Linda Jaivin is the author of eight books, including the bestseller Eat Me – a romp through the lives of four Sydney women and their erotic exploits. Eat Me was her first novel and was a bestseller in Australia and overseas.
Though she was born in the US, Linda lived in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for nine years and has been an Australian citizen for over 20 years. As well as being a best-selling author of fiction, she’s also an academic, translator (from Chinese) and writes extensively on art, culture and China. She’s a fellow in the Pacific and Asian History Division at the ANU. In 2001 she published The Monkey and The Dragon, about her friendship with a Taiwanese pop star. She has also written several plays.
Since Eat Me was published in 1995 she has published five more novels – Rock & Roll Babes from Outer Space, Miles Walker, You’re Dead, Dead Sexy and The Internal Optimist. Her latest is A Most Immoral Woman.
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Transcript
* Please note these transcripts have been edited for readability
Valerie
Thanks for joining us today, Linda.
Linda
Oh, it’s a pleasure.
Valerie
Now, Linda, when and how did you decide that writing was going to be one of your main careers?
Linda
It’s interesting I always thought that reading was going to be my main career. When I was a little kid I wanted to be a librarian. Very specifically I wanted to be the librarian. I had an idea this was actually a job, the librarian who got to read all the new books and choose which ones went to the library.
It occurred to me only when I was about- I can’t remember, I was 11 or 12, something like that, I wrote an essay for school about Cyrano de Bergerac. We were supposed to pick something, read it, and write about it. My teacher wrote on the top of that essay when she handed it back that it was very well written and had I ever thought about becoming a writer.
It seemed to me something that I couldn’t possibly do. It seemed out of reach. It didn’t seem like something that one would do, like, become a teacher, or a doctor, or something.
So, it occurred to me only when my teacher wrote that little, probably for her quite offhand comment, on my essay on Cyrano de Bergerac. Then it lodged in my brain.
A little bit later when I was in high school there was a creative writing class that was introduced as a new element in the curriculum. The teachers chose which students they thought had the most potential, those students were allowed to take the class, and I wasn’t chosen!
So, I was like, “Well, obviously I’ll never be a novelist, even though I love reading novels, and I do it all the time.” And, I had that sort of fantasy. But, “Oh, it probably won’t work out for me. But, I still kind of want to be a writer. I probably just won’t be a very good one.”
So, I took a little blow with that, but I think it’s always stayed in my head.
Valerie
Then what steps did you take after that, before then your first novel, which became a best seller, Eat Me, what steps did you take before you got to that stage?
Linda
Well, I have always needed to write, so that’s something else. A lot of people say, “Oh, I want to be a writer, but I don’t have time.” And, that’s just not the way it works, you have to be completely obsessed with writing.
Even when I was younger I would write little stories, or I would write little poems. I would write things all the time. I loved doing essays at school. So, I was always writing, and then when I was 23, or 22, or something, it was after I graduated university, I was living in Taiwan, I wrote my first novel, which was absolute crap. I didn’t have enough experience in the world, and didn’t know what I was doing, but I did try. I got a good start on it and I realized it was absolute crap and threw it away.
But, I was writing constant. I was writing poetry all the time. I was writing stories. I was always writing. And writing essays, I started to work for a little magazine. When I was about 29 I wrote my second novel and I was very, very close to finishing this one. I was very happy with it, and it was a novel about a society of mutants and post-nuclear holocaust world.
I mentioned it to somebody, I had been doing this very quietly every Sunday afternoon, because I was working full time as a journalist. Then what happened was when I told somebody about this they said, “Oh, have you heard about the new book Riddley Walker? It’s about a mutant society in a post-nuclear holocaust world.” I just went, “Oh, whatever I do now it’s going to look like I was copying Riddley Walker.” So, that sort of went into the wastebasket.
I wrote a third novel a couple of years later, and meanwhile I’m writing, writing, writing. I’m always writing essays, and by now I was writing lots of essays, journalism, everything else, travel writing. But in terms of novel writing I then gave it a third try and this one I actually liked quite a lot. I put it, but nobody wanted to publish it.
