Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Rick Morton. Our colleagues that Read This
Speaker 1: routinely hosts the brightest and best writers from Australia and
Speaker 1: around the world, including a lot of journalists. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, today we're going to hear from Lee Sales.
Speaker 1: Lee is a Walkley Award winner, best known, of course,
Speaker 1: for being the former host of seven thirty on the
Speaker 1: ABC and the co host of Everybody's favorite podcast chat
Speaker 1: ten Looks three with Annabelle Crab. Michael Williams is the
Speaker 1: host of Read This and he's with me now. Michael,
Speaker 1: tell me, how do you actually prepare for an interview
Speaker 1: with one of Australia's most prolific interviewers who've spent her
Speaker 1: whole career probably talking to people every single day.
Speaker 2: Look, the imposter syndrome that does and should creep in
Speaker 2: any time you talk to someone definitely creeps in, doubly
Speaker 2: so when it's with someone who is a seasoned interviewer,
Speaker 2: as you say, and having watched Lee do it night in,
Speaker 2: night out in her tenure on seven thirty, I was
Speaker 2: definitely aware of those kind of journalists conventions, but also
Speaker 2: her book that she came and Read This to talk
Speaker 2: about was called Storytellers, and it's explicitly about the question
Speaker 2: of the way in which we craft journalism, whether it's
Speaker 2: through the monthly or the Saturday paper or seven Am,
Speaker 2: or whether it's through the kind of journalism that we
Speaker 2: do on read this where it's not prosecutorial, but it
Speaker 2: certainly aims to be kind of interrogative and interesting ways.
Speaker 2: And so all of that's kind of racing through your
Speaker 2: head when you sit down to talk to someone and
Speaker 2: you know, there's a little intimidating I'm not going to
Speaker 2: lie you know.
Speaker 1: Lee obviously is a journalist, but she has quite a
Speaker 1: storied writing career now as well. Is it a continuum
Speaker 1: for her from journalism to writing creatively so to speak?
Speaker 2: Look, I think it is, and you definitely hear that
Speaker 2: in the interview that she gives is for her writing
Speaker 2: books is in part about exploring things at greater length
Speaker 2: that she doesn't get the chance to do in the
Speaker 2: space of a kind of short, sharp interview. It's still journalism,
Speaker 2: but it's journalism in a kind of more considered mode.
Speaker 2: The second book that she wrote was just this little
Speaker 2: essay that was published as part of a series that
Speaker 2: Melbourne University Publishing did with little books on big themes,
Speaker 2: and her one was on doubt, and I think if
Speaker 2: you look at that book, you get a real sense
Speaker 2: of why she writes beyond just doing journalism. It's talking
Speaker 2: about the ways in which you need to bring a
Speaker 2: skeptical mind to journalism. You need to kind of ask
Speaker 2: questions not just of your subject, but of yourself, and
Speaker 2: I think in her books she does that in really
Speaker 2: interesting and I think kind of genuinely brave ways.
Speaker 1: And also she's just playing old nosey sometimes, isn't she.
Speaker 3: Look she is.
Speaker 2: The episode takes its time. We always like their episode
Speaker 2: titles to come straight from something that's said in conversation,
Speaker 2: but to present something that might be a little counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: And Lee's love of the word sticky beak and her
Speaker 2: recognition of the fact that it applies to her plays
Speaker 2: a big part in the episode, which is.
Speaker 1: Fun coming up in just a moment. Lee Sales is
Speaker 1: a professional sticky beak.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes the mistake that journalists make is thinking
Speaker 4: that because they can write nonfiction, that they will be
Speaker 4: able to write fiction. I think that's like thinking I
Speaker 4: can play the piano, so therefore I'll be able to
Speaker 4: play the cello. Some of the tools that you have
Speaker 4: in being able to play the piano are going to
Speaker 4: help you if you're learning a new instrument, but it's
Speaker 4: still a new instrument.
Speaker 2: That's the unmistakable voice of Lee Sales. Anyone who's followed
Speaker 2: her career will be unsurprised to hear that she can
Speaker 2: play both the piano and the cello, which somewhat undercuts
Speaker 2: her metaphor there, but the broader point still stands, what
Speaker 2: do you do next when you've left your job as
Speaker 2: the host of the ABC's flagship nightly Current Affairs show.
