Alysha Lasaitis

This podcast was recorded with gratitude on the lands of the Gadigal, Dharug, Kulin and Bundjalung nations. I would like to pay my respect to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We recognise the storytelling, teaching, and knowledge sharing that has taken place in this country for tens of thousands of years and that this always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Welcome to In Conversation With Writers, the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part one of our conversation with writer, editor and teacher Mykaela Saunders. In this episode we'll be discussing one of Mykaela's works, Overture and her thoughts and inspiration.

Dr. Mykaela Saunders is an award-winning Aboriginal and Lebanese writer, editor, and teacher whose work powerfully examines Country, Culture and the politics of storytelling. Mykaela's writing explores how voice, memory and place can preserve knowledge and challenge dominant narratives. She's the editor of the acclaimed anthology, 'This all come back now', the first collection of speculative fiction by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, and the author of 'Always Will Be', which won the David Unaipon Award at the 2022 QLA Awards. Through her work, Mykaela invites readers to imagine new futures grounded in cultural continuity and truth telling.

Today we're speaking with Mykaela about her piece Overture. Her approach to writing and the way storytelling can shape both personal and collective authority. To begin, I'd love to explore what inspires your writing and how your cultural background inform the stories you tell.

Mykaela Saunders

I write because I enjoy it. I have tried a lot of different art forms over the years, and I've just always loved reading books. And part of me has always wanted to be a writer. I always enjoyed creative writing in high school, but you know, after high school and kind of going out into the world and having to find a job and all that, it got pushed down or pushed to the side.

But yeah, I've just always really enjoyed it. So I came back to it. And the reason I choose to tell certain stories, like particularly speculative fiction, is. Purely because I love reading it too and I just want to be part of that, you know, community and tradition.

Alysha Lasaitis

Wonderful. So in terms of that idea of, I guess, loving what you are writing, do you find with speculative fiction, I guess, are you writing because you are not seeing those stories you're wanting to read within that genre?

Or are you writing because someone else might write an idea or a concept and all of a sudden inspiration hits?

Mykaela Saunders

It's a bit of both. I began writing my. Own speculative fiction collection always will be because I wanted to see stories where people like myself, my family, my community, were living in the future.

We were thriving, not just kind of. You know, lone wolves or token aboriginal characters in colonial narrative. So yeah, my writing in this genre is from a place of inspiration and criticism. I've read a lot of Aboriginal speculative fiction. I've probably read them all by now, and some of them really inspire me to want to try this technique or like to try that setting for my own work.

But also. Seeing that there are certain things in the genre that I think need addressing, and I'm kind of writing back to those in my own stories and critiquing them in my own way.

Alysha Lasaitis

Within all of your writing, I really see that there's this strong sense of sort of place and identity. So I'm curious if we are thinking about this idea of inspiration and our background in terms of our writing, how does your cultural background, influence the themes that you're writing about?

Mykaela Saunders

The simple answer is that every single person, every single writer's cultural background influences the way they write often, like as an aboriginal writer, as a Lebanese writer, because you know I'm in a minority or marginalized group, my writing is often seen to be kind of like different or exotic or writing into these different things.

Then say like a non-indigenous writer. But the fact is that even non-indigenous writers do have cultural backgrounds and traditions and all of these worldviews and ideas and ways of being in the world make their way into their writing too. How can they not? In terms of my own cultural background, I find it really hard to kind of answer this and analyse it because for me.

It's just who I am. It's just how I've always lived. It's how I've been brought up. It's how I think. I can't really separate out that kind of stuff from how I write. I think other people might be able to do that better, like readers, reviewers. People who are reading my stuff from a bit of distance, but I find that really hard to do because it's like asking a fish, what is water? You know? It's just who you are.

Alysha Lasaitis

I really love that answer. I think a lot of times students. Panic when a teacher says, write what you know, that writing what you know really looks to who you are as a person and who you come from. And so I think that that's such a great way of looking at it. So I'm going to move a little bit for this one here into Overture.

Now, what I really love about Overture is that the voice feels really intimate and really distinctive that you are talking to the person who's picked up this collection and instead of giving us. Your point of view, it draws the reader in that there's this warmth and this humour, but there's also a real sense of authority as you are writing.

It feels like a conversation between a writer and a reader, which I think we don't always get to see. So I'm curious if the voice in Overture, is it your own voice or did you almost sort of create a character who was giving the readers pieces of information?

