When writing bites back – Markus Zusak on truth, chaos and creativity
There’s nothing like having a punch-up with your dog on a crowded city street. The first line of Markus Zusak’s debut non-fiction novel, Three Wild Dogs and the Truth hooks us from the start. Despite the partial-cancellation of this year’s Byron Writers Festival, we were still thrilled to sit down with Markus for an afternoon chat about the emotional highs and lows of being a writer, his creative process and a writer’s identity in the public eye.
Tell me more about the opening sentence of Three Wild Dogs and the Truth. Did you already have that opening sentence in your head when you started writing it or did that come later?
I describe my life as doing a lot of things that don’t work. This was one of those ideas. We had two dogs that died within a year and a half of each other. My wife always said, “you’ve got to write about those two dogs”. It wasn’t until we got a third dog, [named Frosty] who we thought was going to be really easy and he turned out to be wilder than the other two combined. I finally just said, I have to have it out with him. So we had a huge [confrontation] at the gates of Centennial Park in Sydney where there’s nine lanes of traffic, an army of cavoodles and their owners on the other side and it was during COVID. So everyone is supposed to be home but literally everyone and their dog was out on the street. And if they weren’t with their dog, they were on their bike.
Can you describe the most memorable interaction you’ve ever had with a reader?
I think you always remember the negative ones. I remember going to a wedding right when The Book Thief started doing really well. I was at the peak of something I thought would never happen – my book was on the New York Times bestseller list and it’s doing really well. There was someone there who is notorious for saying the wrong thing everywhere she went. [She says], “oh yeah, congratulations on your book, but I just have to tell you something, I just couldn’t get into it”. Within the hour, she probably told me this about six or seven times. It’s a real levelling thing where you think just because you’re a writer and you’ve got a book in the world that it guards you against thinking you’re special even though it’s just what you do and this is what you do for a living.
How many unfinished manuscripts do you have?
There were three books I wrote that were finished, but never got published, which is a good thing because I’d be really embarrassed if they got published. I think there’s a reason that happens because it’s all just a training ground for how much you want it. There are a lot of unfinished bits and pieces, like thousands. Literally think of how many days there are in 13 years and that’s how many unfinished manuscripts there are.
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The Three Wild Dogs and the Truth is your first book, nonfiction. Why did you choose now to explore nonfiction?
It wasn’t so much a decision but whatever I’m dreaming about at the time. I’ll have really vivid – I’m going to say both literally and figuratively – [dreams] where I get an idea and I just mark that down as a moment. The first things I think of in any book, in most cases, is the beginning, the end and the title. I get the title really early and then I feel like I’ve got some anchor points. In terms of why non-fiction now, it’s just what was there.
What’s the weirdest Google search you’ve done for research?
I’ll give you a Google search that isn’t a Google search, if that’s all right. When I finished writing The Book Thief, I went into my local library to check my research. One of the things I researched was the seasonal habits of apple trees in Germany. Because in one part of the book, the kids steal apples and what I don’t want is a letter from Bill of the South Australian Orchard Association saying, “those apples wouldn’t have been ripe at that time of year in Germany”. Luckily my cousin was a chef in Munich at the time and she actually had a chart of all the apples throughout the seasons and thankfully, I was right.
Write for healing or write for readers?
Write for readers until it’s time to not write for the reader anymore. There’s a certain point in every book where you’ve done all this work and you’ve been helping the reader all the way and you’ve been going, come on, just keep coming … I want you to stay with me. Then there’s a point where you go, you know what? If you want to be in this, now you’ve just got to be alongside me in this. I feel like that’s when the unplanned chaos comes in. The reader may like this bit, or they may not … and that’s when they will either abandon you or really respect you. When they know that the writer is just sort of translating whatever terrain is inside them … and that they’re really doing it for themselves.
A MESSAGE FROM BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL
Byron Writers Festival wants to thank everyone who made this year’s event possible. BWF is looking forward to welcoming everyone back to celebrate its 30th year. If you would like to support the festival and help keep the arts and literary culture thriving in the Northern Rivers, you can make a tax-deductible donation here.