Speaker 2: What are the instruments at your disposal for working out
Speaker 2: the next chapter of your career? For Lee, it's always
Speaker 2: been about storytelling, no matter the form, from her childhood
Speaker 2: love of reading to her long career as one of
Speaker 2: the country's most celebrated journalists to her secret desire to
Speaker 2: write a novel. In her new book, Storytellers, Lee Sales
Speaker 2: takes her personal passion and guiding curiosity about the business
Speaker 2: of telling stories and turns it into a series of
Speaker 2: conversations with the wide range of the country's best journalists
Speaker 2: talking about how they do it. From Schwartz Media I'm
Speaker 2: Michael Williams with read this to show about the books
Speaker 2: we love and the stories behind them. Ahead of chatting
Speaker 2: to you today, I was rereading your wonderful two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine essay on Doubt, and that essay opens with
Speaker 2: you reflecting on your childhood and on the kind of
Speaker 2: elements that I think arguably went on to make you
Speaker 2: the journalist that you are today. Can you tell us
Speaker 2: a bit about your nan, your mom's mum.
Speaker 4: So, my mom's mom lived with us when I was
Speaker 4: growing up, and she was a fantastic woman, and I
Speaker 4: think the lovely dynamic that you have with an adult
Speaker 4: who's not your parents is so fantastic. So I was
Speaker 4: very close to her. We shared a room until I
Speaker 4: was about thirteen, and so it's like that trusted older
Speaker 4: adult figure. But who doesn't, I guess, discipline you in
Speaker 4: the same way that your parents do, and so you
Speaker 4: don't have that kind of tension in the relationship. And
Speaker 4: so she and my mother would always buy the Woman's
Speaker 4: Weekly and New Idea and Women's Day and all those
Speaker 4: kind of things, and they'd always be sitting around in
Speaker 4: the house and I used to love reading them. And
Speaker 4: what I particularly used to love was the advice columns
Speaker 4: and reading about other people's lives and problems and reading
Speaker 4: what advice they were given. And my grandmother, I used
Speaker 4: to remember, she always used to have a thing against
Speaker 4: sticky beaks. She used to be don't be a sticky beak,
Speaker 4: you know, because it was the era, of course, where
Speaker 4: there was one phone in the house and it was
Speaker 4: in the kitchen, so you can never have a private conversation.
Speaker 4: So I would always be like, well, what was that about?
Speaker 4: What did someone say? Don't you be a sticky beak?
Speaker 4: And of course being a journalist allows you to be
Speaker 4: a professional sticky beak.
Speaker 2: Even then, did you know that you were a harder
Speaker 2: sticky beak? You had to hide that from your grandmother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I was a sticky beak.
Speaker 4: I definitely was always interested in people, and I was
Speaker 4: curious about things and curious about the world. And I
Speaker 4: remember I'd go to bed and they'd be listening. They'd
Speaker 4: watch Prisoner, which was on after I went to bed,
Speaker 4: but I wasn't allowed to watch it, but I used
Speaker 4: to be listening.
Speaker 3: From my room. So yeah, I definitely it was always
Speaker 3: a sticky beak.
Speaker 2: I like advice columns as a way to kind of
Speaker 2: feed that hunger, to kind of see on the page
Speaker 2: people kind of engaging with media to share their deepest,
Speaker 2: darker secrets. There's something in that that makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense that you would like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think I guess when you for all
Speaker 3: of us, when you're a.
Speaker 4: Child, you don't really realize this as child, but your
Speaker 4: world and how you think the world works is based
Speaker 4: on what is in your immediate vicinity. So if like me,
Speaker 4: you're having a suburban upbringing with a house where you
Speaker 4: know your mum and dad are there, you've got a sibling,
Speaker 4: your grandmother lives with you. Like I didn't even really
Speaker 4: realize until my teens that that was unusual that my
Speaker 4: grandmother lived with us. So everything that's in your normal
Speaker 4: life seems normal. But when you say read advice columns
Speaker 4: and things like that, you realize, oh wow, there's all
Speaker 4: this whole world of other interesting and strange things that
Speaker 4: happened out there, and so that that was fun.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when you first had a sense of vocation?
