In Episode 236 of So you want to be a writer: A.L. Tait is helping kids find their writing superpower. Why you need to make your characters want something right away. We dive into the age-old writing advice ‘show, don’t tell’. Discover your chance to win a book pack. Plus, meet Kali Napier, author of The Secrets at the Ocean’s Edge.
I’m so pleased I stumbled upon this podcast. I could listen to Val and Al all day, they are so chatty, honest and friendly and I love the Aussie accent, so win win! Full of information this podcast is interesting and motivating, including interviews, current topics and let’s not forget the word of the week. I have listened to various podcasts and this is the only one I look and wait for religiously. Thanks so much for the entertainment, information and amazing welcoming Facebook group.
Kali Napier worked in Bangladesh as an anthropologist on gender programs before working as an Aboriginal family history researcher for the Queensland government and as a Native Title anthropologist in the mid-west of Western Australia, the setting for The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge.
The novel was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award as was her first manuscript – also a finalist in the Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program.
Kali is currently an MPhil candidate in creative writing at the University of Queensland. She now lives in Queensland with her two children.
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Now, in case there are some people who have yet to come across your book, this awesome book, The Secrets at Ocean's Edge, for those readers who haven't got there yet, or haven't read it yet, can you tell us what it's about?
Kali
Okay. Well, The Secrets at Ocean's Edge is set in 1932 in Western Australia. And it starts with the Hass family, Ernie and Lily, and their daughter Girlie, abandoning their wheat farm to start a new life on the coast in a town called Dongarra where they hope to build a guest house and establish themselves in the town.
Unfortunately, things don't go as they hope. Lily's brother Tommy, who is suffering from shell shock from the first world war, has been wandering the track for several years looking for her. And he wanders into town and starts to pick at the threads that bind their family together.
Valerie
Now, I understand this was inspired by your own family history. So do tell.
Kali
Well, ‘inspired' is a rather loose term. It was actually inspired by the Great Emu War, which was this fantastic historical event that I discovered one day when I was just looking through my feed, and it popped up on screen. It was something that happened in 1932 in a town called Campion in WA, a wheat town, where the Australian Artillery was called in to cull the emus that were menacing the farmers' wheat crops.
Now, over several campaigns, the army… Sorry. The Australian Artillery fought several campaigns against the emus, but the emus actually won. And the army had to withdraw.
Now, when I read this, I thought it was such a wonderful event, raising so many issues of men who no longer have a war to fight and what do they do when they don't have any more wars to fight? And so I kind of wanted to write a story then set in 1932, because it had all the other themes and issues of hardships that people experience in rural areas during the great depression.
And so I had my setting of 1932. I had WA, and I am a West Australian. So I definitely was into setting my story there because I love the landscape. And I just needed to people it with characters. And I didn't really know what the story would be, or the form it would take. But I did remember that I had done some family history research quite a long time ago where I'd discovered that on one branch of my family tree I had someone who had been a bankrupt. He'd been in a wheat area and he had moved to Dongarra to start up a new business following a fire on his property in Perenjori. And so I used that then as the spark to launch the story.
Valerie
Awesome. So this is your debut novel and I have no doubt that it's going to be the first of many. Can you just give listeners a bit of an idea of what you were doing before you decided, oh, I'm going to write a novel?
Kali
It was a bit like that. I have worked as a social scientist, an anthropologist for quite a few years. I always wanted to be a writer, though, as a child. I was always writing poetry and plays. And I even enrolled in first year creative writing when I started at university when I was sixteen. But I had a lack of life experience. So I dropped out at the end of first year, because I had nothing to write about.
And yes, my life took a different direction altogether. But I was always writing. Because as an anthropologist, I was writing a lot of case studies and reports of different ways that people live their lives and make sense of their worlds.
And so, I guess I was writing a lot of narrative, non-fiction narrative in that way. And people would say that I had a technical ability to write. So I didn't have any confidence issues there. But in terms of fiction, because I hadn't written it for many decades, I never thought I would be able to write a book until I was actually working for the Queensland government as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family history researcher, and I was writing stories of people's family histories, piecing together fragments from the archives. And sort of forming complete narratives out of them.
