Phillip Gwynne's successful Aussie style

You know how some dog owners look like their dogs, just as some couples look alike (think back to Lleyton Hewitt dating Belgian tennis star Kim Clijsters). Well, I reckon there should be another category – novels that sound like their authors.

I happened upon this thought when I was chatting to acclaimed Aussie author Phillip Gwynne about his new young adult novel, Swerve, which is a tale of a 16-year-old boy who goes on a road trip with his newly-discovered grandfather.

I'm certainly not suggesting there are any parallels between Swerve's plot and characters and Phillip’s actual life - i.e. one of the main characters is driving to the NT to top himself, Phillip’s not; the protagonists are car fanatics, Phillip’s not - his humour, honesty and very Australian trait of ‘telling it like it is’ certainly shine through in his written work.

Just as I found Swerve to be very funny, down-to-earth and enjoyable to read, I found Phillip himself to be much the same and very easy to talk to.

Let me demonstrate. Here is a 30-second grab of our interview:

Is this your seventh or eighth book?
I don’t know actually.

You dabble in some serious issues in this book – drug dealing, counterfeiting, hitchhiking, cancer, euthanasia – were you hoping to drive home some big messages with this story?
If you want a message, check your email. I just set out to entertain.

How much do you need to know about your characters before you can start writing about them?
Not much.

What non-literary influences colour your work?
I play music all the time - quite loudly - when I write.

What aspect of writing do you struggle with most?
It’s hard. It’s all hard.

You were 38 when you published your first book, Deadly, Unna?, but had you written much before then?
Deadly, Unna? was the first thing I ever wrote. I had never written anything before. (But) I used to write long, stoned letters to my friends because I spent some time backpacking… and they would say you are weird, but you have actually got something.

Deadly, Unna? is a story about two boys, one an Aboriginal. Did you do a lot of research on Aboriginal culture for this book?
None whatsoever.

Now, here are a few snippets from his book, Swerve.

‘A’, then ‘D’, and Lasseter Highway was now Dickhead Highway.

Drugs. Alcohol. You name it, I was addicted to it.

‘That stuff you’re playing, is that off the tampon ad on TV?’

‘Forget all that nonsense about pollination, flowers were designed specifically so us blokes could atone for the various stuff-ups we’re prone to.’

My thoughts were as follows: Poppy’s dead, ants have come to eat up his face and – shamefully – he hasn’t even signed my logbook.’

Phillip has even managed to get, not one, but five Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi! chants in there.

I only had the pleasure of chatting to Phillip for about 30 minutes, but he is as down-to-earth and as Australian as they come and it seems, in part at least, this could be why his stories are so widely read and enjoyed.

(Deadly, Unna? has sold more than 200,000 copies and was made into the feature film Australian Rules, for which Phillip won an AFI award. Meanwhile, his adult detective novel, The Build Up, is being made into a 13-part TV series on SBS.)

He concedes that he draws on his own experiences when he is writing, often recalling his childhood as one eight children growing up in numerous small Australian towns.

Although he says this book relies less on autobiographical details than his previous books, he did take a road trip to Uluru - like the characters in Swerve - with his 16-year-old son, and phoned his ‘revhead’ brothers every other day for information about cars.

“You're not going to write a road story about a Hyundai Getz. I had to find a car that was iconic,” he says, referring to the HT Monaro GTS 350 featured in the book.

“I grew up in a revhead family. My four brothers are all revheads, but I was the bookish kid. I was ringing my brothers asking, ‘What sort of carburetor does a Monaro have?’"

A self-taught writer

What makes Phillip’s tale of literary success so compelling is that not only is he a self-taught writer, he didn’t start his career as an author until he was 38.

“No-one in my family was interested in reading, except my mum who read a bit, but I just read everything. I would go to the library and read at school,” he says of his youth.

“There was an idea in the back of my head that I should write something, but I didn’t think anyone would want to read anything I had ever written. It wasn’t until I was 38, I was a single dad, working in a job I hated, that I finally said, ‘Okay, it is time to think about writing’.”

Now that thought has turned into a full-time occupation. He is currently working with a writing team to put together the TV series on The Build Up.

He’ll also soon begin working on the sequel to The Build Up, a task he hopes will be easier than writing the first book.

“I find young adult books easier to write. I know the market, I know what works for that market and it’s just a great time of life to write about. We authors want to write about turmoil and this is the most tumultuous time for a lot of people; in their teens trying to come to terms with who they are and where they are going, their sexuality," he says.

“It was really hard to make that transition (to the adult genre). I was always thinking, ‘Have I explained it too much? Is this young adult writing?' But all writing is the same, it is all about character and plot.”

When he has finished that novel, who knows what we will see emerge from Camp Gwynne. One thing for sure is that Phillip is one author unlikely to run out of ideas for his next book.

“Ideas are easy. There’s plenty of ideas out there,” he says.

For more information about Pamela Wilson or WriteSmart, log on to http://www.writesmart.com.au/