Q&A with Rob Johnson
“It’s nice when Bart sings but also strange because the house gets smaller, like it’s taking a big breath. You can lean against the walls and feel them pushing back against you.”
~ Bart by Rob Johnson
The title of your piece, Bart, is the name of a quite vocal ghost that haunts the family home in your story. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your piece?
Bart is an actual figure in my family’s folklore. She was my mum’s imaginary friend when she was a little girl: an old woman with long white hair who lived in the laundry. Named Bart. This “imaginary friend” is so weird and so specific that we’ve long speculated Bart was actually a ghost, and I’ve always been interested in using that idea in a story. At the time I saw the callout from Aniko Press I had been jotting down some ideas for this potential story, so it gave me the extra push to write it. Mum’s chuffed!
Your story is narrated from a child’s perspective. How did you go about capturing this narrative voice and how did it influence the way you told the story?
Funnily enough the narrative voice in this story emerged as a strategy to beat writer’s block. The narrator was originally an adult, but I couldn’t seem to make it work. I kept asking myself why this person was tolerating living in this clearly haunted house, and I started having to invent all of these extra elements to justify the circumstances instead of just telling the weird spooky story I wanted to tell. So I turned to my trusty technique: when in doubt, make the narrator a child. Like anybody doing anything creative, I experience my fair amount of imposter syndrome – why am I telling this story? Who cares what I have to say? I don’t even know anything! etc. Writing from the perspective of a child began as a way to thwart these thoughts. Who’s going to accuse an innocent little kid of being an imposter? Not me, that’s for sure. However, along the way I’ve discovered this narrative voice is actually extremely interesting to me, and I’ve started to use it quite a lot in my writing. It feels very natural - I don’t have to heavily plan or wring it out of myself or anything. Maybe because I still am a little kid! At any rate it was a relief to find a voice that really clicked in my head and allowed me to tell this story in a compelling way. Hopefully I can use it forever.
As well as a fiction writer, you are also an actor and one half of the comedy duo Mantaur. How does writing for performance differ from writing short stories? What do you enjoy, or find challenging, about both forms?
Both are liberating and frustrating in different ways. The main difference for me between writing for page and stage is the expectation of collaboration. If I’m writing a sketch for a Mantaur show, for example, I’m writing with the full knowledge that whatever I put down is going to be workshopped and cajoled and improved by multiple other people in rehearsal before it’s put in front of an audience. One of the great joys of working in theatre is that other people are constantly making your ideas work better than you could have imagined. However, it does also mean the final product isn’t always exactly how you wanted it. Which is one of the main things I enjoy about writing stories - even if the story isn’t very good, it’s entirely my own creation. So I’m not a perfectionist, but I guess I’m an egomaniac?
What's the last book that made you laugh?
I’ve just started reading The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West and it’s fantastic. Serious insights and serious LOLs. However this question made me realise I’ve read pretty much nothing I would call “funny” all year. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Though I would like to mention two other recent reads that knocked my socks off: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, and The Plains by Gerald Murnane. Both completely brilliant and original, I loved them as a reader and found them very inspiring as a writer.
Rob Johnson is a writer and actor based in Sydney. He has been published by Overland, Underground, Audrey Journal and Needle in the Hay. He is a winner of the Hal Porter Short Story Prize and the Best of Times Short Story Competition, and has previously been shortlisted for the Hachette Australia and John Marsden Prize for Young Writers. He was the lead writer of live sketch comedy shows Fat On Purpose (Giant Dwarf) and The Recidivists (Red Line). As an actor, Rob's recent credits include The Torrents (Sydney Theatre Company), Rosehaven (ABC), Calamity Jane (Belvoir) and Spamalot (One Eyed Man).