And I was writing, I was uncovering and writing these family sags which were fully of mysteries, full of secrets, and horrendous events. And I started voicing aloud this idea that perhaps I should write a book. But I didn't want to write a book about those stories, because they were definitely not my stories to tell. But it kind of this idea gained momentum.
And I was soon made redundant from that job in 2013, which gave me some time to reflect on the sort of story I might tell and how I might go about writing it. And that's when I started doing some creative writing courses.
Valerie
And so you've done courses at the Australian Writers' Centre. And did that provide you with some techniques? Or was it more inspiration and motivation? What was its contribution to your writing process?
Kali
The Australian Writers' Centre courses I did made a great contribution. Because at first when I was made redundant, I was thinking, oh I would like to write as my career, to make money. So I actually started off with a feature writing course. Because I still didn't have the confidence to write fiction. Or I didn't know if I could write fiction at that stage.
So I did the feature writing course. But I didn't really have the sense that it was what I really wanted to do. And then I kind of explored, you know, what did I want to be when I grew up? And I went on a personal development journey. I realised I had to get back into the creative writing.
And so I did the Advanced Fiction Writing Techniques course through the AWC. And at the same time, I had enrolled in post-graduate university studies in creative writing. But it was at such an advanced level, where they don't teach you the nuts and bolts, I guess, of writing craft. And so I realised that I was so far behind, and that's why I actually enrolled in the Advanced Fiction Writing Techniques course because I had to go back to basics, to catch up with the rest of my classmates.
So I did those, the post graduate studies, and the online course concurrently. So that I would get a more rounded course. And yeah. And so I learned a lot of skills in a very short amount of time through that online course, especially the self-editing skills which I still use to this day.
Valerie
Great. So just talk me through some timelines, just rough timelines is fine. You see this thing in your feed and you think, okay, this has piqued my interest, I've got my setting, Western Australia, I'm going to populate it with people, and you remember this incident in your family history. Did this all kind of converge at once? Or did this happen over a period of time? And how did it eventually become a book?
Kali
I'm going to laugh here, because everything you described then happened pretty much within minutes.
Valerie
What!
Kali
Not the writing the book part, of course.
I'll give you… I'll go back a little bit in the timeline. So this was not actually my first manuscript. My first manuscript that I wrote, I started as a university assignment in the first course that I did at postgraduate studies level. And I had to write a novel, a first chapter of a novel. And I had no idea. But I just started. And as soon as I put pen to paper, it flowed. And then I finished that first manuscript after five months.
And then I started submitting it places, not knowing if I actually had written a book. Because I had had no feedback at all at that point. And so I submitted it to unpublished manuscript awards. And one of them was the Queensland Writers Centre Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program which is a national competition. And that was in 2015, and I was selected as one of nine winners of that. And I spent four days at the end of October working with a publisher at Hachette to develop that manuscript, as well as talking to a number of other industry professionals.
However, I'll backtrack one week from that program in October, I thought I'd better start preparing a week beforehand for the four-day program. And so my university lecturer at the time was Charlotte Nash-Stewart, who had been a graduate of the Hachette Australia Development Program, Manuscript Development Program. And so I'd asked her advice, and she said to have a second book to pitch. And I just thought, oh my goodness. It's only a week away. I have been spending all of this effort, all of this time on this one manuscript, all my energy was focused on that. And having a second book idea was, for me, going to be years down the track once I'd got that first manuscript published and then you know, then I'd leave it up to the publisher.
However, I went home after Charlotte said that to me, and I thought, what can I write about? And I think it was the next day, it was the next day that this article on the Emu War appeared in my feed.
Valerie
Wow.
Kali
Yeah. And then I had the setting, then the characters came all at once. And a week later when I turned up to the Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program I'd written one chapter of the book. And I had a synopsis. And when Rebecca Saunders, the publisher who had chosen to work with me that weekend, asked me, do you have a second book to pitch? I was able to say, actually, yes I do.
