( September 1999 ) by Miriam Hurst
How did you start to write?
What were your first experiences of writing/publishing?
It was made clear to me that reading and writing were about the most
interesting things in the world at a very early age. There was a glut of
five-year-olds starting school so I did not start until I was six. I learned
to read between September and December 1936 and began to make up stories
shortly afterwards. My Dad said they were rather derivative; this was
true--they were about trees, fairies, talking toys, animals etc. My parents
were relieving teachers, often in what were then called The Native Schools
and I attended twelve schools all over the North Island.
I began when I was about eight to contribute to the children's pages of
local newspapers--puzzles, acrostics and so on. The first requirement of a
writer is wide reading and I went at it solidly, with increasingly adult
books A lot of genre in there--like Perry Mason--but also solid stuff like
Walter Scott or regency romances from Georgette Heyer. My Dad muttered about
my `frittering my time away with stupid Comics" and yes,I read them keenly.
Liked "Chips", with Weary Willie and Tired Tim the World Famous Tramps.
Publication was its own reward in the Children's Corner but in the year 1941
I earned Ten Shillings as second prize for a Christmas Story competition in
the Auckland Herald, Children's Pages. The story was entitled "A Michaelmas
Mishap" or How Santa Got His Sleigh. My mother and I were living at the
time
in Ohaeawai, Bay of Islands. There was no-one to pronounce upon whether the
story was derivative. My poor young father had been shot dead upon the beach
in Crete earlier in this same year.
What were your early publishing experiences?
I had a number of poems published in the College Magazine, NGC, which stands
for Nelson Girls' College. As such magazines go it was very good and well
run and we helped to edit it as seniors. The early reading had indeed paid
off--young Cherry came second in the junior General Knowledge Prize Test in
her third form year and won or tied for the darned thing every other year
until 1947. So if you want to be a writer, of SF or anything else General
Knowledge, gained by reading really helps. No, you don't have to read
Ponderous Tomes--read the news, play Trivial Pursuit, just read, or at least
watch the Telly. Television is the best way of learning a foreign
language---you get a picture which is helpful. Learning German
at age 47 is jolly hard but in the end even my kids agreed that Mutti could
speak German. (They picked it up at school much more quickly.)
At Canterbury University College I published funny stuff in the College
paper CANTA--this is a cultural cringe title from the Cambridge University
paper GRANTA. We would have done better to call it TAKAHE. I wrote
poetry
and submitted it properly, nicely typed, with brief submission letter
and
polite request for a comment, to Charles Brasch, well-known and revered
editor of the literary Magazine LANDFALL He returned it in the stamped
addressed envelope with one of the cruellest and nastiest comments I have
ever received from an editor. "All I can say about these poems is that
they
didn't particularly move me." I reacted in the only possible way
one can or
should react to such subjective shit. I thought "Stuff you, Charles"
and
submitted the poems to another magazine, in Wellington. They were published
and presently I had a request from Louis Johnson to submit more poems to New
Zealand Poetry Yearbook. Poets and all writers must develope a tough hide
for rejections because they will get them all the time.
This does not mean that one should refuse editorial suggestions --just don't
be discouraged easily.
What made you decide to write Science Fiction and Fantasy?
I went to New South Wales to live in 1954 with my first husband. I
was
writing short stories which were published in Women's Magazines and in Men's
magazines. Writing for Women's magazines is very specialised--the adventure
stories I wrote for Men's magazines were more fun to write. I wrote at
least one quite viable one-act play which we put on in our drama group,
where I did a lot of production. In 1961 I moved to Sydney with Horst
Grimm
(1928-92) my second husband. We had two daughters and lived in the
suburbs---I wrote reviews for both the Sydney Morning Herald and The
Australian and published literary short stories in such magazines as
Southerly, Westerly, Australian Letters and Meanjin. These magazines are
often badly run and treat their contributors badly---my final brush with
these guys was in the seventies when I submitted a story to the new Meanjin
editor. He asked me to change the ending which I did, promptly. Then he
wrote and said I should revise again and he'd look at all three versions.
Curbing my impulse to tell the stupid creature to jump in the Yarra I did
not reply....Goodbye to all that! Professional treatment is what one is
seeking and what one should dish out to editors, as a writer.