Mykaela Saunders

I think that it's me. There's obviously a version of me that is a more public facing version, and that version is necessarily different to how I am with, say, my family, my friends, people I've known for a long time.

But the, the way I wrote Overture as a, it's a nonfiction piece, so I wasn't envisioning myself as some other character. I was really just wanting to write. A comprehensive essay that kind of gave the context for the anthology and spoke about the genre and my kind of interest in it, and of course all the wonderful stories that are in it.

When I wrote this, yeah. I was thinking about readers who might not know so much about speculative fiction, you know, readers from all over the world, all different ages. You know, I was just thinking about bringing people in and, you know, kind of just explaining a few things, but not like overly lecturing to people because I don't enjoy that style of writing myself.

I come to storytelling from a very oral tradition, so a lot of my favourite stories, whether they're spoken stories or stories I read, have a really warm voice. They are personable. I feel like I'm listening or reading a real person, and that's really important in my own writing because when I'm writing I, I'm always thinking about the rhythm of.

Of the sentences, the kind of musicality of what's being read. I often also think about having to read the piece aloud at some stage. And so for me, if I can't read it aloud, if it doesn't sound like me, if it sounds very stiff, then I have to, you know, rethink it.

Alysha Lasaitis

With the mix tape analogy that you used, did you come up, because I mean, I think it's such a fabulous way of thinking about sort of a collection of works. And I mean, as someone who made mix tapes herself growing up, it really sort of speaks to you and again, creates that sense of connection with sort of writer and reader. Was that an easy analogy to come up with?

So is it something you had to sort of work through a process to come up with that concept?

Mykaela Saunders

No, it was very easy. Um, it was, I think. I've only been a writer for a few years, but I've actually been a lover and consumer of music all my life. You know, I tend to compare different processes in writing to other art poems, whether it's music or art or, or whatever.

And so I always find, um, these analogies really useful. Especially when I'm talking to like a lot of my friends who aren't really big readers, but they are like musicians or, you know, they love music. So being able to explain to them what an anthology is, you know, it's like a mix tape. It's, you know, it just was a really useful, a useful comparison to draw.

Alysha Lasaitis

That brings us to the end of episode one of In Conversation with Writers with Mykaela Saunders. Be sure to tune into episode two. If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to In Conversation with Writers, leave us a review and share with your friends. You can also follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes.

Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

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Alysha Lasaitis

Welcome to In Conversation With Writers, the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part two of our conversation with writer, editor, and teacher Mykaela Saunders. In this episode, we will be discussing with Mykaela the processes that can be involved in crafting our writing.

Something sometimes that a lot of students really struggle with this idea of sort of writing as a crafting process. And so I think that looking at your work, it has such a strong sense of structure and purpose to it, but at the same time, it does feel very fluid and very organic.

Like you are sort of coming to an idea on a page and working through it within the writing itself. I'm wondering if you could describe your writing process. Is there a first idea to final draft? How can you manage the steps like drafting and revising and editing as you are working on your craft?

Mykaela Saunders

For myself and particularly with this piece Overture, and, and you know, generally when I'm writing nonfiction, I'm often using the pen and the page to think through an idea. I have tried the style of like, you know, thinking something in my head and I just kind of putting it all down on paper. But I find that kind of writing very boring and not so fluid, it's not so interesting. When I come to an empty page with my pen and I do, I write by hand always. first because I enjoy it. I am just working through an idea. I'm starting at, you know, the question and I'm just kind of following it through.

So my process is usually. Just drafting by hand, just going with what I feel, you know, one sentence might lead to another question, which might lead to an answer, which might throw up new questions. So I just keep writing and writing until I feel like I'm done. And then by then I've got like pages of, you know, thoughts. I try not to just jot notes down. I'm, I'm trying to write complete sentences that, you know, form paragraphs, which forms a whole piece.

And what I'll do then is I'll transcribe it. I'll either type it up or I'll use voice to text software, and that way I can actually hear how it sounds as well. And if it doesn't sound right, I can change it. Or if it doesn't read right, I can change it as I go. So that's one, that's kind of like my initial editing, that, that transcription process.

And then what I have then is I have all these words on a page, and then the revision for me starts. For me, the revision is about moving things around, moving big chunks of information around so that they tell the story in the most natural way, the most interesting way. So I'm thinking about what are the most interesting parts of what I've written?

What's the most logical sequence for them, for the reader to encounter this information? What's the most interesting way to open this discussion and how can I close it? So those are the kind of main things I'm thinking about. And then it's just a process of like moving things around, like you would a puzzle, just seeing what fits and then, you know, you're, you're changing like the beginnings and endings of different paragraphs so that they lead in more naturally to the next.

