Ten Terrifying Questions with Gina Rushton!

Gina Rushton is a journalist. Her reporting has appeared in Australian Associated Press, BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, The Australian, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Crikey, Business Insider Australia and The West Australian. Her first book is The Most Important Job In The World, an investigation into the contradictions of choice and the mythology of motherhood.

Today, Gina Rushton is on the blog to take on our Ten Terrifying Questions! Read on …

Gina Rushton

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

I was born, raised, schooled and still live in the inner west of Sydney.

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

When I was twelve I wanted my mum to let me be a girl who shopped at Supré, at eighteen I wanted to be smart and now I’m about to turn 30 and I just want to be a better dinner party host.

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

Most of them! I thought morality was binary in a way that is embarrassing to me now. I was loyal to a fault to people I’d deemed good and disinterested in learning more about people I thought were careless or cruel. I seemed to be blind to the fact that other people were learning from their mistakes just as I was. I’d like to think I’m now more comfortable with the idea that we are all flawed and capable of cutting each other some slack.

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?

I read The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison when I was about 22 and it exposed me to a kind of writing that could be precise without shunning vulnerability. I cherished that. Then, I think the first collection of essays I read that felt as impressively cohesive as I found novels to be was Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays.

While I was reporting on reproductive rights I found myself unable to consume any art about the topic because I needed emotional distance from it. I couldn’t even watch The Handmaid’s Tale! I later discovered a series of paintings that offered a kind of belated solace and reminder of what it all meant. Portuguese artist Paula Rego created the Abortion Series in 1998 after a referendum to legalise the procedure in her country failed. I was so moved by these images of backyard abortions. I felt like all these quotes I had spent years gathering from legislators and healthcare professionals and patients about how criminalising something doesn’t stop it, it just makes it less safe, were captured in her pastels. I guess it didn’t directly help me develop as a writer but it certainly validated a huge part of my journey in becoming a person who would consider writing a book.

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

Well firstly, I could never write fiction and I regard people who do so as wizards. It is a magical process that I hope remains totally opaque to me. Aptitude aside, I think that I’m drawn to non-fiction because it can challenge you in very practical ways. It can change how you live and how you treat others. I had very little exposure to feminist ideas until I left high school and all of the thinking on the page in my book is courtesy of the thinkers I was exposed to in non-fiction. I think it tries to make something substantial out of a curiosity about other people.

6. Please tell us about your latest book!

The book is about the decision of whether to have a child. So, it is really a book about everything we love and fear in ourselves, in each other and in the world as it is and as it will be. It is about love, labour, hope, fear, legacy, gender and ambient dread.

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

It is funny because I think the book will probably appeal to angsty middle-class millennials like me but I hope that is the very readership who feels most uncomfortable and interested in making something legible from their hope and fear by the end of it. The people I interviewed do a good job of this. I was reading recently about a landscape architect who will use oyster reefs to mitigate the storm surges and tidal flooding caused by climate change by slowing the movement of water. ‘There’s no more natural nature,’ she told the New Yorker. ‘Now it’s a matter of design.’ I remember finding it simultaneously depressing and inspiring. I guess I hope I’ve struck that balance somewhere in my book where I’m validating an anxiety about the future without letting myself or readers off the hook for being a huge sook about it.

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

Helen Garner. She is forensic, which I value as a reporter and curious, which we can all delight in as readers. She makes finding the perfect description seem effortless, as though if any of us looked closely enough we could have done so ourselves!

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

I honestly didn’t think I would have the privilege of writing a book so now that is done, my only goal is to shut up until I find something else useful to research or compelling to write about.

10. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

I am not the first person to say this, but you really do need to write as though no one you love or respect will ever read it. It feels selfish at the time, but readers shouldn’t have to wade through a self-conscious pile of crap because you were too cowardly to cut a clean path for them. Also, don’t try to write a book in nine months.

Thank you for playing!

—The Most Important Job In The World by Gina Rushton (Pan Macmillan Australia) is out now.

The Most Important Job In The World

by Gina Rushton

Should we become parents? It's a question that forces us to reckon with what we love and fear most in ourselves, in our relationships, and in the world as it is now and as it will be.

When Gina Rushton admitted she had little time left to make the decision for herself, the magnitude of the choice overwhelmed her. Her search for her own 'yes' or 'no' only uncovered more questions to be answered. How do we clearly consider creating a new life on a planet facing catastrophic climate change? How do we reassess the gender roles we have been assigned? How do we balance...

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