So, this was, I think, the early ‘90s when I was trying to get it published, or the late ‘80s. I can’t remember. And, nobody was interested. So, what happened was I put it in a drawer. Actually that novel is going to be, not my next novel, but the one after that. It’s already contracted.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
Yes.
Valerie
Fantastic.
Linda
I’ll return to it. It’s going to be quite different. I’ve got to completely rewrite it and it’s going to go way beyond what it was, but it certainly has given me- that one is work continuing.
Valerie
What’s that one going to be about?
Linda
I’ll save that for later, but it’s going to be called, probably going to be called The Education of Proofreader Dean.
Valerie
Alright. Great. Intriguing.
So, then Eat Me came out. I remember at the time reading it and just being completely blown away.
Linda
That was before Sex in the City.
Valerie
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Linda
And, it was before Chicklit, it was before Bridgett Jones, so women weren’t writing funny, erotic stuff.
Valerie
What made you decide to do funny, erotic stuff?
Linda
I was doing it for myself and I showed it to a friend and she said, “You should get this published.” Then one thing led to another and, yeah, that’s how it happened. I published the first stories in Australian’s Women’s Forum. Then the publisher came along, so things rolled on from there.
But, I wrote for myself. I think if you don’t write for yourself then there’s no point, because you never know if you’re going to be writing for anybody else.
I taught a workshop recently in which somebody who was taking their first workshop, and unlike a lot of the people in the workshop who had novels in their drawers, or half-finished novels, or whatever, and I’d teach workshops for everybody when I do that. I love people who are coming in for the first time.
But, I was quite surprised when this one said, and I had said in the beginning, “This is about writing, it’s not about publishing.” She’s the one who said, “So, how do I get published?” And, I thought, “Well…” what I said was, “You have to write first, and if you’re not going to write to amuse yourself, if you’re not going to write because you have to write, then it’s not going to be fun for you. And, it’s not going to be worthwhile, because ultimately you have to write for yourself. And, if you don’t do that nobody is really going to relate to it either. And, you probably won’t get published. You won’t get published if you’re always thinking about writing for publication,” if that makes sense.
You have to be very, very true to yourself; write what you want to read. Write something that means something to you. That’s the most important thing. Then if you don’t get published, and then I almost said punished, if you don’t get published then you’ve at least done something that is meaningful to you.
I’ve got tons of stories and things that are on my computer that have been published.
Valerie
You’ve written fiction, non-fiction, erotic fiction, a variety. Do you have a preference? Is there a genre that you actually prefer?
Linda
No, my preference is always what I’m working on now.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
It’s always the most interesting thing to me is what I’m working on now, and what I have worked on in the past, it’s almost like a puzzle that’s been solved. I don’t ever like to return to exactly the place where I was before. I don’t want to repeat myself. It’s not interesting enough to me.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
It would be very interesting to my publishers, because then you’re a consistent, known quantity.
Valerie
They know where to put you in the bookshelf?
Linda
They know where to put you in the bookshelf and people know what to expect when a new novel of yours comes out. So, it’s not a really smart career move, but otherwise I think I would just bore myself. It’s just not in my nature to do that.
I admire writers who can, who can be consistent and yet fresh. It’s just probably a failing of mine. I always want to go somewhere new, really new.
Valerie
I’m sure it’s not a failing.
Tell us about your latest book, A Most Immoral Woman. How did that idea come about to start off with?
Linda
The idea came about, I can tell you the exact moment, I was reading a biography of George Morrison, the great Australian journalist from the turn of the century. It was the new biography. I had the old biography on my bookshelf, by Cyril Pearl. This one was new. It was by Robert Macklin and Peter Thompson.
I was reading it for review for the age, and as I was reading I was thinking, “God, Morrison is so much fun. I’ve forgotten how much fun Morrison is.” Really, really enjoying him as a character and thinking, “It would be great someday to do something around him.” It was a very vague thought.