And I told her. And instantly she was all over it. She said, yes, write that. And I said, but what about my first manuscript? And she said, oh, no, no, no. And so I knew straight away that she wasn't into that first manuscript, but she was into the second book idea. So I put the first one aside. I even considered just binning it. And I just worked like a demon on that second one. And I finished the first draft within two months.
Valerie
Wow. That's amazing. So when you say that you turned up to that meeting with a synopsis, had you plotted out the entire story already at the start?
Kali
No. I'd written the chapter. And I knew what the climax would be, what the main event would be. And I kind of worked backwards from that, just writing some very loose notes about… I did have the four characters, because it's told through four main points of view. And how their stories would sort of evolve to get to that point. And that was all I had. And in fact, the climax that I first came up with changed completely after speaking to Rebecca that weekend. She told me, no, it couldn't end up that way.
Valerie
Right. Wow. Okay, so you had some kind of plan or structure, but it was a rubbery one, effectively?
Kali
Very rubbery, yes.
Valerie
Okay. So you spend two months then, writing the first draft. Tell me about those two months. Did you go at it full time? Were you quite, like, did you wake up at a certain time and make sure you achieved a certain number of words each day? Tell us about the structure of those two months.
Kali
Okay. We're talking about the end of 2015 and I've written quite a lot since then, so I can't remember exactly what I did. But I imagine I would have written in the evenings and weekends, because that is what I do. I have two children. And so they take up a lot of my time. I would have been working as well as at university at that time, as well. So I would have had other assignments I had to do. But it was November. And I do Nanowrimo.
Valerie
Ah right.
Kali
So I'm pretty sure I was using the graph on the Nanowrimo website to track my progress. And I just continued it into December. And I finished – I had told Rebecca I would finish by Christmas. I in fact finished on the 28th of December. So I was a few days past my deadline.
Valerie
I'm sure she didn't mind.
Kali
No. Well, she didn't see it at that point either. So what I did then was, because I'd written so quickly with no planning and no research, it was set in 1932 and I knew nothing at all about 1932. I just made it all up. So I had to then do research. So I did desktop research in January. And then in February, I went to Dongarra, the town in WA, to do the field work research.
Valerie
Had you been there before?
Kali
I had, yes. I used to live in Geraldton which is about 40 minutes north of Dongarra. I lived there for a few years where I worked as a Native Title anthropologist. So I did know a lot of the historical issues in terms of the Aboriginal people who had to live under the Protection Act and things like that. And I'd passed through Dongarra a few times. But I hadn't really stopped there and I didn't know what its particular character or nature was.
But I spent a week there, talking with the historical society. A local oral historian had done an oral history project which was very useful, because a number of the people who she had spoken to have passed on. And so they had a lot of anecdotes in those transcripts of the 1930s when they were children. And so I used a lot of those. I lifted lots of little anecdotes and details, food and games, and just happenings around the town. And I put them straight into the novel.
And also, it changed the story. Because a few of the things that were in the original story I found out could not possibly have happened. For example, cars. I just assumed that everyone would have cars in 1932. But the historical society told me that most people were still getting about in buggies and drays. And so I had the original story happening at a mechanic's garage, and that had to change significantly. And I had to find a way of bringing a petrol bowser into town, because that had to be there for a particular plot point.
I also learned that there wouldn't have been Aboriginal domestic servants, and I had a story line with that. And they were quite integral to the plot. And I had to remove an entire character, in fact two whole characters.
And I added a family. So there's the Feely family in the story, who were not there until the third draft. And so they're now woven through the story and quite central as well.
And so all of these things came out of my one week that I spent in Dongarra.
Valerie
It actually sounds like quite a lot of changes.
Kali
Oh yes.
Valerie
Did you anticipate that after you had done your research there would be this many changes?
Kali
No, I did not anticipate it. And I have to say, I was speaking to my publisher, Rebecca Saunders recently, and she said to me that she on purpose did not tell me how much work needed to happen to the manuscript when she offered me a contract because she thought I'd run a mile. And I said, thank gosh. Thank gosh she hadn't told me, because I would have. I really would have.
