Episode 1: Interview with Rosalie Ham

Rosalie Ham is the author of The Dressmaker, Summer at Mount Hope, and There Should Be More Dancing.

The Dressmaker was made into a movie starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth and Hugo Weaving, amongst others, and opened at the number one spot at the Australian and New Zealand box offices, and became the second highest grossing Australian film of 2015. 

Find out more about Rosalie's work at RosalieHam.com.

What you'll learn:

1. Rosalie's thoughts on the Hollywood box office success of The Dressmaker.
2. The one trait you must have to succeed as a writer.
3. How a negative review has turned out to Rosalie's advantage.
4. Why Rosalie prefers the company of the main characters in There Should Be More Dancing.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth: Welcome to Writers’ Tête-à-tête with Elizabeth Harris, the show that connects Authors, Poets and Songwriters with their global audience. So I can continue to bring you high-caliber guests, I want you to go to iTunes, click Subscribe, leave a review, and share this podcast with your friends.

I’m delighted to introduce today’s guest, Rosalie Ham. Rosalie was born and raised in Jerilderie, New South Wales, Australia. Prior to Rosalie’s life as a bestselling author, she worked in a variety of jobs, including a stint in aged care. Rosalie completed a Bachelor in Education majoring in Drama and Literature in 1989, and completed her Master of Arts (Creative Writing) in 2007. In 2000, Rosalie published her first novel, The Dressmaker, now a major box office hit. The Dressmaker opened at the number one spot at the Australian and New Zealand box offices, and became the second highest grossing Australian film of 2015, and the eleventh highest grossing film of all time at the Australian box office. The costumes from this poignant film have been featured in several costume exhibitions. Rosalie is jetting off to New York soon for a special screening of The Dressmaker before its release on September 23rd. Rosalie’s second novel, Summer at Mount Hope, was published in 2005. And in 2011, we were privileged to receive yet another great novel, There Should Be More Dancing, which we will feature today.

Rosalie Ham, welcome to Writers’ Tête-à-tête with Elizabeth Harris.

Rosalie: Thank you, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Rosalie, we both worked in aged care before launching our writing careers. Can you tell me a little about how serving others has impacted you?

Rosalie: Enormously. Looking after elderly people was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. And I think possibly because of all the information, all the learning, all the experience, all the history, and because of their outlook on life at that stage in their life. They seem to be quite – a lot of them seem to be quite resigned to the life they’ve led and others are quite happy about the life they’ve led and others are quite bitter about the life they should have led, I suppose. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, I learned a huge amount. I enjoy enormously old people and of course it makes you see what’s important and what’s not.

Elizabeth: Just because they’re usually perceptive, isn’t it.

Rosalie: Yes.

Elizabeth: And learning too from their wisdom, whether they actually enjoyed their life or whether they have not quite enjoyed, they laugh as well.

Rosalie. Yes, and we learned about war and why the men were like that. We learned about some of the lives of the women. Most particularly, a lot of the women got married early because that was what was expected of them, and a lot of women were actually quite disappointed in the whole thing.

Elizabeth: That sense of duty to the country, wasn’t it.

Rosalie: Yes. And then of course you see the elderly ladies coming and sitting at their husbands’ bedside, the devoted true-love matches that have endured 60 years. That’s very sad when one of them has to be looked after by other people. It’s sad for their wives. They come in, sometimes twice a day. It’s just very real.

Elizabeth: Sure. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Rosalie: Do you know, I’ve always known it, but it was only hindsight that told me that I had always known it. I wrote stories as a kid, I put on plays with all my imaginary friends, and my best friend Terrie and I put on acting performances at primary school. So there’s always been a sense of story and drama. And there’s always been a sense of an audience for all those things. But of course if you weren’t raised in the way I was, be able to get a good job and support yourself and that … Happily, I was given the alternative, like if I was unfortunate enough to not get married and be supported, my parents always wanted me to have a job. So I trained to have a job and I put any writing aspirations to the side. But I always wrote letters and I always kept a bit of a journal. And occasionally I would write a short story. And I knew that I could spin a yarn because people would say to me, “Can you write me a letter, like in your letters?”

And then one day I just got bored with life and seeing that I’d done everything else that I was supposed to do, it seemed there was something a bit not there, something a bit missing, so I went off to writing school. And I think I was sitting in that writing class for about three weeks before I went, actually there was something physical emotional sensation that came across me and I went, “Aha!” This is where I remember the classroom and this is where I remember “I can do this”, where I feel good. That moment there – it was excellent.

