The Distance Between Dreams: In Conversation with Emily Paull

I’m really excited to introduce you to Emily Paull, whose novel The Distance Between Dreams is out in the world this week.

Emily Paull is a Western Australian librarian, author and book reviewer. Having formerly worked in bookselling, Emily is an avid reader and a big supporter of the WA writing community who regularly moderates author interviews around Perth. In 2019, her debut collection of short fiction, Well-Behaved Women, was published by Margaret River Press. Her novel The Distance Between Dreams was shortlisted for the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award. When she’s not writing, she can often be found with her nose in a book.

I’m particularly excited to pick up my pre-ordered copy of The Distance Between Dreams because I had the privilege of reading an early manuscript draft; I can’t wait to hold the published version in my hands and celebrate its official launch.

Emily kindly agreed to chat to me about The Distance Between Dreams, her writing practice and creative process, as well as a few of her favourite things.

Writing

How/when did you discover that writing was something you wanted to do/loved doing?

I don’t know that there was ever really one moment of discovery. One day, I would have just picked up a pen and started writing. But I have known since primary school that I wanted to write a book. I have always loved books and bookstores and libraries and stories.

The thing is, and maybe this says something about the way the Arts are viewed in Australia, that for the longest time I did not view writing as something I could do as a career. I always wanted to be something else for a day job, and then write as well. Some careers I have considered over the years: doctor and writer, Japanese teacher and writer, professional Tae Kwon Do instructor and writer… those are the memorable ones that make me laugh now to look back on them.

These careers usually reflect what else I was interested in at the time. (The doctor was when I was very young and had been given a plastic doctor’s kit for Christmas. And yes, I did get all the way to my black belt exam for Tae Kwon Do, but I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for the actual exam so I’m stuck at the Brown Belt White Stripe level forever I guess…)

I can vividly remember sitting in one of the science labs in my high school at lunch time with a friend in around year 10 or 11 and talking about what we wanted to study when we left school. I was trying to convince her she’d be really great as a publisher or editor because she read so much. The more I tried to talk her into it the more I realised maybe this was actually what I wanted to do— to have books and writing be the focal point of my life.

So I went to uni and studied History and Creative writing, did my Honours year focussing on WA Literature, worked at a bookshop for a while and wrote LOTS, went back to uni to study Publishing as a Grad Dip, realised I didn’t want to move to Melbourne for work, wrote some more, moved to a different bookshop where my main clientele were librarians, remembered that I really LOVE libraries, did my Masters in Information Science and (takes a big breath) wrote another draft of my book.

Where do you write?

I have my own office in our house now, which is lined with mismatched book cases and the desk is starting to get crowded out with piles of books I want to read or I’m supposed to be reviewing. I use a laptop most of the time. Sometimes I move to my reading chair but that can be dangerous, and I have been known to accidentally take a nap.

Do you prefer writing a first draft, or developing and editing subsequent drafts?

That really depends on how the writing is going at the time. Whenever I can find that flow state, that’s my favourite part of the writing process. So at the moment I am re-writing the third or fourth draft of my next project (also historical fiction) and there are sections where I almost feel like I’m reading, and my fingers fly along the keyboard because the story is so vivid to me. But at other times it can feel like a real slog—something is not working but I don’t always know exactly what. I hate those moments the worst and either kind of moment can happen in a first draft or in a twentieth.

What keeps you writing?

I’m an addict. If I could stop I would … no, that’s not true.

I did ‘retire’ once. It would have been 2019/2020 I guess, after my book of short stories came out. The book that would become The Distance Between Dreams had been rejected so many times that it didn’t seem viable anymore and I didn’t feel like I had any more ideas. I didn’t want to write ever, I just wanted to read. I wondered if maybe I only had one book in me, so I half-jokingly told people I was retired from writing. I took a few months off. Refilled the well. One day, an idea hit me like a lightning strike. During the Covid lockdowns when the library I was working at was closed to the public I took six weeks off and smashed out a whole book and I was really proud of it. The feeling I had while I was writing that book is what keeps me writing.

Plus the people in the writing community are my people and I want to be allowed to stay and talk about books with them always.