I was reading the book. I came upon the description of George Morrison’s affair with the woman the biographer’s described as the American heiress nymphomaniac, Mae Perkins, about three pages’ discussion of this wild affair in which Morrison completely lost it. She out libertined him by a mile. And, he was totally wrapped with her. She was unlike anyone he had ever come across. This was all unfolding against the backdrop of the rest of the Japanese War.
When I was reading those three pages my brain just light up and I went, “That’s my next novel.” And, so it was.
Valerie
You have a real interest in China as well.
Linda
Oh, yes. Long standing.
Valerie
Tell us how that- has that always been there? What fascinates you about it?
Linda
I studied Chinese history in university, which was somewhat accidental in the sense that in my first year when I thought I was going to be doing a degree in the study of politics and government I took a course in East Asian history, that somebody said was taught very well, and so it was because I could never leave the subject again. I just was completely fascinated.
So when I graduated that was at a time when China was not open to the world. I was studying the Maoist era, and the cultural revolution had just finished. I graduated in ’77. And it was, you know, you wouldn’t study Chinese history or Chinese language because you thought you couldn’t make money out of it, let’s put it that way. I didn’t even know if I would ever get to China, that’s really what it was like, you know? I had no idea if I would ever actually be able to step foot in China, but the history was so interesting.
I just did it because I loved it, and I had no idea what I was going to do afterwards. I just had vague thoughts of popular history. I went to Taiwan to continue my study of Chinese. I was in Taiwan and then I moved to Hong Kong. China was opening up. I went to China.
Thirty-some years later I’m still going to China. I’m going to China in two days as a matter of fact.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
And I’ve just come back. Yes.
Valerie
Wow. So, did you have to do a lot additional research for your book?
Linda
Oh yeah, tons of research. Some of the books that I needed were on my shelf, some of the books were in the ANU Menzies library, which is one the better Asian studies libraries in Australia. I’m a visiting fellow at the Australian National University in East Asian History, so I have access to their libraries. I’ve spent quite a lot of time there looking at first person accounts of the Boxer Rebellion that would mention George Morrison and give me a little bit of insight into the character.
I also had to look up Mae, because although, as I discovered when I went to the old biography of George Morrison, although I discovered this ‘most immoral woman’ as Morrison called her, and hence the title of the book, A Most Immoral Woman, although she also made a rather special mention in the other biography, nobody really had gone into who she was. She was the daughter of an American politician, of a millionaire, but beyond that her past was never explored. So, I did research.
Also, she had left a number of cryptic comments, which Morrison recorded in his diary, and the biographer’s mentioned because it’s quite salacious and interesting. Things like she was seduced by a Doctor Jack Fee in a restaurant called the Hens and Chickens, or Poultry, or something. That’s what Morrison said.
How do you get seduced in a restaurant; Poultry? Chickens? Hens? You know?
I wanted to know everything about her, and I wanted to know how to unlock the secrets of what she told Morrison and Morrison recorded in his diary. So, that took me to Oakland, California, and the Californian State Historical Archives, and biographies of wild women in San Francisco at the turn of the century, and so on and so forth.
I did a lot of research. I also realized I knew almost next to nothing about the Russo Japanese War.
So, I had to go back very seriously into research on Morrison, because even though I had read two biographies- I reread the first biography. I read his letters again. I wanted to get a good handle on his language and his thinking. When he mentioned in his diaries- I read his diaries for several years. He kept very detailed diaries. I read those diaries. I took notes on the way he spoke. If he said he read a book- he read one book at one point, and it was the ‘immoral book’ he had ever read.
I thought, “This is very interesting.” So, I went and I had to track down that book, which is very, very hard to track down. And, I did. I found a print in England, and got it shipped over, to understand, and that gave me an insight. That appears in A Most Immoral Woman, it’s the book Anna Lombard by Victoria Cross. So, I have a little bit of fun with that book, because I realized I had to think about why he thought it was the most immoral book. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.
I did tons of research around every aspect of the story behind A Most Immoral Woman. I did Russo Japanese War. I went to Japan, I went to Yokohama and Tokyo because the story also has scenes in Yokohama and Tokyo.
