S2E20: Author Trish Bolton on writing into fear + making the invisible visible

[gentle music] Hello, Trish, and welcome to Creative Momentum with Meg.

Uh, can you start by introducing yourself and telling us what your creative, um, interest is, what you do creatively?

Hi, Meg.

It's so lovely to be here chatting with you.

Uh, well, I'm Trish Bolton, a creative writer.

Just had my first novel published about two years ago, Whenever You're Ready.

Um, but I was thinking about this, about writing and how long I've been writing, because it wasn't until I actually had my book published that I even thought to call myself a writer.

I certainly would never have said ...

If someone said, "What do you do?" I would never have said, "I'm a writer." And yet, if I think back, I have been writing for so long in so many different ways.

I think my first piece of writing that ...

Well, not published, but it was actually read out.

It was a poem, and it was read out on 3AR, which gives you an idea of how long ago [laughs] that is, because that's now Radio National, and most people listening to this will never have heard of 3AR.

[laughs] Um, and then I went on to write, um ...

And I'm a very keen gardener, so that is part of my sort of creative life.

I'm not sort of someone that goes and just pulls out weeds, but loves to sort of paint pictures in the garden with plants and texture.

And I was always making up these little stories in my head about what I was doing in the garden, and then I decided to sort of put them on paper and got quite a few of those published in The Age when it was, uh, quite different.

It wasn't about how to, you know, how to look after a plant, but a sort of a story.

And then I sort of went on.

I was doing my honors year and, uh, my supervisor said, "You've got to get this essay published," and I had it published in a political journal.

And when I was doing my PhD I was told I should get my proposal published, which I ended up getting published.

And then, you know, research submissions in my work and hammering out press releases and editing other people's work and writing a few features.

Uh, so I've just done all sorts of writing that I hadn't really sort of thought about when you sort of pull it all together.

So, um, yeah.

That's really been a very big part of my life.

Um, and you know, I have touched on gardening, so that is another creative side.