Jennifer Mills – Writer

Background

A voracious reader from an early age, Jennifer Mills was often in trouble for not concentrating on important things, because her nose was more or less permanently parked in a book. To give a sense of Jennifer’s family background, imagine a thief breaking into her family home, ascertaining from the deafening silence that the coast is clear, only to find the entire family sprawled out in different positions in the lounge room, all lost in their own book worlds. The thief exits, disappointed and unnoticed.

Armed with an obsession for the miniature, Jennifer began her foray into writing in primary school by producing tiny illustrated books (commonly known today as zines) of poetry and fragments of stories. Jennifer’s favourite books as a child were adventures with strong female protagonists like Alice in Wonderland and Pippi Longstocking. At the age of 10, the best thing ever was being a finalist in Taronga Zoo’s short story competition and seeing her story about seals pinned up in the Zoo’s foyer.

Jennifer studied 3 Unit English at high school and as a means of procrastination started writing a novel. By the third chapter she realised she had no idea how it all worked and reluctantly returned to her studies. Jennifer believes reading is essential, and writing and being read is a kind of conversation. As a teenager, if Jennifer ever had something to say she would make a zine and give them away to friends and receive immediate feedback in some form or another. After finishing high school and refusing to study Creative Writing or English Literature for fear that she would stop liking books, Jennifer opted for Political Science. She did contemplate Neuroscience but realised that her curiosity might not be satisfied by studying one subject. Writing, however, was an excellent excuse to be interested in everything.

Jennifer lived in the Inner West of Sydney for seven years getting a few things published here and there before coming out of the closet and announcing to the world that writing would be her profession. Jennifer moved to a little town in the Illawarra called Austinmer to avoid Sydney’s rising rents and began working away on a few different projects. She soon fell madly in love with the area, and the rich labour history and compelling landscape of the Illawarra became the background for Jennifer’s first novel The Diamond Anchor. The Diamond Anchor is a story of a woman who runs a pub in a small coal-mining town and her relationship with her best friend who escapes to travel overseas. It’s about home and what it means to stay in one place. Jennifer planned the whole book in her head while travelling herself, hitch-hiked around the world to exotic places like Turkey, landed in Alice Springs and started writing.

How Dya Get This Far

While overseas, Jennifer started telling people she was going to move to Alice Springs. Everyone took her seriously so she felt a certain obligation to go. She promised herself it would only be for six months, but has been here over two years and has no intention of leaving.

 

The Nuts and Bolts

Travelling and hitching has been an endless source of material for Jennifer’s writing. Hitch-hiking is a great way to pick up stories because you see a side of people’s lives that they usually keep hidden. There is a real intimacy to sharing a car with someone for a long period of time. Jennifer is a great one for sitting around in public spaces, eavesdropping and watching people. She believes you can get some amazing dialogue if you sit quietly by yourself and pretend you’re not listening.

Over the last five years of writing professionally, Jennifer has managed to avoid any kind of institutional training. She does attend a few one day writing workshops and sometimes reads books about writing, though more in search of people with the same symptoms – to find some reassurance that she is not alone in this world with this specific kind of madness. Although Jennifer gets frequent gigs as a freelance writer she’s not quite making a living from her writing and believes that may not happen for another 10 years, but she considers herself stubborn enough to stick it out.

Although Alice is far away from the establishment of literary Australia, Jennifer feels it is a good place for writers to work because you can be really focused and retreat from the world whilst being part of a very supportive community. Jennifer believes that Alice writers punch above their weight, producing works full of vitality and strength, especially the poets simmering away under the surface. Jennifer describes Alice as ’social conflict heaven’ and a great source of material for her writing.

 

Jennifer’s debut novel has recently been accepted for publication by University of Queensland Press (UQP), only the third publisher to look at the work. Most manuscripts are repeatedly rejected before they find a soft place to land. Jennifer attributes her good fortune to meeting the publisher face to face at an NT Writers’ Centre Meet the Publisher weekend last year and believes the personal contact was crucial. These days, big publishing companies are less likely to take a risk on an unknown writer and prefer to go with already established writers that are guaranteed to make profits.

For UQP it’s a huge decision, as the small company only take on a couple of new writers a year for their fiction list. The press has a history of nurturing emerging talents such as David Malouf and Kate Grenville. UQP have appointed an editor that will work with Jennifer for the next few months to get The Diamond Anchor as perfect as possible before publication. Although daunted, she is looking forward to getting her teeth back into the manuscript with a reader’s perspective and professional feedback.

Jennifer believes in celebrating her rejections, and has been keeping all her rejection slips to use as wallpaper in case she can one day afford to move out of her car and into a house. I’ve got a feeling she might need to use paint.

 

Jennifer Mills’ website is at www.jenjen.com.au.

The Diamond Anchor will be published by UQP in April 2009.