Elizabeth: Can you advise all the aspiring writers out there how to get started, and more importantly how to keep going?

Rosalie: It’s tenacity – and I kind of believe that everybody could be a writer if they wanted to. But you’ve got to have the inclination, and you’ve got to want to sit in a room on your own for a very, very long time, and you’ve got to be quite comfortable doing that, and then perhaps being rejected.

But I just think you need to be bored enough as well. Like there needs to be something not in your life that you can find happiness in doing that – in doing that menial task, just sitting in your room on your own with that computer and being dedicated to all those characters. A huge amount of writers will drop out of a writing course partway into it. They discover that it’s not for them, so I think that if you were still sitting in that room after a year and you’re still walking around thinking about your story, then you have the temperament to sit down and be able to do it. You’ve got to have a degree of talent, and you’ve got to have a degree of tenacity to be able to do it. You just got to stick at it. My personal philosophy is that you need to get it all down on the page, and then once you’ve got all the words, then you have something to craft.

Elizabeth: They talk about writing junk, don’t they, and then eventually you fine-tune that.

Rosalie: You do, and that’s a skill too. I think that’s a really important part of writing. You can go back and recognize what the junk is. You’re quite happy to chop it out, and you feel quite confident that you’ll be able to write more, and write again, and keep writing, that there’s something in you that will keep doing that. So if you have to cut out ten pages, it’s not a problem.

Elizabeth: It’s almost like there’s that sense of non-attachment too, because you are too attached to what you’ve written down, you can’t let it go. You need to have that free-flowing feeling about things.

Rosalie: But you’ve got to write – I agree with you completely, you’ve got to be writing so that other people will read it. Other authors say they don’t write for an audience, but I write something that is well-crafted, well I try to anyway, and other readers might disagree with me, but I do try to write something that’s well-crafted that will keep the reader engaged. So I do have a reader in mind when I’m writing, so therefore I’m quite happy to edit and get rid of things, I learned that earlier on. With my first edit actually, I learned that you have to let things go, and I was quite happy to do it.

Elizabeth: Great. And I know that when I read your work, I giggle right through. Do you do that too?

Rosalie: Yeah you know sometimes you need to. I was preparing for this interview a few weeks ago, and I picked up There Should Be More Dancing, and I read a couple of pages and I thought, “Gosh! That’s…that’s quite okay.”

Elizabeth: Absolutely.

Rosalie: And I was watching an interview with Edna O’Brien on television last night, and the interviewer read something of hers to her, and she had to ask him which book it was from. He said it was The Country Girls. And I felt quite happy about that, because honestly I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve written.

Elizabeth: When you’re writing, Rosalie, what is your major source of support – or who?

Rosalie: No one. I suppose I will have to say my husband; he knows not to – I think he can tell by the tone – and my shoulders are … Then he will ask me a question and then he kind of backs off, because you know, I’m in the middle of doing something. I speak a lot to the dog that’s lying there on the …

Elizabeth: Yes, Eric’s there, having a bit of a sleep.

Rosalie: And I’ve got a really good friend Terrie, and I talk … whinge to her about it. She doesn’t really listen to what I’m saying, but at least I can air my thoughts. And there’s a couple of other writers that I have dinner with from time to time, and we’ll have a little bit of a whinge. And so I think those things…But there’s not one huge great thing.  I guess it’s my desire to get to the end of it too that keeps me tripping over, sitting there typing.

Elizabeth: Letting you come back into it again.

Rosalie: Absolutely.

Elizabeth: You’ve had phenomenal success with The Dressmaker. What does being successful mean to you?

Rosalie: You know, people ask me that, and it actually hasn’t altered my life at all, really. I’ve got a nice car and I’ve paid off my mortgage, which is a huge relief. It’s a blessing to have that off there, but I think what it means now is that when I do publish my … when publishing houses get hold of my fourth manuscript that I’ve just finished, they will look at it in a different way, given the success of The Dressmaker. And along with that, that has meant people have started reading Summer of Mount Hope and There Should Be More Dancing, so they are reaching a wider audience, and I can’t tell you how happy I am about that.

Elizabeth: Wonderful.