So yeah, very rarely do I write a piece from beginning to end and it ends up in that structure.

Alysha Lasaitis

So you said you hand write everything, which I love. I'm a hand writer myself. Do you keep all of this work? Like, do you keep all of your drafting things, do you go back to it or do you just sort of at the end of it, think, no, no, no, I'm done and I want to move that to the side?

Mykaela Saunders

Yeah. I don't go, I, I keep them. I have all these old notebooks, like I have journals, I have notebooks full of, you know, creative writing, nonfiction, all kinds of writing, whatever I'm writing or working on at the time. I begin by handwriting it because it's, for me, it's the process of thinking through my pen.

Talking to myself. I'm listening to myself. I'm not being interrupted by anyone, and I can do it as fast or as slow as I want, and I actually just enjoy it. I'm not staring at a screen. I can go for a walk. I can sit at a cafe, a library outside.

Alysha Lasaitis

I think that's great to have that confidence too, that you are not needing to rely on anything other than just your pen and paper. I think that in terms of writing is really beneficial.

I think it's really interesting that you mentioned a few times about how you tend to speak your work. You know, you talk it through, you might read it aloud, voice to text, you imagine it. In terms of then when you are writing, do you imagine who's reading your work? Like just as you're writing different works, as you're writing an essay to a piece of creative writing to poetry? Or does your audience sort of change depending on your form?

Mykaela Saunders

Yeah, it's all very different. If I've been commissioned to write a piece, say for, from a journal or a magazine, I often have that readership in mind because, you know, that's the purpose I'm reading, I'm writing for, but I don't, that's not my preference to write that way.

I prefer to just write for myself. when I began writing, I was thinking very much about the people who was, who would be reading my work and for my book for example, that were people in my community like Aboriginal and Torres Strait from the Tweed. and I was thinking about what they would, you know, whether they would be enjoying my work.

And that can be a good thing. And it can also be quite a terrible thing for a writer to allow people into your head. Mm-hmm. While you are kind of in this very vulnerable place of trying to create work. These days though, I try and write for myself. I try to write to please myself. If I don't like it. You know, it's not going to get anywhere if other people don't like it, that's fine. They don't have to read it, but I have to like it. I'm the one who has to, you know, live with it. I might have to read it later. I might have to answer for it at some stage, so I have to really like it. Yeah.

Alysha Lasaitis

Have you liked something then, whereas you're writing it and looking back on it, has your perception of it changed over time in terms of that, or do you, have you liked, have you not liked something when you've first written it and then it's grown on you as time has gone on?

Mykaela Saunders

Every single time. I used to despair when I hit that stage of, writing or usually editing where I really hated what I'd written and it's terrible and it was boring, and derivative and all of that kind of stuff. But now that I have a bit of experience with writing, I know that that's actually one of the most important milestones in your journey of writing a piece, because once you push through that, you're going to love it again, and you're going to be very proud of it, and it's going to be better than anything you thought that it was going to be.

So for myself, when I'm having a really, really hard time with a piece, which happens, you know, when I'm really tired or I'm stressed or I have a lot of other stuff to do, I'm trying to do it on a deadline and I'm not enjoying it, you know? yeah. I, I just, I accept that this is all part of the process and I push through and eventually, I, I learn to love it.

Alysha Lasaitis

I think that's really important. I think especially with students at school, they are having to write sort of to a deadline, to a concept, sometimes to a stimulus. As teachers, we do sort of give them parameters that they have to follow, and sometimes it is that struggle, I think of that process and that understanding that we do need to push through our work. So I think that that's a really useful piece of advice.

Writers have strong critiques of their own work, but I'm wondering how you might balance, say your creative ideas with making changes, not based on your own ideas, but on sort of external advice or external critiques, how do you cope with that and how do you take that on as a writer?

Mykaela Saunders

Well, I don't belong to like a writing group, so I'm not showing a lot of my early work to people. You know, I will only show my work to people once I'm really happy with it, and by then, you know, for better or worse, there's not a lot that's going to change. That said, there are certain times where feedback has been really useful, especially when I was a, a lot younger as a writer, you know, and I was just kind of finding my way. I didn't really have a good sense of what worked and what didn't work in the story. And so some of that feedback was pretty useful, but then again, sometimes it wasn't.

