The Sound of Butterflies

And so it begins. Again.

2011-10-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

It feels as though every time I write a new blog post I seem to be apologising for or at least acknowledging the fact I haven't been keeping this blog up to date. So I'm not going to do that this time.

What I'm going to write about is new beginnings. Because for the fifth time in my life I am starting a new novel (discounting of course all the false starts I had in my 20s when I should never have been attempting a novel, but counting my first, unpublished novel). What happened to the last one I was writing? Well, if you look to the right of this blog you'll see my 'picometer' widget which has been tracking my progress on the children's novel I was chipping away at. And guess what? I finished it. Quite a while ago actually. And it's going to be published, too, but I'll post about that in more detail at a later date. Let's just say that I surprised myself, because I am always complaining about what little time I have to write with two pre-school-aged (hence the neglected blog) but it turns out that just tapping away a few hundred words here and there actually gets you a book. Admittedly a very short book.

What this all means is that I am starting again. I have been trying to start again. But damn, I have just been reminded how damn hard beginnings are. My children's book was actually a breeze in that department. The whole idea came to me while I was out walking one day and I went home and wrote the first chapter. The voice of the story, of the main character, arrived in my head immediately, and once you have the voice, the book just writes itself really. So of course when I had my big idea for my new book, I just expected that I would sit down and out it would come. But it didn't, did it? And then I remembered how long it took me to really get started on Magpie Hall. Months actually. I even wrote about 10,000 words of a completely different book, but that one died a horrible death and Magpie Hall assembled itself from its squashed bones and guts. And it took me so long to find Rosemary's voice. I wrote so much that never made it into the book, just finding my way into her head, into her life. The result being that I knew an awful lot about her, which was a good thing, but at the time it was actually quite painful. I moaned about quite a bit on this blog, actually. In fact I started this blog as a diary of writing Magpie Hall, really. Maybe this process will bring me back to this blog as I work through things.

So. New beginnings, and lots of words to write that will never make the final cut but which will get me into the head of my character. In the meantime I am learning things about her, and her family, who I think will be quite wonderful. They're already becoming like real people in my mind, just not on the screen. I won't lie, it's an exciting time, but I just have to remind myself that each book is not necessarily as easy as the last.

Here's what I'm listening to at the moment in case you interested. Tiny Ruins' Some Were Meant For Sea. Sad and sublime. Nothing like a bit of melancholy to get me writing. (In fact, the cover of this album reminds me of my children's novel)

Upcoming Events and a Catch Up.

2011-07-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe how busy life is at the moment. My poor old blog seems to be the last thing I get to these days after looking after two kids under 5, mentoring other writers for the New Zealand Society of Authors and the Hagley Writers' Institute, judging the BNZ Short Story Awards (Novice section), serving on various boards and panels, presenting a citation at the Arts Foundation Icon Awards, being stranded by ash clouds, writing a novel for children, and launching and publicising The Silence Beyond: Selected Writings by Michael King. Twitter suits me well these days, as instead of sitting down and composing a post I can just go blah! on Twitter in thirty seconds (and you can follow me here), on everything from books I'm reading to those pesky earthquakes. But don't worry, this isn't a death of the blog announcement, it's a quick update of where I'm at, with some links, and an announcement of some upcoming events to keep me even busier.

But back to The Silence Beyond. A slightly revised version of the introduction I wrote appeared in the Listener a while back. It is available to read online here. It says everything I want to say, really. I am very happy with the book and its reception so far. I will be discussing the book, the process of assembling it, and Dad's work, with Lloyd Jones at an event in Christchurch on July 27th. More information can be found on the Christchurch Writers' Festival website. Lloyd has kindly offered to take a break from his hectic schedule, between Bougainville and Hobart, to help give the wearied book-lovers of Christchurch something to look forward to. The festival is putting on other fantastic events too, throughout August and September; information can be found on the website.

A few days after that, I will be appearing as part of Great Lake Tales in Taupo, in an event at the Hilton on July 31st. I'll be talking about how I started writing, and the process of writing and researching my two novels, The Sound of Butterflies and Magpie Hall. I might even read from my current project, a children's novel called Red Rocks. More information, and details of a bookstore signing, can be found here.

Things should settle down a bit after that, and with more writing time I hope to devote more time to writing about writing ie keeping this blog active.

Andrea Eames*.

2011-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

When I was the writer in residence at Canterbury University in 2008, part of my job was to make myself available to creative writing students who might want to talk to me and ask me advice. Only two students ever contacted me. One of them was Andrea Eames.

She emailed me and asked if she might come and have a chat to me. We made a time and when it came I opened the door to a beautifully dressed young woman with brown hair (I know it's now blonde). The chat turned into an hour's conversation. Andrea was writing a novel, had nearly finished it in fact, and wanted some advice about getting agents and publishers. I took a copy of her manuscript with no promises that I would be able to read it. It's a cliche I know, but Andrea, in that fusty old English Department, really was a breath of fresh air. We bonded over our love of vintage clothes and blogging (it turned out that Andrea has an extremely popular blog about, among other things, fashion, or more specifically, style). I showed her some swing dancing videos, which were my obsession at the time. We talked about writing, and books, and probably a whole lot of other things. She utterly charmed me and I think the next morning I made just that little more of an effort when I got dressed.

Andrea was just 23 (I think) at the time, and she gave me a little information on her background. I immediately asked when we met if she was English, because of her accent, which I couldn't quite place, but she was actually from Zimbabwe (she also revealed to me the shockingly ignorant questions people sometimes ask her when they hear where she is from, which I won't share). Her novel was based on her experience growing up under the Mugabe regime.

So, thus far, I knew I liked Andrea very much, and I knew she had some incredible material for a first novel, but could she write?

Uh, the answer was a resounding yes. I read the first few chapters of her book and I didn't hesitate, when it came time for Andrea to send it out into the world, to recommend her to my London agent. My agent was similarly impressed and took her on immediately. Before long she had a book deal with a highly respected London publisher, Harvill Secker. I was so thrilled for her and couldn't wait to read the finished novel in proper book form.

It was a bit of a wait. But nearly three years on from that first meeting, the book is out and I am happy to report that it is wonderful. I was gripped from beginning to end, and couldn't wait each evening to fall into bed with it, to find out what was going to happen to Elise and her family, and to experience the world she brought to life, like magic, using only words. How could someone so young be so astute, so intelligent, bring so much? I'll tell you. Bloody hard work. And a sharp mind, and a good heart.

Please go and buy The Cry of the Go-Away Bird. You will not be disappointed.

*note the outstanding taste in publicity-shot headgear.

We are safe.

2011-02-25T20:46:00.001-08:00

Just a quick sign-in to let readers know my family and I are all safe after the Christchurch earthquake. One day I may recover enough to write about it, but for now we're taking it day by day. Huge virtual hugs to others in Christchurch and around the country affected by this terrible disaster.

xxxx

My website is now fixed!

2011-02-09T01:16:00.001-08:00

As you were. Thanks for visiting.

My official website is down.

2011-02-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

Apologies to anyone trying to get into my official website - it seems to have been hacked by someone nasty. The situation is being remedied and business should be resumed soon.

In which two lady novelists converse about writing.

2010-11-26T18:01:00.000-08:00

If you liked The Sound of Butterflies do go and buy Kelly Ana Morey’s excellent novel Quinine. I am not saying they are the same book, far from it. But the two books share an exotic, steamy and Edwardian setting, pockets of natural history and, admittedly, a fair bit of transgressive behaviour.

It took me a good few weeks to read (not because the book was slow – I am just slow these days), and I looked forward to getting away from everything and getting into bed with Marta, an Austrian who marries a man she doesn’t love in order to take off for more exotic climes, in this case Papua New Guinea, then German East Neuguinea. I’m not going to give you a plot summary, as plenty of overwhelmingly positive reviews have done (here for starters), but will say that Kelly Ana has created a complete world, with some extraordinary, and never overwhelming, descriptions and some vivid, flawed and loveable characters. She has also done what all good historical novelists need to do, which is hold back on throwing in too much research. As Emma Darwin once said to me: “If you’re thinking about my research as you’re reading, I haven’t done my job.”

As a quick aside, I have to mention that the book has been ill-served by bad proofreading. In many places, it looks as though the editor has made changes to a word, but the original word has been left in alongside the new one. And this book deserves a beautiful, lush cover. It doesn’t have one. What a wasted opportunity.

But those are minor negatives. Quinine is an interesting, easy read, written with sly humour and a love of good character. I had a number of questions for Kelly Ana when I finished it, and in keeping with our tradition (see earlier editions of Black magazine for similar conversations for my book The Sound of Butterflies and her book On An Island, With Consequences Dire) she kindly agreed to answer them for me and let me post them on my blog.

RK: Did you feel that Quinine was still the best title for the book once you'd finished, given how much the book had changed (an understatement - I read the first chapter once that was in the first person, narrated by a girl in Samoa waiting for her father...? Kind of magical realism?)

KM: Absolutely, I never considered any other title. It’s just such a great word.

It did change so much, you’re right. I was so ambitious. But by the time editor Anna Rogers took me in hand I was ready to settle for writing a reasonable good book about three people with a beginning, a middle and an end.

RK: Been meaning to ask... did you sign up for word of the day and then set yourself a challenge to use every word in Quinine? There are more than your usual amount of unusual words in there. Spotting them was like part of a game.

KM: Last Christmas I spent five days reading the dictionary and created a Quinine lexicon… Anna took tons of them out. The words I really loved were the animal descriptive words like vulpine, murine, lupine and psittacine ... only a few of which made the cut. And isn't 'a gallimaufry of gimcrackery' the best way ever of saying, a pile of shit?

RK: It is. What do you think of the idea that if someone is thinking about your research while reading (ie 'gosh, this is meticulously researched') then you haven't done your job properly?

KM: Ah yes, we – editor, two readers and me - had many conversations about that. Readers were fans, editor not so much, so in the end I used my research in a way that I would like as a reader which I think is all you can do. And some of the stuff that I made up I presented as researched, like when the Germans are interned at the hospital in Kavieng, which probably did happen, but I don’t know for sure.

There was also an awful lot of research that didn’t make it … I, for example, know rather a lot about how coral atolls are formed. I was really enchanted, editor, again not so much.

RK: Ah yes, the coral! The coral death scene is a masterpiece. I wanted to ask about whether you had swiped that from a real-life event - did they used to have dynamite the coral? - or if you just decided that a gruesome death was necessary and made it up. I love beautifully written gore.

KM: I needed to kill Bernard and I wanted his death to have that element of complete farce about it, and I do love a good explosion. The idea of dynamiting the coral was more practically driven because that eastern coast of Nuemecklenberg is totally locked with coral, which is why Bulominski’s road was built, and I needed Bernard to be able to get the copra of the plantation, and I had read about dynamiting the coral, which they still do. Strangely one of the few memories I do have of my early childhood are of the coral reefs around New Ireland and the extraordinary sea life they contained. That scene was one of the easiest to write, I do like me a good killing.

RK: Also, I love that you made up the hospital thing, as well you should. That's why I get annoyed when people praise novels for being well-researched (almost a back-handed compliment) because... well, how do you know? How do you know I didn't just fudge the whole thing convincingly? The work is in creating a believable world, not in doing research. Anyone can do that.

KM: I made most of mine up in the end because all I had was one book of historic photographs with really good captions and the Queen Emma biography. Also I have never been to Vienna and can only assume that the storerooms in the natural history museum were originally in the basement. Sometimes you've just got to temper it all with a bit of commonsense I think. But making stuff up, yeah that’s my job.

RK: It was quite unusual to get flashbacks and backstory for quite a main character (Royal) so near the end of the book when things are usually building up to a climax. What was the thinking behind that?

KM: One of my readers went through one of the very last drafts and marked in the times when she started to get bored, and I wrote all of the back stories, which were originally twice as long in one 10 day marathon, and then broke them up and dropped them into the text at those points. I think the back stories work in themselves, and I think my instincts were sound in that you have to change it up when the reader is starting to get bored, but I definitely needed to write more and incorporate them better into the over all flow of the text. Even I went WTF when I was reading the galley and the lady novelist came up … strangely no one’s given me any grief about this.

RK: I love the lady novelist section, although you're right - it does seem to have been written separately. But I don't mind this as it's as though you've dropped in a pastiche of bad romance novel, and that was consistent with the playful aspects of the novel.

KM: One of my favourite novels is Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress one) which was first published in 1957, which is loosely based around the life of Edwardian romance novelist Marie Corelli. It’s monstrously funny, and I think every lady novelist should read it as a cautionary tale. So, yes, ripping off the style was all part of it.

RK: I’ve read and loved Angel. I also saw the film of it recently and it was dull in comparison, although I have picked up some good tips on how to dress as an eccentric lady novelist. Of course when reading about your lady novelist and her brother, I couldn't help think of the brother and sister in Byatt's Angels and Insects (or Morpho Eugenia as the novella is called) and that led on to thoughts of the film version, with Patsy Kensit. So your lady novelist became a pouty Patsy in my mind.

KM: Strangely enough I didn’t read Morpho Eugenia until after I finished Q … imagine my surprise. But I do wonder if some of my love affair with Antonia is that she writes about all the things I love, is a relentless post-modernist and she’s quite prurient. I’m reading The Children’s Book at the moment, which is essentially about childhood sexual abuse (they didn’t put THAT on the blurb) but written in this lovely restrained, arts and crafts, literary kind of way. It’s just the quiet tragedy that stalks the book and slowly destroys lives.

RK: Christo Matthews is a wonderful, vile character. Are all your ex-boyfriends going to be immortalised in your books?

KM: Only the ones I really like. Chris [Matthews] still hasn’t read it, but I know he’ll love it.

RK: I was amused when someone called your book 'more authentic' because you had lived in New Guinea as a child, but you have said that you can't actually remember it. I can't remember anything from when I was 3 or 4. Are you going to milk it anyway?

KM: The authentic thing is odd isn’t it? I’m a writer and I think part of my job is to explore worlds beyond my own experience … you know, stretch myself a bit.

It wasn’t until I sat down and actually engaged with the location that I realised that I didn’t remember a thing about the East Neuguinea time because I was so young. Like you with The Sound of Butterflies I found [TV reality show] Survivor, in my case Samoa, really helpful in terms of understanding how the land sits between the sky and the sea, the way the sky looks when there’s an approaching storm, and the way trees grow … all that stuff you have to get right.

I’m not going to milk it, but you think my publishers might have huh?