What do you do when you don’t feel like writing, or the words aren’t coming easily?

If I am being honest, probably have a tantrum.

Going for a walk is usually a good option too, but sometimes you just need to know when to call it a day and come back to the desk another time. Often your brain works on those tangled knots of story problems in your subconscious so not forcing things and waiting for the solution to come to you is better for your mental health over all.

I’ve also found talking through problems with non-writers to be surprisingly helpful. First of all you have to explain the problem in a way that makes sense to another person so it forces you to see your work through someone else’s eyes. And second of all, they aren’t hindered by the knowledge of what’s cliché and what’s trite and what’s a trope. One of the solutions I used in the historical book I’m working on now came from my partner’s brother, and it was beautiful in its simplicity.

The Distance Between Dreams

Can you tell us a little about what The Distance Between Dreams is about?

The Distance Between Dreams is a work of historical fiction set in Fremantle, Western Australia, during the second world war. It’s kind of a wrong side of the tracks love story. It’s about Winston, a young working class guy who lives a very simple, practical life by necessity with his parents. One day, his best mate Lachie drags him along to work at a big party being held in the rich part of East Fremantle and there, he meets this young woman named Sarah. She’s fun-loving and a bit dramatic – in fact she wants to be an actress—and she is the first person who encourages Winston to believe that he could be more than just a labourer, and that life could be about more than just getting by.

But Sarah’s father, who owns this very successful cigarette factory, reveals to Winston that he knows Winston’s father and that there’s this big secret between them that means he and Sarah can’t be together. So he runs away, the Second World War starts, and Winston finds himself in Singapore in 1942 when the Japanese invade…

What was the initial inspiration or motivation behind The Distance Between Dreams?

I really like this idea that books are inspired by a couple of completely disparate things coming together in a beautiful way. For The Distance Between Dreams, there were a few elements that fed into it. The first was that I had been learning Japanese for most of my schooling, and at the time when I started writing this book waaaaaay back in 2008 I was doing Japanese for my TEE, and my family took a trip to Japan.

The second was that my Year 12 history class had an excursion to the Army Museum in Fremantle and they had these big displays that were, for example, inside an air raid shelter, in a medical tent, inside a POW camp on the Thai Burma Railway – which I had never heard of before, by the way. (The Narrow Road to the Great North is an amazing book but it wouldn’t come out until 2013.)

The final element was this CD that I traipsed around Japan looking for. This was in the MySpace era, if you remember that, and you could go to band’s pages and listen to their music, and I was sort of following a trail of musicians along just listening to some really interesting stuff. I can’t even remember the path that led to them but I discovered a band called Search/ Rescue and I wanted their album, but Mills Records in Fremantle couldn’t order it in. I searched the shops in Japan until I found it. Listening to it back home in Australia, the track listings seemed to be telling me a story, using these other things that were in my head. That ‘story’ was the loose frame I wrote the first draft to.

What drew you to writing historical fiction?

I was just thinking about this the other day. The first historical fiction book that made its mark on me was Somewhere Around the Corner by Jackie French. I also used to really like the My Story series, which were diaries from the points of view of people living through historical turning points. I guess I like the way that historical fiction shows you what’s changed but also what is exactly the same as it was in the past, and the fact that some of the best stories don’t need to be completely made up, they’re already in existence in the past. Plus researching feels a little like being a detective, which is fun.

What piece of research did you find particularly fascinating?

I wouldn’t necessarily say fascinating, because it’s a bit horrible, but researching the ways that sexual assault trials were handled in the early 20^th century was a real eye opener. For example, the burden of proof was on the victim to say that they weren’t in any way asking for it or responsible for leading the accused on… actually to be honest, it doesn’t really feel like much has changed either which is so awful.

I enjoyed learning about the history of the South Fremantle football club (my brother was my research consultant there) and about the Services Canteen in the old Tramways Building down near the Round House, and the dances people used to have in the middle of the war. I also really liked that even though the American submarines being based in Fremantle was supposed to be some big secret, it seemed like it was a very poorly kept one.

Why did you choose Fremantle and nearby suburbs as the setting for the parts of the story set in Australia?

