Ask the Author: Cath Ferla
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Cath Ferla
Resilience and Belief are my two big mantras. 1) Resilience in writing means being prepared to put your work out there, have it criticised, adjusted, rejected and commented on. Take a positive rather than a defensive attitude to criticism and you may improve your work. 2) Belief. By this I mean belief in yourself, in your work and in the process. Believing in myself meant making the effort to grind away and finish the thing, even when the plot strands felt like a pile of pick-up-sticks. Believing in my book meant that I continued to believe in it, even after rejections. Believing in the editorial process meant that I listened to the questions, suggestions and concerns of my editors in a constructive way, rather than defensively; I was able to open my mind and find the new layers of meaning that have made Ghost Girls the book it is.
Cath Ferla
I am a writer and, like most writers, I also have another profession – teaching. My primary interest and experience is in teaching English as an Acquired Language (EAL). I’ve taught English in Beijing, Sydney and Melbourne. During a stint at a language college in Sydney, I became aware that one of my students was not who she purported to be. She was a ‘fraud’, sitting in on another student’s classes so that student could maintain her visa credits. I never found out where the other student was but my story mind ticked over… and that was the kernel for Ghost Girls.
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