RK: You chose quite an old-fashioned narrative voice - the omniscient narrator. Was this so you could talk about things the characters couldn't know themselves? Or perhaps because you wanted one over-riding voice to the novel rather than the voices of individual characters? Or was it just one of those things that happened all on its own?

KM: It is a very old-fashioned novel definitely. Probably my biggest failure as a novelist is structure. It has to be simple. I also have a tendency to wander within the narrative, which I really like, but because of this too, the narrative has to be quite simple. Also because the reader has to take a lot that is completely foreign on board with Q, as well as the subplots, I couldn’t expect them to work any harder by processing multiple POV’s. And last of all – multiple voices, are you mad? So hard. No, I like being an all seeing judge and jury.

* Quinine by Kelly Ana Morey, published by Huia, $35.

Short stories vs novels.

2010-11-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back to writing. Hooray! Life has been rather busy, what with two children and earthquakes to deal with. My spare time has been taken up over the last few months by a project involving the writings of my father, which has been very exciting, but I am glad that for now my part is over, at least until there are proofs to look at. Watch this space.

For the second time this year, I have been commissioned to write a short story. People wrongly assume that short stories are easier than novels. They often think shorts are what you write while you're 'learning' to write a novel. Certainly my novelist apprenticeship involved a lot of short story writing, but the reason I don't write them very often is that they are hard. Much harder than novels in my opinion.

Of course, the main reason I don't write shorts is the same reason I don't really like reading them these days: I prefer to really lose myself in a story, over a long period of time. But at least with a novel, you only have to come up with a good idea every few years, which is about how often I come up with good ideas for short stories. I realised yesterday why I find them difficult, too: it's because the most important part of writing a novel for me is finding the voice or voices of the narrators. Once you have established them, the writing often takes care of itself. So with a novel, it might take me months to get the voice right, a slow process of writing and rewriting the first few chapters. I also get hundreds of pages to explore an idea, or many ideas, to follow it to all its possible conclusions.

But when you're asked to write a short story, and given a few weeks to do it, you think - oh, a few weeks, that's a few hundred words a week, that's easy. But that doesn't take into account the time it takes to establish that voice, not to mention that single, powerful idea that is central to the story. It's worth mentioning at this point that I am compelled to write short stories about once every three years, when a voice pops into my head. So, as you can imagine, trying to find that voice can be quite frustrating when there is a time limit and when you have a few precious hours a week away from family commitments.

As an example, earlier this year I was commissioned to write a story for the Scape biennial at the Christchurch City Gallery. It was to go into the programme, and I was given the theme of the exhibition - Christchurch in the future - and asked to come up with whatever I wanted. Scape was to have taken place in September but a certain seismic event not only meant that it couldn't go ahead to plan, it also meant that many of the works were, well, a little obsolete, since they were dealing with cityscapes and where Christchurch as a city might be headed. In fact, the house I imagined my character living in, on Madras St, now has yellow tape around it and a red sticker on the door, and in reality, all her preoccupations would have heavily shifted after the quake.

But back to the writing of the story: I had very little time to myself at that point, but I really wanted to be involved as it was such an exciting project, and I was actually quite flattered to be asked. So it wasn't just a matter of handing the kids over to hubby for a couple of hours in the weekend and sitting down at my desk to let the words flow dutifully from my fingers: I had to actually come up with an idea. And that took weeks. It took a lot of walking around the city, listening to music, picking up books to read - basically everything except writing. I had a couple of false starts too. I was getting quite desperate. Then, after the deadline had passed and I as starting to feel quite queasy - boom! - up jumped the idea and the voice followed soon after. I was saved. It was a breeze after that.

What I'm getting at though, is that the initial work that went into massaging that idea out of my head was as arduous as it is for any novel. So I prefer to write novels because by the time I have finished one, the next idea has already come along - well, you'd hope so, wouldn't you, when it's usually three years between novels? But those shorts... to write them, to write them well, is a damn sight harder. Maybe if I went back to reading shorts I would get more into the swing of them, take pleasure in the crafting of something so small. But I do love novels. And anyone who thinks the short story is the poorer, littler cousin of the novel... think again.

Earthquake.

2010-10-28T02:36:00.000-07:00

That was when it happened. My hand rested on the glass and the window began to hum. I felt it pass through my fingertips, up my arm and down to my toes. The rest of the room began to gently rock, as if the house were a giant that I had disturbed from its sleep; it shrugged its body from side to side and my heart pumped so hard I could feel blood pulsing in my face. It was the sound that disturbed me the most, as it travelled across the plains towards me, was all around me for a second, then travelled on through, a low throbbing.

“Letting off steam,” I reminded myself and lay back down on the bed. Even though I knew it was an earthquake, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the house had caused it somehow.

No, this isn't one of my diary entries from the last few weeks but an excerpt from Magpie Hall. Rosemary is dogged by earthquakes, a (rather obvious perhaps) metaphor for her own sense of instability.

Then Dora, the wife of Rosemary's great-great-grandfather Henry, experiences firsthand the Canterbury earthquake of 1888:

Dora is startled awake by her bed shuddering across the room. In the fog of sleep she thinks she is back on board the ship that she and her father took from England last year, but within moments she knows this is not so. The earth, which had been shrugging and sighing the evening before, has finally given in to its anger and heaves the house from side to side. Its wooden structure creaks and groans; her washbasin falls from its stand and smashes. She curls into a ball and clutches her knees until it subsides.

The house she lives in survives the quake, but part of the house that is to become Magpie Hall falls on its owner, killing him, thereby freeing it up for Henry Summers to buy and repair it. I couldn't help think of Magpie Hall as I looked at pictures of the beautiful Homebush Station, brought to its knees. Magpie Hall would not have survived.

It's now October 28th, and I have been unable to bring myself to finish this post. Lack of time certainly, but also the enormity of writing about the experience. Here's what I wrote a few days after the quake: "It's taken a few days for my nerves to calm down enough to sit still and write some thoughts about the Christchurch earthquake that hit us at 4.35 am on Saturday. I am still in shock to be honest. We came out of it unharmed, with moderate damage to the house, but going through a 7.1 earthquake messes with you. It's hard to explain, but physically and mentally I have been feeling the way I felt in the days after my father and step-mother were killed in a car accident, and I put it down to the physiological effect of unexpected trauma. Long term, who knows? I will probably recover more quickly from this as there isn't grief on top of shock."

Well, I have recovered. I left town for a week with with my kids to calm my nerves, and it helped enormously. Now that the promised 6 point something aftershock is a distant possibility, I ride them with more excitement than terror. Last week, I was at the gym when the big 5.0 aftershock hit, and the plate glass windows flexed while the rest of the building jiggled around as though it was made of cardboard. The noise was nearly drowned out by women screaming but I felt oddly calm. I called my son's creche to be told they had all been sitting down to lunch and had dived under the table. There were no tears, thanks to the calming influence of his teachers. When I picked him up and asked him what had happened that day, he told me he'd had yoghurt for lunch. When I said "what else?" he said "oh, there was an earthquake." I am proud and thankful that my kids are not living in fear.

Elsewhere in Christchurch, people aren't so lucky. The houses in my neighbourhood have mostly just lost chimneys, but one of the things I mourn in all of this is the loss of the character shops, not just in St Albans, but all over Christchurch. You know, the little brick shops that in the old days would have been the butcher, the fish shop, the green grocer. Now, the shops that are gone are the dairy, the hairdresser, the shoe shop, the Thai restaurant. Around one corner from us is the the cafe I used to stop in on my way to the bus when I was writer in residence at Canterbury; next to that, the tattoo shop, Ink Grave, where I did my research for Magpie Hall. After the quake they looked like this:

Now they are gone. Thank god it didn't happen when all those lovely folk were at work. How could they have survived? This is the scene all over Christchurch, shops that for some reason seem to mostly be local fish and chip shops and Chinese takeaways, probably because the rent was cheap. I shudder to think what will be put up in their place.

Plenty of people have written about the earthquake, so I'm going to finish up and finally post this. It will make way for my blog to open up now that I'm writing again. I can stop thinking about it and turn my mind to book and writing related things. But first, I just want to mention the people who still can't flush their toilets, who still have to wash their dishes in a bucket because there is no wastewater, and those who can't return to their homes at all. I actually cried the other day when I walked past a beautiful two-storey brick villa in my neighbourhood. When I first saw it months ago, I thought, what lucky people, to live in such a beautiful house. That house now has yellow tape around it; one upstairs wall has fallen off, the others are cracked beyond repair.

I also want to mention the people whose businesses have suffered, either because their buildings are unsafe, or because their shops are right next to those that are being demolished. Because it must seem to all those people that to the rest of the country, and the rest of Christchurch, life goes on, while their's are still hanging in limbo. And I want them to know that I am thinking of them and hoping that things will get better soon.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

2010-09-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

In true 'Keep calm and carry on' fashion, I am pleased to say that The Press Christchurch Writers Festival will continue this week despite the huge earthquake in Christchurch on Saturday morning. Please come if you are able - it will need your support and we all need cheering up.

And it was huge. I know because I was there. I am composing a post about it, but it may take a few days. In the meantime I leave you with a picture of our favourite chair, which we bought from one of our favourite shops in Christchurch, The Painted Room. Which unfortunately now looks like this. Get well soon, Painted Room and all those other places and people badly affected.

Roll Up, Roll Up.

2010-09-02T17:13:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the late notice, but The Press Christchurch Writers Festival kicks off next week and I should probably let you know that I will be appearing. The session is entitled Good Stories and I'll be sharing the stage with one of my lifelong favourite authors, Barbara Trapido.

Trapido first came to my attention when I read a book called Juggling in the mid-90s, given to me by my late father. He showed me her picture and said something along the lines of "Isn't she lovely? Don't you just want to read everything she's written?" And so I did. After Juggling (which I managed to sell to everyone who walked in the door of the London bookshop I was working in at the time) I moved on to her first and perhaps best known book (or so I have been told) Brother of the More Famous Jack, which I can't remember much about now except that it featured her trademark warm, interesting and vibrant characters and complicated relationships. From there I worked my way through her oeuvre and loved them all (although Temples of Delight perhaps a little less then the others).

So imagine my delight at being put next to her and asked to converse while people watch.

The other author joining us is Kirsten Reed, and I have just started her book Ice Age, which is very short with large type, and has captured me with its writing style. Looking forward to meeting her as well.

Now, if the thought of me and Barbara and Kirsten banging on about the power of stories "in this challenging and uncertain post-911 world" (what???) doesn't excite you, there is plenty of good stuff at the festival to push all your buttons. And of course, lots of parties. Have I mentioned I like parties? Really, they're the only reason I go to these festivals.

The Talented Ms Laing.

2010-07-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

I have been conspicuously absent from the blogosphere, I know. My life has been taken up with selling and buying houses, packing, moving, unpacking, child-minding etc etc ad nauseum. And even some writing! And mentoring. So not much spare time. I am compelled to break the silence, however, to celebrate Sarah Laing. Last night she won the award for best cover design at the PANZ Book Design Awards, for none other than Magpie Hall!

It is very well deserved. I LOVE this cover, front and back, and it was just one of many clever designs she came up with. Sarah is not only a talented designer, but also an award-winning writer herself. Check out her books (both also with gorgeous covers designed by hers truly): her short story collection Coming Up Roses, and her novel Dead People's Music, one of my favourite reads of last year.

She has her own website - visit www.poppyshock.com to see her diverse talents. And just lately she has started a graphic blog of her time as the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow. Such talent, and all this achieved as a mother of three. I take my hat off to her and thank her for doing such a wonderful job on Magpie Hall and for (hee hee) bringing attention to it again!

Oh what fun we had - Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

2010-05-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

At least, Paula and I had fun; so did Dorothy. But I think the audience enjoyed it too, as reported by Christchurch City Libraries and Bookman Beattie. As for the question about being 'Team Bronte' or 'Team Austen', what I should have said (and only thought of it afterwards, as is usually the case with these things), is that despite Magpie Hall seeming to be an homage to all things Bronte, it also owes an awful lot to that wonderful Jane Austen novel Northanger Abbey. Not only did I name the book after the house in which it is set, Magpie Hall also features a young woman who is so immersed in the world of gothic novels they start to colour her vision of the real world around her. If you haven't read Northanger Abbey, please do.

It is a horrible misfortune that the one year I get a free pass to everything, I could only stay in Auckland for 24 hours, and I had a sick baby with me, so caught very little. Alison Wong and Graham Beattie had a lovely soothing chat to an appreciative crowd (with the prize for the most bizarre and possibly inane question I've heard at a festival: 'Is it customary for Chinese New Zealanders to refer to Europeans as "Pakeha"' - wtf?). And the highlight of the Saturday evening session with William Dalrymple was the kind lady who leaned over and asked me, probably because I was sitting alone near the front, if William Dalrymple was my husband.

From what I saw of it, I have to congratulate the team at the festival once again for another great one, and also for making their authors feel extremely well prepared and cared for, even with such outrageous demands as my own. Next time I have a book out there will be no more babies and I will go to every session and every party and wear lipstick and high heels every day.

Off to the Auckland festival!

2010-05-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

It's fair to say that real life has thoroughly got in the way of the writing life of late, hence my absence from the blogosphere and all things writing-related. However, I am happy to say the drought will be broken this weekend when I appear at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

I love the Auckland festival. I attend every year, whether I'm participating or not (the last time I appeared was 2007). It's a chance to see some great local and international authors and it's also a great social time, where I can catch up with many friends from all over the country without having to make any appointments at all - we just bump into each other at the Aotea Centre or one of the associated parties. I usually fly up alone and stay at a nearby hotel and get to have some 'me' time.

This year, despite being there in my author capacity, it'll be a more subdued affair for me - in on Friday, out on Saturday - with too much of the aforementioned real life preventing me from hanging out and relaxing. But I am very much looking forward to my session: Saturday at 11.30 am in the Upper NZI Room at the Aotea Centre, alongside my good friend Paula Morris and a very able chairperson, Dorothy Vinnicombe, who always reads the books carefully and asks great questions. Come along - and guess what? It's FREE! So what have you got to lose? Paula is always excellent value - sharp and very funny. I'll try my best to match her.

More details can be found here. See you there!

Bad blogger!

2010-03-04T17:39:00.001-08:00

I have been a bad blogger in so many ways, the most obvious being that I hardly ever post anymore. When I was in the thick of writing Magpie Hall, I posted far too often, probably, although I still maintain that it helped me with my writing rather than took me away from it. I am grateful that, according to my statcounter, readers continue to visit despite there not being much new to look at.

