RMIT has an impressive reputation for turning out writers of note. This session, chaired by author and RMIT staffer Catherine Cole, only underlines their success.

Carrie Tiffany’s debut novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and the Orange Prize. Toni Jordan’s ‘literary romantic comedy’ Addition has sold into multiple countries, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin and was selected for Richard and Judy’s Book Club in the UK, guaranteeing her sales of 10,000 plus copies there. Kalinda Ashton’s first novel, The Danger Game (currently Readings Australian Book of the Month) was launched to widespread critical acclaim, and she was mentored by Christos (The Slap) Tsiolkas throughout. Nick Maxwell is a chief writer on Rove, responsible for the satirical segment ‘Kevin Rudd, PM’, about the unlikely weekly adventures of a manic, high-voiced version of our prime minister.

Carrie spoke movingly about her love of reading, and the way it allows her to escape to other worlds. ‘If I was given a choice between never reading again, or never writing again, I would ditch writing.’

She talked about moving with her family from Yorkshire to Perth, aged six, and that although they were ‘a TV family, not a book family’, they brought with them a leatherbound copy of the works of Charles Dickens, which gathered dust on a bookshelf until, following her parents’ split, she found solace and escape within its pages. ‘It was the first time I experienced the sensation of my mind crossing over into a place with no actual geography – the imagination.’

Toni Jordan (pictured above) talked about her approach to writing and readers, and her decision to write intelligent literary fiction for time-poor readers who valued words and construction, but were primarily looking for a good story. She was inspired by seeing a good friend – a very intelligent woman who worked in science – move from reading Margaret Atwood and co in her twenties to Marion Keyes in her thirties, as she married and had kids. ‘The middle ground is for me,’ she concluded.

Nick Maxwell, a somewhat anxious, furiously self-deprecating, utterly charming speaker, talked about crossing over to ‘some kind of dark side’ by writing for television. He said the medium had been both helpful and unhelpful. The good thing is that it got him organised as a writer, and weekly propels him past self-doubt to deliver a finished product, ‘because if you didn’t, there’d be a black screen’. The bad side, he reflected, was that ‘you don’t get the time and audience to make something you really feel is the best it can be’. The best result for his writing is that it’s taught him ‘to be concise with language’.

And finally, Kalinda Ashton (left) talking about ‘crossing over’ from being a writer of plays and short fiction to novels. She said that novel writing was interesting in that she experienced ‘a closing off of options, a limiting of choices’ as she progressed through the work. ‘Each incidental decision early on has later consequences.’ Interestingly, sorting out minor issues to do with the consistency of the book often evolved into major changes that would alter what Ashton called ‘the fulcrum’ of the novel. For instance, one of the three main characters, Jeremy, the brother of the two sisters at the core of the novel, was only introduced as a character in his own right after his sister mentions seeing someone who reminds her ‘of her dead brother Jeremy’, which led Ashton to reflect that perhaps she needed to mention Jeremy again later on. In the final product, Jeremy is the narrator who both introduces and closes the book.

‘I never meant to work in three narrative voices and two time frames to write this novel,’ she said. ‘But I did.’