We’d been planning it for days, loitering at the drinking trough beside the tuck shop window. Leigh distracted him. I snuck up from behind. What a rush! How funny was that? It was 1963—a time when funny was defined by the Three Stooges.
The Cream Bun by Roy Mears
Few moments from your childhood live on. Memories are often suppressed. Yet, a smell, a sound, can immediately transport you back, to relive what you felt at the time. Mostly not by choice, you’re called to this memory for a reason. This season’s theme led me to explore suppressed memories and led to surprising discoveries about who I am.
Writer, reader, teacher and coach, Roy Mears was, for several years, author of The Week That Was for The Climate Project. He has been published in PEN Quarterly and Melbourne Observer.
You can find Roy on Twitter and Instagram.
Interview Transcript:
Nat: So Roy what are you working on at the moment?
Roy: My current project is a story about a boy who learns how to grow up. Some might call it a YA it on my own. I’m not sure I think it’s more just a story about a person learning who he is and how to be and it happens he’s 12.
I find myself writing wherever I can. One of the challenges and I’m sure I’m not alone, is those of us who are working for a living and writing for a passion. Have to find moments, so my favourite thing is to actually go home the long way.
I get on a tram, which takes 45 or 50 minutes if it’s a good run with my little iPad and my two or three prompts, sentences for where I’m at and away I go. Writing is a really interesting skill.
I’m going to say skill because I think it’s a proper skill, I think everybody who starts writing a story has lots of skills, and then they learn a whole lot more than the thing that I’ve learnt he is that these fantastic scenes that just play out in my head. Also, have to have some structure, so I can write for days, literally, and then realise that I’ve written off on a complete tangent and it’s got nothing to do with the plot. It’s been fun. But my ritual now is to actually set up scenes.
That I try and have a sense of what’s the place? What’s the timing?
And who’s involved and what’s at stake and then I’ve got a little bit of, you know, a focus to write it on.
I’ve set myself some very lofty goals this year, but because I’m probably about two-thirds of the way through the first draft of this manuscript. My young protagonist, or main character, I believe that is the new
buzz word, is called Pocket. So Pocket is well advanced in terms of getting a first draft out I find myself procrastinating about the editing, but I know if I get the draft finished. That will be it, so I’ve even got a deadline, which I am not sharing in case I completely jinxed myself.
Nat: So Roy what books inspire you?
Roy: It might be my Catholic upbringing or it just might be my Catholic tastes but I am inspired by such a wide range of writing and writing skills.
I’m currently reading Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci and I thought I knew about this fellow and his writing brings a whole different perspective to it, but really my focus is on writing for boys. By boys, I mean 12-year-olds and those who you are still wishing that they were 12-year-olds and so I do like the men’s authors, that type prose of a Hemingway or the great dialogue of a Twain or those kinds of people. I love is kind of stories those kinds of writers.
Episode Acknowledgements:
Memoria is written, produced, edited and presented by Natalie V.
The Cream Bun is written and read by Roy Mears. The story is sound edited by Jen Farrow.
Music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions, “Sage The Hunter” and “Plaque”.
Illustrations by Peta Manning. Her book, See Me Doodle, is out now.
Sound effects used in this episode by:
Butterfly wings.wav, Yuval, CC0 1.0, Church during mass, Joao_Santos, CC BY-NC 3.0, Dusk Atmos with Cicadas, kangaroovindaloo, CC BY 3.0, gravel.wav, thedapperdan, CC0 1.0, Lone Harvest, Kevin MacLeod, CC BY 4.0, http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100409, Medium sized propellor plane.wav, soundslikewillem, CC BY-NC 3.0, Punch Punching Fist To Skin Hit, deleted_user_7146007, CC0 1.0, Rainbow_lorikeet.wav, soundbytez, CC BY 3.0, Rutherford Primary School Lunchtime.aiff, simongray, CC0 1.0, Staalpennadopp.wav, fastson, CC BY 3.0, Squelch 1.wav, JarredGibb, CC0 1.0, Quill pen writing on hard paper various speed.wav, marcoman89, CC0 1.0, Wind Through Trees 3b, spoonbender CC BY 3.0
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