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A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists by Jane Rawson: 9 Feb, 2017

It's 1997 in San Francisco. Simon and Sarah are on a quest to stand in every 25-foot square of the United States at least once. Decades later, in Australian, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River. She’s sick of being broke and alone. Caddy’s future changes when her friend, Ray, finds some well-worn maps—including one of San Francisco. Their lives connect with those of Simon and Sarah in ways that are both unexpected and profound.

A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists was the winner of the Most Underrated Book of 2014.

Jane Rawson will join us for a Q&A on Thursday, 9 February between 8 and 9pm. Please leave any questions you have below. (And discuss the book at your leisure!)

Want to buy A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists? Receive 10% off when purchasing it from Readings at State Library Victoria. To receive the discount online, enter the promo code BOOKCLUB in the promo code box during online checkout. To receive the discount at our State Library bookshop, simply mention the Thursday night book club at the counter.

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Public servants, bankers and bureaucrats often make the best writers (Kafka, Borges, Faulkner, Melville, Eliot). How does Jane's writing life at work relate to her creative writing life at home.

Hello Louise! How lovely to see you here. For my whole creative writing life I’ve also had a full-time non-creative writing job. Sometimes I think it would be great to be a full-time author, but I’m pretty sure having a paid job keeps my mind in balance. Being an author is such an emotionally febrile thing – the constant longing for approval, the constant flailing about between over-confidence and utter despair about your writing. Having a job where my success is measured in whether I show up or not is a nice balance. Plus, I get paid. That means I’m free to write whatever I want without having to think about whether it will sell (and generally the things I write are not very commercial). Being a professional writer has taught me some skills that are very useful for creative writing – meet the deadline, keep it clear and succinct, remember your audience, don’t stress too much about the first draft (just get the words on the page). These have all helped me get novel writing done even though I have to spend most of my time not writing novels. They’ve also affected my style; whether beneficially or not I couldn’t say. My books are kind of short. As you’ve noted, a fair bit of my work has been in bureaucracies, and that’s also provided content for my fiction: ‘Formaldehyde’, ‘A wrong turn…’ and my short story, ‘In registry’ (published in Sleeper s Almanac) all strongly feature the minutiae of bureaucracy. I find process – particularly the process of getting something approved by people who don't want to be blamed for anything – quite inspiring.

Ooh, please can I post a question even though I'm a bit late?! I read this quote from Jane on SLV's #booksonthursday twitter feed and I'm dying to know the answer (assuming the questions weren't rhetorical): “What happens to the ideas you have but never do anything with? What happens to all your misplaced dreams?” Please tell!

I'm sneakily here to answer this, and the answer is: you'll have to read the book! This is what 'A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists' is all about.

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