The second way I am a bad blogger is that this blog set out to be about writing and books and my thoughts thereof, and lately has turned into plugs for Magpie Hall and events I do around it. But, dear reader, don't despair and abandon me just yet. It's just that along with less time to blog now that I have twice as many children as I had a year ago, I have a fraction of the headspace to devote to thinking about the craft of writing and reading. This will not always be so. I repeat: this will not always be so. And in the meantime, while it is so, I will continue to post when I can, even if it's just to tell you about an event I'm doing, or have done, and eventually I will get back into writing poignant and witty posts about writing.

The third way I am a bad blogger is that even though I only seem to post about events I am doing or have done, I can't even get that right. I had planned to blog all about the Hamilton Gardens Festival event I did and look, two weeks have gone by and I haven't. Not only that - I intended to take photos and all I took was a picture of my aunt holding my baby and one of some fish.

So please engage your imagination and look at these pictures that don't exist:

1. The Hamilton Gardens in full festival flight with happy people everywhere and characters from Alice in Wonderland wandering around directing people to where they woule like to go, including a Duchess holding a real live baby.

2. Alexa Johnston entertaining people with tales of where the recipes for Ladies a Plate came from.

3. The beautiful spread offered on tiered plates: little round cucumber sandwiches and salmon sandwiches; tiny scones topped with jam and cream; other cakes, biscuits and deliciousness. Not to mention delicious fruit punch and bubbly.

4. The items up for raffle: Ladies a Plate along with a lovely tea setting; The Swimmer's Rope along with free swimming lessons; Magpie Hall, perched in a cage with a bottle of red and some chocolates.

5. Stephanie Johnson reading and taking questions before she had to race off back to Auckland.

6. The ladies from Poppies Books, the SPCA and the Hamilton Hospice, who organised a delightful event.

7. Me, reading and talking with Karen from Poppies.

Depending on how good your imagination is, you'll see that a lovely time was had by all.

On another note, I have a booky week lined up next week, starting on Sunday for the Richard King Memorial Cricket Match in Christchurch: authors vs publishers - I may even have a bat and a bowl myself in memory of a fine fellow.

On Monday night I'm off to see Elizabeth Kostova, hosted by Women On Air, and on Tuesday I'm flying up to Wellington to catch Sarah Waters, Audrey Niffenegger, Emily Perkins, Geoff Dyer and more at the Writers and Readers Week. I may even attempt to report back, depending on whether I have become a better blogger between now and then.

Hamilton Gardens Festival.

2010-02-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

If you're in Hamilton this weekend come along to the Ladies' Literatea for high tea and bubbles at 3pm on Saturday. I will be appearing alongside Stephanie Johnson and Alexa Johnston and luckily I am not being made to change my name to fit in. I think it'll be a lovely occasion, and the proceeds are going to the SPCA.

The Hamilton Gardens is a simply stunning venue for a literary event. I did an event, a wonderful relaxed chat, with Jenny Pattrick in 2007, on a balmy summer's evening. I was completely enchanted by the place. With themed gardens from all over the world it is hard to believe you are in Hamilton. I particularly loved the Italian Renaissance Garden and sitting beside the ambling Waikato River I could have imagined myself on the Arno in Florence. It was a particularly blinding hot day the day after the event, and my family and I took in as much as we could before it just got too hot to be outside.

Even if you're not there this weekend, next time you're passing through Hamilton, spend a couple of hours at the Gardens: you won't be disappointed. One of NZ's Best Kept Secrets in my opinion. I'll try and remember to take photos and post them here; in the meantime, here's one of me, looking extremely casual, on that hot hot day:

New year, new work.

2010-01-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

The inevitable has happened. My thoughts have turned to what I am going to write next. I have been asked so many times, 'so, what are you working on now?' At which point I usually look at my baby and back to the person asking the question. Alas, he is now five months old and I can no longer use him as an excuse. Even though motherhood is a full time job, there comes a time when your brain starts coming back and you start thinking about what to apply it to.

In some ways it's a lovely feeling - a clean slate, an empty page. Anything is possible. At the same time it is daunting. What if I don't have any good ideas? Actually, I have a notebook full of good ideas for my next grown-up novel, but none of them is calling to me louder than the others. Each one would require exploration to see if it's any good. It is worrying to me, because the last time I was at this stage I spent months on something that just never took flight. I don't want that to happen again but know it inevitably will.

There is pressure, too. Your second novel has its own syndrome, but your third has no excuse. Your third should be perfect. It should have all the strengths of your first two and none of the weaknesses; it should have new and unique properties that demonstrate that you have kept on getting better at this writing lark. It should be deeper and more profound, more controlled and yet more exuberant. Not too much to ask.

In among the new ideas scribbled in my notebook, there is one that has been there the longest. An idea that come to me after my first son was born as I walked around Wellington's wild south coast with a pushchair. At the moment that is the idea that is calling to me the loudest, the one that feels less daunting (and certainly shorter): a children's novel. In some ways pushing everything aside to work on it (I have written the synopsis and the first chapter already) is a delaying tactic, but I also feel that this is a story that can be wonderful in its own right, to sit alongside my adult novels. I also feel that while I work this out of my system, my next adult novel will present itself and can slowly percolate while I write about a 12-year-old boy called Jake.

Whatever happens, I will be happy to be writing again.

As an aside, my dear friend Mary has started a very knowledgeable blog on good things to listen to and read while commuting - Beaut Commute (love the title!). A fabulous idea. Sometimes I wish I was a commuter, instead of working from home.

My books of the year.

2009-12-15T00:42:00.001-08:00

These are the not the best books of the year. These are my best books of the year; that is, the books I read and enjoyed the most. Some of them weren't published this year. Also, having a book out myself and reading wildly different reviews for it (sometimes you'd think people had actually read different books) I am fully aware of the subjectivity of reading. I'm not reviewing these books. I'm simply giving them a little bit of the praise they deserve, and pointing my readers in the direction of books they might themselves enjoy.

Here are my favourites, in no particular order:

The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins
The Blue by Mary McCallum
Dead People's Music by Sarah Laing
The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday
Relief by Anna Taylor
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce by Paul Torday
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Magpie Hall by Rachael King (whoops, how did that get on there?)

If you are buying Christmas presents this year, please think about buying books. The above list is a good place to start.

Under the Mountain.

2009-12-02T16:07:00.000-08:00

The year was 1979. I was nine years old. My father gave my brother and me a book. It was called Under the Mountain, and it was set in the city we lived in. We both read it - devoured it more like - and were transported to the mysterious and dangerous world beneath our own. It's the story of twins Rachel and Theo, and the enigmatic Mr Jones, who fight the slimy, creepy Wilberforces who sleep beneath Auckland's volcanoes and plan to take over the world. They must harness the power of their twin-ness to triumph.

I loved it. I yearned for an adventure to happen to me.

Then, shortly after, I was given the opportunity to audition for the part of Rachel in the TV series. My dream come true! Drama was my strong suit at school, and I longed to be on TV, convinced that child actors in NZ were terrible and I was just the girl to make it all better. I was sure to get the part, after all, I had the right name and everything! Alas, it was not to be. My brother Jonathan, three years older, also auditioned, and along with our friend Sarah, we had to come up with a mimed scenario to show off our acting talents. I had some vague idea about a kid being bullied on the way to school, but it was vetoed in favour of a gunfight. None of us got the parts, but Sarah later went on to star in another New Zealand children's TV classic, Children of the Dog Star. My brother went on to play Theo in the Radio New Zealand version. I went on to... write books instead.

Under the Mountain, the TV series, spooked a generation of NZ kids.

But that's not all my brother went on to do. He has now directed the feature film of Under the Mountain, which premieres this Saturday night in Auckland and which opens nationwide on Thursday the 10th. Go and see it in the opening weekend if you can, to ensure it gets a long screen-life. Go and see it if you have read the book, or seen the TV series, or go and see it just because you can. See volcanoes erupt! See slimy creatures and a creepy old house on Lake Pupuke! See a great homegrown supernatural adventure.

Spare a thought for a nine-year old girl whose dream didn't quite come true but who is very glad that her brother's did.

Serendipity revisited.

2009-11-29T00:47:00.001-08:00

Way back in November 2007, I wrote this post. Go on, go and read it.

I can now do what I said at the end of that post ("I will have to revisit the post in a few years when the book is safely written and published and it will make rather a nice story, I think.").

So, here's that cryptic paragraph, with all the details for Magpie Hall inserted.

"While waiting for the order to arrive, I had the brainwave for my new novel, in no way related in subject matter to the five books I had just ordered. My protagonist (ROSEMARY) has a specific occupation (TAXIDERMIST) and in the novel, a certain object that I had never heard of before until very recently (A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES) plays a big part in the story. So the Amazon package arrives and I am happily reading the first novel when unexpectedly, what should turn up, unannounced, but a CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. The book delves right into the history of CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES and gives many prime and beautiful examples. That book finished, yesterday I randomly picked up the second in the pile of books and lo and behold the first page has the main character STUFFING THINGS. He is a TAXIDERMIST."

What fun.

The latest edition.

2009-11-24T01:06:00.001-08:00

Taiwan!

It's been a while.

2009-11-23T01:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the absence. I have been so busy lately, and once publicity for the book launch died down, I threw myself back into the domestic life and had little room for any focused thoughts worth blogging.

It was a great night at Our City in Christchurch, a cosy chat with Ruth Todd from Women on Air. Thanks to Ruth and Morrin Rout for hosting the event and for asking me. Thanks to Gillian at UBS for selling so many books, and of course thanks to everyone who came and listened and/or bought the book. I do like doing those intimate affairs (although there were around 80 people it felt very intimate) where people chime in from the floor and we get a good conversation going. We gave away some magpie tattoos to celebrate, and you can see one of them in action here.

Magpie Hall debuted at number two on the NZ bestseller list, behind a book that was getting, ahem, rather a lot of publicity, whether it was welcome or not. Which leads me to...

New Zealand literature has finally been in the news. It's funny, with dedicated sports sections on the news every night, it's a shame that it takes a bit of controversy to get people talking about New Zealand books. Peter Wells pointed it out on his blog that at least people are now talking about literature: the national book awards usually get a two-minute slot on the late news, but this has been front page news, with this story on the cover of the Dom Post and this on the cover of the Listener.

As a sometimes-historical novelist, people have been asking about my methods for research and incorporating that research into my books. I could talk about it all day, and I might write a proper blog post about it in the future, but basically, I do my reading, I absorb it, I close my eyes and imagine myself into the scene and I write what I see, through the eyes of my character. So you see, there is little chance of inadvertent copying as it has gone through such a transformation, and often dry information is turned into something altogether more subjective. If it is someone else's bright-eyed description, I do not copy it into my notebook but I might take elements of the description and use them in another context, with different words. But if there's one thing that this scandal has taught me it's that people have different ideas about what artists of all kinds should and shouldn't do and I hope I'm never at the receiving end of anyone's scorn and disapproval due to my methods.

I'm also not sure why people have focused on historical novelists as novelists of all breeds research things and rely on the knowledge of others.

Right, that's me. I've joined the twittering classes, and you can follow me here. I hope to be keeping this blog up to date but my life is an unknown quantity at the moment. I will just leave you with this:

If you're new to my blog and have come here because you're interested in Magpie Hall, you may be interested to know that I started this blog as a diary of writing a novel. Please take a look at the archives when I used to post a lot more regularly and philosophically - I was pretty honest about the highs and lows of the writing life, and the novel writing process is documented from go to whoa.

Launched!

2009-11-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

Magpie Hall is now officially out in the world. Available at all good (New Zealand) bookstores yada yada. I feel something like relief.

It had a great launch at Mighty Mighty, which was the perfect venue - it conjured up all the lushness of a Victorian tattoo parlour. The book was launched by my good friend Gemma Gracewood who said unbelievably nice things about Magpie Hall and about me. Afterwards we discussed the fact that while Rosemary Summers isn't based on anyone we know, she is someone we could imagine knowing (indeed, Sally, the manager of Mighty Mighty, is herself a tattooed lady who collects taxidermy). After the speeches, Gemma was joined on stage by three more friends (Nigel, Carmel and Andy) from the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, and they serenaded us with songs by Nick Cave and The Be Good Tanyas, both inspirations for the novel and on my list.

The launch was somewhat overshadowed by the sad death earlier in the week of our friend Heather McKenzie. She was sorely missed and will continue to be so.

Further to my last post about my new website, within days of it going up it was chosen as one of 8 great author websites, alongside the likes of Dan Brown, Peter Carey and Isabelle Allende! Thanks to my fantastic designers Sharon Blance and Brence Coghill. Sharon also took my author photos. If any authors out there would like to contact them in view to having their own website done, please feel free to leave your contact details in the comments here and I will pass them on. They were wonderful to work with and really listened to what I wanted, the result being my dream website. These two are multi-talented and are also the best swing dancers around.

Finally, if you are in Christchurch, I am doing an event tomorrow night (Tuesday, November 10) with Women On Air at Our City, Oxford Terrace. For more details visit www.womenonair.org.nz, or www.rachael-king.com. Please tell your friends!

My new website.

2009-10-30T02:14:00.001-07:00

I have a new website! It's the same address as the old website but it has been completely overhauled and redesigned. Please visit to find out about me, The Sound of Butterflies and Magpie Hall, including excerpts, reviews, interviews and stories about how I came to write the books. It's also where I will post news relating to the books and events.

I am overjoyed at the way it has turned out, thanks to my talented web designers Sharon Blance and Brence Coghill. They have perfectly captured the visual essence of my work.

Oh, you might want the address. It's at www.rachael-king.com.

It's here. And more on the Book Awards.

2009-10-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

So here they are: photos of an actual copy of Magpie Hall, due to be released here in NZ on November 6. I was ridiculously excited to receive it, just as Vanda Symon was to get hers (both with hands on the covers - spooky). I carried it around with me all day and kept looking at it, much as I might stare at the wonder of a newborn baby. There's that comparison again.

The publicity machine is in motion. This week's Listener has an interview with me, and the Sunday Star Times will tomorrow be running a 1000-word extract to give people a taste of the book over the long weekend. I will put up links if and when they appear.

After the strange silence surrounding the announcement that the new look New Zealand Book Awards would carry a shortlist of only three fiction titles, which I blogged about last time, Bookman Beattie finally brought it up on his blog and a good number of people weighed in on the argument against such a small shortlist. You can read the comments here, and add your own if you can, since I don't know that the right people are reading this blog and its attached comments. The story has been picked up by the Dominion Post. I hope the powers that be don't dig their heels in for the sake of it and listen to what people have to say.