If you’ve been to Fremantle, you’ll know that it’s a place with character. The buildings still wear the semblances of their past selves, it’s very easy to imagine what it might have been like there in years gone by. But it was also a busy place during the Second World War, in that it was a very active port, and as I’ve said, there were American submariners in town. I spent a lot of time in Fremantle as a teenager as well, so I think the character of it caught my imagination first, and once I learned more about the place, I was hooked.

Which character were you particularly drawn to and why?

I started with Winston. His point of view was the first one that came to me. But Sarah was the character who it was trickiest to get right. She’s not always likeable, her sense of bravado and always being ‘on’ despite what she might really be feeling make her seem like she’s not very nice sometimes. It’s tough writing a love interest when your early readers keep telling you they don’t understand why your main character likes her, let me tell you! But I did a lot of digging to learn more about why she was like that, and I hope I finally got it right. Sarah is a character for every young woman who has ever been told she is too much!

My favourite minor character is Lachie Bell … he was just the most fun to write.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing The Distance Between Dreams?

Writing about things that I hadn’t experienced using only what research materials I could find on the internet, probably. Not everyone has the funds to fly overseas to walk the places where wars were fought for example (and I don’t know that I would be able to handle it either…) I had to use newspapers, articles, novels, memoirs, movies, and more than a bit of my own imagination to write the fourth part of the book set on the Thai Burma Railway. With most things, you can dig deep and think ‘I have not experienced this but I can find an experience that might translate’ but for that level of suffering and endurance and human spirit… I could never. I just hope I’ve done it justice in my own way.

What was the time frame between a) the initial idea and a complete draft and b) finishing your manuscript and holding a printed copy in your hands?

Hmmm let’s do some quick maths. I think I would have started it in April 2008… I have no idea when I finished my first draft but let’s say it was probably about a year. I probably printed it out right away then and there, that first draft. There have been a lot of drafts since then too, but in the last five or 6 years I stopped printing every one and I work off an iPad now if I need to compare copies.

I held a copy of my book in its published form for the first time in December 2024 so 16 and a half years. When it comes out in April it will be 17 years.

 

What’s next?

Hopefully another book! I’m working on a book called The Good Daughter which is about a twenty something year old woman from a good family in Subiaco in the years before the First World War breaks out. She believes that it’s her lot in life to be the daughter who doesn’t marry and stays home to look after her parents as they age, but then she falls in love, both with a man who owns a bookshop, and with writing and reading and the possibilities they offer her as the world descends into conflict.

I hope someone will want to publish this one too.

A Few of Your Favourite Things

Who inspires or has made a difference in your life and why?

Wow, there are so many possible answers I could give … I love Margaret Atwood, she’s the beacon in my writing life. I would be very lucky indeed to have a career like hers.

If you could write a letter to your 12-year-old self, what would you say to her?

I don’t know … I’d want to warn her that there were some really hard times ahead and let her know that one day she will understand herself a lot better but if I went back and gave her spoilers, I worry that she wouldn’t become the person I am today. Maybe I’m feeling optimistic at the moment, but I do think that the tough things I’ve had to work through have mostly proved to be worth it.

What book has had a lasting impact on you and why?

I just did a post on my Instagram about all the ‘touchstone’ books that inspired me while I wrote The Distance Between Dreams so I know there are a few that have had a very profound impact, but I have to go cliché and say that Pride and Prejudice is my go to book of choice. Why? For a start, the trouble that Jane Austen would have had to go through to publish any of her books, and the way that she probably had to choose writing over having the kind of life that would have been expected for her… but also it’s just a well-crafted love story, it’s got emotional depth, and the dynamic between Mr and Mrs Bennett is comedy gold.

Any final words for other creatives?

At the moment this is my big crusade—if you want to be an artist in Australia, support Australian arts. Buy Australian books, recommend Australian films and TV shows and plays and books and music to your friends. The biggest book on BookTok probably doesn’t need your Instagram post but for debut Aussie author whose book you read and loved that kind of thing means the world.

Find out more about Emily Paull on her website.

Order a copy of The Distance Between Dreams from Fremantle Press’s website or grab a copy from anywhere good books are sold.