I'm Lola. I went to Smith Hill High School in Wulingong. And Butcher Bird is a short story about a little piece of bushland um which I've spent a lot of time in. And it's about the thread between mothers and daughters. Those two things intertwining. I think the main thing that drew me to write about this location is that I've spent so much time walking and running through it.
I've spent yeah a lot of time sitting and listening and observing the animals and the plants that feature so heavily in the story. Um those are all real details that I've sort of either written about or sketched at some point. Particularly the animals like the diamond python that features quite heavily is a snake that I sat with for half an hour on a walk. the King Fisher pool and the Olympic pool in the Heath Coat and Royal National Parks as well as the Wii track all feature in some way or other um in the story.
Spending time in that landscape in that time realizing how little I was compared to it and it was particularly interesting I think to explore reversal of power. Typically, we sort of are seen to kind of have power over nature as an entity. And in that story, that's very much the opposite. The landscape has most of the power.
Experiencing that led me to want to explore it in greater depth. A sentence that really captures my major work that I really like is, "The bush is waiting. It breathes slowly in and out and in again. It's patient. It has to be. I like this sentence because it gives um an impression of the bush as a character and I think especially as a timeless character.
Time was something that I was really interested in throughout the whole major work and that was something that I really tried to get right. I would say the main detail that helped it come to life was really just the amount of time that I spent sitting in it and just quietly kind of listening um and observing. I took a lot of photos. Half my journal was probably um photography in the end through a lot of reading or I was able to sort of bring that to life that feeling that I was kind of so much smaller than this entity.
Catching Tele Crow by Ambulin and Ezekiel Qualina which is written by two indigenous Australian authors explores the relationship between nature and people. That was an important perspective to read.
Definitely writing about Darwal land on Darwand. So I think that definitely informed the kind of more than human element of the bush which I really tried to get across this idea that there's something more that we don't necessarily always see. I would say the main technique that I brought from kind of studying those genres was definitely the personification of kind of nonhuman entities. In this case it was yeah the landscapes or the bush. I think from the very beginning, it's a character and it's probably the most important character.
I made the bush a character through how it interacts with the characters. It does everything that Maggie and Iris do. Like it sort of it breathes, it dances, it twirls. Um, you know, it kind of walks just like they do, which I think was an easy way to put them all on an equal footing. So there's no one who has any kind of power over anyone else. Um I mean if anything, yeah, the bush has sort of the most power in this story. My very first draft was actually exclusively description.
There was there was not really any characters. Um it was pretty much just describing more general things I changed throughout the process. I mean initially the story didn't have a plot like for a long time actually for you know a few months there wasn't really a plot that was something I found later which obviously is probably a fairly large part of the criteria um there has to be a plot so I would say that's the main thing that changed there was kind of a not knowing where it was going to go but I guess having the setting or the place like having place so solidified from the beginning like that never changed I think that helped with direction. Like I guess I knew there would be a plot eventually.
Um I just sort of had to find it. So I think having that one thing that I knew was going to stay the same. And I had my characters. I had Maggie from the beginning and I had place. So everything else maybe changed, but those two things always stayed the same.
I mean the very first draft had Maggie barely as a character really. was pretty much just the bush was the only character um in the beginning and then she obviously you know came into more of her own role. Introducing Iris as a character gave me a lot more insight into Maggie um which was really useful. She was a really nice baseline to have for Maggie's relationship with the landscape, especially as it sort of changes and evolves.
That evolving, it couldn't have happened without her as a character. And I kind of moved to sort of attempt to deise a plot. I I moved to the idea of of risk-taking a bit. And I think of having to learn how far you can go before it's too far. That was something that was on my mind a lot when I was especially starting to kind of go walking by myself and have to decide like how far I can climb, how high I can go without it, you know, being too dangerous and just having to sort of rely on myself a bit more.
So, I think that idea of risk in this particular landscape, obviously, you're very vulnerable, especially once you kind of acknowledge how how small you are maybe in comparison to it. So I would say that sort of drove the plot and it really I think it just kind of developed naturally as I was got more and more interested in the relationship between Maggie and Iris thinking oh you know it's it's always I guess the possibility is always there like oh what happens if you know you take one step too far or you know something snaps or sort of that's all out of your control.
So I think that really drove the plot when I sort of started asking those questions particularly about their relationship. My personal childhood experience has definitely played a big part in this story. The process of growing up has definitely been always against the backdrop of the bush and spending time within that landscape.
Being able to grow up within that landscape and sort of being able to swim in those water holes as a kid and just explore and play with in all the little rock pools. There's definitely parallels between the story and my own life with the bush kind of being the backdrop for kind of a letting go. I think the most valuable lesson I've learned is not to be, I guess, afraid of giving your work to other people. I think because writing is such an evolving practice, by the time you've given it to someone else, you've already like you've already moved on. You've already started a new draft. So, I'd say the most valuable lesson I learned is not to get attached to what you've written. I mean, I ended up getting rid of most of it anyway. Like, I kept, you know, maybe a hundth or a tenth or whatever of what I actually wrote.
So, definitely the most valuable lesson I learned was just don't get attached. The main part of the revision process for me was just getting as many people to read it as possible, especially people that, you know, I trusted and respected to give me feedback. A lot of people read it. I mean, I had a really incredible teacher, um, Mr. Cutler. He would have read it about a thousand times and always gave me really, um, you know, good and insightful feedback every time. I had my mom read it a lot. Friends that were doing the course, we swapped as well. We did a lot of peer editing.
Getting read was the main part of the revision process. The main thing that was, I guess, changed due to feedback was the plot. Like as I said before, I didn't really have one in the beginning. That really developed as the story did and it changed. I mean, it changed a lot from the beginning. My main piece of advice would be just write as much as you can. I think something that my teacher said was, yeah, you can't edit nothing, which is very true. Um, so it's always better to have something to edit or to go from. [Music]
