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Inspiration a la Lanka

It's the dogs that get Michelle De Kretser, 45, away from her desk and her 500-words-a-day target. Gus, the stately 13-year-old English setter-cross, and his one-year-old border collie-cross companion, Oliver, must be walked every day. "When I'm with them, I don't think about the writing at all," says Melbourne-based De Kretser. "But I do find I get new ideas the next morning. And it's the only way I'll end up doing something physical. Sitting is so bad for you. When you've got a dog, exercising is much more natural than joining a gym and lifting things."

De Kretser has always had dogs in her life. Her father, a Sri Lankan judge who immigrated to Australia with his children in the 70s, used to breed spaniels, and canines have roles in both De Kretser's novels - The Rose Grower, set in 18th century France, and her latest, The Hamilton Case (Knopf, $29.95), set in inter-war Ceylon.

De Kretser, formerly an editor at Lonely Planet, got the idea for her first novel while on a walking tour of France with her partner, academic Chris Andrew. She started toying with the idea of rose growers and revolutionaries, and didn't admit to herself that she was writing a novel until she had an entire draft roughed out.

For her second novel, she knew she wanted to write about her homeland, but didn't discover the angle she needed until Andrew told crime-buff De Kretser she could write a good murder mystery. Then she remembered that her father had once written a legal tome discussing a famous case, the murder of a white tea-planter. "For me, Sri Lanka is connected to murder," she says.

De Kretser was also inspired by all the books she didn't want to write - the sub-continental exotica full of what she calls "mango-scented maidens". She avoided reading anything Sri Lankan, good or bad, until she finished her first draft. "Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost came out and I did not want to go near it until the second draft, so I wouldn't feel dwarfed or crushed. But in the end, it is much better to be reading really good writing when you're writing. It inspires you."

In bed with a good book

The first three books Mandy Sayer wrote she penned in longhand in bed. "I wasn't a very good typist and I'm a hopeless technophobe," she says. "I like to write as soon as I wake and I keep my pyjamas on until I'm finished - sometimes five or six hours later. If I stay in my pyjamas, I can't leave the house, although I have nicked out to buy some milk."

Even now, 14 years after her debut novel, Mood Indigo, won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, Sayer is comforted by climbing into bed in her Kings Cross flat, particularly when she's seeking inspiration. "I read fiction by Flaubert, Faulkner, Marquez, Peter Carey ... the standard of their work seeps into my unconscious and sets the bar."

For her, writer's block is "not so much a lack of inspiration, but a lack of isolation". During her writing sessions she won't answer the phone and she withdraws from her social network - "I have to have my head down, I have to conserve my energy."

Sayer, in her late 30s, has experienced cycles of depression since she was a teenager and she isn't sure if it triggers her insecurity about her work, or vice versa. "I've come to realize I'll probably never be any more secure in my work but I can live with that," she says. "Some days you feel really excited and others you feel despondent, and I have to remind myself that it's all part of the process."

When constructing a new work, Sayer says she always has a framework in mind and usually knows how the story begins and ends. She chooses to write at her own pace, using a desk located, funnily enough, in her bedroom.

Sayer won't accept advances from her publisher. "I don't have a credit card and I don't like to be in debt financially or creatively. The work sets its own deadline."

(Courtesy Sydney

Morning Herald)