Thoughts like leaves.

2009-10-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Further to my New Zealand Book Month post, I did a quick tally of the books I have read so far this year. 17 novels, 7 of which are from New Zealand. So I'm beating the 5% average by 36%. Yeah! Interestingly, four of them are by debut authors, and all of them are by women.

I also pondered why it is that, when our newspapers are full of NZ-only interest stories, with tiny sections devoted to world news, we are not similarly interested in NZ fictional stories.

The new look New Zealand Book Awards has been announced, now sponsored by NZ Post. I certainly look forward to the new format, and good on NZ Post for the tireless support of New Zealand literature (they also sponsor the Wellington Readers and Writers' Festival and the Katherine Mansfield Menton fellowship)... but. There will now only be three fiction finalists. I don't understand this decision, especially given everyone's dismay the year the judges chose only four finalists instead of the five they were allowed to. Aside from winning, it is a good honour and a good opportunity for promotion to be short-listed, and that honour is now much harder to obtain. I really hope this is re-thought.

In other news, congratulations to fellow-blogger and wonderfully pink-haired Laini Taylor, whose latest YA book, Lips Touch, has been short-listed for America's National Book Award. Laini's books aren't available in New Zealand as far as I know, but her other project, Laini's Ladies, can be bought from Cosi Fan Tutte in Christchurch. Of course, you can always check out Laini's books from Amazon, or order them from somewhere like Unity.

I hope to be blogging much more regularly now that things have settled down somewhat on the home front. And of course it is only three weeks until Magpie Hall comes out. I am expecting an advance copy by courier tomorrow. Exciting! Well, it is for me anyway. Heh.

New Zealand Book Month.

2009-10-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

Unless you have your head in the sand or you're not from New Zealand, you'll know that it's New Zealand Book Month this month, an initiative that it is hoped will have the same impact on NZ books as NZ Music Month has had on NZ music (ie a good one).

Last week, the Sunday Star Times ran a story with statistics of what people are buying when it comes to books: of all the fiction sold in New Zealand, only 5% of it is from New Zealand. On the one hand that looks like an appalling ratio, but on the other, when you consider just how much international fiction there is out there, it's not so bad. Surely only 5 % of novels available are from New Zealand?

That optimistic view aside, once I had finished the article, which interviews some well known literary types about why this might be, I was surprised that nobody mentioned this: if we want New Zealand fiction to sell as well as international fiction, bookstores are going to have start putting New Zealand books alongside 'real' fiction. Walk into any bookstore and you find a 'fiction' section, and a 'New Zealand fiction' section. I imagine that Joe (or more likely Josephine, as women buy far more fiction than men do) Public, when they go into a bookstore looking for a novel, make their way to the fiction section for their browsing. They find a book and they are happy. It might not even occur to them to make a special trip over to the NZ fiction section.

Perhaps bookstores think they are doing NZ books a favour by singling them out like this, giving them their own special showcase section, but I disagree.I think it makes the average buyer see New Zealand books as somehow second-rate. By all means have a NZ fiction table, or a section, but can we please see NZ books put alongside the Peter Careys and the Hilary Mantels and the Sarah Waters? Otherwise they are just not seen, let alone considered, by the buying public.

It seems obvious to me. Thoughts, anyone?

The countdown begins.

2009-10-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Only one month to go until my new novel, Magpie Hall, is published here in New Zealand. I am feeling rather excited and, of course, apprehensive as to how it will be received.

I read through two sets of proofs - admittedly the second not quite as thoroughly as the first given the timeline and my commitments at home - and fixed up a few typos and some potentially embarrassing factual errors. It is now at the printers, and advance reading copies (or ARCs) will be going out soon to booksellers and reviewers. I have already done one media interview which was a joy because the interviewer had actually read the book (not as common as you would think!), and it made me realise that I have plenty to talk about with novel so hopefully I won't be boring people by going over all the same ground as the last time I had a novel out.

In fact, there are quite a few things I would like to say about Magpie Hall on this here blog, but I think I might wait until the interviews are over, in case I get the chance to wax lyrical in those about why I chose Magpie Hall as the title, what led me to tattooing as a theme, how this novel was assembled in a completely different way from The Sound of Butterflies etc etc. Then I can write about whatever I wasn't asked. I hope that anyone who reads the novel and who also reads this blog will feel free to ask me questions about it as well.

In the meantime, I wait. It's like that final month of pregnancy where you're sick of being heavy with child and would just like to get it out now please, so you can meet it and see how it is in the world.

Speaking of which, the upside to spending hours on the couch feeding a baby has meant that I've caught up beautifully on my reading, as anyone who has been keeping an eye on my 'what I'm reading' section over there to the right will have noticed. I've just started Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, which, like my book, is set in an old country house that has seen better days and may or may not contain a ghost. All I can say is thank goodness it came out after I'd written mine so I couldn't be influenced by it in the slightest. Now I just get to enjoy reading it.

Relief. Proofs.

2009-09-01T14:24:00.001-07:00

I have read some really excellent New Zealand fiction this year, including work by Mary McCallum, Sarah Laing and Emily Perkins, and I have just added to the list with Anna Taylor's short story collection Relief. At her best, Taylor's writing throws up the atmosphere of Kirsty Gunn's stories and the inventiveness with language of Anne Enright's. An example: "... he looks tired, his head small and pale like a peeled egg." That image stayed with me a long time after I'd finished the story.

I read the book from start to finish, and while some of the stories didn't work quite as well for me (mostly due to a slight heavy-handedness in aforementioned atmosphere and inventiveness) on the whole, I thought it was a remarkable achievement. The stories remind me of the kind of stories I used to try (and fail) to write before giving up and concentrating on novels; in other words, I wish I had written them.

In other news, the proofs for Magpie Hall have arrived. You often hear writers talking about how exciting getting the proofs is, because that is when your new baby is all laid out like a real book. I am making way through them slowly (too slowly probably) and so far haven't come across any howling mistakes.

I have a real, human, new baby to look after, and having something like this to look over is really nice; it keeps me from falling head-first into total domesticity.

MAGPIE HALL

2009-08-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

Posting may be erratic or non-existent over the next few weeks, so I thought I would leave you with this: my new novel.

It's called Magpie Hall, and will be released by Vintage (Random House) in November in New Zealand. International editions TBC.

Here is the back cover blurb:

“There were two rumours surrounding my great-great-grandfather Henry Summers: one, that his cabinet of curiosities drove him mad; and two, that he murdered his first wife.”

Rosemary Summers is an amateur taxidermist and a passionate collector of tattoos. To her, both activities honour the deceased and keep their memory alive. After the death of her beloved grandfather, and while struggling to finish her thesis on gothic Victorian novels, she returns alone to Magpie Hall to claim her inheritance: Grandpa’s own taxidermy collection, started more than 100 years ago by their ancestor Henry Summers. As she sorts through Henry’s legacy, the ghosts of her family’s past begin to make their presence known.

If you like old country houses, tattooed ladies, taxidermy, cabinets of curiosities, gothic Victorian novels and (possible) ghosts, then I hope this one's for you.

The cover design is by multi-talented Sarah Laing.

I started this blog at the same time as I started this novel, so the blog has been my diary of a novel, really, documenting all the highs and lows and the thought processes that went into it. Once I'm back online, I might report on the process of having the novel published. It is edited; the next step is to go through the proofs in a few weeks' time.

I'm excited. And a little scared.

A trip down (rock & roll) memory lane...

2009-08-02T13:30:00.001-07:00

I have been following photographer Jonathan Ganley's photo-blog for a while now as he posts his photos of bands from the '80s and '90s - a great nostalgia trip for anyone who was in the music scene or just went to gigs in that period.

The latest photos are from 1990 and feature the Cakekitchen, the band I played in as a young 'un (started when I was 17, finished when I was 19, not long after these pictures were taken). This particular gig I remember as being one of the highlights of my musical career - we packed out the Basement theatre and it was hot and sweaty and we played well. Look how serious we look! Look at my gorgeous Musicman Sabre bass!

Even though I was only 17 when I started with the Cakekitchen, it was the third band I'd been in, and I went on to play in three more after that, before I sold my bass guitar and bought my first laptop, swapping one creative endeavour for another, I suppose. But I always knew that music was a hobby for me, whereas writing was what I really wanted to do.

We recorded an EP and two albums in that line-up (CDs can be found here and here; the single, Dave the Pimp can be found on the Flying Nun box-set and on the Flying Nun video compilation DVD); drummer Robert Key and I left that year and Graeme Jefferies headed off to Germany where he recruited new band members and continued the Cakekitchen project until this very day.

A Música das Borboletas.

2009-07-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

I noticed this morning that my blog and website have had a sudden influx of visitors from Portugal, which alerted me to the fact that A Música das Borboletas, the Portuguese translation of The Sound of Butterflies, must be out! It's a lovely cover, I think. I'm intrigued to see what will happen to the translation in the places where, in the English language version, I wrote some dialogue in Portuguese. I guess some copies will inevitably find their way to Brazil, and I wonder what the reaction to the book will be there (I did give it to a couple of genuine Brazilians to read before it was published).

The winners.

2009-07-27T16:11:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to all the winners at the Montana Book Awards last night. My favourite for the fiction medal came out on top - Emily Perkins' Novel About My Wife - but as I have confessed elsewhere, it is the only one I have actually read, so I am a little biased. It is such a well crafted novel and a gripping story - the two things that, when combined, make me love a book. All too often the two seem to be mutually exclusive.

This is the last year that Montana wines will be sponsoring the awards, and next year, with NZ Post on board, the awards are getting an overhaul. For the better I hope! My only suggestions for improving them are as follows:

1. Please get rid of the runners-up for the fiction award. This is a literary award, not Miss World. I don't really see the point, other than making the two authors who didn't get a place feel stink.

2. Open up the Readers' Choice award to all NZ books published that year, not just the ones on the shortlist. I think the winner this year was very apt (Kate DeGoldi's The 10 PM Question), as it has clearly been a popular book, but other years I think it's been a bit mean-spirited, and some good books that have reached many readers have missed out because they are not 'literary' enough. I'm thinking of authors like Jenny Pattrick and perhaps some genre fiction writers - this is their one chance to get recognised as we don't have separate genre awards as they do in other countries. I think it's fine to leave those books out of the finalists for a literary award, but open them up for the Readers' Choice award and let them compete with the literary heavyweights. Go on.

My two cents.

Ooooooooo #2.

2009-07-18T13:18:00.001-07:00

Lucky me.

2009-07-16T19:49:00.001-07:00

It was my birthday the other day and I was given two books I have had my eye on: Relief by Anna Taylor and As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong. The next book on my pile is The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, so a varied and sumptuous feast of debut New Zealand fiction awaits! (Just a quick aside: I just love the covers of Wong's and Catton's books: both designed by the very talented Keely O'Shannessy.)

As Bookman Beattie pointed out a while ago, there are a lot of new books being published in NZ this year, all of which seem to be by women (and I know for a fact there are a few more to come before the year is up). It seems the NZ lit scene is alive and well and is turning out new faces all the time.

But where are all the blokes?

A Jolly Good Show.

2009-07-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is nothing whatsoever to do with writing, but does take in some of my other interests - namely, vintage style, parties and general silliness. I think now would be a good time to be young and carefree in London with this kind of event going on (when I lived there it was all raves - blah). I'm keen to check out this Chap magazine as well... just the thing for the chaps in my life.

Thanks to Fleur de Guerre for her wonderful blog, Diary of a Vintage Girl, to make me envious.

The incredible growing and shrinking novel.

2009-07-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

I have finished my novel and sent it off to publisher and agent.

Hooray!

Some time ago I asked readers of this blog whether they are a taker-outer or a putter-inner. I have recently proved to myself what I already knew - I am definitely a putter-inner. When I finished the first draft of Magpie Hall, it was 74,300 words long. When I finished the second draft, it was considerably longer. I am not someone who throws everything at the page and then has to cut it back, like topiary, to find its form. Instead I throw down what I need, then go back and expand things.

Now it seems that I am both a putter-inner and a taker-outer. My final draft, even though I added a couple of scenes, is now shorter than my second draft. Turns out there was a lot of fat to trim.

I also posted once about the perfect novel that I had in my head. I don't know if what I have written is quite what I had imagined I would, but that is not surprising really -- things get lost in translation from brain to page, and we are limited by our own abilities.

My friend and fellow writer-blogger Marianne drew my attention to this fabulous article by Ann Patchett. It was written years go, and I'm astounded that I've never seen it before. Go and read it: it's funny and apt for anyone working on their first, second or tenth novel. As if in direct response to my 'perfect novel' post, Patchett has this to say:

"Somewhere around Page 80 I will accept that I am neither smart enough nor talented enough to put all the light and movement and beauty I had hoped for onto paper, and so I will have to settle for what I am capable of pulling off."

With my finished novel I have settled for what I am capable of pulling off, but I hope that it is better than that sounds! Check out what she says about wanting to plagiarise your own novels...

It's all coming to a head now.

2009-07-03T14:14:00.001-07:00

Madness. My novel is just about finished. Just a final polish and then off it goes to various publishers and agent, three weeks ahead of deadline. Which is just as well, because it will need to go through the editing process and I need the extra time up my sleeve. From August 23 I will be a little indisposed with a new family member.

Four months ago the deadline was looking impossible: I written had 40,000 and those words had taken me a year to write. The more I wrote, the longer the book wanted to be. I was feeling sick and tired all the time. But then something happened. It all started falling into place. Suddenly that life growing inside me wasn't being such a burden. I had spent so much time thinking about the book that suddenly my writing sped up and what was going onto the screen was no longer about finding the voice and the story of the novel: I already had those. So when the words eventually fell on the page they were mostly the right ones. I have been describing it as the novel reaching a critical mass in my head. It was bursting out of me.

Writing a novel is a little like having children. It gets easier as it goes along, so much so that when it is going really well, you forget how hard it was in the beginning, and you do it all over again. This book was agony to write at times - last year I had some dark days, weeks even, when I couldn't imagine ever finishing it or getting it right. But all that is behind me now.

Just a quick mention: last weekend I went to Wellington to visit family and friends, and was very privileged to witness the gloriousness of The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra at the Michael Fowler Centre, on the first of two sold-out shows in one night. The sound was superb, as was the set and it truly was, as they advertised it, a magical evening. Those harmonies! Those lead breaks! As their friend, I was pleased and proud. As a fan, I was just so happy to be there. This is a show that deserves to play at similar venues all around the world in my opinion.

