Margo Lanagan was born in 1960 and spent her childhood in the Hunter Valley (NSW), her teens in Melbourne, her twenties travelling, and then settled in Sydney. She has a history degree from the universities of Perth and Sydney. Once she'd tried kitchen, sales and office work, she decided there had to be more to life, and she has been working towards full-time writing, (and sometimes succeeding!), for 15 years or so now. When the money runs low she does contract technical writing.
Margo on writing ‘I write because it's my way of making sense of the world. I've always loved reading, both to escape from real life and to make life more real, and I like doing both in my writing, too, writing straight realistic and fantasy stories.
‘Inspiration is pretty much everywhere. I get it from reading both good and bad writing, from watching and listening to people, from landscapes and cityscapes, from wildlife documentaries and building sites and classrooms and music. My problem is not finding ideas but finding time to pin a few of them down to a page.
‘I write a lot of stories with babies, children and young people in them, because I'm interested in the way people piece together their world for the first time. As we grow, we try to work out what's happening and why, to interpret other people's intentions. We also have fresher perceptions of atmospheres, weather, physical, social and interpersonal events, because quite often it's the first time we've encountered them
‘Red Spikes is my third collection of short stories with fantastical/science fiction/horror aspects to them. With White Time, I was trying on different styles like new hats.
Black Juice settled into something closer to "my own voice", and
Red Spikes is similar but, I think, a little darker. I'd recommend that people take these collections one story at a time, maybe rationing them out one per day, or one per train trip to work. If you want strange dreams, read them just before you go to sleep at night!
‘As for advice to new writers, I would say "Just do it, and keep doing it". The rewards come from sensing that you're getting better at this writing thing, that you can express more and more of your world in your own way, because your powers are always growing greater. Persistence is the main quality you need, to the point of pigheadedness and beyond.’
School visits by Margo (to all Australian states) can be organised through Lateral Learning.
Visit
http://www.laterallearning.com.au or email bookings@laterallearning.com.au.
Download and print this author profile.