Melbourne Writers Festival – Day 3

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL: Malcolm Fraser (photo courtesy: Melbourne Writers Festival)  

Beyond Politics

‘Don’t tell me what you’re going to do, it’s better not to know.’
I only see the back of Margaret Simons but she seems to chuckle.
‘Otherwise I’ll start thinking of what I’m going to say,’ says Malcolm Fraser.

He’s sitting only a few metres away, impeccably dressed as you might expect, navy jacket with flecked gold buttons, waistcoat and tie, his long rectangular face even longer with the retreat of his hair, deep-set welt lines down his cheeks, the familiar blockish chin, thin framed glasses.

The audio-visual welcome starts blathering and asks us all to turn off our mobile phones. An ‘oh’ moment flicks across his face, he feels his pockets, pulls his phone out and checks. Up close, Malcolm, is human. Not only human but dignified. He’s self-depreciating, warm, polite, insightful, up to date. It’s what I’ve come to love about the festival, these strange moments of observation, seeing and hearing extraordinary people.

This session looked at Fraser’s life post-politics and talks about his book, Malcom Fraser: The Political Memoirs written with Margaret Simons. We’ve been bumped from the BMW Edge to the much smaller ACMI 1, as thanks to Alex Miller winning the Age Book of the Year he got the bigger venue. Not many of us had turned out at 10am on a Sunday morning anyway, which was a shame, but understandable.

The discussion covered Fraser’s time serving with the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons in South Africa in the mid-80s brokering the circumstances to start a dialogue between the South African government, at the time led by PW Botha and the ANC. Then talk jumped to his time with Care Australia, and when he was involved with supporting Care workers. Back to the present, and he discussed the lack of differences between the two parties in this most recent election campaign and the reversals of traditional policy positions especially in areas such as education. He took a swipe at the way both parties have destroyed funding to Australia’s universities and bemoaned the lack of a comprehensive water policy and commented on potential reforms to Australia’s political system.

He described the free-market ideology of some in the liberal party as sheer nonsense, saying that if a government wants to have a country with pride it must support the arts. Then praise the Rudd governments actions to avert a deep recession after the GFC.

The most touching moment, came in the questions, when a woman admitted she was straight as a die leftie, had lived through the dismissal and all that but that she wanted to say thank you for all that he has done for Australia since, and there was spontaneous applause. She then asked when we might hope for a bi-partisan approach to asylum seekers. Fraser told a story of a young women, now in Sydney, educated in secret in fear of being shot under the Taliban. How her family sold up everything they had, on the chance of getting to Australia, to give their kids a better life. Have faith and trust, tell Australian a few real human stories, he said. They will welcome them with open arms.

As the audience left, I heard murmurs of approval, of I’m so glad we came, and I’d always wanted to see what he was really like. Ain’t it a great thing famous people write books?

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Author as Brand

The next session chaired by Jo Case from lit journal Kill Your Darlings couldn’t have been more different. How to go from unknown writer to cyber celebrity. Three hot tech things talking blogging, twittering and moving units

James P. Othmer (Adland) is an ex-adman who left that world to try and get away from ‘branding’ but it’s followed him anyway. Kathy Charles (Hollywood Ending) learnt selling as a publicist at Disney and Pixar and has worked every angle she could think of to optimise her audience; buy her book and she’ll be your best friend. While mum turned blogger Karen Andrews (Miscellaneous Mum blog and kid’s book Surprise!) has turned the virtual into print with her anthology, Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing #1 .

If you thought getting a book published was hard, and from there on in fame and fortune would flow, no, its just as hard getting it sold. Ads are expensive and untargeted. Newspapers and magazines give over less space to reviewing books, the avenues to promote a book are fewer, even getting noticed at a writers festival can be tough. And there are a lot of books coming out every month.

It used to be seen as beneath true writers to publicise themselves and in some quarters its still considered crass, Othmer said, The truth is however, your publisher will only give you a limited window of support, after that its up to the author.

Kathy Charles took that seriously when she wrote her first book about two kids obsessed with dead celebrities, so with her publicity and marketing background she drew up a plan on how to brand herself. She made herself the ‘go-to’ girl on dead celebs, with a blog, a website and thankfully a passion for the subject. But it came with a catch. She started getting interviews, called up to make comments by the media, but not about her book, about dead celebrities. Her messaging got lost, she said, she’d actually limited herself by trying too hard to control her writing career. In fact, she’d branded herself really well, just not as an author.

Kathy recommends emerging authors construct a messaging document, so when they do get an interview they don’t get side-tracked. You’ve got to make sure you say the title of your book, get in what it’s about and that people know where and how to buy it, she said.

If you are going to build a network of people interested in what you do you’ve got to blog, have that website, tweet and have a facebook page. But it’s not enough to just have them, they’ve got to be good, they’ve got to updated regularly. It’s that old mantra, Karen says, Content is king.

But if you’re doing all of that, when are you supposed to write? James turns it off, allocates time when he’s doing other things, like watching TV. Karen does too, as she realised, not so much that the internet was stopping her writing, but it was stopping her reading. She’s going on a cyber-diet. Kathy, with her hyper energy and bounce says you’ve just got to do it. It’s exhausting but that’s just what you’ve got to do. The truth is she says, if you don’t sell units, you won’t get published again. You’ve got to be an octopus.

To be continued…

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL
27 August to 5 September
For further information and ticketing go to www.mwf.com.au
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