My second pair of guests are Sue Braghieri and Hannah van Didden. I first met them at a writing workshop a few years ago and we have been friends since. Their responses remind me how important it is to celebrate as well as create.

When did you two meet and what were your first impressions of each other?

Sue            Hannah and I met in 2013 at a year-long course run by the Peter Cowan Writers’ Centre in Perth. I remember being incredibly nervous on the first day of the course as I didn’t know any of the other writers. My first impressions of Hannah were that she was very tall and elegant, and exuded a genuine warmth and openness to those around her. As the course progressed, there was a rapport that developed within our group and we began to feel more comfortable sharing our writing. I remember we were given an exercise with the prompt: ‘He wrote that he was coming back and she …’

We all came up with very different follow on lines, but Hannah’s response was something like: ‘She went inside and turned the gas mark on the stove to four.’ A few of us commented that we thought her character was going to meet a rather untimely end, but Hannah’s explanation of where she intended to take the piece was completely different to what I had imagined.

Hannah    We met at band camp— I mean, writing class. We had a very motivated and talented group in that course, supporting each other and growing together. I met more than one kindred spirit in that PCWC boardroom. I was impressed with Sue’s focus and experience, in writing short stories and plays, and I felt an affinity with her pieces, even though our voices, styles, and subject matter were all very different.

 How long did it take you to become writing buddies? How often do you write together?

Sue            I think the turning point in our writing friendship was the group decision mid-way through the course to produce an anthology. Hannah and I were both on the publication team, and were in a buddy group together to develop our short stories for the anthology. After the launch of Other Voices: a collection of short stories, Hannah and I were keen to continue as writing buddies. We were both writing short stories regularly, and would meet to exchange pieces and provide each other with feedback. Our writing friendship has now evolved to regular writing sessions together. We generally meet at least once a month, but often manage fortnightly sessions, and if we’re really organised, a weekly session.

Hannah    Once we had buddied up and pulled together the anthology, our bond was cemented: if we didn’t write together afterwards, we were destined to be friends. Fortunately for me, we are both. I think we started writing together regularly within a month or two of the anthology being launched. As well as writing together, I love that Sue is someone I can trust to cast a discerning eye over new stories, chapters, poems, essays, manuscripts… I do send you an awful lot of stuff, Sue! It does work both ways, but I think I get the better deal.

Sue            I’m keeping this up my sleeve for when my novel is finished. It will be a weighty tome!

What is the process you follow when you read each other’s work? Do you comment, edit, offer feedback, or are simply present while new work is born?

Sue            Early in the friendship, we were providing each other with copy and structural editing suggestions, and general impressions on each other’s work. We still do this from time to time, but for the most part, we are now present as new work is being created. We tend not to give detailed critiques at these writing sessions as we know giving comprehensive feedback at this point in the creative process would kill our stories before they’ve had a chance to be born. There will be time enough for that later during the editing and revision process.

Sometimes it’s just about sharing what’s going on in our personal lives that may be impeding our writing. And we support and encourage each other, particularly when the inevitable rejections land in our Inboxes, but there is also the joy in celebrating each other’s successes!

Hannah    We usually start with a coffee and a chat. Because we like each other. We update one another on our latest submissions and rejections—and sometimes we have an acceptance to celebrate. Then we get stuck into whatever we’re working on. Or something brand new and unplanned. It all depends on what grabs us at the time.

Most often, we use a marathon writing process of free-writing in timed segments [with thanks to you, Rashida, for that introduction], however we also use writing prompts from time to time.

Rashida     Liana Christensen introduced me to marathon writing, You’re welcome 🙂

Does the act of writing with someone affect how you write? Is it possible that your own writing can change if you read or listen to another, in the process of creating?

Sue            I find being in the presence of my literary friends while I create is incredibly conducive to the writing process. There is an energy there that you can’t replicate when writing on your own. I am more focused and driven in getting words onto the page. As for taking on someone else’s style, I haven’t found that to be a problem. Hannah and I write in different genres and have very distinct voices and styles, and to try and emulate each other just wouldn’t work.  But we’ve had some rather inexplicable coincidences where we’ve created pieces completely independent of each other, but have both ended up with characters with the same name, or with stories with a similar premise or theme. But the pieces we’ve created were poles apart.