I had always known that I would write a Science Fiction story because I read
SF and Fantasy, beginning with Buck Rogers, H.G.Wells, Jules Verne, and on
to Heinlein, Asimov. . . I wrote THE ARK OF JAMES CARLYLE in about
1973
and spoke to the only local Sf writer I knew about, namely, A Bertram
Chandler. author of the Commander Grimes series of space adventures. He was
most helpful
with advice about markets, agents etc and this generous attitude was indeed
part of the SF writers/readers attitude towards newcomers I sent the story
to NEW WRITINGS IN SF , NUMBER 24, in England. The well-known editor E.J.
Carnell had just died and his place was taken by Ken Bulmer a prolific
writer and editor-- my Dr Frankenstein who sent the Monster forth. These
were sexist times--I submitted the story under a male pseudonym but when it
was accepted I whipped off the mask!
Ken Bulmer was delighted -- I had integrated New Writings with the first
story by a woman. This was hard to believe and I canvassed for earlier
female contributors but none appeared At this time I chose the name Wilder,
thinking of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Thornton Wilder, and Sir John Wilder of
TV's "The Power Game", played by the late Patrick Wymark..(Uncle Ken
said
the story `made him sweat" when I was a chap
but when I was a woman he found it `evocative'. So it goes. There was
a
sexist episode in the story itself which I have not altered.) Anyway
CARLYLE was reprinted about seven times --sometimes I felt the only story I
ever sold was this one. From the original payment of about 35 pounds,
through $ 200 dollars etc it finally peaked amazingly. The Readers Digest,
Australia, published a volume called GREAT SHORT STORIES OF AUSTRALASIA,
with everyone from Henry Lawson through Katherine Mansfield ---so there are
umpteen stories set on the farm, in the kitchen, in the garden, up the creek
but one story set on another planet. The original money offered was about
$AUS 200 but those hardy battlers The Australian
Society of Authors took on the Readers Digest, who are very rich, and I
received $AUS 1400.
Greater rewards came from the reactions to the story from the Sf community.
Writers and Fans wrote letters, invited me to Cons, sent me fanzines and
made me feel wanted. This had never happened before. I decided to stick with
SF and Fantasy. Soon afterwards Horst and I and the two kids, Cathie and
Louisa, went to AussieCon 1 in Melbourne, 1975, with Ursula K. Le Guin as
Guest of Honour. Wow!
How do you write?
I begin with an idea and a setting and characters almost all at once. I
believe character is the most important thing and it can determine how the
story develops. I can be suddenly inspired but I can also hunt around
or
find suggestions for a new story. I don't mind being helped with this---by a
request for a certain kind of story in a marketing guide, for instance. I
try to get the end of the story as soon as possible and work towards it.
The answer to the question "Where Do You get your Crazy Ideas?" often
flung
at Sf writers is that we practice getting them from everywhere--the daily
news, books, daily life, everything. ( Example: In a story about an Art
Gallery there is a show of American Landscape Painters, including
Grant
Wood. Paula, who runs the gallery explains no--they didn't get his most
famous painting AMERICAN GOTHIC --they hung a collage based on American
Gothic done by a Young Artists Group called the Ground Hogs of Athens,
Georgia. After hearing this my daughter Louisa said reproachfully: "Oh
Mummy, you made them up!" And I replied "Of course I did--I'm in the
making-up business!" The point is that Athens, Georgia really is
a centre
of young artists, musicians, rock groups, etc. Good place for those Ground
Hogs.) [See THE BERNSTEIN ROOM in Interzone, UK August 98.]
A number of your books have focussed on contact (first or otherwise) between
aliens and humans. What do you consider the important points, or the
advantages, of this theme?
I think that Communication between humans, aliens, androids, of all
imaginable kinds is a good and important activity. As I've said before, I am
not a UFO Believer, I'm a First-Contact-Hoper. One of my favourite ideas
men was the late Arthur Koestler who explained in ?The Act of Creation that
Marsupials often produced versions of non-Marsupial creatures--Marsupial
wolves, possums, sloths (koalas) -- even the Diprotodon, a sort of giant
prehistoric Wombat (See also Big Name Fan Jan Howard Finder). But, he
explained, because of the human limbic brain it was not possible to have
marsupial people. At this point I thought, OK Arthur--not here on Earth, but
how about ON ANOTHER PLANET? Hence the Torin trilogy.
Some of your books (in particular, the Torin trilogy) have been marketed
as
children's or young adults. Is this an area you chose to write in, and if
so, why?
Yes, the Torin books have been marketed as Juveniles or Young adult books
but I don't write children's books or plan to write YA books.
Do you have any advice for writers?
Best advice to a writer which I gleaned from an SF interview of a prize
winner long ago--DON'T EVER QUIT!