Speaker 2: Because I always knew I was a book ned and
Speaker 2: it was going to be books one way or the other,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't it took me a long time to
Speaker 2: understand how that might be a job, how that might
Speaker 2: be something that you do. And I imagine recognizing an
Speaker 2: innate sense of curiosity and tendency to argue back to
Speaker 2: your parents and being a sticky beig. We're all qualifies
Speaker 2: you identified, but understanding how to turn them into job
Speaker 2: must have been a different thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, totally, I like you.
Speaker 4: I also knew that I was a book dead and
Speaker 4: because I just never had my nose out of a book.
Speaker 4: And I used to love writing, and I was always
Speaker 4: writing stories and reading them to my friends and so on.
Speaker 4: And I have a very distinct memory of when I
Speaker 4: was in grade three, did this piece of creative writing,
Speaker 4: and my teacher, Missus Cantort, he said, that's so good.
Speaker 4: You should go and read it to the grade fours,
Speaker 4: which I did, And then when I came back, they
Speaker 4: were doing an activity where you had to draw a
Speaker 4: picture of what you'd like to be when you grew up,
Speaker 4: and I drew someone sitting at a desk writing. And
Speaker 4: so really, even today, you know, one of my great
Speaker 4: dreams would be to write a novel, because in my
Speaker 4: own head, even though I've written, you know, Storytellers is
Speaker 4: my fifth book. I feel like, yeah, but it's not
Speaker 4: a real book.
Speaker 3: It because a novel.
Speaker 4: It's a real book. And so I still would love
Speaker 4: to have a go at writing a novel. And so
Speaker 4: in my head, I think that that's what I thought
Speaker 4: I wanted to do. But where I grew up, I
Speaker 4: mean I didn't know anyone who was a journalist or
Speaker 4: a writer, or an artist or a musician, Like those
Speaker 4: were hobbies. Those weren't things that you did for a job,
Speaker 4: And so I was looking for Okay, I like words,
Speaker 4: I like writing, I like talking to people. I like communication.
Speaker 4: What is a job that enables you to do those things?
Speaker 4: And so journalism seemed like, okay, well that's that's a
Speaker 4: job where you actually go somewhere and you get paid
Speaker 4: and there's a reliable income.
Speaker 3: But you know, like all kids i'd gone.
Speaker 4: Through, Oh, I should be a cruise director, you know
Speaker 4: when I was watching Love Boater, I should be a
Speaker 4: vet when I was watching a country practice.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I kind of like you. I knew it
Speaker 3: would be something words based.
Speaker 2: I could see you as a cruise director. I think
Speaker 2: you could. I mean, you could be cruise director and
Speaker 2: occasionally move over to the grand piano and you know,
Speaker 2: just kind of master of ceremonies at all times.
Speaker 4: It's you know, it's funny because it's interesting, isn't it
Speaker 4: that of all of the jobs on Love Boat that
Speaker 4: I seized on the one that probably of all those
Speaker 4: people's jobs I would have made the best suited to,
Speaker 4: which was dealing with people front of house. You know,
Speaker 4: I didn't want to desire to be the captain. I
Speaker 4: didn't desire to be Eyazac on the bar. I thought
Speaker 4: Julie's gig.
Speaker 3: Was the gig.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's so lovely about storytellers is
Speaker 2: that the structure of it is this series of conversations
Speaker 2: that you have with this cross section of people working
Speaker 2: in this space, and so it becomes this rolling dialogue
Speaker 2: between you and all these other people. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that strikes me often talking to writers is
Speaker 2: how solitary a pursuit it is, and how hard it
Speaker 2: is to remember that you have peers and colleagues. How
Speaker 2: important is that kind of network of other people doing it,
Speaker 2: and how enjoyable was the process of going to them
Speaker 2: all for the book.
Speaker 3: Oh, I loved it.
