Emerging Writers Series: Rachel Morton
“Essentially, I do think this book is about how you live when you have ghosts in your past that you do not know what to do with. We all have ghosts, and they can be anything, and we need to learn how to continue to live, both with the ghosts and in spite of them.”
Rachel Morton’s debut, The Sun Was Electric Light (2025, UQP) won the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. It’s an introspective read, questioning what it means to belong, how we haunt ourselves, and the process of returning as a means of escapism, but also release. It’s one of those books that asks a lot of questions and brushes against the answers, inviting readers to explore their own perspective of the themes it explores.
I was delighted to get the chance to chat with Rachel about her work, her writing process and to unpack the way she approached the story, what it means to her, and what she hopes others will take away from it.
I'd love to start by learning a little about you! Can you tell me more about yourself and your writing journey?
My writing journey started with reading, of course, and I didn’t really try to write anything creatively until I wrote my first poem at fourteen. I remember a feeling of magic in that moment, and from then on, I kept trying to return to that feeling of fireworks that I had experienced. It took many years, and it was very frustrating – why didn’t my writing have the same feeling as the poems and books that I read? But I was determined.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I was very lucky – within the space of a couple of months, two separate people told me about a book on writing called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I read that book, and it changed my writing process completely. She is a Zen person and also a writer, and she emphasises writing as a practice for your life, rather than as a means with which to ‘get’ things. She says you have to allow yourself to write badly, and you have to give yourself the freedom to do that, but also that you need to cultivate a devotion and consistency to your craft, like, I will continue to write no matter what.
I followed her teachings faithfully, and then spent another decade just practising, trying to apply what she taught about letting go, following the mind, etc. Finally, an internal voice told me that it was time to write a novel, which was a very unexpected thing, but by then, with the solidity of my writing practice under me, I was wise enough to say yes.
Congrats on The Sun Was Electric Light winning the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Unpublished Manuscript! Can you share the journey from first draft to prize winner – how did winning the award reshape your perspective on this book?
Thank you! The journey from draft to winning was exactly the same as the journey of writing during the years earlier. Even though I had never written fiction before, I had been practising writing for so long that I knew what to do—just write every day and keep doing it. I learnt how to write fiction by doing it, and I promised myself that I would finish the novel, even if it was very bad.
That promise to myself was very important, because the novel was very bad for most of the time I was writing it, and if I had been trying to write something that other people thought was good, I would have given up. I actually used the VPLA’s submission date as a deadline, and I told myself I had to submit whatever I had done by then. That is why awards for unpublished writers are so important, I think. They give us encouragement and a place to submit!
To win was a huge surprise. Since I had never shown my writing to anyone before, aside from a handful of poems, I had no concept of whether my writing was ‘good’ or not. I knew I liked it, but I didn’t think anyone else would. So winning the award gave me encouragement, that is for sure.
What inspired you to explore the idea of ‘returning’ as both solace and reckoning in The Sun Was Electric Light?
The concept of returning is very interesting to me, and one that I will keep exploring, probably for many years. I like to think of novels as maps of the psyche, and all the characters within them are aspects of ourselves, interacting with each other, undoing knots, growing, and being transformed.
In this case, the concept of returning was important because Ruth had gone out into the world, looking for something specific, which she didn’t find. So she needed to ‘return’ to herself, and in this case, the lake represented a deep inner part of herself that she had abandoned, or forgotten about.
Ruth’s emotional ‘flatness’ sometimes reads like a deliberate narrative distance. Was distancing Ruth’s voice from her own feelings a conscious technique, and how did that choice shape the novel’s pacing and intimacy?
I was interested in being right there with Ruth, in her mind, experiencing things as she is experiencing them. And I wanted to watch her thoughts and document them and not write over the top of them. So I found it interesting to watch this, and to see that Ruth’s mind was constantly watching her own feelings and watching the things outside her and watching the interaction of the two – of her internal world with her external world. To me, that is the essence of being a human being, that interaction of our feelings with the physical world, the way one impacts the other and vice versa. In writing, I always try to capture exactly what it is like to be a human being, not the ‘idea’ we have of what it is like, but what it is really like.
So I was trying to stay really present with her – to be with her, one thought at a time. That was a fascinating process to me – I watched her mind move, shift, change, and contradict itself, sometimes all in one paragraph! But isn’t that how life is? When I watch my own mind, I’m the same.