Rosalie: And of course that means I’ve been published in other countries as well. And all of that is amazing. It’s amazing to have that kind of affirmation, and people pick up your book and look at it differently because there’s been one successful book, so they have a certain expectation about the others. There are some people that will go into my other books with trepidation and possibly a little bit of cynicism. But there are others who will go with a lovely attitude. So I’m really, really happy about that but I think most importantly, it’s an affirmation for me. It’s a double-edged thing; I feel quite affirmed by that success, but also slightly more terrified because there is that expectation.

Elizabeth: And does it in one way create a sense of pressure?

Rosalie: Absolutely, it does. But that’s alright. It comes back to that boredom or tenacity or something, but I just seem to be okay with that, and I’ll just try really hard not to read the reviews. I think that’s probably the best thing – just don’t read reviews, because they will scrutinize more, the reviews, so I will just have to deal with that.

Elizabeth: Have they upset you in the past?

Rosalie: Look, the very first review I ever read of The Dressmaker, I think was the worst review I’ve ever read of any book, ever. It was scathing, it was awful, and I photocopied it. And I was at home at the time, and my friend was with me, and I photocopied it and we took it to class. And we read it out to the class. They all looked – I can still see them, they were looking at me like “Oh my God”, and the teacher – bless him – said, “Right, okay, this is a good lesson to us all. What we’re going to do now, is we’re going to do some therapy with Rosalie. And I want everybody to close their books; we’re going to the pub.”

(Laughter)

So we went to the pub. So I of course have blown that review up, and it’s on my wall in there, and what I do with that review is … often, because The Dressmaker is on the VCE Lit. list, and often they study The Dressmaker – and one of the questions they’re asked when they’re doing their SAC’s, you know, other people’s opinions of the book as opposed to theirs. I happily had photocopied thousands of copies and handed them out to the schoolchildren of Victoria, to show them how one reviewer’s point of view can differ from theirs and how you don’t take literally or to heart every review, and how that can be damaging. So there’s a whole lot of schoolchildren out there who now know that particular reviewer got it terribly, terribly wrong. She missed the point. She missed the point entirely of the whole book.

Elizabeth: So thank you very much to that person, because she certainly increased the determination all over Victoria, Australia, possibly the world… people who might be feeling a bit bruised. That’s great. In There Should Be More Dancing, I was particularly drawn to your main character Marjorie Blandon. I especially loved this quote: ‘Marjorie Blandon has led an upright, principled life guided by the wisdom of desktop calendars.’ As the novel progresses, the reader discovers that there are many secrets contained within Marjorie’s supposedly principled life. There Should Be More Dancing is such a great book, and showcases your wit beautifully. Can you please share one of your favourite passages from There Should Be More Dancing?

Rosalie: I think – possibly – it would have to be the public scalping incident with Pat across the road. I think that’s probably the one I enjoyed writing the most. But actually Marjorie is my favourite person on the planet. She’s one of those people in the aged care facility, a little bit bigoted and a little bit prejudiced.

Elizabeth: So I’ve looked after many Marjorie’s in my time in my nursing career… (Laughter)

Rosalie: Look, I’m going to read the Public Scalping Incident, and it’s quite long. So I might just start off.

It happened at the 1976 Ladies Legacy luncheon. Pat and Bill were big in Legacy, and for the ladies’ luncheon, Pat was allowed to take a guest as it was her turn to give the address. As she was rehearsing her address one last time, articulating and emphasizing her words to her assembled ballroom dancing frocks, the phone rang. She was disappointed to hear her guest Betty say her car had broken down. “I know it’s a long way Pat, but we could go halves on the price of a taxi.”

So of course Pat doesn’t want to go halves on the price of a taxi. So she is forced to ask Marjorie to be her guest at the Legacy luncheon where she is to give her address, because Marjorie’s got a car.

Elizabeth: That’s right.

Rosalie: And so Marjorie ends up on the top table. And I’ll just read that bit there.

So Marjorie found herself at the top table – the Legacy leaders’ table, a dignitary to her right and Pat on her left. Before her a sea of soft brown and blue curls and ample-bosomed ladies, floral and pastel with fleshy earlobes, wattles and dewlaps, all maintained by step-ins and various prosthetics. Before her propped a saucer of geranium petals surrounding a floating chrysanthemum, was a white card advertising the day’s proceedings. First on the program was the local choir, who sang ‘God Save The Queen’. The assembled ladies then sat through Number 2: welcome speech by the Chairwoman. Number 3: the main meal would be served – chicken or ham salad followed by Number 4, the choir singing ‘Morning Has Broken’, while the ladies enjoyed a fruit compote with custard. For Number 5, a lass from St Joseph’s School wrote a composition on the effects of war on those left behind. Her story was based on the life of her great-grandmother, who had grown her own vegetables and milked her cow and ploughed her own fields during the war to help the Land Army.