Speaker 4: I was looking for people with a really diverse range
Speaker 4: of experience in journalism, right from tabloid journalists to serious
Speaker 4: investigative reporters, feature writers, camera operators, and people from all
Speaker 4: sorts of different cultural backgrounds. And so I was deliberately
Speaker 4: trying to think, Okay, not everyone loves tabloid journalism, but
Speaker 4: who in this country is really good at tabloid journalism,
Speaker 4: or who is really good at commercial television journalism and
Speaker 4: so forth? And so luckily for me, everyone that I
Speaker 4: approached said yes, which was just so great. And then
Speaker 4: the process of having the conversations was fascinating, partly because
Speaker 4: it's reassuring. So, for example, I interviewed Lory Oaks, who
Speaker 4: is a terrific interviewer, political interviewer, an amazing journalist. And
Speaker 4: when Laurie talked through how he prepares for a political interview,
Speaker 4: I felt relieved because I was like, Oh, thank god,
Speaker 4: that's how I've been doing it all this time. Great,
Speaker 4: that must be good, that must be an okay way
Speaker 4: to do it. But then the other thing that was
Speaker 4: amazing was just seeing how many different ways to skin
Speaker 4: a cat there are, and all the different approaches people take.
Speaker 4: So many people said they think about the audience all
Speaker 4: the time, and they think about who they're broadcasting to
Speaker 4: or writing to. And then one person, Nicki Sava, who
Speaker 4: is a columnist with nine newspapers and I think a
Speaker 4: terrific political columnist. She said, Oh, I never think about
Speaker 4: the audience. I just think about what I'm interested in,
Speaker 4: and then I write about what I'm interested in. And
Speaker 4: I thought, Jesus, isn't that fascinating? Because she her columns
Speaker 4: are so interesting. They're not in any way insular. They
Speaker 4: don't feel like she's self focused. They feel really outwardly focused.
Speaker 4: But she clearly starts from a position of thinking, what's
Speaker 4: caught my attention in politics this week? And if it's
Speaker 4: caught my attention, it'll probably catch other people's attention too.
Speaker 2: She's also a fascinating example because I do think she
Speaker 2: lets emotion be part of how she writes opinion and commentary.
Speaker 2: You know, Nicki Sava's anger is a wonder to behold
Speaker 2: on the page, and part of why you read her
Speaker 2: is because you know that if she assesses a politician
Speaker 2: and finds some lacking or insincere or whatever, she's going
Speaker 2: to train both barrels at them. And it's that interesting
Speaker 2: idea that journalistic impartiality doesn't mean not having an emotional
Speaker 2: response to things.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, it was really interesting with someone
Speaker 4: like nick as well, and this is why diversity in
Speaker 4: newsrooms is important, and not just cultural diversity, economic diversity
Speaker 4: as well. Nicki was talking about her family with Greek
Speaker 4: When she started in the press gallery in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: she was one of the very few women and her
Speaker 4: nickname was Ethniki. That's what everyone called her. She said,
Speaker 4: to this day, she's never forgotten that she grew up
Speaker 4: in a working class household where her parents were illiterate
Speaker 4: factory workers. They couldn't speak English, and that, of course
Speaker 4: would inform Nicki Sava's work, because she's got more, She's
Speaker 4: got that lived experience of growing up in that environment
Speaker 4: and being treated in that way and being different in
Speaker 4: a group of people.
Speaker 3: One of the other stories.
Speaker 4: That really stuck with me is Pamela Williams, who's a
Speaker 4: very decorated journalist at Australian Financial Review, and at the
Speaker 4: end of her interview she talks about how she came
Speaker 4: into journalism, and it was that she'd had a daughter
Speaker 4: in her twenties and her daughter had cancer and she
Speaker 4: had long illness, and then her daughter died when she
Speaker 4: was nine, and Pam was just absolutely on the bones
Speaker 4: of her ass. She was on a single mother's pension.
Speaker 4: She joined this group of skeptics because she was so
Speaker 4: angry at faith healers and people like this kind of
Speaker 4: thing and the peddling of misinformation around childhood cancer.
Speaker 3: And so forth. And she ended up kind of conning.
