Throughout all my writing years I have been aware of one intention only, I suppose, and that is to try to recapture for myself certain moments, incidents, events that have at the time acted as some kind of emotional impetus. Writing about them seemed to give a permanence. Others might read what I had seen or felt and be affected too. This is what I hoped. But primarily writing is a form of self-indulgence. I admit readily that as I wrote, the shape or outline of the captive moment changed. There's the pity! Never was I able to recapture in its first innocence that primary stimulus. The very nature of fiction writing affected whatever I touched. Other characters intruded. Dialogue sharpened or blunted what had appeared to me entire in itself… what the non-writer cannot seem to understand is that my stories were not photographs of people as I knew them in deadly accuracy, but sketches of an aggregate of what I… saw and what I heard: writing is an exercise in photography — but the developing fluid is feeling.
Quoted in Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds (2006) edited by SUSAN SHERIDAN and PAUL GENONI
Use the link below to read about the life and work of Australian novelist, poet and educator THEA ASTLEY (1925–2004):
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