I went to China to what was known then as Wei Haiwei, it’s now just Weihai. The municipal archives were wonderful there. They opened their doors to me. They gave me a desk, and they said, “What do you want to see?” So, I got to look up all sorts of things.
I looked into all the side characters, like Lionel James, who wasn’t originally very important to the story. I mean I had no idea he was in the story, really. He was a colleague of Morrison’s who wanted to bring wireless telegraphy to the arena of war reporting. I came across a book that was a biography of Lionel James, I got that by an Irishmen. Then I began to correspond with the Irish author, and I suddenly realized that Lionel James held a major clue to the plot of A Most Immoral Woman.
So, the research was phenomenal really. But, it was great, and it was fun.
Valerie
Obviously you enjoyed it.
So, what period of time lapsed between that light bulb moment, and when you actually put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard? What kind of research period was that? And, did you do all the research first before you thought you could write the story?
Linda
I didn’t do all the research first, because you often are writing and then you realize what you don’t know. I did a significant- the light bulb moment was in 2004. I was working on Infernal Optimist. The Infernal Optimist, is the novel that came out before- the novel before this one, before A Most Immoral Woman. It’s another novel that I’m actually quite proud of. I really like the Infernal Optimist. But, I was working on that, and very involved with it when this light bulb went off.
So, what I would do is just work on the research, think about it, begin some research notebooks, begin thinking, but my head was mostly in the Infernal Optimist.
You know the whole process of publishing, there’s gaps where your editor has your book, and maybe you’re working on some essays for magazines, but you also have that mental space to go into your new project.
So, it’s very hard. People want to know very cleanly how much time did it take to research. It’s a bit of a mix up for us. It’s from the time the light bulb went off, 2004, to the time it was published, 2009; a five year period. But, I wouldn’t say I was writing it for five years.
I was probably more writing it for three years, or something like that.
Valerie
You also write plays, you travel, you do work in academia. You’ve got several projects on the go. You’re already talking about not the next book, but the book after that-
Linda
And I’ve just read an article on how multitasking is bad for you, so I’m very depressed.
Valerie
So how in the world do you fit it all in, or juggle it? Do you actually have sort of a strict schedule that you do this then, and this then? How do you fit it all in?
Linda
I’m a bit ADD, which is really bad. My goal in life is to bring myself in to real focus, so that I don’t jump from thing to thing, but I don’t always achieve that. I really do feel very proud of myself when I can work on one project for a couple of hours without thinking of another one.
Valerie
I thought you were going to say a couple of weeks.
Linda
Are you kidding? I wish. I wish, that’s my dream.
No, I’m doing way too much and it’s stupid, but it’s also interesting. I don’t sleep as much as I would like to. I would really- I haven’t slept- I’ve slept about- I was talking to my agent this morning, and I think I’ve only slept eight hours maybe three or four times in the last three or four months, and it’s my goal. It’s my dream. I wish I didn’t pop awake at 5:30 in the morning going, “Get to the computer.”
Valerie
When you have enough research done for whatever it is that you’re working on at the time and you want to sit down, do you actually grab moments of two hours here or there, or do you have a routine?
Linda
Oh, yes, yes. When I get into my books, big projects, I certainly devote very concentrated periods of time, like a week, or a couple of weeks where I really don’t do anything else, and that includes- when I was working on my book about The Monkey and the Dragon– you were saying I taught university, there was recently a creative non-fiction course in Sydney University, which I gave three lectures to about The Monkey and the Dragon, as creative non-fiction and it made me think back on that time. I realized I was really focused on that. I love it when I can just focus on one project. It’s actually the best thing in the world. I did have that with that.
I think my life has become a bit fractured recently. I’ve been doing way too much traveling, and working on an opera in China, which is just monstrous in terms of the way it loops back in and eats up chunks of my life that I had allocated to other projects. It’s hard.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
It’s hard and reading that article, I think it was The Guardian just in the last couple of days about how multitasking is really bad for you. It reminded me that I need to focus. Part of that is also too many deadlines all coming in at the same time.