Speaker 4: Away into writing a story for a magazine, and she
Speaker 4: lied and told them she was a freelance journalist, and
Speaker 4: then that got published, and then she got another one,
Speaker 4: and then she kind of worked away and for years
Speaker 4: she never told anyone what her actual backstory was. And
Speaker 4: she makes the point that journalism has to have paths
Speaker 4: in it for people that come into it from weird
Speaker 4: and unusual backgrounds, because they bring that experience then into
Speaker 4: their reporting.
Speaker 3: You don't bring it in in terms.
Speaker 4: Of first person accounts, but it just might make you
Speaker 4: a bit more attuned to certain stories. So, for example,
Speaker 4: if you have a disability yourself or you care for
Speaker 4: somebody with a disability, you have more experience in that sector.
Speaker 4: Of course, you're going to see more stories in that
Speaker 4: somebody who doesn't have that experience at all. And so
Speaker 4: that's why you know, when we get to bring it
Speaker 4: back to storytelling, we're going to get a richer array
Speaker 4: of stories that appeal.
Speaker 3: To more people.
Speaker 4: If the people searching for those stories themselves come from
Speaker 4: a diverse array of backgrounds.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back coming to the world of journalism.
Speaker 2: From a bookish bend Lee quickly came to the somewhat
Speaker 2: annoying realization that while her vocation was all about storytelling,
Speaker 2: in real life, the stories often didn't unfold in the
Speaker 2: way she wished.
Speaker 4: In my first book, Detainee two, which was about the
Speaker 4: case of David Hicks, the Australian who was held in
Speaker 4: the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay, I went to interview
Speaker 4: Dennis Richardson, who was then the head of ASIO, the
Speaker 4: Director General of ASIO, and in my mind I wanted
Speaker 4: the chap to start with the day that Dennis Richardson
Speaker 4: got the phone call to go there's an Australian who's
Speaker 4: been picked up in Afghanistan. Because it was it was dramatic, right,
Speaker 4: it was the immediate aftermath of nine to eleven. People
Speaker 4: forget now because it was so long ago, but everyone
Speaker 4: was terrified. We thought another terrorist attack was imminent, and
Speaker 4: it was this shocking thing that this Australian, this white
Speaker 4: Australian young man, had been picked up in Afghanistan at
Speaker 4: this al Qaeda training camp, And so I wanted to
Speaker 4: be able to write this chapter. Like you know, Dennis
Speaker 4: Richardson was sitting at his desk.
Speaker 3: The phone rang. He picked it up.
Speaker 4: It was General Smith of the US sent calm and
Speaker 4: he said, blah blah. You know I wanted that. And
Speaker 4: when I spoke to Dennis, I said, where were you
Speaker 4: when you got the call? He's like, oh, jeez, I
Speaker 4: can't remember it. And I'm like, oh, Dennis, you must remember.
Speaker 4: This is a big thing. An Australian picked up. I
Speaker 4: got down of my bait. Edis is like, you've got
Speaker 4: to remember in this moment, there were that many phone
Speaker 4: calls and that many pieces of intelligence. I honestly, I
Speaker 4: know I got a call about it, but I just
Speaker 4: can't tell you. Was I in my car, was I
Speaker 4: at home? Was I at my desk? I was just
Speaker 4: like desperate, Like God, You've got to remember, because when
Speaker 4: you're trying to make order of a whole sea of
Speaker 4: facts that you've got if you've got an idea about
Speaker 4: how to structure something, it's like you're in the middle
Speaker 4: of the ocean holding onto a piece of driftwood, waiting
Speaker 4: for rescue, and then basically the driftwood gets taken away
Speaker 4: from you, and then you're just back in the ocean,
Speaker 4: floating around hopelessly. But the reality is, because Dennis Richardson
Speaker 4: couldn't remember that, I could not make that up and
Speaker 4: just go, oh, well, I'll just say he was at
Speaker 4: his desk.
Speaker 3: You can't do that.
Speaker 4: So I had to completely abandon that idea and find
Speaker 4: a different way of opening that chapter. And that's both
Speaker 4: the joy of nonfiction versus fiction, or journalism versus fiction.
Speaker 4: It imposes a structure because you can only work with
Speaker 4: the facts that you've got.
