Two Things I Took Note Of from “Garth Nix In Conversation with John Birmingham”
Last week, I ventured out into the streets of Brisbane to see Garth Nix in conversation with John Birmingham at the Brisbane Square Library. The in-conversation was nominally about Nix’s new book, Angel Mage, which got described as “Three Musketeers meets Joan of Arc with Angelic Magic and Kick-Ass Heroines.” As these events are wont to do, the conversation took a turn through inspirations, process, and industry lore, courtesy of two career writers digging into one another’s work and trying to figure out how they did what they did. Nix is largely a make-things-up-as-I-go-along writer, and Birmingham is not, and the disconnect in their respective approach proved fascinating. I walked away with two quotes from the event, both marked in my notebook so I wouldn’t forget them. Nix got the first of them, when talking about “research” and the slow filtering of everything he reads into his process: “We are all descendants of everything we’ve ever read.” Which is one
