What are you doing it for? Realist writing – the riddled boundary that divides fiction and reality

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this essay, I respond to Australian author Charmian Clift’s question about writing: ‘what are you doing it for?’ (Wheatley 2022, 291). This question is the title of one of Clift’s essays, from a collection of narrative-driven essays, written for the Women’s Pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, after Clift’s return to Australia in 1964. I consider the similarities between realist fiction and writing that (by classification) purports to bear a closer allegiance to the author’s autobiographical life. I understand realist writing to be a representation of living | memory – the complicated and multi-faceted nature of our interior selfhood. This essay reflects my preoccupation with the cartwheels of our inner consciousness as it relates to what-I-write | how-I-write | why-I-write, and how we engage with the work of others, both writers we know in the everyday, and writers we ‘know’ through the page. I consider the act of producing narrative as a sensate response to enigma, a creative response to rumination and (perhaps) an antidote to ongoing rumination – shirking the discussion about autobiography in favour of a discussion about impetus – considering writing as a reflection upon the operations (and inherent conundrums) of an interior consciousness.