Kobi Simpson

“I come from a family of great storytellers, and looking back, storytelling always seems to have been my main drive, whether through writing, music, or acting.”

Heartlines explores what it means to write – from the heart and soul – and where that writing takes us. Every writer’s journey is different, so we invite you to take a moment to read, pause and reflect on what it means to shape stories for the page.

Kobi Simpson was born in South Australia and has lived in three states, many houses and occasionally a car throughout his life. He has Nunga heritage through my maternal grandfather and is a young father himself who enjoys writing in his spare time. He hopes to tell stories that live and breathe, sweeping people up and connecting them with a good story, in any medium or genre. Kobi generally writes short fiction of the sci-fi/fantasy genre and was recently a mentee in the Writing Change, Writing Inclusion project at Centre for Stories.

Centre for Stories: What do you do outside of writing?

Kobi Simpson: I raise my nearly two-year-old son, I spend time with family, I study two cert 3’s
(horticulture and conversation & land management) at TAFE, and I work one day a
week at a retail store specialising in garden supplies and sustainable home and self-
care products.

CFS: Why do you write?

KS: I almost think I write because I don’t have a choice. Even before I could write
properly myself, I’d dictate stories to my grandmother which she’d type up. Short
story assignments that were supposed to be done in a couple of pages ended up
being closer to novellas. I come from a family of great storytellers, and looking back,
storytelling always seems to have been my main drive, whether through writing,
music, or acting. Of these, writing is currently the most fulfilling, the one that provides
the most scope for play and wonder, which I always try and find even in my heavier
stories.

CFS: Who do you most want to read your work? What is your ideal audience and why?

KS: My ideal audience is whoever my work connects with. For one, I can’t really afford to
be picky at this stage. But also, as someone fascinated by the living
experience—whether that’s of humans or fungi or octopuses or aliens or creature’s
that’ve never existed and never will, or even that of a rock, a river, story itself—as
someone with all that whirling around in them, I’d find it hard to think of an ideal
audience. That being said, most of my story submissions are to speculative fiction
magazines and comps, so whoever reads those.

CFS: What inspires you to write?

KS: I think I accidentally answered some of this question in the last one. Specific stories
could come from thought experiments, places, processes, events, while the drive to
actually follow through with and finish them is, when I’m at my best, just needing to
know what happens next. I used to have trouble with inspiration, needing prompts
and a fixed amount of time to get something done or it just wouldn’t happen, but
these days I almost can’t keep up with the ideas.

CFS: What are you currently reading and why? Does this also serve as inspiration?

KS: I’m reading The Fisherman by John Langon, which is a sort of supernatural horror
response to Moby Dick (I should probably read that book at some point, seems like a
few people like it). It’s got people vomiting water filled with tadpoles who have human
eyes, which is about all you’d need to say to get me reading a book. Its beginning
and end is a story in the novel’s present, told by the main narrator, while the middle is
an oral tale told by another character of events that occurred 100 years in the past.
This nested structure is hugely inspiring, and captures something of how storytelling
tends to work that I would love to incorporate in my own fiction.

CFS: When did you decide to pursue writing and what triggered that decision?

KS: I think a lot of it was becoming a dad. I didn’t do much of anything before that, but I
found I had a whole lot more purpose and, although I was sleep deprived and time-
poor, creative energy. As I said, I’ve always been writing and telling stories, but
hadn’t done it with real intent before then. After the first six months, when I was just
too tired and mentally ill, I’ve been writing and sending stuff around pretty much
constantly. The kind words some amazing teachers had written after grading creative writing assignments and tests, which I kept ‘cos I’m secretly vain as hell, helped as
well. I read over them again and got enough of a confidence boost to jump in and
pursue writing for real.

CFS: Can you describe your experience with the Centre for Stories program?

KS: I came across the Writing Inclusion, Writing Change program on the Writing WA
website and procrastinated applying until the last week. To my surprise, I got in, and
was soon linked up with my mentor, Baran. Baran’s great; I think our brains work in
similar ways, so when I came in all scatterbrained with a handful of weird stories, no
clear direction, and a load of ADHD tics, she went, “This is all very familiar,” and off
we went. In our meetings we’ve focused a lot on the language of particular stories
I’ve brought in, and afterwards I’ll get comprehensive suggestions for edits and some
ideas for where to send them. She also introduced me to the wonders of fucking with
word placement in poems, which I had never even considered (clearly, I haven’t read
too many poetry books, but I have read Baran’s Woven Frays and it’s excellent!). When I
came in a few months ago with a couple of thousand word story that, by the next
meeting, had exploded to over ten thousand and has ended up at around twenty, she
took it in her stride.

The rest of the Centre for Stories have been great as well, letting me bring my sleeping baby in, providing some good chats and a lovely space to have the meetings in. Oh, also, Baran’s book launch was my first ever, and now I want to go to more.

CFS: What were your writing goals for the program?

KS: I think they were to develop a bit more discipline in writing, to find places to send
stories to, and to work on stories rigorously. Prior to the program and the confidence
that gave me to go to other writer’s groups, the only people who’d read my work were
my mum and partner, who are both great with words but often have better things to
do than fuss over stories about forcefully composting people or bookshelf-shaped
aliens.

CFS: Do you find that the program helped you achieve your goals?

KS: For sure. Baran helped me embrace my particular discipline, which tends to be
periods of hyper-fixation where I might write twenty thousand words in a few weeks,
followed by a burnout and then a more measured approach to tie a story together.
Through the program, I learnt of places to send my stories I would’ve had no idea of
before and, above all, I’ve had Baran to help me sharpen and improve my writing.

CFS: Based on your experiences in the writing industry, including at Centre
for Stories, what advice would you give to writers who are starting out or are unsure
where to start?

KS: I feel I’m still starting out, so whatever advice I have to give should be taken with a
generous handful of salt, but I think what’s been most important for me to remember
is two things. One is to write (and read) what fascinates, unnerves, disturbs, and
challenges you, and then be prepared for the first draft of that to be completely
underwhelming. Increasingly, I’m finding that I only really like what I’ve written after
several rewrites.

The second is to get work out there, which I’m still not great at. But I wouldn’t have
got into this program without doing that, and obviously nothing will get published if no
one but you reads it. Free competitions and magazines are good places to start I think, especially if you tend to be a bit stingy like me, but even for paid submissions it’s usually no more than what you might spend on a night out, and you might get more out of it.

Still, the best thing about writing is writing.

CFS: What will you be working on next?

KS: I’ll be finishing up my long piece, which is essentially fuelled by my distaste for paid
parking, then finishing a couple of shorter pieces still in the works. Afterwards, I might
have another crack at a long piece set in the same world as a previous short story. I’ll
keep on sending things around, I’ll go to more book launches, and see where the
wind takes me.

Writing Change, Writing Inclusion is Centre for Stories’ signature writing program for 2021 to 2024. Generously funded by The Ian Potter Foundation, Australia Council for the Arts, My Place, and Centre for Stories Founders Circle, this writing program features mentoring, hot desk, and publication opportunities for emerging writers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and/or Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.

These stories have been licensed to the Centre for Stories by the Storyteller. For reproduction and distribution of these stories, please contact the Centre for Stories.

This interview was published on April 10 2024.