Cirrus@Austlit

'With the publication of The Australian Author the ASA has achieved another target. I am sure members will want to join with me in congratulating the editorial committee which has given so generously of its time and talents. The Australian Author will be our forum and shop window and, I'm sure, a major force in the Society.'  (Introduction)
 

'This important matter is not a simple one so it is understandable that many members of the ASA are still unclear on what the Public Lending Right is all about, and what it could mean to book-writers in terms of money. 

'This article will try to set out simply the answers to these and other questions, including questions that members are likely to be asked about PLR.'  (Introduction)

'There was a time, not very long ago, when every novel had a line in the front which said, 'All the characters in this book are and have no relationship to any living person'. Nobody believed it.'  (Introduction)

''What is the best way to read a book? The first answer is: twice!' So run the opening sentences of a Victorian Adult Education Board bulletin issued this year. They are blatantly characteristic of the cloud-cuckoo territory in which the novel is studied by children, undergraduates, intellectuals and discussion-groups, And, if such poisonous nonsense were restricted merely to such groups, the result would be nothing more than a startling waste of time. It is when the novelist himself becomes influenced by changes rung upon such data that the results can be most dangerous.' (Introduction)   

'There are as many kinds of editor as there are men - good and bad, patient and impatient, honest and dishonest, discerning and adventurous or lazy-minded and hidebound. The one asset they have in common is eyesight. Most of them, understandably, intend to preserve their vision and resent what causes undue eyestrain.'  (Introduction)

'I am honoured that your Committee of Management has arranged this evening for me. The last time I spoke at the Opera House was in the election last May. I was in the company of Patrick White. So you will see that I have always had some success in getting writers on side. Now that authors are receiving public funds, now you are all on the government payroll, I expect an even bigger turnout at our next Opera House meeting, whenever that may be. In the meantime it is a pleasure to meet so many of you personally. Names familiar from innumerable dustjackets and title pages, from countless airport bookstalls and library shelves, are now fleshed out in living form. It is good to be among you.'  (Introduction)

'During IWY (International Women's Year], I was asked to lecture in Townsville and Armidale on 'Images of Women in Australian Literature'; at the Adelaide Festival I found myself on a panel discussing the female consciousness in literature. It seems worth thinking a little further on what the contribution of women to Australian writing has been and is, what its limitations and strengths consist in, and where it may be moving. '  (Introduction)

'Every volume of a history has to be written at least three and sometimes four times, and, as each volume contains nearly 200,000 words, that means over three-quarters of a million words have to be written to get out a volume. A man has to be single-minded to keep going.' 

'When Joan Clarke first asked me to write a short piece concerning those heady days in 1968 when we decided to publish our own quarterly I shrank from the task. So many other people are better able to tell the story, of the magazine we couldn't afford and weren't sure our members wanted.'  (Introduction)

'Many of the articles I have read in The Author over the past few years have been by struggling writers trying to get established. Not unnaturally, many of them complain bitterly at the treatment they receive at the hands of editors and publishers. I have no quarrel with these complaints for most of them are, I am sure, wholly justified. What I do quarrel with is the implied, sometimes stated assumption that those of us who have managed to become established writers find it any easier to cope with the general level of incompetence, inefficiency, ineptitude and downright lack of consideration which one encounters in one's dealings with the 'intermediaries' between one's work and its final purchaser.'  (Introduction)

'I have had some experience of the life of a part-time writer during the past 40 years. It's obviously a life of pressure—so much so that I wonder what happens when that pressure is suddenly removed. Does the writer suffer from the literary bends, get nitrogen in the ink of his arteries or suffer paralysis of the verbal nervous system? ' (Introduction)

`Any fool can make a thing, it takes a man, when things are tough, to sell it and make a profit.' Sexist Henry Ford could well have been referring to self-publishing. To be successful, over a long period, one has to be a better businessman than writer.' (Introduction)

'The new federal parliament will consider a new legal right for artists which has already been enacted in 60 other countries.' (Introduction)

'The advertisement in the newspaper simply invited 'published and unpublished ports' to send poems - 'any subject, any style' - for inclusion in an anthology of Australian poetry. There was no indication that it was vanity publishing.' (Introduction)

'There was a conference on literature at Monash Uni earlier this year and not one of the 70 papers presented was by an author. When this was pointed out to a prominent scholar the reply was that the Wool Board doesn't need to consult with the sheep. As a fiction writer, I found the analogy pretty apt. Being more pragmatic than academic, I'm dodging heavy duty theorising. This article is simply a practical overview of gay writing in Australia, an examination of recent history, choices and consequences. To push the analogy, it's a look at combs, both wide and narrow, which publisher uses which and what kind of fleece is currently considered to be most marketable.'  (Introduction)

'Recently my writing's been going through a crisis. Voices are starting to whisper to me as I write, and they're not the voices of Joan of Arc's saints telling her to carry on, you're doing nicely. They're nasty sneering little voices. They tell me the book I'm wilting is about as entertaining as the instructions on a packet of frozen peas.'  (Introduction)

'As with so many things young John Keats wrote, his description of the innermost psyche as 'an internal spangly gloom' is the finest we may get In this region you will spend one or more years if you decide to write your autobiography. By autobiography I mean what the dictionary means—the written history of the life of some person. I want to be clear about this because the word, from publishers' point of view, has become imprecise and gaseous. The string of anecdotes, the axe-grinding exercise, the regrettable whinge motivated by revenge—these will certainly sell if' written by a sufficiently famous or powerful individual. For we arc insatiably nosy about others' private lives. Horses and chimps don't appear to care in the least, so for us this striking inquisitiveness is probably a learning process, and so has evolutionary value.'   (Introduction)