I will leave you with a picture of the ukes at one of their first ever gigs: my wedding, in 2006. They played 'All You Need is Love' as we signed the register and the wedding ditty as we walked down a makeshift outdoor 'aisle' on an unusually glorious Wellington day in February. Don't I feel smug.

Ooooooooo.

2009-06-22T03:07:00.000-07:00

I'm almost too scared to see this film because I liked the book so much. Sure the book got pretty sentimental at the end, but by the time I got there I was willing to forgive it anything.

Bootcamp. Wuthering Heights.

2009-06-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

That's where my novel is (at bootcamp that is, not taking a holiday on the Yorkshire moors). It's all looking very clear, everything's fallen into place etc etc. Now I just need to put the hours in and it will all be done. Feeling very good about it. Not much time for blogging.

Last night I watched the first half hour of the new Wuthering Heights mini-series. I reckon finally (finally!) someone has got it right. Heathcliff was menacing and scary and didn't look as though he was wearing a wig and a spray on tan a la Ralph Fiennes. Perhaps for once it will be true to the book ie all the characters will be loathsome. I have recorded the rest to watch as a treat for doing my work.

Wuthering Heights has been a very important work for me lately as you may have read on this blog. Last year I attended a series of lectures at Canterbury and even wrote an essay on it in an attempt to get into the head of the main character in Magpie Hall. The book itself plays an important role in my new novel - you'll just have to wait and see how.

Done!

2009-06-04T23:45:00.001-07:00

A full draft, anyway. I've had a marathon 8 days in which I wrote more than 10,000 words. Please refer to my picometer, to the right. 100% done. Now the real work begins, whipping my novel into the best shape it can be. Sending it to bootcamp, perhaps. I think I might take the weekend off. Here's my reward:

Montanas and a title at last.

2009-06-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to all the finalists in the Montana NZ Book Awards. I was really pleased to see Eleanor Catton on the short list for the fiction prize. I confess I haven't read The Rehearsal yet, but I always think it's a wonderful achievement for a first novel to get onto the shortlist for the big one. The book is on my TBR pile, honest. The only one I have read is Emily Perkins' Novel About My Wife, which I loved. I was sorry that Paula Morris's excellent collection of short stories didn't make it - surely she is long overdue to have her work recognised. But while last year was the year for short fiction (Alice Tawhai and Charlotte Grimshaw both on the shortlist of four; Grimshaw taking out the prize), it seems this year is the year for Young Adult fiction, with the inclusion of Bernard Beckett and Kate De Goldi, and the teenaged protagonists of Catton's novel. I have no complaints - I understand awards for what they are: the subjective opinion of well-qualified people who will no doubt choose different winners from the next set of well-qualified people.

On another note I have had a burst of productivity on my novel, and my deadline is looking easily achievable if I can keep it up. I also have a final title, all other options being rejected for one reason or another. The title is:

(dun dun dun DUUUUNNN)

Magpie Hall.

66,600

2009-05-29T21:15:00.001-07:00

That's the number currently displayed on my picometer (in the bar to the right). By the time you read this, the number may have gone up, but for now I am reminded that 66,600 was the exact number of words of the first novel I ever wrote. And no, I'm not talking about The Sound of Butterflies.

It was called Birds of Passage, and I wrote it for the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University (the IIML). It wasn't published; it never will be published, and I am unlikely to mine much material from it for future books.

Don't get me wrong; it wasn't a bad book, but ultimately, it wasn't the kind of book that I wanted to write. My big epiphany came half way through it when I realised that the kind of books I should be writing are not the ones I thought I should be writing, but the kinds of books I like to read. That was when the idea for TSOB was born, but I wanted to finish the job at hand first. I needed to write a novel in nine months for the MA, and knew that TSOB would take me several years.

Loosely, it was about the young kiwi OE experience. How so many people of my generation drift off to the UK to see the world, and have a slight yearning to discover their roots all over those fair isles. In the case of my novel's protagonist, it was Ireland, where her estranged father lived. She travelled around Ireland with him, getting to know him and a few family skeletons. The writing of the novel coincided with a trip I made with my own (non-estranged) father; in fact, it was the upcoming trip that gave me the idea for the book in the first place. But the protagonist was not me, and the father was definitely not my father. I often thought that if I'd had it published, people would possibly buy it to get an insight into my own father. They would be severely disappointed. Either that or they'd be misguidedly excited - the father in my novel turned out to be gay, which was the reason for the estrangement. At the end of course they made their peace, on top of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, a set piece that I'm still rather proud of and may have to turn into a short story one day.

If I'm honest, I would say that if I hadn't written that book and someone else had, I would have picked it up in a bookstore and put it straight back down again. Although it's a novel that would have reflected my own experiences, I realised that in the end, that's not what I want to read about, so how could I write those kinds of books? I want to read books that aren't about my experience. And those are the books I would like to write as well. The truth is that my writing is better when I can step outside of myself and use my imagination.

I would like to say that I stuck it nobly in the drawer as soon as I'd finished it, but I did try a few publishers, and received very encouraging rejections. I am so glad that it was never published. The Sound of Butterflies had a much better impact for a first novel than Birds of Passage ever would have. So my thanks go out to those editors that turned it down. You know who you are.

Festival, aspiring writers and the joy of the unmarked page.

2009-05-21T13:07:00.001-07:00

Husband has taken son to creche on the way to work today, so have a couple of hours more Friday than I usually do (they left very early - I don't usually get it together this early, hence the huge amount of extra time). I'm fighting the urge to go back to bed, to be honest. Instead I thought I'd take the opportunity to update my sadly neglected blog.

I had a wonderful weekend at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. My plane was delayed on Friday night so I missed the annual party held by my publishers (bit sad about that one), and missed most of Richard Dawkins, but arrived just in time to see him present the Royal Society prize for science writing to my talented and beautiful sister-in-law, Rebecca Priestley, for The Awa Book of New Zealand Science. Very pleased and proud I was. It was odd seeing it being presented by a huge man on a screen (Dawkins via satellite).

The rest of the weekend was an intense round of sessions, five or more per day I think, and catching up with all manner of friends, family and colleagues in the gaps between. I won't go into it too much - others have written about it better and more thoroughly than I have (here, here, here and here), but I will say that the highlights for me were Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche and Monica Ali, both warm and engaging and thought-provoking with beautiful readings that left me wanting more (I confess I often nod off at readings and prefer to hear writers talk, but these two were an exception). The success of these sessions was in no small part due to the excellent chairing by Paula Morris, whose energy and intellectual capacity always astounds me. Chairing can be exhausting and challenging, and far harder than it looks, with hours and hours of preparation time (and that doesn't even include all the books you have to read), so I take my hat off to her for chairing three sessions with important writes and doing a wonderful job, as well as appearing as a writer in two sessions. And she even finds time to write books. To digress for a moment, I probably shouldn't point this out but I'm going to: Paula and I wrote our first books together in 2001 during the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML, and since then she has had three novels and one collection of short stories published, with a YA novel due out in August. I am hoping to have my second novel published at the end of the year. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Another session I enjoyed was the 'Emerging Stars' (no pressure!) with Eleanor Catton, Bridget van der Zijpp and Anna Taylor. It was a great idea on the behalf of the organisers to make this a free session, as it introduced new writers to people who might not otherwise have taken a gamble with their money. Sessions with new writers always attract aspiring writers, so there was the inevitable questions from the audience of "Did you get an agent first or did you just send it into your publisher?" and "Did you sign your international rights over to your publisher?". It always amuses me how aspiring writers (and I still count myself among that group) always want to know things like this, rather than questiosn about how to write well (this has been my experience speaking to first year creative writing students as well). People, it doesn't matter how many agents and editors you sumbit your work to, you've got to put in the hard yards and learn how to write as well as you can first. That should be your priority. And try and enjoy the process of improving your writing for the sake of it.

Now I'm back home and trying to write as much as I can. I have about 10,000 words to go for a complete draft of the new novel and have possibly settled on a title. Because of the way I work, although it will be a complete draft, it won't be a first draft as such. I tend to work things out as I go along, and the first half of the book is pretty polished as I wrote and rewrote until I got the voice right. Once the voice comes, it can seemingly just write itself. This novel has a contemporary story and an historical story. Unlike with The Sound of Butterflies, which I wrote from start to finish in the way it is read (alternating between two different time periods), I have completed the historical section and am now tackling the end (and the middle and all the bits in between) of the (much more complex) contemporary section. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I started at the beginning, picking up the printouts I have been carrying around with me for nine months of what I have written so far and went through and incorporated all the notes that I have scribbled over those pages during the that time. I can't tell you how satisfying I found it to get to the end of one chapter and reprint it, all clean and beautiful, knowing it was as good as I can get it at this point. I have five more of these to go, and then it's the home stretch, pulling all those loose threads together and writing those final chapters. I am on track, so far, and have scheduled panic and anxiety for six weeks time. Before that, it is not allowed.

Titles are hard.

2009-05-07T11:17:00.001-07:00

I have not been blogging lately. You may have noticed. Instead, I have been deep inside deadline-land, trying to finish the new novel by August 1. Anyone following my picometer (to the right - just a bit of fun really) will see that although the word count is inching up, the percentage of novel completed is not. That is because for every 3000 words I write, I realise that the novel in fact needs to be 3000 longer than what I originally thought. It like one of those sci-fi or horror movies where the heroine is walking down a corridor and the corridor just keeps expanding.

One thing I have been thinking about, of necessity, is the title for the novel. I thought I had it all sorted, with two title options, both of which I liked, but one I liked slightly less due to its construction being The (something) of (something). One of my friends from my very scientific Facebook poll suggested that "Either's a good title [The Sound of Butterflies and the Something of Something]; together they look like an attempted branding exercise." Well, that was what I had been afraid of all along, despite this title's absolutely perfect capturing of theme and motif.

The other title, secretly my favourite, has had a mixed reaction. It seems it is too similar to a famous book written in the 1960s - do I really want people to think of that book? Well, actualy, it wouldn't hurt if they did, but it may set up expectations about the plot and deliver too neatly to those expectations. Need a bit more mystery in there. My version of the title has also been done before, and quite recently, albeit for a trashy thriller a million miles from the literary masterpiece I am constructing. But, like, it's been a bestseller, so a lot of people have at least heard of it. The final nail in the coffin is that some people think it's just plain boring - but it makes so much sense when the book is read, and brings the two threads of the story together in perfect harmony. Sigh.

So it's back to the drawing board. Everything I come up with just doesn't make me fall in love. It's a stock phrase, or it's been done before, or it looks good on paper but when you say it out loud it is clumsy. And the worst thing is that it's distracting me from the important task at hand - writing the book. I'm hoping that as I type the last word the perfect title will just slide into my head. Unfortunately I need it before then.

Not writing.

2009-04-29T14:40:00.001-07:00

It hasn't been the best week or so for writing. Son was sick at the beginning of last week, which meant we had to put off our planned trip to Dunedin until he was better. Which luckily didn't take too long - we drove down on Wednesday and back on Friday night. I had a dance workshop on Saturday which might have been where I picked up the illness that struck me down on Sunday night and has only started to come right this morning after lots of sleeping and generally lying around feeling sorry for myself.

So not much writing, but I plan to make amends in spectacular fashion this afternoon. Had a great time in Dunedin. I hadn't been there for nine years and as soon as I drove into town I remembered how much I love it. Something about the Gothic quality of light and the buildings and the way its history has been preserved in the inner city. I spent a lot of time in Dunedin in my youth, when I played in bands, regularly touring there and even living there for a short time when I played in the 3Ds. Then, I thought it was a magical place, full of ancient wisdom, and certainly there was something there that produced all that great music.

I even liked visiting in the middle of winter, staying with people who usually had nothing more than a two-bar heater to huddle around for warmth. We had many a party with blankets over our knees and we wore all our clothes to bed. It was just what we did. I think people must be softer these days with their fancy heating and wanting to walk around their houses without their coats and hats on.

The first time I drove out to the Otago Peninsula I loved looking at all the drystone walls - they seemed a direct connection to the Scotland the Dunedin settlers had left behind. But this time I didn't see any - perhaps they have finally fallen down and been replaced by wire fences; or perhaps we didn't explore enough.

We were very kindly accommodated by fellow author and blogger Vanda Symon. She and her family made us feel wonderfully welcome and relaxed, and, as she mentions on Overkill, we even had a bloggy lunch, with Tania Roxborough and Paradoxical Cat. So, while I wasn't writing, at least my brain was being stimulated. I am slightly in awe (and a little suspicious - kidding Tania!) of Tania, who wrote her latest novel, which is 120,000 words long, in approximately two months.

The highlight of the trip for me was the Otago Museum. We only visited two exhibits - the butterfly house (which I wish had been there when I was researching The Sound of Butterflies) and the Animal Attic. The latter is a replica of the original museum with its wondrous collection of 19th century taxidermy and natural curiosities, which was wonderful for research for my current novel.

We decided to take the scenic route back to Christchurch and got lost not once but twice, and since it was 5pm when we left, we were driving around the hills when it was dark, so we didn't even have the benefit of any scene from our scenic detour in the end.

The upside of being sick was that I caught up on some long overdue reading and in three days read Mary McCallum's The Blue and Sarah Laing's Dead People's Music, both of which I highly recommend. No time now to go into great detail - a hungry novel awaits.

The hare and the tortoise.

2009-04-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

I was having a conversation with a novelist friend of mine the other day who mentioned that she is unhappy with how her novel has turned out despite numerous rewrites. She (and her publisher) have given herself three months to give it a final go to get it right. I also have a deadline which is a little over three months away, and it seems that our novels will be hitting the public at about the same time ("Let's feud!" she said).

Feuding aside, it got me thinking about just how different each writer's process is but how we all eventually get there in the end. This novelist and I both started our novels at around the same time. In fact I started a novel that I have since abandoned. Everything seemed to be going so well for her with it and I confess I felt a little jealous. She has always been so disciplined and always seemed to enjoy the first draft process. She was very much of the "just write 1000 words a day and you have a draft in three months" school, whereas I have always aimed for 1000 words a day and failed miserably.

It doesn't matter how many words I write, it seems it takes as long as it takes and I can either work it out on the page and write copious amounts of words, or I can write fewer words and work it out in my head. At the moment I have two and a half days to write, plus another couple of hours on Wednesday afternoons when the toddler is at my mother's house and I sneak off to her local library.

