Ten Terrifying Questions with Tabitha Carvan!

Tabitha Carvan is a science writer for the Australian National University and a freelance features writer on the side, focusing on issues of identity, family and pop culture. Her writing has appeared in over a dozen different publications from Crikey to Junkee; Overland to Offbeat Home; Popula to MamaMia. She lives in Canberra. Her new book is a memoir called This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch.

Today, Tabitha Carvan is on the blog to take on our Ten Terrifying Questions! Read on …

Tabitha Carvan

1. To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

I was born in Penrith in Western Sydney, raised in the Blue Mountains, and completed a quaintly-named Bachelor of Print Media (remember that?) at Macquarie University.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

At twelve, I wanted to be Lynda Day, editor of the Junior Gazette, from the British kids’ TV series Press Gang. To clarify, I didn’t want to be a newspaper editor. I wanted, very specifically, to be Lynda Day: unbowed by authority figures, unmoved by popular opinion, and unwavering in her (entirely correct) belief that she’s the best person for the job.

At eighteen, I still wanted to be Lynda Day. That is literally what I wrote in my Year 12 yearbook in answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

At thirty, I was surer than ever that I wanted to be Lynda Day, and that has not changed since. Lynda Day is a sixteen-year-old girl and I am a forty-two-year-old woman and, at this point, I am beginning to worry it might never happen.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you don’t have now?

This is such a pertinent question for my book, which is very much about interrogating all the strongly-held beliefs I had when I was eighteen! The biggest one was the idea that you have to “grow out of” loving things passionately, as part and parcel of becoming an adult. Your taste can change and mature, sure, but there’s no reason you have to do away with the kind of enthusiasm you have for things when you’re young. After all, for many people (men), it’s normal not to.

4. What are three works of art – this could be a book, painting, piece of music, film, etc – that influenced your development as a writer?

Real Gorgeous by Kaz Cooke. I read this book when I was seventeen, and it was such an honest and vulnerable account of living in a human body that it made my eyes practically pop out of my head. I found it thrilling that a writer could do that. (When I was at uni, I had the temerity to contact Kaz to ask to interview her for a writing assignment which wasn’t even going to be published and she agreed for some reason, even though I’m sure she had much better things to do with her time. What a legend.)

The “Gregor” episode of the Heavyweight podcast. Perfect storytelling and free therapy – in one 45-minute package! On the surface, it’s a very funny story about a man trying to get his CDs back from Moby, but it ends up being about nothing less than … the meaning of life? Wild.

Fleabag (all of it). So many times while watching this series, I had to pause and just sit there, gasping, because I couldn’t believe this was happening on the television. It was the first time I really understood what it means to feel “seen”, and once you’ve felt it, you can’t get enough.

5. Considering the many artistic forms out there, what appeals to you about writing non-fiction?

It is literally the only thing I am good at. I am not even joking.

6. Please tell us about your latest book!

It is a memoir which tells the story of how, as a mother stuck at home with two young kids, I developed an obsession with the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. This was extremely weird and unexpected, because I hadn’t felt this way since I was a teenager with a crush on Michael Hutchence! As I tried to understand why it was happening to me, I discovered all these other middle-aged women in the same boat, all of us having the time of our lives with this weird, new passion.

I started to interview some of these women and realised that Benedict Cumberbatch was—even to me!—the least interesting aspect of their stories. I was blown away by how, for every single one of them, finding their “thing” had transformed their lives and the way they saw themselves, sometimes in truly profound ways.

And this was the case for me, too, and yet here I was, framing this experience which was only good as weird, embarrassing and unrelatable. Unpacking that defensive impulse became the bigger story of the book as I tried to understand where women’s passions go after we leave adolescence, and what happens if we get them back.

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?

I hope it helps them to remember a time when they might have felt passionate about something—whether it was a childhood love of My Little Pony or a teenage obsession with New Kids on the Block or whatever—and reassures them that such a capacity for joy continues to exist within them. They are still capable of having that kind ridiculously good fun, they just need to exercise that capability without feeling bad about it. As Mary Oliver says, perfectly: “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

8. Who do you most admire in the writing world and why?

Taffy Brodesser-Akner for her magazine writing, specifically. Among all the Benedict Cumberbatch pictures I have above my desk, there’s also a photo of Taffy taken by the paparazzi after she finished interviewing Tom Hiddleston for a profile for GQ. She looks so happy in that photo, probably because she knows she’s got all the material she needs to write an absolutely perfect feature. Just like all her stories, that Hiddleston profile is a masterpiece in making the reader question everything they think they know about the subject, and directing them to take a long hard look at themselves instead. Whatever she writes, whether it’s about Goop or soup, it’s always about you in the end. I love it all.

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

Is it not enough that I wrote one book?! I guess I will have to write another one now.

10. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

When I first tried to write this book, I wrote a really not very good book, gave up and put the manuscript in my desk drawer. I spent about six months giving the drawer the stink-eye every time I walked past. Then one day, I finally found the courage to cautiously open the drawer and have a peek inside. And the manuscript still wasn’t good! But somehow, I now knew what I needed to do to fix it, and that’s how I wrote a better book. I don’t know what goes on inside a drawer like this while it’s clamped shut, but if you’re struggling, I recommend giving it a go.

Thank you for playing!

—This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan (HarperCollins Australia) is out now. Limited signed copies are available only while stocks last!

This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch

Limited Signed Copies Available!

by Tabitha Carvan

If you feel that sense that there is something missing from your life, some gap between who you are on the inside and who you are on the outside - then this is the book for you. This is, as the title says, not actually a book about Benedict Cumberbatch.

In fact, it's a book about women and what we love, about what happens to women's passions after we leave adolescence and how the space for joy in our lives is squeezed ever smaller as we age, and why. More importantly, it's about what happens if you subvert that narrative and simply love something like you used to...

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