Planning to succeed

There's no doubt that being able to sleep in every day is a great reason to become a full-time writer but it helps if you also have the talent to go with it. Well Jaclyn Moriarty certainly won out in the talent stakes and any sleep-ins she gets are well deserved. Her latest novel has just landed in bookstores and if the success of her previous novels is anything to go by she will have another hit on her hands.

The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie is Moriarty's fourth novel and her third for young adults. It's tells the story of Bindy Mackenzie, a straight A student who believes she's modest and popular but discovers on her first day of year 11 that she's in fact the most unpopular girl in school. She decides to recreate herself as somebody ruthless and takes it upon herself to tell her classmates what they're really like. This strategy doesn't quite have the outcome Bindy expected and as she learns to be a teenager for the first time she finds herself in the midst of a mystery and what proves to be a very unexpected twist in the story.

Moriarty spent about ten months doing research and planning for Bindy. For Moriarty, research and planning go hand-in-hand: 'The research feeds into the planning and then the planning creates more research.' And because it's a mystery Bindy needed more planning than Moriarty’s previous books. Planning involves lots of time spent with large notebooks and coloured textas, brainstorming ideas and drawing pictures. And in fact it's this planning method that is also Moriarty's antidote for writer's block. Fortunately she doesn't often suffer from the writer's dreaded curse but when she does brainstorming helps get her writing again. Also, not writing for a few days is another cure. 'I don't understand writers who say they have to write everyday because I find that's when I might get writer's block when I force myself to write everyday. If I feel like it's not working or I'm just getting bored then I stop writing.’

Moriarty grew up in Sydney and studied Law and English at Sydney University, Yale and Cambridge universities. She now calls both Montreal and Sydney home, dividing her time between the two cities with her husband. When in Sydney Moriarty finds riding around the harbour on a ferry and looking at the water to be a great way to get story ideas. As for Montreal, it’s 'inspirational because it's so different ... with beautiful, old buildings everywhere it's just different enough to trigger the imagination.'

'I need a lot of praise and encouragement to keep going'

A typical working day for Moriarty begins with a good sleep-in followed by a couple of hours writing whilst still in her pyjamas. Then it's off to a cafe with notebook and textas for some planning and brainstorming. She aims to do another few hours in the evening, social schedule allowing. 'I like to have some writing at home and some writing out because when you're just at home on the computer and suddenly your head is empty of ideas.'

Amongst her influences is John Marsden who's been a favourite since adolescence as well as Carol Shields whose lively, intelligent style Moriarty admires. And Moriarty is lucky enough to have inspiration right at home. Her husband is Canadian novelist, Colin McAdam and her sister is also a writer. Her husband reads her work whilst it's in progress, every two chapters. 'I need a lot of praise and encouragement to keep going so if I give him a paragraph and he doesn't say it's magnificent then I think "Oh, what am I doing?"' Other favourite authors include Judy Blume and Robert Cormier although Moriarty feels that she didn't read many teen novels as a teenager, 'I read more as an adult in my twenties when I became interested in writing for teenagers.'

Bindy is an Australian tale yet despite possible changes from her American and British publishers to remove the 'Australianisms' Moriarty remained true to her story and her Australian roots. 'I try not to think of an audience but at the same time I wanted to make it distinctly Australian. I did want to focus on an Australian audience, if I was on an audience at all to avoid thinking about the American readers because there's a temptation to think about it doing well in the bigger market. I don't want to abandon my Australian audience.' Fortunately Moriarty's American publisher felt the same way and didn't edit out the Australian references.

Now the author of three young adult novels and one adult novel, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, Moriarty describes the experience of writing for the different age groups quite different and she enjoys going back and forth between them. 'When I wrote the adult book I found it almost refreshing, or a relief, because I could suddenly open up the world so it wasn't just teenagers and high school, it could be anything I wanted it to be. And I could write about more adult themes and issues and maybe experiences closer to what I was having then without having to focus hard on remembering what it was like to be a teenager. When I finished that I found it really fun to go back to the teenage [novel].'

Moriarty is currently working on 'three things and nothing at all': another young adult novel, a grown up book and a book for young children.

Karin van Heerwaarden

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Jaclyn Moriarty

Book: The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Price: $16.95

Check out our review of The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie HERE