PART 1
Mr Beasley, could you please tell our readers a little about yourself.
I am a barrister at the New South Wales Bar. I have been for nearly 8 years. Before that I was a solicitor from between 1988 to 1997, so I have been a lawyer for 17 years. I’ve worked in a variety of firms. I grew up in Adelaide, went to Adelaide University to do undergraduate. I did postgraduate at Sydney University. I worked mainly as a solicitor in Sydney. And then I went to the Bar here in Sydney at Wentworth Chambers.
Since going to the Bar, I’ve had two novels published. The first is Hell has Harbour Views which came out in 2001. The Ambulance Chaser came out last year in 2004. The books are about corrupt law firms and corrupt insurance companies respectively. I’m working on a sequel to the second book at the moment, when I’m not working as a barrister.
I’m married with a couple of kids.
So who are your favourite authors and which are your favourite books?
My favourite authors in terms of being an influence would be people like Carl Hiaasen, who writes black comedies set in Florida, that have got a fairly strong left-wing bent, particularly about protecting the environment. Most of the characters in his books are corrupt judges and politicians. He’s a fantastic writer, though not particularly well known in Australia. Elmore Leonard is another favourite of mine – he writes grittier crime novels in the States. They’d be the principal influences outside Australia that I like.
Inside Australia, I’m a fan of Shane Maloney, about a political adviser and then a politician set in Melbourne. A couple of his books were made for television last year, one was called The Brush Off and the other was called Stiff.
They’re the sort of people I like to read and have an influence on my writing. Also, though I won’t claim that I write anywhere as good as them, other detective writers like Raymond Chandler.
So what inspired you from working as a lawyer for so long to writing novels?
I think it’s something that happened even before I was a lawyer. I think even when I was at school, certainly from the age of 15 onwards, I was starting to really like books and got it in my head even back then that I might have a go one day at writing a novel or being some sort of creative writer.
But you finish school and you enter university, you start studying there, different things happen and you start working as a lawyer. If you’re going to tackle something as demanding as a novel, you’ve got to be ready for it and you’ve got to be determined to do it and that combination of things didn’t happen to me until I was about 32, just before I went to the Bar. 32 isn’t particularly old to be a writer, but I was getting to that stage where I thought if I didn’t give it a go now I never will.
Wanting to do it was from teenage years, but getting around to do it took a bit longer.
You wrote that your first manuscript was 10,000 pages?
That was a bit of exaggeration. The first draft was probably a slightly more over 800 pages. I hadn’t done any writing courses. I hadn’t had a career as a journalist or written any short stories, so it was all new to me. I took the approach that you should put in everything first and cut out the garbage later and I think that was the right approach. Through myself, a literary agent and editors at the publisher certainly a lot did get cut out, which makes the book a lot better.
So what were the main problems that you faced during the writing process?
Time. Time is the greatest enemy if you’re otherwise working any job. It means you’ve got to set aside time to write. But as a lawyer, it’s a pretty demanding job. It’s sort of like a 100%-type job. So it’s finding the time. Even if you’ve got the time, then you’ve got to find the energy to write, because it’s a big commitment. So time and energy, outside of commitments in the law, are the greatest obstacles. You’ve really got to be determined to do it.
And that’s why it took three years?
That’s part of why it took three years. As I said writing a novel is a bit effort. From point A to point Z in a first draft is a long journey. And then there’s the old saying, ‘books aren’t written, they’re rewritten’. Both of these novels have had more than a dozen drafts. You go over the book time and time again, in great detail, cutting out long passages, putting in new passages. At the end you’ve also got to edit typos and whatnot. So it’s a long process.
Did the second novel, The Ambulance Chaser, take less time than the first one?
Yes it did. I’m not quite sure the reasons. First book, I think, I was a little bit less confident because I didn’t have a writing contract and I thought there was a great possibility that you were wasting my time. You might be too embarrassed to ever show it to anyone. If you do, they might think it’s garbage – the chances of it getting published is pretty remote, so they are times when you sort of give up. Also I was halfway through the first when I went to the Bar. With the second book, I was much more confident. I had a publisher, they wanted me to keep writing, the first book had done well. I also took a little time off being a barrister to write more full-time so that increased the speed of getting through the second book.