You know, the thing about editors is, sometimes they can be very heavy handed and they can kind of really butcher your voice or the structure and change it into something that you didn't want, you didn't intend. It can be a very really confronting process. And in fact, I've worked with a lot of younger writers or emerging writers who had similar experiences and it made them really hesitant to share their work. So when I was working on 'This all come back now' I worked with, I think there were something like 20 other writers, and most of them had published stuff before. So they'd been through the process, but others hadn't.

And so it was really important to me to kind of make the editing process really welcoming and really warm and collaborative and not just kind of start. you know, marking up their work and striking things through because it can be such a devastating and confronting thing to see that.

But more so if there were parts where I wasn't sure what they meant or it was confusing just to query them and to let them know this wasn't clear, and then to let them work it out.

Alysha Lasaitis

That brings us to the end of episode two of In Conversation with Writers with Mykaela Saunders. Be sure to tune into episode three. If you'd like today's episode, please subscribe to In Conversation with Writers, leave us a review, share with your friends. You could also follow us on social media for updates upcoming episodes, and until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

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Alysha Lasaitis

Welcome to In Conversation With Writers, the podcast where we dive into the minds of writers and explore their ideas and processes. This episode is part three of our conversation with writer, editor, and teacher Mykaela Saunders. In this episode, Mykaela discusses her thoughts on authority, voice, and style.

Alright, so I might now focus on the ideas, I guess, of authority and voice and style with your writing because I do feel like you have quite a very strong voice and a very clear style with your writing. even across forms, I think that there's a real sense of openness and an honesty. Which is something that's really important that we're trying to develop within our students, and it really feels like it's quite grounded, I think, in lived experience, even your speculative work.

And I think that that sort of authenticity gives it power. What does that concept of authenticity mean to you in your writing? And also then I guess a little follow on is how do you keep your voice real throughout your process?

Mykaela Saunders

I think it comes back to what you mentioned earlier about writing what you know.

I think if you are writing about things you know or about things you're very passionate about, you know, whether that be from your cultural background or through something that you've researched and studied intensely for a few years, of course you're going to come out as authoritative. I think it's when you start to write around things that you don't know enough about, you haven't read enough about.

That kind of nervousness, creeps its way into your work. And I think it, I think readers can tell if I were to write about something that I don't know enough about, I would bake that into the writing about my lack of knowledge and try and, you know, grapple with that. I think that that would be a way, but in terms of authenticity.

You know, I'm an Aboriginal person. I have always been an Aboriginal person. I grew up with Aboriginal people. I was brought up by Aboriginal people, so I know Aboriginal people and ways of relating and ways of talking and ways of telling stories, which is all part of my work. So that's all just really baked into my knowledge.

And then, you know, over the last, eight years or so, I've been, researching First Nations' speculative fiction. I've taken it upon myself to seek out and read every example ever published. I've written a lot about these works, analysed them, critique them. So I have built up a lot of knowledge around that and that that kind of authority that I'm able to speak with really just comes from years of work.

Alysha Lasaitis

How does your research process start? Are you finding out that people are sending work to you or do you. Follow writers. How do you find your research? How do you develop those connections?

Mykaela Saunders

At the beginning, during my doctoral studies, you know, I was like, talk to people about, you know, what had they read? And I found a few texts. I'd already read a few of the texts, but then like seeing what those other texts, those writers had written, and then maybe looking at their publisher and seeing what they published and, you know. I'm sorry to do it, but I'm going to use another music analogy. This is how I used to find music back in the day.

You know, I grew up in a world without internet. I lived in a small town. I had a lot of like cooler, older friends who would share music with me, but I also like used to like finding it myself. So if there was a band that I liked, a new band, I would see, you know, had the members been in other bands, who had they toured with, who had they recorded with?

And that was a way for me to find new music, and it's really been the same with First Nation Speculative Fiction. So over the years I started creating like a spreadsheet to list them all and you know, the years and the, the, the, the writers and the kind of sub genres they're writing into. And at the last count, I'm just looking at my spreadsheet now, I've got 140 texts.

So there's been quite a lot and it's really just been a process of just like reading 'em and talking to people and trying to stay on top of it.

Alysha Lasaitis

Do you find then with that volume that there is that incredible breadth of ideas as well? Like that, that there is so many different areas to explore? I mean, so that's what I, I love about spec fiction is that how many places you can go, right?

And so I think, to be able to witness that and see these works be created in so many different ways must be really interesting and help you develop your own sort of love of writing as well. And I can see that in what you're saying. So that's really, really interesting. Do you find that your voice is clearer within a specific form?

