Ask the Author: David Porteous
Answered Questions (3)
David Porteous
A novel set in the 1860 goldrush to Australia's Lambing Flat (now town of Young) in the British Colony of New South Wales. The world's biggest (at the time) goldfields at Ballarat in the Colony of Victoria no longer yielded much alluvial gold, so only "deep lead" mining by men who could afford the equipment still dug for gold. Many men who came from all over the world to Ballarat moved north to Lambing Flat as others continued to pour in from overseas. One tragic irony was that these multi-national men believed they had a right to take another country's gold, but did not allow that right for Chinese, some of whom they bullied, maimed and murdered in riots at Lambing Flat. Those riots caused political upheaval that led to Australia's notorious White Australia Policy - it endured for 100 years. Only the indigenous tribes suffered worse than the Chinese at the hands of the White race, and my "MISTER SUN" depicts the brutal racial bigotry of that time partly from the perspective of Sun Lee and four friends who left China with him. The Colony's English rulers had hierarchy prejudices against non-English White people, with Chinese at the distant bottom and Aborigines (kooris) not even seen as human. Some "outsider" Irish, Scot and North American men figure in how my story is told to expand readers' perspective on that sorry saga. Although easy to call Historical Fiction, this is also an adventure story of multi-racial men bonding to survive in conditions that we can only imagine - or read of in contemporary reports and history books, which I have spent years doing.
David Porteous
I don't think I've experienced a "block" like some writer friends talk about, having their minds go blank and no instinct for which words should next appear on their screens (or pages). My mind is ALWAYS full of characters in situations - often competing for my attention as I wait at supermarket checkouts or watch useless TV shows. I DO sometimes feel hesitant about what to write next - even while in full flow - but I let the characters lead me, and if they are established in my mind (which most are) the writing pulls itself back on course. Of course, that often produces drivel to be discarded and rewritten, but the process of doing it gets my mind refocused on how to maintain the underlying themes in my work (which I see as more important than plots). So, my advice to "dealing with writer's block" would be - JUST KEEP WRITING, REWRITING....AND EDITING.
David Porteous
Strangers In My Mind offers some of my Short Stories, and the characters in it invaded my mind. They refused to go until I wrote their slice-of-life stories. I know only that something brought their images and tales to mind. As examples: I live out on Long Island, where hunters’ shots triggered Bart Novak and the story ‘What Matters’; and in a memory of a man’s disdain for his son I saw Pierre Bondi and ‘His Comfort’. They differ greatly, and in depicting each uninvited character I expose their motives and the ways in which life has shaped them to act as they do. I like how the mind invasions let me examine insights to a wider world of characters - and, yes, I am ‘in’ some, or they reflect my views, but none are me.
Novelists can add pages of details about people or scenes, but to do that with ‘Short’ Stories distorts rather than develops them. My tales are the skeletons of people’s lives on which readers provide the flesh by bonding their imagination with my diverse mind invaders to enliven what they read by seeing people and places as they want them. Since readers ‘see’ each character differently, I try to my give fictional people psychological integrity so every reader can get the same view of the inner lives that drive a plot. I hope that readers reflect on my tales after reading them to create satisfying back-stories for the characters - and I remind you: all that I offer in Strangers In My Mind is fiction. Well, except in essence.
Novelists can add pages of details about people or scenes, but to do that with ‘Short’ Stories distorts rather than develops them. My tales are the skeletons of people’s lives on which readers provide the flesh by bonding their imagination with my diverse mind invaders to enliven what they read by seeing people and places as they want them. Since readers ‘see’ each character differently, I try to my give fictional people psychological integrity so every reader can get the same view of the inner lives that drive a plot. I hope that readers reflect on my tales after reading them to create satisfying back-stories for the characters - and I remind you: all that I offer in Strangers In My Mind is fiction. Well, except in essence.
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