Show Your Working is a regular column exploring how some of our favourite writers get things done. In this instalment, we take a peek into the writing routine of journalist, presenter, and producer Elfy Scott, whose new book The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About is out this month from Pantera Press.
Elfy’s workspace. Image: Supplied
What does your workspace look like?
I work in a shared study with my partner in our rental home, which sounds like it should be convenient and nice, but in reality he loathes the sound of my loud erratic keyboard tapping, so there’s only ever one of us in here at a time. I keep my desk as clear as humanly possible because I am completely incapable of focusing around clutter. It’s so sterile and austere-looking—my study space just looks like something you’d buy straight out of an Officeworks catalogue.
The study itself has a beautiful view of a green valley of houses beneath us, but I actually grew to resent working at home alone in the time it took me to write the book. I find it incredibly isolating to work in the house all day, and I have to fill the day up with inane little activities around my writing and producing time to make it feel bearable.
Are you an analog or digital writer?
I’m a bit of a combination of the two, but for the sake of a lot of longer-term projects, including the book, I’ve turned to exclusively keeping things digital because the mental organisation it would take to work across paper and the computer would simply be too much. My memory is horrific so things slip through the cracks all the time, unless I have my calendar app sending me reminders or folders and Trello boards to keep me on track.
I find it incredibly isolating to work in the house all day, and I have to fill the day up with little activities to make it bearable.
What sort of software and hardware do you use to get your work done?
I’ve become sickeningly reliant on Google Docs in the past few years of work. It’s the only way that I’ve found I can organise myself properly. I wrote the entire book in Google Docs and just downloaded the folders every now and again to ensure the work was backed up, in case, I don’t know, Google happened to collapse or something like that. I know that I should probably be using something more specifically designed for long-form writing, like Scrivener, but I appreciate the straightforwardness of Google Docs—even if it is painfully insistent on American spelling.
Describe your writing practice?
I don’t have much of a writing routine to speak of, to be totally honest. I just let myself write when I feel like writing. The closest thing that I have to a routine is amassing a huge amount of research and quotes and conversations with people on any one topic, and then I’ll tend to go away for a while and think about lines to myself while I’m doing something mindless, like putting out the washing. I don’t start to write until I have a clear idea of the first line as a jumping board and then I’ll let it all tumble out from there quite organically. I do this for podcast scripts as much as for writing articles and chapters of the book.
I don’t start to write until I have a clear idea of the first line as a jumping board and then I’ll let it all tumble out from there.
Often if I have no starting point at all, I’ll just write out the sections that I know I need to cover in an order that I can predict will make some sort of cohesive sense, and then just leave the skeleton for a while. I can’t force myself to write. I can’t force myself to do much of anything—I’d probably be a lot wealthier and more productive if I could.
Has your writing practice changed over the years? If so, how?
I’m not sure that my practice has changed much from working as a journalist in a newsroom or even from my earliest days of writing columns for magazines. I’m always a bit disorganised and just write when I feel like writing, and know that I’ve got something to say.
How do you encourage inspiration to strike?
If I’m feeling really stuck on a topic or struggling to find the right tone of voice, I’ll often just sit down with a book. It can honestly be any book and any author—I just need to take notes on how other people have done it, and I find that strikes up my own writing voice in my head. I know that other people keep journals and I think that’s probably the smartest way to find your voice, expand vocabulary, and formulate ideas…but frankly, I cannot be bothered. I’ve tried to do it many times and just find talking to myself through the page really, really boring.
I’m a compulsive oversharer, and I always try to keep in mind that other people’s boundaries are more important than my own.
How do you navigate the shift from journalism to more personal writing?
I’ve always felt fairly comfortable sharing intimate details of my life. The complications lie in telling intimate details of people who are connected to those stories. Writing the book was obviously tricky to navigate, in that I always wanted to do right by my mum as well as the rest of my family; I felt I had to honour their privacy and not speculate too much about anybody’s reasons or responses to the stories that I’m publishing. I’m a compulsive oversharer and I always try to keep in mind that other people’s boundaries are more important than my own.
What’s next for you?
At the moment I’m just working on getting podcast projects off the ground and doing my best to promote The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About! Hopefully I find a job or another long term project soon, I’m not great with boredom…
The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About is available from 31 January at your local independent bookseller.
