WELCOME TO GIRLFRIEND FICTION
Rowena Mohr
Grew up in rural Queensland. She worked as an actor on TV shows such as 'Carson's Law' and 'Neighbours'. Eventually she went back to uni and began writing stories inspired by her memories of how simultaneously awful and wonderful being a teenager really is. She now works as a theatrical agent.
Embarrassing school moment
'My whole school life was one big embarrassing moment. I was always in trouble because I was a total smarty pants and I had a big mouth. Apparently I was also famous for having the shortest uniform in the whole school.'
Life at school
'I did enjoy school most of the time - apart from the odd sadistic teacher
(actually quite a lot now that I think about it and definitely one or two who should
have been locked up!) and that special someone who decided for no particular
reason that they hated you on sight and were going to persecute you every
day for the rest of your school life. You know who you are!
'I loved English - and I was lucky enough to have some really fantastic
teachers who encouraged me to read new books, and to write and to love words
and language for their own sake. We also had a really good drama department
- and of course I was in the school musical every year - but I also loved
ancient history. I'd like to write a historical novel one day.'
Are the characters in My Life and Other Catastrophes based on real life people?
'This book came out of my fond memories of being in musicals at school – how much fun the rehearsals were, the excitement of opening night, all the flirtations – and more – that went on behind the scenes. I met my first real boyfriend when we were both cast in ‘South Pacific’ – he was playing a fifty year old French plantation owner and I was a 16 year old Tonkinese girl with a very bad wig. We didn’t actually have any scenes together but I remember watching him during rehearsals and falling in love with him because he was so good.
'The character of Erin is to some extent based on myself but I also seem to write a lot of teenage characters who are in the middle of some kind of emotional crisis – usually without realising that is what is happening to them. So Erin is in fact having a kind of breakdown if you like and the story is about how she has to learn to put all her personal dramas into perspective and not be so self-obsessed.'
What did you like reading as a teenager?
'Back in the dark ages when I was a teenager, books weren't actually invented. Well, that's not quite true but there wasn't really anything that could be called Young Adult fiction except 'jolly hockey-sticks' boarding school books for girls - a bit like Harry Potter but without the three-headed dogs - and rip-roaring adventure books for boys. None of which were written by Australian authors for Australian teenagers. You read 'The Secret Garden' (about twenty times if you were me) or 'Anne of Green Gables' and when you ran out of those you read your parents' Readers Digest Condensed Book collection - adult books but with all the dirty bits taken out. I also loved books like 'Jennifer', 'Hecate', 'Macbeth & Me', 'Tom's Midnight Garden' and 'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds'.'
What's the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
'I took a writing course at uni with Alex Miller and he told me that the only way to write anything was to treat it like a job. You get up in the morning and you sit down at the computer and you write for eight hours. Part of what you write each day is always going to be rubbish but it's the routine that pays off in the long run.'
