Show Your Working: JR Burgmann

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 author JR Burgmann, whose debut novel Children of Tomorrow is out this week from Upswell Publishing.

What does your workspace look like?

My partner and I have moved a lot over the years, so for a long time my workspace was an ever-changing set up. Children of Tomorrow was written in a range of spaces: The State Library, my mother-in-law’s laundry, my cramped PhD cubicle at Monash or improvised workspaces at home, and so on. In early 2022, we—along with our two little children—moved further out, lucking upon a place in the Dandenongs. As you can imagine, I was eager to set up a writing space that finally felt permanent. On the bottom floor there is a spacious, light-filled, concrete-floored basement walled floor-to-ceiling in painted white brick. There is a fireplace and idyllic views out across the Yarra Ranges. I’ve been working on my second novel Abominable here—as well as at my Wheeler Centre hot desk last year—and I often find myself in disbelief I get to write in such a space. We were back in the UK and Europe for the past few months and one of the things I was most looking forward to upon returning home was this very space.

For a long time, I thought that I didn’t need a stable workspace; in hindsight, that view seems more a product of circumstance than anything. However, I can hardly claim the space is a sanctuary of order. My kids, who are six and four, invariably find ways to make the space their own. But I personally embrace the chaos—there’s a happy place between order and disorder in which I work best creatively.

There’s a happy place between order and disorder in which I work best creatively.

Are you an analog or digital writer?

I tend to work digitally. Certainly, when I write it’s almost always digitally; my notetaking has moved more and more from analog to digital over recent years too. I don’t think I would have been able to keep my system of notes for a research-intensive project like Children of Tomorrow if I was working with physical materials. One of the most annoying parts of my writing brain is that often whole passages of prose come to me when I’m not actually trying to write. It might happen when I’m walking or running, or even on long country drives. Obviously I can’t pull over all the time to type passages into my phone’s notes app. So I have to let those moments of inspiration slide (no doubt these would have been my finest pieces of work!). But when I’m walking or running, I often stop to type fragments of ideas or prose into my phone that I’ll later transpose and refine in Word—I’d estimate I wrote 10 to 20 per cent of Children of Tomorrow in this rather inconvenient way! Because of this I’m heavily reliant on the cloud and always keep my laptop, iPad, phone, notes and iCalendar synced and backed up.

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

It’s conventional, but when I’m writing it’s entirely with Word. I use the notes app across my devices, as mentioned. As I did with my PhD, I use a range of softwares for current academic research and work. There is something refreshingly simple and stripped down, then, about working just in Word for my creative work.

My desk itself is minimal—a sit-to-stand hand crank Ikea model, on which I use my MacBook along with an external display/second monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse. I find shifting between sitting and standing across a writing session useful to kickstart different modes of writing or work.

One of the most annoying parts of my writing brain is that often whole passages of prose come to me when I’m not actually trying to write.

Describe your writing practice?

At the moment, I’m finding it very difficult to carve out time to write. Between working across two uni roles and parenting, there is very little time for writing at the moment. When I do find a slice of time, I try to write while the kids are at school and kinder. For me the evenings are for unwinding, so I only write or work late if necessary. I won’t lie, there were late nights while writing Children of Tomorrow. For my second novel Abominable, I’m trying to maintain a more regimented approach, writing only when there is ample time to do so. I didn’t necessarily do this with Children of Tomorrow, which was more fragmentary and made up of various types of writing modes. But the narrative structure of these two novels differs greatly, encouraging different approaches to writing.

I’m a big believer in segregating writing from editing. For me they are different modes of composition. The writing part is fluid and flawed. Sure, you write as cleanly as possible, but refinements and the actual creation of publishable prose happens at the editing phase for me. Generally, I make multiple passes of drafted material, reading the text out loud, making refinements along the way. In terms of narrative design and planning, I tend to let the story dictate my method. With the novel I’m currently working on, I’m taking a looser approach, seeing where the writing goes. For Children of Tomorrow, which is an episodic saga that depicts shifts in the planet’s climate across this century, I had to plan in great detail how narrative events would transpire, which was a major creative challenge in many ways.