'A unique, intimate portrait of writer’s working life,as experienced by one of Australia’s most highly regarded novelists and artists.
'A Novel Idea is a memoir in photoessay form that follows Fiona McGregor’s life as she writes her award-winning novel Indelible Ink. It is a tongue-in-cheek rumination on the monotony and loneliness of the novelist’s daily life, and the act of endurance the writer must perform.
'Through an extended sequence of photographs taken on a hand-me-down camera, accompanied by terse, evocative captions, the book spans several years of labour and procrastination, elation and despair. The details of the outside world intrude as McGregor works on the novel alone in her Bondi flat, with nothing but a desk, a pin-board, a laptop and a cat, and in studio spaces in Berlin and Estonia.
'McGregor’s voice is wry, vulnerable, at times caustic, capturing the colloquial qualities of her fiction and the durational nature of her performance art via the ephemeral and essential thoughts that take up an author’s days, weeks, and years.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'One morning I listened to Fiona McGregor talk about her writing on a podcast as I washed a dusty pink cashmere sweater I bought from an op shop for five dollars. Although it was before nine and I was still at home, I had started work for the day. Multitasking by doing laundry and listening to a podcast felt legitimate to classify as ‘on the clock’ because of several factors: the time and day of the week (Monday, 8.45am), the match between the manual activity and a key theme in my current research (housework) and, primarily, the direct relationship between the podcast and my task for the morning (drafting this review of McGregor’s A Novel Idea). While a complicated, informal, internal algorithm determined the legitimacy of this action, I felt justified nonetheless. Even if the difference between work and life is only ever one of degree, I won’t tell HR.' (Introduction)
'In her work as a performance artist, Fiona McGregor is no stranger to physical and psychological endurance, often sitting uncomfortably still for hours on end. However, it is the more challenging act of endurance – writing a novel – that she documents in this photo essay, A Novel Idea. In the epilogue, McGregor laments that novel writing “is mystified, romanticised or, conversely, trivialised”. She says, “Let this document then show how banal, gruelling and lonely it really is.” And so she does.' (Introduction)
'In her work as a performance artist, Fiona McGregor is no stranger to physical and psychological endurance, often sitting uncomfortably still for hours on end. However, it is the more challenging act of endurance – writing a novel – that she documents in this photo essay, A Novel Idea. In the epilogue, McGregor laments that novel writing “is mystified, romanticised or, conversely, trivialised”. She says, “Let this document then show how banal, gruelling and lonely it really is.” And so she does.' (Introduction)
'One morning I listened to Fiona McGregor talk about her writing on a podcast as I washed a dusty pink cashmere sweater I bought from an op shop for five dollars. Although it was before nine and I was still at home, I had started work for the day. Multitasking by doing laundry and listening to a podcast felt legitimate to classify as ‘on the clock’ because of several factors: the time and day of the week (Monday, 8.45am), the match between the manual activity and a key theme in my current research (housework) and, primarily, the direct relationship between the podcast and my task for the morning (drafting this review of McGregor’s A Novel Idea). While a complicated, informal, internal algorithm determined the legitimacy of this action, I felt justified nonetheless. Even if the difference between work and life is only ever one of degree, I won’t tell HR.' (Introduction)