Then it was Pat’s turn. The emcee said, “I give you Pat Crookshank, and this month’s address titled ‘The Unseen Effects of War on Women’. Pat bared her teeth to Marjorie and said, “Any fruit seeds stuck to my dentures?” “No,” said Marjorie. And Pat turned to stand up.

At that moment, Marjorie noticed the tag poking out of the back of Pat’s cardigan. “Hang on,” she said, and reached out to tuck it in, when the catch on her wrist watch caught on one of Pat’s curls as she rose. Marjorie had no idea Pat wore a wig, no idea her hair had snapped off and fallen out from years and years of peroxide and perming fluid. Pat stood frozen before the room of fellow legatees, her rival addressees past and future, the thin tufts of her brittle hair flat against her damp shiny pate, and her wig dangling from Marjorie’s wrist watch.

(Laughter)

Finally someone started clapping. Pat had turned a deep red, and the audience, moved by her brave humility, started to applaud thunderously.

(Applause)

Elizabeth: This is weird, classical, absolutely delightful. How can we better that? (Laughter)

Rosalie: Thanks.

Elizabeth: What are you working on at the moment, Rosalie?

Rosalie: I’ve just handed in my fourth novel. I think that’s the third or fourth time I’ve mentioned that in the last fifteen minutes – I’m so pleased.

Elizabeth: We want you to mention it again.

Rosalie: The fourth manuscript is … again, I’ve returned to a small community. A small community is a good palette for life’s tragedies, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s in a rural community or urban community or in your street or your football club or whatever. But small communities…

Elizabeth: It’s all group dynamics, isn’t it.

Rosalie: It is, absolutely. So this one’s set in a small country town and has to do with irrigation water and the effects of government buybacks and water allocations on this one small community. And one man – whose name is Mitchell Bishop – and he has a 12 km stretch of channel that needs to be replaced. But there are three areas in the town that are affected. There are the riparians who live along the river and there are the town folk and the shopkeepers, and of course there are the irrigators. And the impacts that the water renewal projects and the water restrictions and irrigation allocation has on that community.

Elizabeth: Which would be huge, being a life force, water.

Rosalie: Absolutely, yeah. And if you cut the allocation to the irrigators, they have to produce more with less water, and they have to spend more money to get less water to support the upgrade, and therefore they don’t spend money in the town. And so when one liter of water leaves the community, so does one job more or less. But in order to stay afloat, you need the water. You all need to work together. And of course the town people are resentful. Their water rates are going to go up to support the irrigators. The riparians are resentful because they’re going to suffer, they’re going to take more water, yet at the same time the world needs food. We have to feed people, and there are more people, so they need more food. So it’s a sort of distillation of that in a small community.

Elizabeth: And all the dynamics that go with that, no doubt addressed very cleverly by you.

Rosalie: Oh well actually there is love, and there is a bit of tragedy, and there’s a few things that go on.

Elizabeth: If you had decided not to write your novels, what sort of career do you think you would have taken?

Rosalie: Do you know, I often think about this, and I think that I probably would be a teacher. I still am a teacher. I still teach two days a week, but I think I probably would be working fulltime as a teacher, possibly in a secondary college. You know years ago I went for an interview to be a State Registered Nurse, you know, a nursing sister. But I just never did it. I was having far too much fun, so I only tried to be a State Enrolled Nurse, which was just the one-year course. And I think that was the key to my writing success, because if I’d been a State Registered Nurse, I think I probably would have been quite content with that, and I would have had a perfectly lovely life around that.

Elizabeth: Ironically, I am a State Registered Nurse, but I have continued on to write, so maybe not, because you’ve got that enormous talent that we could not do without.

Rosalie: Possibly, but it’s hard to speculate, but yeah, perhaps you’re right.

Elizabeth: What is it about teaching that you love?

Rosalie: Do you know, I think probably communication. Communicating ideas, and for me it’s seeing the light bulb go on. If you’re explaining something – and I teach Literature – explaining Shakespeare or reading Shakespeare or poetry or something and you stop and you look at those people and you go, “Okay, now this is what is happening”, and explain what is going on, they go “Oh…right…” and you send them off on a journey of self-exploration and you get them to find all those things. I think if you’re enthusiastic enough it infects the students, and they get carried away with the whole thing. You just – it’s communicating the information and seeing them go “Oh okay, I get it”.

