, give us the third novel. So all summer I quickly wrote that. I think I started Stone Sky for the Griffith Review because I had a Griffith Review grant for it.

And then, I decided I would write a novella about Anna the Javanese. So I away from Stone Sky [00:29:30] again. And wrote that novella for Griffith Review, and my publisher was not happy about that.

But I did hear the other day that Tim Winton has like desks in different areas for different works.

And I'm like, I'm going to do that, because I'd like to write a crime fiction again. I found that really fascinating.

Courtney: Thank you for your attention. It's just been such a pleasure to have this conversation. If you would like to follow us on Instagram we are @areyoustillworkingpodcast for tips and [00:30:00] tricks of the trade, let's say. Thank you, Kris, for your lovely warmth and hospitality and thank you to my producer, Lisa Madden and thank you all.