Speaker 3: But then that.
Speaker 4: Obviously can be kind of crippling because you can only
Speaker 4: work with the facts that you've got.
Speaker 2: Journalism is littered with examples of people who decided not
Speaker 2: to let the facts get in the way of it.
Speaker 2: Good story. Yes, that idea, you know, I can see
Speaker 2: the beguiling thing about it. You know, what you're saying
Speaker 2: is absolutely true, But funnily enough, a story and telling
Speaker 2: a good story is an agenda in and of itself.
Speaker 2: It's not a good point part of some political agenda,
Speaker 2: but it is a kind of predetermined outcome that you're
Speaker 2: working towards.
Speaker 3: That's so true.
Speaker 4: It's a form of bias, actually, really, and it's a
Speaker 4: bias that's inherent to journalism a way that this manifests.
Speaker 4: And I think it's something I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 4: about because I think it actually is contributing to mental
Speaker 4: health issues. Journalism seizes on the aberration. That's the nature
Speaker 4: of the news. The nature of the news is one
Speaker 4: hundred helicopters fly safely today. The one that crashes is
Speaker 4: the one that makes the news. It's important that we
Speaker 4: investigate and report that because, like a coroner, what you're
Speaker 4: checking is is there a reason that helicopter crash That
Speaker 4: could mean there are going to be more helicopter crashes.
Speaker 4: There's faulty pilot training, there's at that's coming out that
Speaker 4: there's more helicopters that have it. So it is important
Speaker 4: to have a look at that aberration. But the end
Speaker 4: result of that, if you overemphasize it, is it makes
Speaker 4: people fearful of something that don't really need to be
Speaker 4: fearful of. Because it's not a representation of the real world.
Speaker 4: So the reality is, when you see things on the news,
Speaker 4: what you need to say to yourself to avoid becoming
Speaker 4: anxious is what i'm seeing here is the least likely
Speaker 4: thing to happen to me. That's the very reason it's
Speaker 4: made the news, because it is the least likely thing
Speaker 4: to happen.
Speaker 2: I am curious again, and I thought it a lot
Speaker 2: reading this book, about the way in which we're beguiled
Speaker 2: by stories and turning things into stories, and the conventions
Speaker 2: of storytelling and narrative aren't always in need overlay with
Speaker 2: real life. Is there a different kind of story you
Speaker 2: find yourself wanting to tell now that you're not in
Speaker 2: the business of nightly news storytelling.
Speaker 4: The older I get, the more I'm interested in the
Speaker 4: nuance of stories and the complexity of stories, and the
Speaker 4: fact that, as you say, so often things aren't clear.
Speaker 4: So people who we think are heroic, often you know
Speaker 4: they might not be that heroic because they're human beings.
Speaker 4: Or people that we think are evil aren't all bad.
Speaker 4: They might have some good aspects to them. And so
Speaker 4: the more nuanced story is, and the more complex it is,
Speaker 4: and the more it captures all of that, the more
Speaker 4: engaging I personally find it. But I think because of
Speaker 4: the polarization of things, you often tend to get stories
Speaker 4: that are on one track or another, like this is
Speaker 4: all good or this is all bad, And I personally
Speaker 4: find that kind of boring.
Speaker 2: Doing eleven twelve years in a job like the seven
Speaker 2: thirty job, you must have had to actively work not
Speaker 2: to have a sense of your base, not to have
Speaker 2: a sense of kind of the expectations of the show
Speaker 2: and people's preconceptions of what the role of Flagship Current
Speaker 2: Affairs on the ABC is. How much is that awareness
Speaker 2: of audience unhelpful to a storyteller.
Speaker 4: You have to have audience in mind and.
Speaker 3: Both out of mind.
Speaker 4: So for me, how I approached that job, and how
Speaker 4: I think journalists generally should approach their job is thinking,
Speaker 4: I'm here and it's not about me. It's not about
Speaker 4: my opinion, it's not about what I think about this.