(Aside: sometimes those two hours are as, if not more, productive than the full days I have. I usually just put my head down and write in a stream of consciousness fever, then the next day go back and either find 700 words of rubbish or 700 gems.)

I can't help but wonder whether, if I had more time to write, the book would get written quicker. I suspect not. I think it's just going to take as long as it takes for the words to ripen and fall onto the page - if I were to force them out at 1000 words per day, seven days per week, I would inevitably end up throwing many of those words away. This way, it's like a steady drip, and by a designated date (hopefully within my deadline), the bucket of the novel will be full. To carry on the metaphor, if I were to pour great gushes into the bucket, I would inevitably end up spilling half of it on the floor.

What can I say? I am the tortoise, at first jealous of the hare's lightning pace and quick mind, but ultimately I think we will get there at the same time.

The joys of self-employment.

2009-04-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I have noticed about self-employment is that, while I get to work my own hours, it also means that public holidays often don't mean a thing except perhaps a mild inconvenience. Case in point: my son's creche is closed today through Tuesday. Friday and Tuesday are my two full writing days in the week, with one half day on Thursday. I know I should just relax and use the time to spend with my family, but I have a deadline and a momentum to keep up.

Luckily for me, husband has taken son away for a few hours. Unluckily for me, who finds it impossible to work at home because of the mountains of housework beckoning, the libraries are all shut today. Luckily, I can always work in a cafe. Unluckily, they are very busy and everything costs 15% more due to the public holiday surcharge. (Incidentally, when I worked in hospitality, before the Employment Contracts Act, we used to get paid extra on weekends and public holidays, but the restaurants and cafes sucked up the extra. Why? Because take a look around: businesses boom on those days. They easily used to make enough extra money to cover the extra wages. I resent places charging me for them to pay their staff fairly when they are pulling in extra anyway.)

For some reason Christchurch cafes seem to more expensive than elsewhere. We long ago stopped going out for weekend brunch when it ended up costing us $50+ for a modest breakfast for two and a fluffy/muffin combo for toddler - add 15% on top of that and there goes our week's food budget. At first I thought it was just the state of everything, food costing more etc, but a return to Wellington proved it was otherwise. It's just Christchurch. Who knows why?

And of course when you are at home with children, it's hard work whether it's a normal day or a holiday. Same with when you're a writer with a deadline.

However, I shall be indulging in more than the usual amount of chocolate and taking the weekend off work.

Полет бабочек

2009-03-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Sound of Butterflies for those of you who can read Russian... and I now know that my name in Russian is Рейчел Кинг.

Second Novel Syndrome.

2009-03-24T01:26:00.001-07:00

This term has been bandied about a bit lately thanks to the announcement that Audrey Niffenegger has received a whopping advance for her second novel. Expectations are running high for the novel, as are expectations that the knives will be out once it hits the stores.

This story in the Times mentions some high flying debut novelists whose second attempts have failed to live up to their first: Charles Frazier and Zadie Smith (who more than made up for it with the superb On Beauty in my opinion) for example. Included in the list is Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, which I would strongly argue does not deserve to be on a list of failures. Sure, she had the syndrome bad probably, which is why it took her so long to write (ten years between outings) but I thought it was very good book - a very different book, but a good one nonetheless.

Of course all of this has come to my attention because I am working on my own second novel after a reasonably well received first novel. I am constantly being asked by people if I feel under pressure to live up to my first. My answer is that of course I do, but it's not other people's expectations that I feel acutely, but my own. I just want to write a better book. I am writing a better book (she says, hoping that statement won't come back to bite her on the behind!). It's been 7 years since I started The Sound of Butterflies - I should be a better writer by now. So, yes intense pressure, thanks very much, but I don't think it is to do with Second Novel Syndrome. I hope I never rest on my laurels and feel released from that kind of pressure, because that's when I have stopped trying to improve.

All a writer can do when faced with something like SNS is to ignore it and sit down and write the best book he or she can write. And that goes for third, fourth and fifth novels.

Libraries as offices, and some technology advice.

2009-03-18T18:00:00.001-07:00

I arrived at the library today to find a talk being given by Basia Bonkowski, author of the memoir Shimmer. I'll just sit down and listen for a bit, I thought. A question came from the cosy audience: what was your writing schedule like for the book (a topic which seems to hold endless fascination for audiences the world over - aspiring writers themselves perhaps, looking for the secret?)? Well, said Ms Bonkowski, I had two small children and after I dropped them off at school at 9am, I turned down everything else so I could spend four hours writing. Then at 1pm I stopped to do the errands I needed to do before picking the kids up again.

Here I was, in the library, having just dropped my son off at creche with 4 hours to write, and what was I doing? Not writing. So, feeling guilty, I slunk away and began my working day.

The Christchurch libraries have become my new office. I have talked before about how I can't work at home. Working in the library is great. They have wireless internet for when a little procrastination is in order, and no other distractions. I find the general hum and bookishness of the place very conducive to working on a book. Yesterday I went to the Sumner library, which is near my mother's house, where I stole two hours. It is amazing how I seem to be able to write just as much in two hours as I can when I have a whole day. I think this is because I have to only focus on one thing - getting some words out - whereas on my full days I tend to start slowly (because I have all day, right?) and spend a lot more time reading books and websites for research and thinking about the overall novel instead of just the next 500 words.

As I was typing away at the Sumner library, my brand new computer froze on me. I rebooted it, hoping that it would autorecover the file I had been working on. It didn't. Not only that, but when I opened my memory stick, all the files, despite still being there, with names and 'last modified' dates on them, were completely blank. 0 kb used. Blank.

Luckily I have been almost vigilant about backing up this novel. The memory stick contained all the files that I had held on my work computer at the university, which I had already backed up onto another memory stick (thank God). But I lost what I had written that day and the day before, which admittedly wasn't very much.

I learned a valuable lesson. Apparently, if you open a file in a memory stick you should copy it over to your hard drive and then start working on it. Otherwise it can behave in all sorts of strange ways, and it doesn't automatically autosave like a hard drive file would do.

Not the most inspired post today but I hope that is useful to someone. The reason I'm letting myself add to my blog? I wrote my afternoon's minimum quota in half an hour today. Must have been thanks to a kick up the posterior by one Basia Bonkowski. Think I'll go back and write some more.

Deadlines. And a few ramblings about technique.

2009-03-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

I have a self-imposed deadline of August to finish my new novel. That gives me five months to finish the first draft (25% to go) and whip it into shape. It's a very real deadline. I have something else on from the end of August that will stop me writing for quite some time and I just won't allow myself to not finish it by then.

But it is putting the pressure on. When I think about five months, it seems like a long time, but I know how fast that can travel. But then again, if I look at it practically, it took me only four months from finishing the first draft of The Sound of Butterflies to submitting it and having it accepted by an agent in the UK and a publisher in New Zealand. My writing is much more confident and stream-lined now, so the new draft is a) shorter and b)more polished than TSOB was at this stage.

I talked a long time ago about my decision to try out the shitty first draft technique on this novel, but I abandoned that along the way. You see, I need to feel that I am in control in order to move forward, and that meant going back over the early chapters until the voice was right and until they pointed me in the right direction of where to go next. I also need to feel in love with my book to be excited enough to keep going, and a shitty draft isn't going to generate that love. So even though I'm calling it my 'first draft', my chapter one has gone through six drafts, my chapter two four drafts etc.

I gave a small talk at the Hagley Writers' Institute, where I will be supervising a few students this year. I read from my new novel, which felt really good. Reading it out loud enabled me to hear it with fresh ears and I liked what I heard (you can probably tell I'm going through a bit of a romantic phase with my novel - in all likelihood we will be fighting and/or not speaking to each other in a couple of weeks). It also reminded me how valuable reading your work aloud to yourself is. I did a practice run the day before for timing, and it helped me make a few adjustments to sentences that didn't flow, to trim them a bit and to work on the cadence of the language, which is very important to me: I do not believe in just delivering information in the most economical number of words; they have to sound right. I read the entire manuscript of The Sound of Butterflies aloud to myself for the very final draft. It took me about a week, from memory. A daunting but very valuable exercise, which I recommend to anyone on the verge of finishing their novels. It helps you pick up all sorts of gremlins.

But back to Hagley - one of the students asked the assembled supervisors (an illustrious group: Charlotte Randall, Frankie McMillan, whose reading of a short story had me enthralled, and Jeffrey Paparoa Holman) about how much they plan their work before writing. Charlotte Randall says she doesn't plan hers at all, she just starts writing, although she often writes the last page first so she has something to work towards. Frankie said she writes a draft from start to finish, but she writes short stories, which is a bit different to writing a novel. I gave contradictory answers really. I plan bits. Then I unplan. One novel I nearly wrote I think I planned too much and it froze me. I realised that the students were listening eagerly to see how much planning they should do, but in the end I had to confess that it works differently for everyone and the only way to find out what works for you is to write a novel. I learned more about writing a novel by actually writing one than I could have from any number of classes or how-to books and blogs. That first novel was never published, but it didn't need to be - it served its purpose, which was to teach me how to write a novel.

I spent the weekend in Welllington where I had an absolute ball, catching up with good friends, attending one of the best weddings I've ever been to (and probably ever will) and meeting with my writing group. It was perfect really. My writing group gave me wonderful advice and encouragement and I wished I could explain to them what I was trying to achieve without spoiling all the surprises in the book. At the moment, if it works, it will be the kind of book that you need to read all the way to the end to see how everything that has come before falls into place. If it works.

So this deadline has put a fire under me, and as a result I think my blog is going to suffer a bit. But then I hope I can be back with posts about the process of getting one's second book published, which I hope will be useful to some.

Onwards.

Excuses.

2009-02-23T18:45:00.001-08:00

My posting has been tardy. My writing days are down to two per week and in the evenings, after either looking after a two year-old or trying to write my novel on queue, I am just too darn tired to think, let alone come up with some erudite topic for blogging.

The writing is going well when it happens. This is my last week with an office at the university - after that I will have to put blinkers on to ignore the shambolic mess that is my house so I don't spend all my writing time doing housework. Lectures started again this week and after dropping my son off at creche this morning I couldn't find a carpark (I used to catch the bus), so I drove home again and have been trying to work in the chaos.

I am hoping that I will be back to my old blogging self one of these days. For now - please bear with me as I adjust to my new routine.

Wait - there is one thing. The lovely Vanda Symon will be in Christchurch on Monday for the Words on Wheels tour on Monday, so I will finally be doing something booky to report back on. Oh, and on Thursday I will be speaking to a class at the Hagley Writers' Institute, where I will be a supervisor this year. I plan to read something from my new work in progress as, to be honest, I am sick of reading from that book about butterflies.

There. I did find some things to post about after all. Just a place-holder post, really. An I'll-be-back sort of a post.

Progress. And the importance of different types of readers.

2009-02-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Despite my diminished working time, I feel that I have made some significant progress in the last week or so. You might say that I have broken the back of the novel, although given the mood swings that go with writing a novel, it could have knitted its own spine back together by next week for all I know.

At this point I can see the end, and know just what I need to do in order to get to the end of the first draft. It's just a matter of systematically working through each section that needs to be added (in contrast to the last one, I have not worked from beginning to end, I have jumped around a lot). It's been slow. I have installed a picometer to the right (you may have noticed it creeping slowly upwards), but I have written many more than 42,000 words over the past year - 42,000 is just the number of words that have stuck. And I do tend to revise somewhat as I go, so I don't race through a complete draft and turn around at the end, breathless, to see what I've got. I know what I've got. Now. I say 'now' because a few weeks ago I definitely lacked clarity; clarity which I now have gained. I think. (Hark at her, how certain she sounds!)

I decided it was time to send some out to a trusted reader. Most of my readers are other writers. I will be having a long overdue meeting with my writing group when I go to Wellington in March (I say long overdue, but I have not been ready up until now). But in the meantime, I needed another type of reader. Not a writer-reader, but a reader-reader. So I sent it off to my friend Mary (not Mary McCallum fyi). What is great about Mary is that she is a very careful and intelligent reader. She will not only get excited for me if she is enjoying it, she will tell me exactly what works and why. She is the perfect person to send my first four chapters to because she will ask a lot of questions about what is going on, and then tell me whether or not I am answering them sufficiently.

I got a wonderful email back from her, saying all the things I needed to hear right now to give me the boost to keep on going. And I don't mean just unconditional praise such as you might get from your mum or husband, but useful positive criticism. From a very clever reader's perspective. She added, at the end, somewhat apologetically, that the new novel is more sophisticated and complex than The Sound of Butterflies ("not that there's anything wrong with The Sound of Butterflies," she said). And I wrote back and told her that in fact that was the highest praise she could give me, because any novelist's fear for their second book is that people will say "well it was OK, but it wasn't as good as her first one".

I'm looking forward to my writer-readers' feedback too, which will no doubt be more critical, but for now, Mary has given me the energy to keep going. You could say that she is that elusive 'perfect reader' I have in mind when I write my books. Now that she's given it the seal of approval, I can continue with confidence. Because sometimes a writer can't see the bloody wood for trees, and some outside help is what is needed. Thanks Mary.

A room of one's own no more.

2009-02-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

At least, not for much longer. My residency finishes at the end of the month and after that I'm on my own - like most writers. How spoiled I have been! I got a bit of a tatse of my new life yesterday when I was at home with my son. I planned to do some power writing during his usual nap-time (usually about 1 1/2 hours). I put him down, sat at my desk, and after 5 minutes he was yelling to get up. So, no nap for him, and no writing for me. I dread to think that the excitement of having mum home has excised the need for a daily nap. Thank goodness for the times he'll be at creche (which he loves by the way).

I have been extremely grateful for the Ursula Bethell residency this year. It is such a fantastic opportunity: a salary and a quiet, roomy office, which equals time and space to devote energy to writing a novel. The English department at Canterbury is the perfect environment for a writer – it is friendly and very quiet and I have been left alone to get my work done.

I have made good progress on my new novel, tentatively entitled The Collectors, with a huge amount of research and a first draft almost completed. When I began the year I had a vague premise, an idea of where I thought it would be going and 10,000 words. Over the last 11 months my novel has changed into something far more intricate and ambitious and interesting than I originally envisaged. The residency has given me (or, has let me give myself) permission to explore ideas to the full rather than doggedly sticking to a plan and churning out something less satisfying, which is often the case when writing time is limited.

I was able to attend lectures on the 19th century novel, which fuelled the story and gave me ideas on intertexuality to create a many-layered narrative. These lectures were a highlight for me, not just for their usefulness but for the sheer enjoyment of rediscovering and analysing books I had read in the past.

