Show Your Working: Gina Rushton

What sort of software and hardware do you use to get your work done?

I started writing my book with Scrivener which was great at first because it encourages you to think in a very zoomed out way about structure, but then I found myself in Microsoft Word. I lose a lot of things—this morning I locked myself out of my house but immediately found another key I had lost months ago—and it was stressing other people out that I was using Word, so I changed to Google Docs so they wouldn’t worry about me losing my laptop containing the manuscript. It is funny to think about ‘special features’ because the only one I discovered was because I am a massive bimbo…I had no idea that you created an indent by pressing the tab key. I’m not joking—I just didn’t use them, or I did multiple space bars. I shared this information with friends, and some of the replies included: ‘I don’t know what to tell you’, ‘I’ve known this since I was twelve’, ‘don’t tell anyone that’, ‘how many years have you been using a computer?’

Describe your writing practice?

When it comes to journalism I can write at any hour, but for anything that requires an ounce of creativity I need to get to it first thing in the morning. I don’t know if I so much edit as I go as I just don’t edit myself very much. I want to be edited by people who are smarter than I am, so I seek out my friends’ opinions a lot. Non-fiction writing requires a lot of material that has nothing to do with you, and I find the personal reflection the last and least important ingredient, so that element is particularly unrefined.

Has your writing practice changed over the years? If so, how? 

My writing practice has changed in that before I wrote the occasional essay beyond my reporting and then, suddenly, I wrote a book. I think I’m probably more realistic now about the role idle time plays in writing. It sounds indulgent, but you need enough time—even if it is half a weekend away from work and writing—to see your friends, to have a hangover, to swim in the ocean etc. It took me a while to realise that sometimes what the writing needed was for me to relax.

I think I’m probably more realistic now about the role idle time plays in writing…It took me a while to realise that sometimes what the writing needed was for me to relax.

How do you encourage inspiration to strike?

I deal with writers’ block by eating, immediately picking up a book or going on a long walk. I remember talking to Sarah Krasnostein about how I couldn’t write the book at my desk and I only felt like writing at inconvenient times in uncomfortable places. She said something, in an eloquent way I won’t do justice, about all of the stuff around writing being part of the writing. It really helped. I probably took it too seriously when I was trying to bludge, but when you think about the moments a book comes together, it really is in those strange in between times when you’re only half thinking about it—standing at the kitchen sink staring out the window is the writing, peeling a mandarin is the writing, shaving your legs is the writing.

*

The Most Important Job in the World is available now from your local independent bookseller. Gina will be appearing at events at the State Library of NSW on 21 April, at the Wheeler Centre on 28 April, and at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in May.