Speaker 4: It's about people at home and the broader public, and
Speaker 4: it's about the average fair minded person out there in
Speaker 4: the community and what they might like ask of this
Speaker 4: person in this position of power. Because that was the
Speaker 4: nature of my job. There was that I was often
Speaker 4: having to challenge people in positions of power, and so
Speaker 4: I would be thinking of the audience in that sense.
Speaker 4: But the point at which I would not think about
Speaker 4: the audience is how is the audience going to react
Speaker 4: to this? And I think the answer to that is
Speaker 4: that it was kind of some advice actually that my
Speaker 4: grandmother gave me when I was a kid, which is,
Speaker 4: it's none of your business what anybody thinks of you.
Speaker 4: So I used to say to her, well, what did
Speaker 4: missus Solenso say about my blabbahs? She'd sayll, it's none
Speaker 4: of your business what anybody thinks of you. And I
Speaker 4: think that's actually quite good advice in life. It's not
Speaker 4: really any of my business if people think that I'm
Speaker 4: an awesome journal or if people think I'm absolute crap.
Speaker 4: You have to go about your job and about whatever
Speaker 4: it is that you do with I think, a strong
Speaker 4: sense yourself of this is what I believe, my values are,
Speaker 4: this is how I believe in doing the job, and
Speaker 4: then you have to go from there. Sometimes people might
Speaker 4: like it and it might be popular. Sometimes people may
Speaker 4: not like it and it might be unpopular. But there's
Speaker 4: only one way to do it, and it's the way
Speaker 4: that is having integrity to your own values.
Speaker 2: I can't let your confess desire to when day write
Speaker 2: a novel go by the wayside. While we're here. There's
Speaker 2: a precedent, an established president of journalists who turn their
Speaker 2: eye to fiction. What kind of fiction would you write it?
Speaker 2: If you were writing a novel.
Speaker 4: Look, I would suspect what I would end up writing.
Speaker 3: You never really know until you sit down.
Speaker 4: I suspect I would end up writing something that would
Speaker 4: be heavily drawn from reality. Because what I've realized so
Speaker 4: I have had a stab at writing a novel. I've
Speaker 4: got about forty thousand words sitting in a drawer which
Speaker 4: will never see the light of day. But hopefully there'll
Speaker 4: be things I can pick out of it, because I
Speaker 4: think what you learn when you do writing for a
Speaker 4: living is often your first drafts of things bear no
Speaker 4: relationship or limited relationship to what you actually end up
Speaker 4: with at the end of the day. But it's like
Speaker 4: I viewed as like you need to assemble something. It's
Speaker 4: like a building where you're building the building and you
Speaker 4: have scaffolding on it, and at a certain point you
Speaker 4: take the scaffolding off. So I'll come back to a
Speaker 4: novel in a second. But just to illustrate that point,
Speaker 4: when I was writing my book Any Ordinary Day, it
Speaker 4: had this opening that was there.
Speaker 3: For a really long time.
Speaker 4: You know, the whole book was kind of done, and
Speaker 4: I was working on just my edit before I set
Speaker 4: it off to the publisher.
Speaker 3: And just there was just something kind of not right
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 4: But I really liked the anecdote that I was opening
Speaker 4: the book with, and I ended up deciding, you know what,
Speaker 4: I think this anecdote, while it's good, is kind of
Speaker 4: tangential to the ultimate theme and the question that the
Speaker 4: book's asking. And so in the end, the original opening,
Speaker 4: say two thousand words of any Ordinary Day, did not
Speaker 4: make it into the book, but I needed it there
Speaker 4: for the entire process of the writing because I had
Speaker 4: to have something that was enabling me to move forward.
Speaker 4: And so say, to go back to the novel, this
Speaker 4: novel that's sitting in my top drawer already, when I
Speaker 4: look at it, I go, h, it's not mature enough.
Speaker 4: Those characters are too one dimensional. But I like that
Speaker 4: hint of an idea, or I like that description. So
Speaker 4: I think because my tools in life are observation, thinking deeply,
Speaker 4: about why people do things and motives. It'll be some
Speaker 4: kind I don't think i'd be reaching safe a fantasy
Speaker 4: or something kind of elaborately comical, like say Steve Toltz's work.