 Hannah    I am amazed at the subjects we stumble into from opposite directions. And the characters! We each have a recent story featuring an ‘Ivy’ and there is a ‘Sam’ somewhere in there too. Utterly disparate characters and stories, but the synchronicity is there. That said, we have different ways of approaching our work, different inspirations, different voices. At first I treated our partnership gingerly, as a hopeful but wary experiment. I wondered if writing together might dilute our respective voices into one homogenous mass. Groupthink. But, from our very first writing session, it became clear that we were feeding each other’s writing instead of feeding on it. We draw from the same energy, but we don’t share muses.

How honest can you be with someone who is also your friend? If feedback is meant to feed the writing rather than kill it, how much do you hold back when offering feedback?

Sue            I think it takes time for mutual trust and respect to be established in any writing friendship. You receive from the relationship what you are willing to invest. It has been a learning process for me. Outside our writing circle, I have witnessed the damaging effects that being overly critical can do to a writer’s confidence, so I try to keep that foremost in my mind. With our writing friendship, I feel we are now at a point where we can be honest with each other, and trust each other’s judgement. It’s about commenting on what’s working well with the piece, and what may need further consideration and revision.

Hannah    It helps that we actually appreciate each other’s writing but that doesn’t stop us from getting to the point—constructively, of course! It’s tough to improve if you can’t take feedback. We are trying to get to the same place with our craft: we each want to be better than we were the day before. We spur each other on to write better, I think, than either of us did alone.

Thoughts on writers groups? Do you think writing with one or two other people is better than writing with several? What makes your literary friendship work?

Sue           I think writing with a couple of other people works best if you can achieve that. If you have too many in the group, it can become unwieldy at the sharing phase. And ultimately, I think there is a huge level of trust in sharing your writing and giving feedback in a smaller group. That relationship takes time to develop, and all parties need to know how the group works, what the expectations are, and the rules of engagement. That said, more formal, structured writing groups also have their place in that they are good for getting you into the habit of writing regularly, and can be a way to meet like-minded writers in your area.

As for reflecting on why our literary friendship works, I think it is like any friendship. You can’t quite quantify why you are drawn to certain people, but there is an easiness in developing the friendship. While Hannah and I are very different personalities, when we met there was synergy in the way we related to each other. The best way I can describe this is a feeling of connectedness and shared experience, even though we were still getting to know each other. We have nurtured the friendship, and ultimately, it is all about the respect we have for each other’s writing skill, and the support we can give each other. My writing friends have really helped with my development, and I hope that I have equally given back to them in return.

In closing, forming a small writing circle is something that we can both highly recommend. Writing can be a very lonely pursuit, and it can be hard to get over the rejections and the knock-backs that will inevitably head our way. Having some other writers to share your journey, makes that lonely path a little lighter, and will enrich your writing in more ways than you can possibly imagine. You will laugh together, cry together and lift each other up when the demons of self-doubt strike.

Hannah   I couldn’t agree more!

Current writing projects, biographies and website details

Sue           I am working on my first novel with the working title The Secret of the Fox. It is an intergenerational, historical fiction work set in Launceston, Tasmania during the late 1800s, and Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in the late 1970s. It reveals the secrets families keep to protect the innocent and the guilty, and the ramifications these decisions have on the generations that follow.

Susan Braghieri writes fiction, non-fiction, and the occasional play. Her writing has been recognised in Australian and overseas competitions, and is published online and in journals/anthologies.  Susan holds a Graduate Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing from Edith Cowan University. Her published work can be accessed here:

‘Black on Black’, https://westerlymag.com.au/issues/new-creative/

‘The Room They No Longer Enter’, placed second in the 2016 Scribes ‘Short Takes’ Prose Competition: http://www.scribeswriters.com/—2nd-short-story.html

Her website is located at: www.authorsusan.com

Hannah   I am editing two manuscripts while writing three others in pieces. I’ll tell you more when someone likes me enough to offer me a contract.

Hannah van Didden plays with words in the second most isolated capital city in the world. You will find pieces of her published or forthcoming in places like Breach zine, Southerly Journal, Atticus Review, Southword Literary Journal, and thirtyseven [http://37thirtyseven.wordpress.com]—and she hopes you’ll see her first novel on a bookshelf near you very soon. Her published work can be accessed here:

‘Mother’s Milk’, in Atticus Review: http://atticusreview.org/mothers-milk/

‘The Man with the Purple Halo’, placed third in the 2012 Trudy Graham-Julie Lewis Literary Award, first published in Southword Literary Journal and reprinted in Quail Bell Magazine: http://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/Issues/26/vandidden_hannah.html