Mr Beasley, could you please tell our readers a little about yourself.
I am a barrister at the New South Wales Bar. I have been for nearly 8 years. Before that I was a solicitor from between 1988 to 1997, so I have been a lawyer for 17 years. I’ve worked in a variety of firms. I grew up in Adelaide, went to Adelaide University to do undergraduate. I did postgraduate at Sydney University. I worked mainly as a solicitor in Sydney. And then I went to the Bar here in Sydney at Wentworth Chambers.
Since going to the Bar, I’ve had two novels published. The first is Hell has Harbour Views which came out in 2001. The Ambulance Chaser came out last year in 2004. The books are about corrupt law firms and corrupt insurance companies respectively. I’m working on a sequel to the second book at the moment, when I’m not working as a barrister.
I’m married with a couple of kids.
So who are your favourite authors and which are your favourite books?
My favourite authors in terms of being an influence would be people like Carl Hiaasen, who writes black comedies set in Florida, that have got a fairly strong left-wing bent, particularly about protecting the environment. Most of the characters in his books are corrupt judges and politicians. He’s a fantastic writer, though not particularly well known in Australia. Elmore Leonard is another favourite of mine – he writes grittier crime novels in the States. They’d be the principal influences outside Australia that I like.
Inside Australia, I’m a fan of Shane Maloney, about a political adviser and then a politician set in Melbourne. A couple of his books were made for television last year, one was called The Brush Off and the other was called Stiff.
They’re the sort of people I like to read and have an influence on my writing. Also, though I won’t claim that I write anywhere as good as them, other detective writers like Raymond Chandler.
So what inspired you from working as a lawyer for so long to writing novels?
I think it’s something that happened even before I was a lawyer. I think even when I was at school, certainly from the age of 15 onwards, I was starting to really like books and got it in my head even back then that I might have a go one day at writing a novel or being some sort of creative writer.
But you finish school and you enter university, you start studying there, different things happen and you start working as a lawyer. If you’re going to tackle something as demanding as a novel, you’ve got to be ready for it and you’ve got to be determined to do it and that combination of things didn’t happen to me until I was about 32, just before I went to the Bar. 32 isn’t particularly old to be a writer, but I was getting to that stage where I thought if I didn’t give it a go now I never will.
Wanting to do it was from teenage years, but getting around to do it took a bit longer.
You wrote that your first manuscript was 10,000 pages?
That was a bit of exaggeration. The first draft was probably a slightly more over 800 pages. I hadn’t done any writing courses. I hadn’t had a career as a journalist or written any short stories, so it was all new to me. I took the approach that you should put in everything first and cut out the garbage later and I think that was the right approach. Through myself, a literary agent and editors at the publisher certainly a lot did get cut out, which makes the book a lot better.
So what were the main problems that you faced during the writing process?
Time. Time is the greatest enemy if you’re otherwise working any job. It means you’ve got to set aside time to write. But as a lawyer, it’s a pretty demanding job. It’s sort of like a 100%-type job. So it’s finding the time. Even if you’ve got the time, then you’ve got to find the energy to write, because it’s a big commitment. So time and energy, outside of commitments in the law, are the greatest obstacles. You’ve really got to be determined to do it.
And that’s why it took three years?
That’s part of why it took three years. As I said writing a novel is a bit effort. From point A to point Z in a first draft is a long journey. And then there’s the old saying, ‘books aren’t written, they’re rewritten’. Both of these novels have had more than a dozen drafts. You go over the book time and time again, in great detail, cutting out long passages, putting in new passages. At the end you’ve also got to edit typos and whatnot. So it’s a long process.
Did the second novel, The Ambulance Chaser, take less time than the first one?
Yes it did. I’m not quite sure the reasons. First book, I think, I was a little bit less confident because I didn’t have a writing contract and I thought there was a great possibility that you were wasting my time. You might be too embarrassed to ever show it to anyone. If you do, they might think it’s garbage – the chances of it getting published is pretty remote, so they are times when you sort of give up. Also I was halfway through the first when I went to the Bar. With the second book, I was much more confident. I had a publisher, they wanted me to keep writing, the first book had done well. I also took a little time off being a barrister to write more full-time so that increased the speed of getting through the second book.
Maybe next holidays.