I underwent so many structural edits and copy edits. It changed so much. And even, in the second copy edit, I was adding characters and scenes that weren't there before.
Valerie
Wow. And that was because the feedback from the editors were that you needed these other characters?
Kali
Ah, yes. I think from the editors, from Rebecca, maybe even myself when I'm reading through thinking, oh, really that person should have a scene themselves rather than just being spoken about by other characters. Things like that.
Valerie
Right. Okay. So you start doing desk research before you go to Dongarra. Obviously you knew at some point you're going to have to research. But when you were in the throes of Nanowrimo and your ensuing month afterwards, was it tempting at any point to stop and go, oh, I must look that up?
Kali
Oh, all the time. Yes. While I said I didn't do any research while I was writing, I would kind of… Sort of look at the newspaper articles of the time to see what events happened, and so they would just get woven in.
I think it was… It's an iterative process for me. So I would have done a little bit of research, I can't remember exactly how much, but I would have done a little bit each day or each week, just to maybe sketch out…
There's that, I think, is it in Bird by Bird, about seeing the headlights on the road and just seeing what's in front of you as you're driving along the road. So I think I kind of knew what I was going to write in each chapter, what was ahead, but then nothing much more beyond that.
Valerie
Yeah, right. And so, okay, you do your… Now did you do your research before you handed in your first draft?
Kali
Well, for me, by then it was like my second or third draft when Rebecca saw it. Now I didn't show her the draft, I didn't show her the manuscript until May of 2016.
What happened at that point to actually make me send it to her was that it had become longlisted in an international unpublished manuscript award. Now I said I had almost been the first manuscript that had got me to the Manuscript Development Program. But I was still sending it out. So I sent it out to the Bath Novel Award in early 2016. And you only have to send the first 5000 words. And so I thought, well, I've got this other manuscript. It's only going to cost me the entry fee. I thought I would just send it along as well, with absolutely no expectations whatsoever.
And in May, both manuscripts were longlisted out of over 1000 entries worldwide. And that freaked me out, because I only had a few days then to submit the full manuscript of The Secrets at Ocean's Edge, which at that time was called An Emu War. And so I was half way through ripping out some of the old characters and putting in the new characters and it was all over the place, it was just a mess. But I submitted it.
And I thought, well if, you know it's been longlisted for the Bath Novel Award, maybe I will show it to Rebecca. Because she had been asking, you know, how's it going, how's it going? And so I submitted it to her. And I think it was a month later. I hadn't heard anything. And that was fine, because there's a lot of waiting involved when you send things out on submission. So I wasn't expecting to hear from her.
And it was a Sunday morning and I'd just got an email or a text out of the blue asking me what I had in mind for the jacket design. I was like, oh, I don't know really! I kind of came up with a few things, and then there were a few more questions over the week, you know, comparative titles, what did I see its genre as and what would I compare it to in terms of other novels.
And I just started to get this idea in my head that oh, this sounds like she's sort of doing something with this manuscript. But I didn't want to jump to conclusions. But I think it was after a week of these emails I said, are you taking this manuscript, this forward to acquisitions? And yes, she was.
And I just could not believe it. Because you just don't dare hope, you know. Because so much waiting and so much rejection involved in this industry. And so yeah, it was a month later she sent me a text asking me if I was going to the Byron Bay Writers Festival on the weekend, and I said yes, I was. And we met up for coffee, and it was pouring with rain. This was in 2016, in August. And we were in the catering tent, there were hundreds of people around us, and she just said she'd like to make me an offer. And that was that.
Valerie
And so then how did you feel?
Kali
Well, I couldn't feel too much with people pressed in around me. So I just felt… Honestly, it's hard to describe how it feels, to actually have all your dreams come true. It just… Yeah. It still feels like it's happening separately to me. I mean, the book's done really well and people are always saying congratulations. But my life still continues. I still have to raise my children and send them off to school with lunch each morning. And life just goes on.