Elizabeth: And you’d be a fabulous teacher – very, very entertaining. (Laughter) What do you like to do in your spare time to unwind?

Rosalie:  I read. I read books. And I play golf. I love to play golf. Go for a lovely long walk. And I enjoy going for a nice drive in the country, going home to the farm, doing something quite different.

Elizabeth: Do you have a special place you like to go other than the farm?

Rosalie: No, it’s just the farm – the family farm. And there’s something about standing on a farm and being able to see the horizon, with no obstructions, nothing to block your imagination and stop your vision at this point. There’s nothing, so your vision goes on, and as it goes on, things fall away and you understand what’s important. One of my favourite things to do is sit in the ute with my brother as he goes about his sheep work. And my job is to open the gate – that’s something I’ve been doing since I was able to open a gate – and just watch him go about doing his business, asking dumb questions about farming things. It just puts everything back into perspective for me and time is slower in the country.

Elizabeth: Yes, it’s wonderful. What does your brother think of your success?

Rosalie: Oh they’re thrilled to bits. They were all very good you know, because it’s in a small community - they love it if someone is out there kicking goals. You know, they really think it’s a terrific and wonderful thing and I’m very grateful to that. We’ve been back to Jerilderie and they’ve received us very well. It’s been really good, and the Ham family up at J seem to be coping with it all quite well. Of course a lot of them were in the film as extras and they come down if I have a book launch. They’ll come down for a special trip you know, and they’ll make that effort to come down, which I appreciate enormously.

Elizabeth: And you were in the film too!

Rosalie: Yeah, no, I’m an extra as well.

Elizabeth: I’ve seen you in the film. How was that for you? How did you feel when you were doing all that great acting?

Rosalie: Do you know, I probably … I think I’m more content in the company of Marjorie Blandon and her lovely son Walter in There Should Be More Dancing. I think my days of being an extra have come and gone. It was fun, and I enjoyed it, but really when I finished that fourth manuscript the other day and handed it in, it was just such a heartwarming thing. Because that whole thing about your characters and creating the arc and all that sort of stuff, and me doing it rather than participating in somebody else’s, is probably some sort of vanity or narcissism, but I actually prefer that. I actually prefer that, to be doing my own thing in my own room, creating my own little story, rather than revisiting them when they’re out in the world.

Elizabeth: And the characterization of There Should Be More Dancing is so rich.

Rosalie: Yeah, no, I loved writing that book and I loved all those people. I love that Judith came good in the end. I had a huge amount of fun writing that book.

Elizabeth: I enjoyed every page; I must say thank you very much for that book. It was fantastic. Do you have a website or blog where my listeners can find out more about your work?

Rosalie: I do. It’s www-dot-Rosalie-Ham-dot-com and there’s a blog there. And I wrote that while I was being an extra in The Dressmaker. But now that I’ve handed in the fourth manuscript, I’ll probably go back and write a few more things on different topics. And Summer at Mount Hope is being published in the United Kingdom right now, and I’m hoping someone will pick up There Should Be More Dancing. They told me that it’s not a story that will translate well in other countries but I’m just really hoping it does.

Elizabeth: I really disagree, but then that’s me.

Rosalie: Yeah, no, I disagree too but let’s just see what happens…my third one…my third child

Elizabeth: Rosalie, this is a signature question I ask all my guests. What do you wish for – for the world, and most importantly, for yourself?

Rosalie: It’s basically the same thing, it’s Health. For the world of course – I just think … I hope we get our act together … climate change. I hope we get our act together over less advantaged countries and poverty and educating women in disadvantaged countries. If the women rise, the village will rise with them. You always hope for those sorts of things. I don’t think we’re ever going to stop any kind of war; I think that’s human nature. But basically for my health I just would like for me and everybody else around me to be healthy and happy. That’s all that’s important.

Elizabeth: That’s one thing you can’t have too much of. Rosalie Ham, thank you so much for guesting on Writers’ Tete-a-Tete with Elizabeth Harris. We look forward to more of your work and your fantastic characterizations. I totally agree with you and Florence: “There should be more dancing.”

Thanks for tuning in everyone. If you enjoy this episode and want more high-caliber guests, subscribe to Writers’ Tête-à-tête with Elizabeth Harris on iTunes and may all your wishes come true.

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