Or do you have a, a form that you enjoy using more, or do you find that the idea comes first and then sort of takes a life of its own? Really the concept or the thing is really the, the important part rather than the sort of the form as a vehicle?

Mykaela Saunders

Yeah. It's always the idea first for myself, writing just starts with that process of pen on paper and seeing what I think, seeing what's going on, and then it might suggest itself to me as being an essay. Or maybe, I think it's a bit too obvious to be an essay, and maybe it could be like a story, a fiction story, or maybe it's just a very kind of brief idea that's better expressed through poetry. But when I'm writing nonfiction, I am writing as myself.

But when I'm writing fiction, I want to be different characters. I want to explore how they would, you know, experience the world and how they would think, how, how they would talk. That's the fun of it.

Alysha Lasaitis

Do you re-read over works that you enjoy or do you, are you someone who very

much, you read it, you finish it, you move on to the next?

Mykaela Saunders

No. If I love it, I'll reread it. I, and I, I always know by, you know. The first maybe 20 pages, if this is going to be a book that I need to put up, I have a bookshelf and the top shelves are the ones that I love and I want to emulate. I want to learn from, and I will reread over the years. Some books, you know, I can read like once every year or once every few years.

It's just like. You know, movies or music. Right? You know, you're not just going to listen to it once and be done with it. Part of the enjoyment is you, you know how it goes. There's no surprise there anymore, but that's okay. You know the story, but learning it over and over again, and every time you encounter an old text, you are new person.

Yeah. You know different things. You're different in the world. And so the book is going to reveal new things to you as you read it.

Alysha Lasaitis

Of the things that students often say to us is, did the writer really mean that? And so I guess, how much control do you think writers have over how readers interpret your work?

Mykaela Saunders

I think it really depends. I think with something as kind of often more straightforward as nonfiction or essay writing, you do have a lot more control because you can be very direct with your words and you can like overexplain things, but that doesn't work with fiction. If you are over explaining things, it's not a story, it's a lecture, and it's not enjoyable and no one wants to read it.

So I think there's a lot more ambiguity when it comes to fiction and poetry. I mean, of course there can be ambiguity with nonfiction as well, but this is, I'm being very general for myself. I don't actually want to control how people read my work. I want them to just come to it on their own terms and take what they want.

I have read a lot of fiction over the years that is quite didactic. It's heavy handed. I can tell that the writer is trying to make me think or believe what they are. Ideally, if you want to be a good writer and you want to write, you know, great stories, you do want to be a bit more subtle and not, you know, not so obvious with some of those things.

Alysha Lasaitis

What advice would you give to new writers about developing an authentic and confident voice?

Mykaela Saunders

Write, write, write, read, read, read. The only way you're going to get better at writing is to write and the only way you're going to get better at editing your work is by reading and editing it. If you can approach the reading like a writer and think about what the writer's trying to do, what's really amazing about the story, what's not working, and start to really like analyse it in these terms, it'll start to work its way into the way you write and think about your own writing.

Writing is a skill like any other, whether it's playing the guitar, playing sport, conversing, anything, anything that you do regularly and you do it over a long period of time, we are just going to get better at it. And that actually also applies to reading. Sometimes reading can be pretty hard. You know, you've got this huge book that you have to engage in and you're used to kind of just scrolling or like reading very small snippets of texts on the internet.

But reading is a muscle too. And the, the longer you can sit with a text and read it, the easier it gets. And you, you do start to get absorbed into the story. And that's really the greatest pleasure of reading. When you're a beginning writer, it can be feel really daunting to share your work with other people, and that's for good reason because you're very vulnerable and we don't always like being vulnerable with a lot of people.

But one way to see how your writing sounds or, or reads, is to actually read it out loud. You could record yourself doing this. You could record yourself audio or video, or you could just do it in front of the mirror and you'll start to see where your voice catches, or you'll start to understand that this part's not quite working.

Hopefully there'll be like lots of parts where your voice is just singing and you are really enjoying the act of reading it out. They're the parts that are working. So before you show it to anyone else, you can just kind of do this to yourself and you'll get a good sense of what's working and not in your own writing.

Alysha Lasaitis

That brings us to the end of episode three of In Conversation With Writers with Mykaela Saunders. If you like today's episode, please subscribe to In Conversation with Writers, leave us a review, share with your friends. You can always follow us on social media for updates and upcoming episodes. Until next time, keep exploring the world of words and ideas.

This is your host signing off. We look forward to you joining us in our next episodes.

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