Valerie
Wow. Okay. So you've been made the offer, you've sent in your draft, you then go through a series of structural edits. When you got that feedback, when you get feedback from the publisher, from the editor, whoever's editing it, and you know, okay, I've got to add this character or change this or whatever – tell me about that process. Do you start from scratch, in a sense? But obviously you already know what… The bulk of it is done. But because you have to weave things in, you have to rewrite things. Or do you just fix bits where they are required?
Kali
I think in later edits, like the copy edits which for me were like mini structural edits, I did just fix bits. But with the first structural report I was given, I had to go back to the drawing board. Because I didn't have, I guess, specific things I had to fix. I had to actually work out what the genre of the story was, was the main question that the structural report asked me. So, we're talking very big sort of high level structural questions here.
So I had to pull it all apart, pretty much. I had to work out what I wanted to say with the story. What it was about for me. Who to keep. What main plot points to keep. Put them in a different order. I pulled it apart – and this is actually where the editing techniques I learned from the AWC course came in handy – because there was a grid that I remembered that we were taught, and I pulled that out and I used that grid.
And I made a scene map of the whole story where I could actually – it was on Excel. You know, I'm not an Excel spreadsheet person whatsoever. But at that stage, where I had to really work out the building blocks of the story and what was relevant and what wasn't, it was very useful.
And so that was a long process, and it was also quite demoralising at first, when you kind of think, gosh, can I do this? It's like writing a whole new book all over again from scratch. And I did write a pros and cons list one night, there might have been a few wines involved, and I came up with the decision to hand back the advance because I would not be able to write this book –
Valerie
No!
Kali
– the way that they wanted it.
Valerie
Are you serious?
Kali
I'm serious. I'm serious, yes. But the next morning I woke up and I had an idea of how to take the story in the direction that they were kind of insinuating. And it kind of, yeah, everything worked in the end. But oh gosh it was…
Valerie
You were seriously going to hand back the advance and say, I can't do this?
Kali
Yes. Well, I mean I had to write a pros and cons list for it. And like I said, there might have been a few wines involved. But yeah, you know, I'd just hit a brick wall. I really had hit a brick wall. I did not think I could make it work. I just didn't. And you know what, I slept on it, and the answer was there the next day.
Valerie
Yes, well, thank god for that. Okay. So it has been so incredibly well received. When you saw it, when you held it in your hand, what did you think?
Kali
Oh, the first time I saw the book, I was actually on my way to a bookseller's dinner. This was in August last year. So Hachette organises dinners where authors can meet the booksellers and talk about their book a bit to promote it so that it can be sold into the bookshops. And I had to pass, because my mailbox is about a kilometre from my house, I had to drive past the mailbox on my way to the dinner. And there at the mailbox was a box of my advanced reading copies.
So all I had time for was to put the box in the car on my way out, and then at the train station I opened it up because I thought, ooh, I better look at it before I go to the dinner. I just cut it open, pulled out the advanced reading copy, and I went up to the platform. And so I looked at it for the first time at the train station.
And you know, I kind of didn't have time to absorb the import of it. I had to go and be on show and talk it up. And so I had the book with me, and it was like the whole night was exciting. So it kind of went from…
When I look at a graph of this whole experience there's just a lot of plateau, plateau, plateau where there's nothing happening whatsoever and there's vertical spikes of excitement. And so when things are just overwhelming like that, it's hard to know, you know, how am I thinking, how am I feeling at this particular moment because it's just all happening at once.
Valerie
So this book is out now. What are you working on now?
Kali
Okay. Well, the night that I was given the offer of a contract at Byron Bay back in 2016, I started working on my next book. I learnt my lesson from the first one; always having your next book to pitch. And so I came up with an idea set in Brisbane.
Now the first book is told through four points of view; this one is only told through one character's point of view, but over three different time frames. And the reason why I decided to set it in Brisbane is because I've lived here now for ten years, and I still feel very West Australian. And I think a large part of that is because I had written this novel set in WA, which really connected me strongly to the place, the landscape, the people. And so I knew that I had to put down roots here in Brisbane, so I had to set the story here.
