Writers, we’re a horrendously boring bunch

There might only be one thing worse, a room full of actors. Boy, are they hard work.

When introduced to actors — “She/he is in the theatre, don’t you know?”— and if sufficiently oiled, I clasp their hands and tell them, “The Theatre? Is that still around? Wonderful. I would have thought colour television would have seen it off. Good on you. That’s the spirit. Never give up.”

It seems to keep them at bay.

I’ll let you into a little secret. Writers, like actors, are sometimes vaguely interesting, often horrendously boring but always hopelessly, relentlessly self-absorbed. I have seen scribblers lapse into speaking of themselves in the third person, weighing up their remarks with extravagant gravity and no apparent sense of self-consciousness of the arses they are making of themselves.

Perhaps this why the Melbourne Writers Festival turned into a dog-and-pony show this year, featuring a bunch of non-literary mad escapades. Anything to avoid the ugliness of writers talking about themselves.

We’re an odd breed, to be honest. I like the company of people, don’t get me wrong, but I am just as happy on my own. Writing is a solitary affair with long hours strapped to a keyboard. Like most jobs it is often a chore and only occasionally joyful. Even the pleasure of a near perfect paragraph is one that goes unshared at least for the time being.

I have always said that if you wrote books for money, you’d find setting up a sewing machine in the garage and taking in a little piece work more profitable. The hourly rate would not pass muster by the Fair Work Commission.

Having trousered my 12 cents an hour, I am about to finish my fourth book, an exposition into one of the most darkly funny episodes in Australia’s criminal history. I am just getting to the final denouement. It is the time of Sydney’s Gang Wars of 1984-85.

The punch board in my home office contains photographs of gangsters, petty criminals, crooked cops and bent politicians leering back at me while from the adjoining wall, the portrait of mass murderer, John Frederick ‘Chow’ Hayes, painted by the great Bill Leak, stares ominously down.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that the few who venture into my office tend not to stay very long. I did have a family friend wander in, clock ‘Chow’ on the wall and remark that he seemed like a kindly old man but to be fair she was in wine at the time.

When writing about crooks and often as them, one has to assume their characteristics, their absurd grandiosity, their rat cunning and their violent instincts. It might be seen as method writing, an immersion into a darkness from which there is little respite.

A few days ago, my wife returned home from work. She had been expecting some mail.

“Has the postie been?”

I shook my head. He was late again.

“Maybe,” I said. “We should have him knocked.”

I was joking, of course, but my wife gave me that look that said, “You need to finish the book and get the hell out of that office.”

A few years ago, I interviewed Graham Henry, a criminal associate and on-again-off-again mate of Neddy Smith. Henry appeared in Blue Murder played by Peter Phelps.

I asked Henry what he thought of Phelps’ portrayal and it was the only time in the interview he lost his cool. He was unconcerned about the gruesome crimes he was shown to be involved in, the unspeakable acts of violence he was seen to have committed or even if Phelps’ craft had uncovered some previously unexplored truth.

Rather, Henry, a spiffy dresser in the manner of a racetrack pimp, was deeply shocked that Phelps played him dressed in leisure wear.

“I’ve never worn a tracksuit outside the house in my life,” a visibly hurt Henry said.

From a writer’s perspective, the great paradox is the people who commit violent offences are in many ways just like you and me. They drink too much, tell stories and laugh out loud. They care less about their own futures than they do about their children. But then they engage in criminal behaviour that we could not contemplate.

The maxim of the two certainties of life being death and taxes does not apply to these characters. They don’t pay tax for a start. I mean, if you kill people for money or use murder to advance your status, the prospect of an ATO audit isn’t going to hold any major concerns.

A violent death, ‘fully airconditioned’ as hitman, Christopher Dale ‘Rentakill’ Flannery euphemistically referred to the ghastly business of death at the end of a gun, is merely a vocational hazard. Unpleasant and unwelcome certainly but the greatest fear and almost always a certainty is jail.

One or two from that era did manage the improbable feat of avoiding the clutches of the law and died peacefully in their own beds but for the most part the others either languished in prison before being wheeled out on gurneys feet first, or ceased being active criminals and spent the rest of their lives in intellectual and economic poverty.

It is too easy to portray gangsters as gormless psychopaths and in almost all cases, it is false. They have wives and children. They are capable of love, empathy and sometimes even experience remorse.

What they are masters at is compartmentalising their criminality, like a great big box they shove their worst behaviours into which, in turn, allows them to say, terrorise an innocent person at gun point, jump a counter and grab the loot before going home for a meal with the family.

I have read a lot of true crime stuff, from the tedious date, time and place bulletins to the miserable mea culpas from celebrity gangsters. Criminals are sometimes glorified, more often prosaically condemned but rarely, in this genre, do they appear human.

I think I have managed to get the balance right but who knows? I certainly won’t until the publishers have cast an eye over the manuscript. That won’t happen until I’ve finished the wretched thing and emerge from the darkness.

Right now, I’d better get on with it. There’s a lot more mayhem to come and I’ve just noticed the postie is late again.