Alice Pung: Write More Than You Talk About Writing
Alice Pung OAM is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022. Learn more at www.alicepung.net.
Alice Pung (Photo credit: Yoshitomo Sonoda)
In this post, Alice discusses how personal some of her writing surprises were, why writers should do more writing and less talking, and more.
Name: Alice Pung
Literary agent: Clare Forster, Curtis Brown
Book title: One Hundred Days
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: October 2023
Genre/category: Psychological Thriller
Previous titles: Unpolished Gem, Lucy and Linh, Her Father’s Daughter
Elevator pitch for the book: Karuna, 16 and pregnant, finds herself locked up in the 14th floor of a Housing Commission flat. Stuck inside for endless hours Karuna battles her mother for a sense of power over her own life. As the due date draws ever closer, the question of who will get to raise the baby—who it will call Mum—festers between them. A taut psychological thriller imbued with heart and humor.
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What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to explore the dynamics between love and control, and to what extent we can control our children through love. What point do we see our children as autonomous human beings capable of making the right choices?
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
One Hundred Days took around four years, from start to finish. I always knew that Karuna’s mother would lock her up in the flat, and I always had a clear-eyed vision of the ending (and indeed, wrote that about a month after the first chapter).
We meet Karuna in the claustrophobic bedroom and bed that she shares with her mother, and at the end of the novel she’s finally outside. The whole process for me then was to work out how to get her to this physical, psychological, and emotional freedom.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
What I didn’t anticipate was how funny Grand Mar’s character was, until I heard the Australian edition of the audiobook, read by the stella actress Sun Park, who is Korean Australian. She imbued such a feral vitality to the woman that made me actually shift to rally for her instead of my protagonist!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Yes, from the onset I knew Karuna was going to be locked up, but little did I know that world events would mean that everyone in my city (Melbourne, Australia) would be locked up at the time I was doing my final edits to this book.
The other major surprise was that during the completion of the book, I became pregnant with my only daughter—and then had to move in with my parents, at the ripe old age of 39! So this added extra intensity and authenticity to some of the scenes, because parents—they can make you feel 16 again quite quickly!
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Working class Asian-Australian characters are few and far between in literature, as are pregnant teenage protagonists. People usually make assumptions about these characters based on fearmongering in the media, and so I hope readers will see the full personhood of these diverse lives, no less intelligent, valuable, or insightful.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
The same as the Nike slogan: Just do it. Write more than you talk about it instead of the inverse. I have never seen any other profession so obsessed with talking!
You don’t see accountants discuss ad nauseum the accounting process, or lawyers talk about writing briefs—the practice is in just doing it. Once you’ve done it, then you’ll have something to discuss.