Valerie
Yes.
Linda
One of the things that I think is very important for writers to manage a little bit better than I usually, because I think sleep is really, really a great thing.
I also think that something I like to do, and I try even when I’m very, very hectic to do is some form quieting down and I suppose, I believe it’s called active mediation. So, I’m just learning to play the guitar. I just do chords and things like that. I have two little Beatles songs that I play really badly. That’s about the level of it. Oh, and Love is in the Air, which I play rather badly as well, but am enjoying. So, I’ve got a very, very small repertoire and I mainly just sit there and do finger exercises and scales, but I find it really meditative, and really wonderful.
Exercise where I just go out and I walk, and I try to stay in the present moment. But I think it’s very important to stay in the present, and to get your monkey brain, as the Buddhist say, under control, because I’ve got such a monkey brain. I’ve got an entire zoo.
Valerie
Now back on The Monkey and the Dragon, which is about your friendship with a Taiwanese pop star, and it’s creative non-fiction. So, why did you decide to do that book, which was a little bit different from your usual material?
Linda
I had wanted to do a China book for a long time, of course, and that book it was necessary to write for a number of reasons. I was fascinated by the subject of the book, the monkey of The Monkey and the Dragon, Hou Dejian. He was one of my best friends and also a major figure in the Chinese world. He was at one point a household name for like a billion people.
His whole story was in some ways reflective of- in the way a mirror is not life, but it reflects life. I mean I would say that’s- his life was like a mirror to Chinese history, and the relationship of Taiwan and China, and the history of pop music and China, the development of rock and roll.
There was so many things that fascinated me about this best friend of mine, and I had a unique insight into his life. I had always thought- I had written about him many, many times for magazines, but I hadn’t actually figured out how to do a book about him, or at what point I should sit down and do that. Then he began involved in Tiananmen in 1989, and there was something that happened that created a massive scandal throughout the Chinese world. He suddenly was reviled as somebody who had lied, and who had done something really disgraceful, in fact he hadn’t done that. I was one of the very, very few people, and I was the only person, actually, who was not in a Chinese prison at the time who could clear his name.
And so even though Western readers of The Monkey and the Dragon might not even realize that bit was the motivating part for me, that made me say, “I have to write this book,” because there’s so much else in it. There’s an entire portrait of the ‘80s and China, and the opening up of China, and the cultural renaissance that occurred at that time, all of that stuff, all told from my personal mix-up, personal memoir and of course Hou’s story as the center. People might not realize that one event is what pushed me to say, “I have to do this.” And, “I have to do this now.”
Valerie
Now you talk about writing articles, because you’ve got a background as a journalist, when you write articles it’s obviously- you complete it in a much shorter space of time. Is it hard not to get that sort of sense of satisfaction when a book takes so much longer? How do you switch hats also between writing something that is very self-contained and very succinct versus something that can take five years?
Linda
I think for me I need both, because there is a sense of huge satisfaction when something is finished. My brain works in so many different ways, and I’m interested in so many different things. The articles and the short stories give me a little bit of an outlet, the steam that’s building up, you know, in one of those pressure cookers, you have to have that little valve. My steam escapes into various forms while the stew is cooking in the pressure cooker.
It’s just a different thing. I just, I don’t know. Everybody works differently. I really, really love working in different forms. I find that whatever I’m doing helps me with everything else I’m doing. That includes translations as well as everything else.
Valerie
Tell us what you’re working on now.
Linda
Right now I’ve got the two new novels that are coming up. I’ve got a series of short stories that just pop up. They just come. They just happen.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
I have the opera, for which the libretto is finished, but still may need work. I’m very involved in the whole production process.
Valerie
Right.
Linda
I’m involved in, right now I’m writing a book review of a Chinese novel, and I’ve just been asked by the editor of the China Heritage Quarterly to translate a little excerpt. So, that’s what I was doing when you called.
I do- what else am I doing? I’ve got something due for the monthly. And I’ve got- I promised the big issue a short story.