Another one of the highlights of the residency has been the access to the university library, which has allowed me to use material that might not otherwise have been readily available to me. I will miss that resource when I leave.

During my time here I have also taught a night class at UC Opportunity (continuing education) and addressed two creative writing classes, and have been available for students to come and talk to me. I have been helping one student in her search to find an agent and a publisher. I also took part in a poetry reading at the University Bookshop on World Poetry Day in July. Spending the year in Christchurch (I normally live in Wellington) has meant other opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have had – helping out at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival and addressing a class at the Hagley Institute for example. I have been very warmly welcomed by the Christchurch writing community.

I will be very sad to leave when my time is up, and I highly recommend the residency to other writers. It is so important that residencies such as this exist as it is very difficult for New Zealand writers to make a living from their writing alone, and these opportunities ensure that good New Zealand books continue to be produced.

Are you a putter-inner or a taker-outer?

2009-01-29T10:51:00.000-08:00

Not the most technical of terms, I know. As my first draft starts to move more swiftly and I work out just what I need to write in order to get there, I've been thinking about the different ways people write their first drafts. Some just write and write and end up with many more thousands of words than they need; their second draft, as well as reshaping and rethinking, is a process of trimming and cutting to find the essence and minimise the waffle. Others, and this is the way I seem to work, use the first draft to sketch scenes quickly and end up going back and filling them out and adding more scenes to expand the novel.

For example, in the second draft of The Sound of Butterflies, I remember going over each scene and slowing it right down. Closing my eyes and imagining myself into the head of whoever had the point of view. What were they thinking about? How were they feeling about what they were thinking about? Where were they physically in the space they inhabited? What could they see from their vantage-point? What did the air feel like on their skin?

Of course I don't necessarily put all these details into the scene when I'm re-writing it, but it helps me find what is important to the story and to the characters' states of mind. It fully immerses me in the character's point of view and enables me to write a more authentic scene. The result is often a more sensual experience for the reader I think, and helps create empathy for the characters.

The first half of my first draft tends to move quite slowly as I explore the characters and their voices (and doing research, but that's another post topic altogether), getting to know them to the point that I can race with more confidence through the second half to get the story down, knowing that I'll be coming back to flesh things out at the end when I know more about where things will end up.

The second draft isn't just about expanding scenes. It's also about a structural overhaul, looking at the pacing, adding a scene here and there to develop a theme or an aspect of the story that seems rushed or contrived or just wrong somehow. At this rate my first draft will probably only be about 60,000 long, but ultimately I know that the book will need to be about 75,000 to tell the full story that I need to tell.

How do you work? I'd be curious to hear from a taker-outer.

La Musica Delle Farfalle.

2009-01-15T14:17:00.001-08:00

Piemme will be releasing The Sound of Butterflies in Italian very soon. It translates as The Music of Butterflies, which is quite lovely, I think. It is now also available in Greek as Ο ψίθυρος της πεταλούδας.

But enough about me. I'm sad to say that I have not seen Matilda the chicken at the bus stop since that fateful day. I'm hoping she has just found a new home rather than met an untimely end.

I am packing and moving house over the next week, so blogging may be sparse. Have a lovely weekend!

Morgan's Project - Books for Fiji

2009-01-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Morgan Hayton I am 16 years old. I have spent my winter school holidays for two years in Fiji volunteering at local school as part of my schools mission team. We visited a very remote school that is struggling and has only handful books in the whole school, the teachers there can only dream of starting a library. Have you ever wanted to change the world? But think it is impossible because we are just one person? Me too. But then I came up with this idea. We are going to build a library together, one person, one book at a time. One person can't build a library but if everyone that gets into this group gets a book from their bookshelf (they don't have to be new) and posts it to Fiji we can do it together. We can build a library together.

Head Teacher- Laisiana Tabilai
Namara District School
Box 415
Nausori
FIJI

Please write your a small bit about yourself or family inside the cover the kids would love to know who you are and where to book came from.Look at my page from time to time and I will get some photos next year and you can see your library.

Thank you.

Roger Morris brought this project to my attention and I am sending a signed copy of The Sound of Butterflies along with a stack of children's books. It doesn't have to be a stack - just one will do. I think it's a really lovely idea, and I am fully in support of the redistribution and the sharing of words.

If you're on Facebook, you can join Morgans' group here.

On another note, I have been given this 'inspiration award' by Aspiring Writer.

Thanks Joanne! I'm supposed to pass it on to seven other bloggers but to be honest, Joanne has simultaneously given it to five of my blogger friends, so I'm just going to pass it on to my friend Marianne. It is appropriate in this post about donating books to under-privileged children as Marianne has long been an inspiration to try and make the world a better place. She is tireless in her humanitarian work, the most deserving person to give an inspiration award to.

Today.

2009-01-08T15:27:00.000-08:00

Today is not 37 degrees. Hooray! Yesterday was so hot that I confess I retreated inside, closed all the curtains, doors and windows, set the heat pump to its cooling function and lay around groaning. Tomorrow will have a high of 17 degrees. It seems that in Christchurch there is no middle ground.

The bus stop where I catch the Metrostar to work has lately been home to a little chicken. I call her Matilda. She usually just hangs out under the seat, but sometimes she can be seen scratching in the gutter. She is very sweet.

Today there was a pile of chicken bones at the bus stop. Granted, it was rubbish-collection morning and a dog or cat could have just got into someone's rubbish to drag out the remains of a roast. Or perhaps Matilda has met her end. She wasn't at the bus stop this morning, but maybe she took the chicken bones for a Blair-Witchesque warning and has stayed away. Poor Matilda. I hope they weren't her bones.

Because I missed my bus, I sat outside my local favourite cafe (for once it was cooler outside than in) and had a coffee and did some writing in my trusty moleskin. I got chatting to a guy at the next table, and at the end the conversation went like this.

Him: "I thought I might write a book one day. It's an easy way to make millions."

A ha. Seriously.

Me (with hint of sarcasm): "Yes, it's really easy to write a book."

Him: "Oh, I know you have to do research."

Me: "And it's quite hard to make a living out of writing books, let alone make millions."

Him, with a look of incredulity: "But what about all those people who get rich off it?"

Me: "You mean, those two, JK Rowling and Dan Brown?"

Him (with a look that says they were exactly the writers he had in mind): "So if you can't get rich, why do you do it?"

Me: "Because I love it. I can't do anything else."

Him: "Exactly."

Huh?

But what about the writers?

2009-01-06T18:39:00.000-08:00

I am an optimistic sort of a person. Apart from the odd moment of irrational fretting, I tend to think that everything will turn out in the end. So with everyone banging on about the state of the economy and the looming Great Depression #2, I have either decided it won't be that bad, or buried my head in the sand, whichever way you look at it.

Today I just had a pause for thought. With Bookman Beattie re-posting a Telegraph story about the closing of the famous Murder One bookshop in Charing Cross Road, and indeed Charing Cross Road's status as a beacon for booklovers being threateneed, and with that story coming after lots of other stories about stores going under, publishers (local and overseas) making massive cutbacks on staff and parties etc etc... I just thought: but what about the writers? Where does that leave us?

Because I don't think I've read anything about that. Does this mean that the books we are slaving over will get turned down by publishers? Will publishers stop publishing all but one or two block-busters per year? I heard Laura Kroetsch saying on Radio NZ National the other day that literary fiction will be the big loser on the day, but again, she was talking about the sales of the books themselves, rather than the authors of those books and where that leaves them in terms of whether their books get published at all.

This leads me on to all kinds of ghastly questions I might ask but suddenly I feel the urge for a nice sand-bath.

Thoughts anyone?

No rest for the wicked.

2008-12-22T14:28:00.000-08:00

Or, in my case, the slow and lazy. In other words, dear reader, I won't be having much of a Christmas holiday this year as I only have two months left of my contract as writer in residence at Canterbury University (read: two months left of my office and salary). Next year, from March, will involve a lot of juggling - childcare, earning money to feed my family (hubby going back to study), finishing my novel. No pretty office of my own. No salary.

So I think you can undertsand why the next two months are critical to make as much headway as possible. I intend to finish the first draft of my new novel (working title The Collectors) in the next two months, which means around 5000 words a week and much more concentration than I have been able to muster all year. I think it's achievable. The reason I have been slow of late getting words on paper (apart from monstrous distractions) is that I have been immersed in research and planning, so the time has not been wasted. In fact, it was time well spent, because it means I am now in a position to put my head down and churn out the rest of the story. In theory.

This novel has so far been a constant source of surprise, delight, irritation and frustration. The Sound of Butterflies knew what it wanted to be right from the start. The Collectors did not. That is, it thought it did, which is why I bashed out 30,000 words in the first few months of my residency, but then I had to stop and re-think the whole thing. It necessarily got more and more complicated, and ambitious and wild, and just when I thought I was getting a handle on it, last week it decided it wanted to be something else entirely (same characters and basic plot, different raison d’ệtre). I have stopped being surprised by this novel and am going where it takes me.

Previous to writing this novel, I would have said I was the kind of novelist that more or less has a plan when the novel starts, but now I know I am not any one kind of novelist and every book I write will have a different process (just as every child one has is different I suppose, despite the same basic recipe). This first draft has been very much the 'exploratory draft' as described by the wonderful Laini Taylor in Not For Robots.

So I wish everyone a great Christmas break, but I will not be joining you, apart from maybe a couple of days to stuff myself with delicious food and drink. Already I seem to be the only one haunting the English department halls, and I quite like it. Watch this space.

Brown paper packages tied up with string.

2008-12-16T11:47:00.001-08:00

I think the thing I love most about Christmas is wrapping presents for my extensive family. Here's a pile going off today to one branch who are off overseas for the holidays...

Sunday Salon: Everyone else is doing it.

2008-12-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't read as many books as I would have liked in this year, and I have a pile of gems sitting on my bedside table that I know I will love (or at least like a lot), but here are the best of the ones I did read in 2008.

Some weekend reading.

2008-12-11T19:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I visited Craig Cliff's Quest for a Million Words. I looked in every now and again in November when he was conducting an experiment to see if he could write a 100-word story every day. Now that November is over, he's collected them all in one post and done a post-mortem on the experience. I love the way Craig sets himself tasks and challenges (such as the quest to write a million words in one year - not long left!), which effectively immerses him so fully in the world of the written word that the work he comes up with is always surprising and interesting. I like his style and envy his commitment and freshness. And the good news is that Random House will be publishing a collection of his short fiction in 2010.

I recommend my readers take a look at those 30 100-word short stories and also check out his alternative top 10 books of 2008 post, which illustrates what I love about blogging - good thoughtful reviews in a conversational and analytical tone that don't need to conform to a magazine or newspaper's guidelines and come from an extremely personal point of view.

*Please note that I have described Craig's posts without actually cutting and pasting his posts into my own blog, something I find rather irritating in others.

The Sound of Butterflies, the movie.

2008-12-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

Alas, I am not making an announcement that Hollywood has come a-knocking (although surely it's only a matter of time?*). Instead I am drawing your attention to this little piece I wrote for My Book, The Movie, which is a website where authors talk about who they would like to see making the film of their book and who they would like to see cast in the starring roles. I had fun writing it, and it's great to read other authors' daydreams on the subject.

Now, any fellow-novelists out there like to share their dream cast? And perhaps readers would like to share their views on my picks? It's always interesting to see how different people imagine your characters.

(*For rights enquiries, please contact my agent)

Taking myself off.

2008-11-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

It's probably no surprise as I've talked about it before, but this novel seems to be much more difficult to write than The Sound of Butterflies. For a start, when I wrote TSOB, I was fancy-free and could write at any time of the day or night with nobody to answer to (apart from the year and a half I was working full-time and put it on hold). Now I have boss - a two-year old boss - who demands that I down tools at 4.45 to catch the bus home and spend time with him before he goes to bed, and in the weekends that I spend all day with him. As for the evenings: my brain puts up a 'gone fishing' sign and shuts up shop. On top of my new restricted hours, this novel is turning out be far more complex in subject matter, themes, characters and structure. At least, that is how it seems in my head at the moment. I'm sure once it is all out, and polished, it will seem simple and breezy.

I just feel that every time I start to make some headway, the day finishes, or more often, the week finishes and it's time for a break. I mentioned to my husband that when I felt bogged down with my last one, that would be the time to take myself away somewhere to be on my own with no phone, no TV, and nobody to talk to, even if just for a couple of days to give myself a boost. I did it when I was writing chapter 4 of The Sound of Butterflies, which was quite a dense chapter, with a lot of research. I got to the point where I had done the research and just wasn't sure how to write the chapter. So off I went to Murawai for three days on my own. And wow, did it work. I wrote the whole chapter in three days. That chapter is about 13,000 words, or 44 pages long. It is the single biggest burst of writing I've had in my life. Not only did I get that down on paper, but it also meant that I had gathered a momentum which kept me going for months, right up until about chapter 10 or 11, when I ran out of money (and then some) and had to get a job.

I felt a little glum that it's not so easy for me to do that now, but I have a very understanding husband who did not hesitate to tell me to get going, if that's what I need, that they'll be fine without me for a couple of days.

So I can happily report that on Monday morning I am heading to a bach (or crib, since we're in the South Island) two hours north of Christchurch to see if I can't find that muse that only comes around when the internet and TV have been banished and when there are windy beach walks to be had and chocolate to be eaten. I'll be taking my ancient dunger of a laptop and squinting into its tiny screen for three whole days (and two nights), with no blogs to read, no emails to check, and lots of lovely (research-related) books to devour.

Right now I feel like the luckiest novelist in the world.

The last word on Wordstock.

2008-11-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

HIGHLIGHTS

Night of Literary Feasts: A wonderful idea for any festival, and hosted by the fabulous Larry Colton, this was a very relaxed party out at a vineyard half an hour's drive from the city on the Friday night. We dined and supped on delicious food and wine and then sat down for a panel with Kim Barnes, William Ketteridge, Ann Packer and Selden Edwards. We sat there while Larry asked us some informal questions which produced some wonderful anecdotes from my illustrious companions.

Saturday: My talk with Dave Boling, author of Guernica. Dave was utterly charming and a great speaker, and when the small but very receptive audience was a bit hesitant about asking questions in the end, he drawled "Oh, come aaahhhhn!" The whole event was held in a large expo space at the Portland Convention Centre, with exhibitors and bookstores as well as different stages, so several events took place at once. Visitors paid $5 to get for the whole day and could drift from session to session. I have never seen it done this way but it seeemed to work brilliantly. There were thousands of book-lovers throughout the day and the buzz was fantastic, with people wandering around clutching book bags, reading programmes, browsing stands and listening to authors.

