Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
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Also, I swear a lot.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to not quite right.
My name is Ed and this is the 9th of a series of interviews that Amanda and I
recorded at the Words and the Waves Writers Festival this year.
This time we're speaking with Jessie too.
Jessie is a journalist, a book critic, and the author of two novels,
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing and The Honeyeater.
We had a very brief conversation with Jessie about her work as she was just
about to go on stage for the Power and Privilege panel with Nikki and Natasha.
So here is our very brief conversation with Jessie too.
So we're here at Words on the Waves with Jessie too.
Hi, how are you?
I'm good, thank you.
What brings you here to Words on the Waves?
I'm going to be here on a panel about Power and Privilege,
talking about my latest book, The Honeyeater,
and tell us about The Honeyeater.
The Honeyeater is a a sort of psychological thriller workplace drama
about three women.
It centres on a young translator who's trying to get her first book of
translation sold.
And it's really just about the power of dynamics within the workplace,
especially in academia, because she has a very powerful female
boss who is also a translator.
And it's just about these two women trying to vie for power in academia,
in the world of academia, which I'm fascinated by.
So Ed and I used to work together, actually,
and we were just talking about some old workplace gossip.
But it's always such a rich source of drama, the work place, like, Right.
Yeah, 'cause like, your colleagues are people who you're
forced to spend the most amount of time with, and you don't choose them.
No, I didn't choose him, but yeah, talking about the power dynamics between
women is always really interesting as well.
And how, like, there's this kind of often this
competitiveness that just comes into it like, unbidden, I think sometimes as well.
Totally.
Yeah.
Because there's so there's so little space for us.
Is that something you've found in your own life?
Is it just a topic you're interested in more generally?
Yeah, I think a little both.
I feel like the way women are expected to present themselves and to behave in the
workplace, there's a lot of what I've witness is
repressed hostility.
OK.
There's a sort of yeah way that you meant to be.
And I find that very fascinating about like the kind of multifaceted sides of us
that who would present ourselves as women in the workplace.
It's so different to who we actually might be.
Like us come 5:00.
Yeah, right.
OK.
I think that's a big part of the workplace, right,
is putting on that that work face and then being someone completely different
at the end of the day.
Yeah.
And I find that really, I don't know about you guys,
but I struggle with professionalism.
Like I'm not present.
I mean, you get used to it in time, I guess.
You just get used to putting on that mask and being that person for that period of
time.
But it's never a comfortable fit for most people, I think.
And sometimes I feel like I'm something wrong with me 'cause I don't find
uncomfortable and I don't like doing it.
No, the the whole situation is very fake.
Yeah, everyone's pretending.
Yes.
That's why I hate LinkedIn so much, because it's to be a pit of me.
And it's just, that's exactly the issue.
It's onto the online space.
Yeah, but you're a book critic as well.
So how does that impact your own writing?
Are you critiquing yourself as you write, or can you separate those parts of your
brain?
Well, thankfully I can separate it because when
I write for myself, like fiction, my books,
I try to just remember that at the end of the day, I'm writing for myself.
No one is adjudicating this.
Yeah.
That's the sort of key philosophy I try and remember because otherwise,
if you think about your readers, you just won't write authentically.
But then I guess come editing stage, maybe that part of your brain is useful.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Do you see issues in books that you critique and then apply those to your own?
That is such a great question because a lot of people ask me how do you operate
between and a person who actually does the artwork?
And I've never been asked that.
That is such an awesome question.
I think so I think I when I critique something,
it's very different to the sort of criticism I grew up reading,
which was very clinical and sort of objective and like objective.
But the way I encounter a book, it's always through an emotional lens.
So I'm like, how does this speak to me emotionally?
How do I connect to it emotionally?
If I like the pros like a put work, it's often because the pros is good.
And then I guess I think about my own pros and whether or not it flows.
Yeah.
And what's good exactly?
Like, what does good mean?
Like you've experienced it in a way that made you feel good, but why?
And how can you replicate?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But the problem is that you can never really be objective about your own work.
And we, I mean, we do some critiques as well As for our
podcast and we have a, a flash fiction competition.
And it's a very different story when you're looking at someone elses work and
saying what's wrong with the voice, for example, or,
or the structure and then your own work, it's impossible to kind of come.
You're still making the same mistakes that you can pick in someone elses,
but not in your own.
It's, it's really hard.
That's, that's where a good Anderson comes in.
Obviously that's true.
I mean I have a very critical brain.
So I do, I find that it's not only in my own work
that, you know, I become self critical at the time of
creating, which is problematic.
But also I find it sometimes hard to enjoy art because I'm constantly kind of
analysing.
Like when I say art I mean like written word or you know, film or TV,
that sort of thing.
I'm analysing the plot instead of just experiencing it.
So do you have that at all when you're reading that you're sort of already pre
empting what you're going to say in your critique or.
OK, Actually not, I think, yeah, I don't know why.
I think I I've been I just am able to try and take try and consume it as it is
first and then and then later come go back.
And my first question is always what is this book actually about?
And then I guess what is the author trying to do?
Yeah, I've got the same experience as you
actually even just watching TV shows now, you know,
I can't stop thinking about the writing and the structure and all of the beats
and that kind of thing.
I don't know if it makes it worse or like diminishes it.
I think actually makes it a different experience.
Yeah.
That level of like criticism and yeah, you're analysing, you can't really shut.
I can't, I can't shut that part of my brain off
when I'm watching something or reading something.
Yes.
OK, so your first or your latest book is
called The Honey Eater.
And the major theme of that is that relationship, that power dynamic.
Your previous book, A Lonely Girl is a dangerous thing.
Tell us a little bit about that.
That is about a sex addict violinist who is 22 years old.
And it's just, it's about her struggling to come to
terms with, she used to be a prodigy, but then she had a massive public
breakdown.
And then now it's her we're revisiting her, revisiting her in her early 20s.
And it's about her trying to gain some semblance of power.
And I think it was my, just my sort of exploration into how
young women are still expected, like they're sort of still expected to
measure themselves and their worth in terms of their physical desirability.
And I really love makes me so angry because, you know, I just,
I see my young nieces falling for that.
And I'm like, why?
Why is the world still so ****** ** for women?
You know, it's it makes me so angry.
And also because young women don't know, like, I know when I was in my early 20s,
I thought I like, I thought I was the ugliest thing in the
world.
Like, yes, you just so hard on yourself as a young
woman.
You don't know the power you have.
Yeah.
You know, there's no objectivity there.
Yeah.
It's just, oh, it just.
Yeah.
So that book was really just about how a lot of young women,
at least what what I saw was just trying to use sex as a way to gain power.
But at the end of the day, they felt **** about themselves.
Yeah.
And they had power anyway.
Inherently before.
Yeah.
They just weren't aware of.
Yeah.
A fascinating premise for a book that sex addict violinist doesn't have to say.
It's like, OK.
Yeah.
OK.
Well, I'm just conscious that we've got not too
much time.
So was there anything else you wanted to mention before we wrap up,
before you jump on stage?
No.
It was such a delight to talk to you guys.
Me too.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Writers Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
Something doesn't seem quite right.