And I think it was again, when I'm thinking of story ideas, little anecdotes from the past just pop into my head. I was at my neighbour's house a few years ago for New Year's Eve, and she lives with her elderly mother, and her mother just started telling a story about being abandoned by her mother in Fortitude Valley here in Brisbane when she was a child. Her mother just walked off and she never saw her again.
Valerie
Oh my god.
Kali
And so she was brought up by her grandfather with her brother. And that was that. And I think, that was all I took, that's all I remembered when I thought, oh, let's set a story in Brisbane. And that was it. I just started with that anecdote that popped into my head, and the rest of the story just flowed out of that.
Valerie
Wow. You just take action, don't you?
Kali
Yeah. I've got lots of notebooks of five story ideas. I talk about a one book, two book, three, and they're all different colours on my desk. And when I get an idea that belongs in one of those stories, I just have to write it in the notebook, because I know I'm not going to get to it until 2021 or something like that. And I don't want to lose the idea. So I just keep all my notes together.
And I have to say any other story ideas or characters that come along, you know, stop, hold on. I can't write that fast.
Valerie
Yeah, right. Wow. So have you written this book? This manuscript?
Kali
The next one? Yes, I have written it. I am rewriting it at the moment. So I'm not as naive anymore, about how many times a book has to be rewritten. So I'm okay with that. I've torn it to pieces myself. I haven't had a structural report from the publisher yet. But I know now how they think.
Valerie
Is it historical fiction?
Kali
Yes. Well, the timeframes are 1948, 1958 – 63, and then there's a contemporary storyline set in 2011.
Valerie
And have you learned any lessons about the research process? Like, did you maybe do some beforehand this time around so that you didn't have to rewrite entire chunks? Or how did you approach that with the benefit of hindsight?
Kali
Okay, well, what I did was I wrote the 2011 storyline first. Because I had the idea in my head. I just wanted to get it down on paper. And because the 2011 one, I was living here in Brisbane, I didn't have to do any research on the setting, because I experienced the floods here in Brisbane myself. And that's an event in the story. So I was able to write that from my own experience.
And I wrote it like a novella. It was like a 30,000 word novella, that contemporary storyline. But I knew kind of what I wanted to happen in the past without actually knowing the specific events that would lead to that result or consequence. And so I wrote that first. And then I started my research on those previous time periods.
Valerie
What do you consider your occupation these days?
Kali
Writer. Definitely a writer.
Valerie
Are you a fulltime writer?
Kali
Um… I am. But not just fiction. I have done other types of writing, like grants writing. And I'm also a fulltime student of creative writing. I'm doing my Masters at the University of Queensland. So there's a critical essay component to that as well as the creative work.
Valerie
So are you now fitting in your writing – let's say with this manuscript, or whatever story ideas you decide to write about – are you fitting it in like the previous one at night and weekends? Or is this what you do during the day these days?
Kali
Well, it does depend what time of year, what stage each particular essay or novel that I'm writing is at. But because I have to be at university full time, I'm here every day, and so I'll either be working on the novel that I'm writing for that, or I'll be working on the critical essay.
So there might be a lot of theoretical reading and writing that I'm doing, which isn't as exciting for me as fiction. And if I'm doing grants writing, that will be during the day. So I do still spend every evening working on my books that, hopefully, will get published by Hachette.
Valerie
So after you stopped working for the government and you thought, you know, I'm going to try out writing, at that point did you think that this would happen?
Kali
No. Of course not. I mean, I hadn't written any fiction at all for 22 years. I had no idea. But it was just a little persistent voice in my head that, you know, I've got to finish what I'd started. I'd done first year university at Curtin in Perth with Elizabeth Jolley as my lecturer. And I dropped out. And I just thought, I've got to see it through to see if there is anything there. And even if I didn't get published, I think I'd still be writing now. I'd probably still be hoping to be published, but I do love writing.
Valerie
Sure. Love it. What a great story. Thank you so much for your time today, Kali.
Kali Napier worked in Bangladesh as an anthropologist on gender programs before working as an Aboriginal family history researcher for the Queensland government and as a Native Title anthropologist in the mid-west of Western Australia, the setting for The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge.
