Vanessa Berry writes the mysteries and secrets of Sydney on her popular blog, Mirror Sydney. She has over 10 years of experience teaching writing, and currently teaches in media at Macquarie University and creative writing at the University of Sydney. She recently published her book Mirror Sydney, and also authored Ninety9 and Strawberry Hills Forever.
Is writing place more challenging in fiction or non-fiction?
Place is one of the core elements of a successful fiction, and to integrate it into the narrative meaningfully is one of the most challenging aspects. In non-fiction, representing place can be difficult because places have so many interpretations and layers of story. Successful non-fiction place writing often has a sense of opening up into multiple interpretations, even if they are focused on one aspect of that place.
What are some of your favourite Sydney places?
I have many favourite Sydney places, and often they are details I feel some connection to, that form part of my own mental map of the city. Three that I love are the Wishing Tree in the Botanic Gardens – a Norfolk Pine planted in the 1940s to replace the original, very popular wishing tree that was planted in the first years of the gardens. Another favourite place is the 40,000 years mural at Redfern station. It was painted in the 1980s by the artist Carol Ruff and the people of Redfern, and presents a history of Aboriginal Sydney. The mural has been surprisingly enduring, although after almost 40 years, it is fading, and its restoration is imminent. A third favourite is the big ghost sign on the side of Sheffield House on Wentworth Avenue. A ghost sign is an old, fading hand-painted advertising sign that preserves something of the former look of the streetscape, before the era of billboard advertising. (You can read the story in Mirror Sydney.)
How do you authentically capture the soul of the environment you’re writing about?
When I write about a place, I make sure to observe it as closely as possible: spending time there, observing, talking to people, taking notice of the environment visually and sonically, considering its topography, and generally paying deep attention to it. This gives me clues for what I can research further, in archives, to build a portrait of a place through time. Balancing the observations in the present – the moments observed by the writer – with a sense of the layers of time that exist in a place, is one way to capture a place’s identity and enrich the reader’s connection to it.
Join Vanessa for her course Writing Place in Fiction and Non-Fiction on Saturday 4 November, 10am-4pm, at the Centre.