This was such a unique choice of setting. What inspired you to choose Guatemala and the lake to set the novel?
I lived in Guatemala for two years in my twenties, but my life was very different from Ruth’s, and I lived in Guatemala City. I visited the lake a lot, though, and it was a very powerful place. After I came back to Australia, the lake stayed with me in a very real way and became a place in my psyche.
When I started writing the novel, it was because I had a recurring image come to me – that of a woman standing in front of a concrete house at the lake. It appeared to me over a few weeks while I was doing other things, often while I was doing housework! I knew that there was a novel behind that image – it felt charged with energy. And since I had loved the lake, it was a pleasure to be able to return to it, even if only in my writing.
How did you decide what to reveal (and withhold) about Ruth’s past, and what did you intend/hope that narrative gap to communicate?
I’m interested in why we make the decisions we make, and how the past can live in the present in our behaviour, even without our knowing it. When I started writing the novel, my preoccupation was the sense that our lives seem to have their own trajectory, almost separate from our own personal will. The book ended up not being about that, really, but I do sense that thread underneath, directing the narrative.
All of the characters behave in confusing ways. There are a lot of things implied about the past, and nothing is ever really explained. For example, there is something strange going on between the mother and Eduardo, but we don’t really know what. Is he not her own son? Does she have psychological problems that mean she can’t really love him the way she should? It isn’t answered. And this mystery or muddiness is true for Carmen, Emilie, Dwain, and, of course, Ruth.
My goal in the novel was to observe behaviour, rather than explain. We know that Ruth had already left her home in Australia in one go and moved to New York, but why? Why does she keep running away? Why is Carmen so erratic like that? This is how life seems to me – we observe behaviour, our own and that of others, and we don’t really understand it. But to me, there is the certainty that they are behaving like that because of their past, things that have happened, and their own subconscious is attempting a self-correction, however dysfunctional, in a desire to survive and maybe even one day thrive.
By leaving it open and not explaining their behaviour away, I wanted to create space to wonder about this. Just like in life, we can either say, ‘They’re behaving in terrible ways,’ or we can try to understand; ‘Why are they behaving like that?’ I wanted to leave the question open for the reader to interact with it and come to their own conclusions.
Essentially, I do think this book is about how you live when you have ghosts in your past that you do not know what to do with. We all have ghosts, and they can be anything, and we need to learn how to continue to live, both with the ghosts and in spite of them.
I often like to ask writers about the creative process or any creative philosophies you have that might lean into when creating new work. Do you have any thoughts or ideas you’d be happy to share with us?
There is the idea of writing as a practice, which I talked about earlier. That is number one. The idea that I will write, and I will write my whole life, no matter what else happens or doesn’t happen. Allowing myself to write badly, allowing myself to write freely, and allowing something underneath to emerge – that is important to me.
Then there is the concept of aliveness. Maybe vividness or presence are better words. To me, reading is a physical experience that you absorb with your whole body, not just with your head, and good writing can make me present to my life in a way that nothing else can. So when I write, I always aim to be completely present with each sentence, not being even one sentence ahead or behind. That is hard, and it’s why writing needs to be a practice, to try to achieve this.
Lastly, I get all sorts of inspiration on philosophies from other artists. A particular inspiration is the Irish fiddle player Martin Hayes. He has a lot of ideas on creativity that resonate with me. He aims for simplicity over everything, simplicity and feeling. And being present is also a preoccupation of his, to be right with the note he is playing, rather than being distracted. When I am listening to his music, I feel that presence, and I think that is the most important job of a creative person, because your frame of mind will transfer to the person listening (or reading!).
And lastly, what’s next for you? Are you working on anything new at the moment?
It has been a wonderful thing to discover that I can write fiction. Since writing the first novel, I have discovered that I need to have a novel to work on at all times, to have a story that I live alongside, putting parts of myself inside that don’t find room in my actual life. I have a vision of novels being stacked inside me, one on top of the other, and with each new novel I have to dig deeper than I did with the one before. So I am currently trying to excavate novel number two! But as always, it’s a practice, so who knows what will happen with it, and that is fine.
Read our review of The Sun Was Electric Light here.
Rachel Morton is a writer living on Eastern Maar/Gunditjmara Country in south-west Victoria. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin Quarterly, The Moth Magazine and various other publications. Rachel was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry. The Sun Was Electric Light is her first novel and won the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
