By Parker McKenzie
If there was one way to describe Dr Bob Rich’s array of 19 published books, it’d be variety.
From self-help and practical skills to science fiction, the eccentric writer, psychotherapist and self-described mudsmith says environmental conservation underpins all of his writing.
“Everything I write is designed to save a future for your generation and a future worth living in, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction,” he says.
“It’s not necessarily on the surface. In nonfiction, I might have an essay that sets out what I believe in and what people should do first. In fiction I let my characters do the work.”
Having retired from his counselling service, you may have seen him around the area during the federal election when he was campaigning for the Green’s candidate Jenny Game.
Dr Rich says his journey as a writer began by chance after injuring himself playing soccer with a group of teenagers.
“In the hospital, I was bored weightless. I stole the office typewriter — in 1980 there were no computers yet — and I wrote an article for Gardening Australia magazine about my way of making mud bricks,” he says.
“It got accepted and they even paid me for it, so I asked the publisher Keith Smith if he was interested in more articles and he told me the simpler the better, so I wrote how to hammer.”
Mr Smith would go on to co-author Dr Rich’s first book, Earth Garden: How to Build Your Own House. During the 1990s, he published Woodworking for Dummies Like Me which sold 60,000 copies.
“Is not just how to build your house but why you should do things for yourself,” he says.
“Live simply and sustainably, recycled and have less of a footprint on the planet.”
He has taken Ernest Hemmingway’s advice of “write what you know about” to the extreme. From building mud bricks to writing a book on building your own home and working at the CSIRO to writing science fiction, the impressive variety in Dr Rich’s bibliography reveals a deep knowledge of a wide variety of subjects.
He says thee isn’t a huge difference between the process of creating fiction and nonfiction, and both are “like cooking.”
“A new cook needs a recipe with very clear directions. As you gain experience you can improvise, I don’t have this at the moment, I’ll put this in and adjust this way,” he says.
“A chef writes recipes and the master chef doesn’t even need recipes, he just cooks intuitively.”
He suggests starting with one or more characters and devising a situation, letting “them tell you what happens next.”
After this, write a sentence on what the book is about before expanding it to an elevator pitch where the idea can be explained in two to three minutes. Then expand it into a 1000-word synopsis and again into chapters with lists of paragraphs.
“That is guaranteed to result in a good book, probably not brilliant. As you start writing those paragraphs, you’ll find you change the order,” he says.
“You say I think I need a new character to do such and such, and then you have to go back and insert a new character.”
Dr Rich says even though the framework might be the same, the writer’s unique voice will shine through.
“People have done research on this and there is something like 12 major themes. Every story that anybody has ever thought is one of those 12 things,” he says.
“But If I say here’s an opening page of 300 Words, and I give it to a dozen people to finish, you’ll get a dozen entirely different stories because people are unique writers.”
Dr Rich says one of his favourite authors is Isaac Asimov, who inspired his own science fiction books.
“His chemistry textbook was the only science textbook I’ve ever enjoyed. He said in good science fiction, you make one unrealistic assumption and everything else would follow the science,” he says.
“In his Empire series, it was faster than light travel. Everything else is scientifically valid or can be projected from current science.”
You can find out more about Dr Bob Rich and his writing at bobswriting.com