Speaker 4: I think it'll be more kind of small. And by
Speaker 4: that I don't mean small, as you know, in a
Speaker 4: derogatory sense. I mean everyday kind of themes around families, relationships,
Speaker 4: everyday life and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I would guess I'll lend somewhere in that space.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about whether you feel more exposed personally in
Speaker 2: writing fiction than you do in writing journalism. Yep.
Speaker 4: And part of it, for me would be the fear
Speaker 4: of that everyone would be looking to go, ah, well,
Speaker 4: you know, look at all these accolades for journalism. Finally
Speaker 4: Sales has done something completely crap and now we can
Speaker 4: all beat the living shit out of it. So there'll
Speaker 4: be that which I think I will have to just
Speaker 4: put aside, that fear, right, because you just have to.
Speaker 4: If you want to do something, you can't be thinking
Speaker 4: about the ultimate reaction or the ultimate will you be
Speaker 4: any good at it? If I write a novel and
Speaker 4: it's completely hopeless, that's fine, But the inner eight year
Speaker 4: old in me still wants to have a stab at
Speaker 4: writing the novel. So I think I've just got to
Speaker 4: be a bit liberated, you know, from all of that
Speaker 4: sense of you know, will it be any good? Will
Speaker 4: I actually be able to do it? I think sometimes
Speaker 4: the mistake that journalists make is thinking that because they
Speaker 4: can write nonfiction, that they will be able to write fiction,
Speaker 4: and it's actually a drastically I think that's like thinking
Speaker 4: I can play the piano, so therefore I'll be able
Speaker 4: to play the cello. Some of the tools that you
Speaker 4: have in being able to play the piano are going
Speaker 4: to help you.
Speaker 3: If you're learning a new instrument, but it's still a
Speaker 3: new instrument.
Speaker 2: Do you think you're going to take the time on
Speaker 2: the novel? What's your creative process? You disciplined? Are you're
Speaker 2: just going to be like I'm going to chip away
Speaker 2: and keep writing.
Speaker 4: I'm a bit torn because I've also got another nonfiction
Speaker 4: book that I've done a fair bit of work on
Speaker 4: that I'm just not sure which project I should go down.
Speaker 4: I mean, I keep getting worried I'm going to just
Speaker 4: run out of time to write novels because there's always
Speaker 4: nonfiction things catching my eye.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing I'm trying.
Speaker 4: To do is since I'm still busy, but I'm not
Speaker 4: as busy as I used to be when I was
Speaker 4: tied to the daily news cycle and your life could
Speaker 4: be thrown into disarray. So I'm trying much harder to
Speaker 4: do more music practice, more piano practice, more cello practice,
Speaker 4: because I think that that's really healthy for me. And again,
Speaker 4: I just it's been such an important part of my
Speaker 4: life and I don't want to let that slide. And
Speaker 4: there's been times where when I've been so busy doing
Speaker 4: seven thirty, I'll sit down to play the piano and
Speaker 4: I can still sight read, but I'll think there's a
Speaker 4: day if I'm not careful, one day I might sit
Speaker 4: down here and I might not be able to do
Speaker 4: this anymore, and that would.
Speaker 3: Be really a heartbreaking day.
Speaker 4: And so I just want to have more balance in
Speaker 4: that I'm not just all work and looking after the boys,
Speaker 4: which is pretty much what it's being for the past decade.
Speaker 4: So I do want to do some writing, but I
Speaker 4: also want to do an hour of cello practice every day,
Speaker 4: So you know, I need Do you know anyone that
Speaker 4: does cloning?
Speaker 2: I do, and they do specialize in cellist cloning, so
Speaker 2: I think we'll be fine. It's all about the forearms.
Speaker 2: If you're cloning a cellist.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 4: So yeah, if I could just have a few, I
Speaker 4: mean probably a couple of extra Lee sales, this would
Speaker 4: be fantastic.
Speaker 2: Fine, I think I think the demand will be out there.
Speaker 2: That's the sound of one of Lee's clones practicing the cello.
Speaker 2: The real Lee's new book is called Storytellers, Questions, Answers
Speaker 2: and the Craft of Journalism. It's out now.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Lee Sales. I read this. For
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