Valerie
Oh my God!
Linda
And, that’s probably not all, if I actually looked around my desk hard enough I could find some other things that I’m supposed to be working on, or if I looked at my ‘do’ list.
Valerie
What would your advice be to people who are listening who want to do what you’re doing, who want to write for living for a living? Who want to write books?
Linda
Do it. Do it. I don’t actually understand professional creative writing courses. I think workshops are great. I think people should go and take workshops. I don’t think anybody should be coward by the fact that they’re not in a PhD. on creative writing at some university. I never studied writing from the time I was excluded from that high school class.
Valerie
That scarred you didn’t it?
Linda
Well, I’ve always had to write. So, I think it’s a really weird question. I think your best teachers will always be books. If you don’t read a lot you’re never going to be a great writer. I hate to say it.
People in this age, I call it ‘the princess’ age, where everybody is special, and everybody is told they can do anything they want. Well, that’s bullshit. That’s not the way the world works. Not everybody is going to be a great writer. You can graduate with a PhD in creative writing and you might not be a great writer, and you can take as many workshops as you want and you might never get that novel finished.
If you need to write, if you’re driven to write then you will write. And if you read a lot you will know what good writing is. That’s really the essence of it. I really don’t believe that it’s much more complex than that.
I think for anybody who walks into one of my workshops and when I say, “What do you read?” And, then they say, “Oh, I don’t read because if I read other writers then I’m afraid of getting influenced.” I tell them straight up, I say, “Well, you’re never going to be a great writer,” because you have to know, you have to see, you have to understand, and you have to be able to read and see what the potential in language, and story, and structure, and character is.
You have to look at what- I’m not going to prescribe books, but if you looked at Madame Bovary, which is to my mind just about a perfect novel. And you thought, “Why is this so good?” And, if Madame Bovary isn’t your thing, if you like fantasy then read the best fantasy and figure out, “How does this work?” “Why am I enjoying this one?” And, “Why am I not enjoying that one?” Those are your best teachers, your books. And, if you’re not a big reader, get that habit.
Valerie
Yes.
Linda
And, if you want to be a writer because you have some idea that’s it’s a glorious sort of profession and that you gets lots of fame, and that you get to jet around the world, well, you do get a little bit of fame. You don’t get much money, unless you’re extremely lucky. It’s hard and for the most part fairly lonely life, because you have to have the discipline to sit in front of your computer and do it. But it’s something that you have to be driven to do. So, if you’re not driven to do it- I just suspect sometimes that when people ask that question they’re not there yet. I hate to say this, but that’s absolutely my belief.
Valerie
So the bottom line really is read, analyze and just do it.
Linda
Yes, and if you started to do it and run into problems, take workshops or get advice. And see if you’ve completed a manuscript and you can’t get an agent look for those people who do manuscript assessment. Make sure you get a good manuscript assessor. Seriously listen to criticism, that’s another thing. A lot of people, I run into some young writers, it’s very weird, I haven’t heard this from older people going into fiction I hear this sometimes from younger writers and I think it’s because of the whole blogging ethos where you don’t even correct yourself, you don’t want to be corrected by anyone else. I get asked often by young writers, and I’m not saying all young writers are like this at all because the good writers are never like this and I know a lot of those really great young writers and I’ve mentored some. But occasionally I get these people say “How do you deal with editors and publishers? I mean how do you fight them? How do you make sure they don’t interfere with your work or how do you make sure they don’t change your work?” And I’m like “What are you talking about? A good editor or good publisher has in mind making your work as good as it can be. Do you think that they’re the enemy? No, they’re your best friend”
Valerie:
It’s probably part of the princess theory as well, the princess syndrome.
On that note, I could talk to you for hours Linda.
Linda
Thank you so much, it was a great interview
Valerie:
Thank you very much
Linda
Good luck to all your listeners. And just write
Linda Jaivin is the author of eight books, including the bestseller Eat Me – a romp through the lives of four Sydney women and their erotic exploits. Eat Me was her first novel and was a bestseller in Australia and overseas.