To get an idea of what it looked like, here is a photo I took from the stage as my First Novels panel on Sunday was starting. By the end of the hour, all the seats were full and people were standing in the aisles. You can see activity going on behind the audience, but this doesn't really give you an idea of the scale of things as it shows only a sliver of the convention centre.

It's...it's...LIVE WIRE!: I was very lucky to get a ticket (thanks Greg!) to Live Wire ("Variety for the ears. Vaudeville for the mind"), the live taping of a radio show at the very cool Aladdin Theatre, an old vaudeville theatre in SE Portland. Think Prairie Home Companion crossed with The Daily Show. I finally got my dancing-in-the-streets moment when they were warming up the audience and asked: "How do we feel about the election results?" and hundreds of people screamed and roared and cheered and it was one of the most elating experiences I have ever had. Truly a highlight, up there with "Ding dong the wicked witch is dead". Over the next couple of hours I was treated to a great show - sharp, funny, entertaining - and was witness to some unexpected pleasures, such as: hearing cartoonist extraordinaire Lynda Barry in conversation with graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel; "humorist, former literary agent, and minor television celebrity" John Hodgman, along with his troubador sidekick Jonathan Coulton, and another helping of the wonderful Anis Mojgani. For more information and to actually hear the event itself, go to http://www.livewire.org/. In the meantime, here's a taste:

Sunday: A great First Novels panel with Selden Edwards and Randa Jarrar. Another highlight of the festival was meeting Selden and his lovely wife Gaby, whom I have now adopted as my American mom and pop. Selden spent 34 years writing The Little Book (nearly my whole life, I pointed out to him, and he took it with good grace), which has now become one of the big books of the year worldwide, so Selden is the poster boy for perseverence and patience. And his success couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

I finished the festival fairly exhausted back in my hotel room with Randa, drinking wine and gossiping. It is so nice when you meet strangers that you feel so comfortable with when you're both so far from home.

Random Thoughts:

# Portland has only 800,000 people and yet they can sell out a 600-seat theatre for a poetry slam on the same night that a poetry reading attracts 1200 people. I would therefore like to think that somewhere like Auckland can make just such an effort the next time its festival is on.

# I had dinner with an old friend of my mother's who told me that as a self-employed artist, her health insurance costs her $US400 per month and she still has to pay the first $5000 of any medical treatment she gets. Therefore, the insurance is basically not health insurance, but bankruptcy insurance. It makes me glad to be living in a country with more socialist leanings (I was glad anyway of course, it just made me realise even more how lucky we are. I shudder to think what will happen in the future).

# Because many of the 180 or so authors involved in the festival are not well-known in New Zealand, and because there were so many of them, I didn't know where to start. I had to let fate lead me where it may. I wish I could have been in many more places at once and taken the time to hear more authors, but most of the ones I did see were very nice suprises.

# It was great to catch up again with Mark Sarvas, he of The Elegant Variation, who I met in Christchurch, but our schedules clashed somewhat and we didn't see each other speak or get to hang out as much as we would have liked.

#Portland rocks - the place, the people. Everyone I spoke to loves their city with a passion and feels that they live on an island of sanity in an otherwise crazy world. I will definitely be returning.

Projects and gratitude.

2008-11-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

I just spent an hour this morning with my friend Jo Randerson and family, once again making me realise how much I miss my Wellington life and the more regular contact with those friends living similar lives (nothing against my lovely Christchurch friends of course!). Huge congratulations are in order to Jo who just picked up one of the Arts Foundation's New Generation awards - a great honour and a great financial boost. Very well deserved - the multi-talented Jo is tireless in her commitment to the creative life.

We talked about the usual things, babies and writing and the coincidence thereof, and I told her what things were looking like for the next year. My fellowship finishes at the end of March (to be taken over by Victor Rodger - more congratulations!) and then I'll be on my own financially with what I hope will be at the very least a completed draft of the new novel. I will also be back to more child-minding as my husband will be studying full-time. I'm both looking forward to next year and dreading it. If I can be disciplined, I hope to both finish my novel and spend some quality family time. Not necessarily a 'conducive' situation but we'll see. The thing is, I have no fewer than five projects lined up after this novel: a screenplay, a children's novel, another adult novel and two non-fiction projects, as well as a project in my capacity as my father's literary executor. This is all very exciting for me - I can think of nothing worse than getting to the end of a novel and not knowing what the hell I'm going to work on next. Here's the scary thing: I do worry how I am going to support myself and my family. These projects are all going to keep me very busy and creatively fulfilled but they are not things that anyone will be rushing to my door to pay me for, at least not until they are finished. Chances are, I will probably have to take on some kind of paid work which will push all of these things further and further back.

I am not complaining - I have had my fair share of help in my writing. I guess I just want to write down some thoughts about the uncertainty in life when one chooses a creative, independent path. There are certainly sacrifices to make - hell, I wouldn't even call them sacrifices, that is way too strong a word. Compromise is probably better. And I wouldn't swap this life for all the high-flying , highly-paid jobs in the world (been down that path; it did not make me happy). What I'm leading to is to thank goodness for organisations such as Creative New Zealand, and the Arts Foundation who recognise the importance of the arts and who get together with patrons - those with both money and kind hearts - and make it possible for people like me, and like Jo, and the 94 people who have received Arts Foundation awards, and the countless others who have received CNZ grants, to keep doing what we do so that others (hopefully) may enjoy it too.

This started out as a post about all the exciting projects I have lined up and it ended up being about gratitude. Go figure.

On rejection.

2008-11-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

Bernard Black's take on rejection, especially for A Cat of Impossible Colour. Thanks to Louisiana, who first posted it on her blog. In other words, I stole the idea from her.

My musical and creative idol finally writes another novel.

2008-11-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

I just heard, via Literary Minded, that Nick Cave has his second novel coming out (after And the Ass Saw the Angel, published in 1989) in 2009. The new one is called The Death of Bunny Munro, and here is what his publisher, Text, says about it:

'The Death of Bunny Munro delivers exactly what you want and expect from the enigmatic and phenomenally talented Nick Cave—a dark and compelling portrait of characters who dwell on the fringes of society and stumble through life on a diet of drugs, chaos and disappointment, but who'll never give up stumbling which is in part why they fascinate us so much. It's a funny yet tragic novel, proof all over again that Nick Cave is a writer out of the box. We cannot wait to publish this remarkable novel in Nick's native Australia where he is a revered icon.'

Michael Heyward, Publisher

I hope it doesn't take me 20 years to produce my second novel, but then again, I'm not a musical genius who has brought out countless albums and toured the world. I am looking forward to this novel greatly as Nick Cave (specifically, his music) has been a big influence on my life and my work, especially my current novel. You might not be able to see it, but it's there!

A real American highschool.

2008-11-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

On the Friday of Wordstock I was picked up by the lovely Donna and taken to Lincoln High to talk to a couple of classes in the school library. What a great bunch of kids. I was quite nervous beforehand, not because I was scared of them, but because I didn't really have anything prepared and hoped I wouldn't run out of things to say. Someone had made this wonderful sign for the event:

I had nothing to worry about. I ended up just chatting to them about life in New Zealand and about being a writer - they asked lots of really great questions and the time just flew by. I asked them what they knew about New Zealand, and most of them said 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Flight of the Conchords' so I was able to supply good anecdotes that arise from living in a small country where everyone knows each other.

Afterwards I played tourist and took photos of a real American high school! This might seem a bit pedestrian to any American readers out there, but imagine what it's like to grow up watching American teen TV dramas and you'll see what I mean. Schools there are so different from ours, and this one was just like the many I've seen on the small screen over the years.

Case in point:

This photo also captures well the gorgeous autumn-ness of Portland. I also discovered that Elliot Smith* and Matt Groenig both went to Lincoln High so they impressed me right back.

Thanks for having me, Lincoln!

*It has just occurred to me looking at this plaque that Elliot Smith would have been my exact contemporary at school. So very sad.

Poetry Slam!

2008-11-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

Wordstock kicked off with a poetry slam on the Thursday night. I've never been to a poetry slam, I'll admit it right now. I always thought I preferred to read poems in my own head. Boy, was I wrong. The stunning Baghdad Theatre in Hawthorne (very cool district - lots of great vintage clothing stores) was packed (sold out, even) with 600 people and the poets received the adulation normally reserved for rock stars, or at least for stand-up comedians. The fact that most of them sort of swaggered as they walked on stage probably helped. I am ready to join the fan clubs of Anis Mojgani, Jodie Knowles, Good Sista Bad Sista, Derek Brown and Buddy Wakefield.

Hell, check them out for yourself.

I heart Portland.

2008-11-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

First off let me say a big thank you to Larry Colton, Greg Netzer, and all the folks at the Wordstock Festival and the New Zealand Book Council for getting me over to Portland last week. I had a fabulous time, was treated like royalty and recommend Wordstock to everyone, whether writers or readers, both or neither.

It was very frustrating for me to find that in the few short years since I last went travelling (to Europe in 2006), internet cafes - those ones with rows and rows of computers so you can check your emails and update your blogs - seem to have disappeared. Instead, WiFi is available everywhere, which is great, but not so great if you didn't bring a laptop. Also, I bought my Apple iBook just before everything seemed to make a great technological leap forward, so it has no wireless capability and doesn't even have a DVD drive. Sigh. Guess it's time for an upgrade if I'm going to do more roving.

So apologies for my silence. I had hoped to give a daily update of festival festivities, and of course once I got home the task seemed a little overwhelming, cue more silence. So instead I will be presenting an abridged version, in bite size pieces.

When I took off from Sydney to LAX, CNN was announcing that the American presidential candidates had just cast their votes. The announcement came somewhere over the Pacific from the pilot that Obama had won and I expected more of an uproar than there was - I looked around and saw a couple high-five each other, but other than that, people seemed keen to get back to their movies. Maybe they were all Aussies. I also expected when we touched down that America would feel different somehow, but other than a surprisingly short wait at immigration, people just seeemed to be going about their business as usual. What did I want? Maybe I wanted dancing in the streets. I'm sure there was dancing in the streets, somewhere, just not in the transit lounge at the airport.

Still, it felt like a pretty special time to be there. Everyone I spoke to in Portland was very pleased with the election outcome. They were dancing on the inside.

I was picked up from the airport by the lovely Jan, who drove me into the city. Portland was perfectly autumnal, with rust coloured leaves and heavy grey skies, colours which didn't change for the five days I was there. Even the buildings seeemed to be painted to suit the season and the effect was very harmonious, even in the more industrial parts of town. Jan dropped me off at the very flash historic Benson hotel. I was exhausted, but I took myself off for a walk and found some very funky shops and cafes just around the corner. Powell's bookstore ("City of Books") was a little overwhelming for my jetlagged brain, but I was pleased to see that they had a stack of my book in the Debut Fiction wall and another on the general fiction shelf. It was the first sighting of my lovely new paperback cover and it was gorgeous to behold. It was also great to see an independent bookstore so dominant.

Predictably, I wilted, went back to the hotel, ordered room service dinner and crashed out...

...only to be woken just after midnight by someone trying to get in to my room. Luckily I had locked it from the inside, or the couple with the key card would have walked in on me asleep in their bed: I had been given the wrong room apparently. After I had sent the couple away, two burly hotel staff knocked on the door, waking me again, to ask me who I was. All a bit disconcerting, but they apologised profusely the next day and explained that I had been allocated the wrong room by the clerk and so my details had been filed under another room number. I hate to think what hilarity would have ensued if I hadn't locked the door from the inside. The couple would have walked in to find Goldilocks asleep in their bed and I would have got a hell of a fright in my disoriented state. But being interrogated about who I was and what I was doing after midnight and after a 28 hour journey from New Zealand was bad enough!

Still, it was all cleared up and I did sleep in the luxurious bed for another 9 hours solid after that.

Transmission interrupted stop

2008-11-07T16:16:00.001-08:00

here in portland stop wish I had a laptop as there seems to be no such thing as internet cafes all wireless for which you need your own computer stop hotel internet access $US5 per 15 minutes hence telegram stop having a great time and will report back if I can find a cheaper computer stop lots to tell exclamation mark

Portland schedule (or, two and a half sleeps)

2008-11-01T17:00:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it's only three days before I leave for Portland. I was struck down by flu this week (yes, the actual flu, not a cold, although it hasn't been too bad) and so am behind in my preparations. I wanted to get all the planning out of the way so I could keep working on the novel; that way I'd be in full flight by the time I left and could keep working in airport lounges etc. Ah well.

It's only two and a half sleeps because I leave at 4.30am on Wednesday, which means being at the airport and 2.30. I may not sleep at all.

On Friday I visit a high school to talk to freshmen and seniors about being a writer, and I will also lead them in a writing prompt. That should be easy to prepare for - I'll just chat about myself and answer questions, and get them to write about an obsession, be it butterflies, clothes, boys, music or miniature trains. I'm also taking with me a stash of NZ YA lit to introduce them to some NZ kulcha: beyond the Lord of the Rings films and Flight of the Conchords I'm not sure what they'll know, and I'm interested to find out.

Friday night I take part in a thing called The Night of Literary Feasts. It's a nice idea: the public can 'hire' an author to come and have dinner with them and their book group/friends/clients/whoever they want in their home or at a restaurant. All proceeds go to a local literacy charity. I'm going to someone's house with two other authors, so it should be relaxed and fun.

On Saturday I'm doing a 'Historical Novels' session with an author called Dave Boling. I'm going to look for his novel Guernica before I leave NZ. Basically, we both talk for 20 minutes each, then answer questions. This might seem like the easier format, but I have to say I prefer panel discussions where we sit and get asked questions. You have to think on your feet, but the upside is... no preparation. When I have to prepare something I tend to over-prepare for fear of being struck dumb, and consequently it always takes up a lot of time and possibly introduces a grey hair or two. But I'm sure it will be fine, and I have double-checked with Dave that he's not going to give a full-on powerpoint presentation with bells and whistles as that would not be fun to be up against armed with nothing but a microphone and some notes.

On Sunday I take part in a panel about first novels, which should be fun. I know nothing about the other participants, Selden Edwards and Randa Jarrar, but I'm looking forward to meeting them and hearing about their work.

Other than that there are the usual parties, mooching about in hotels and exploring a foreign city. I would say that shopping was on the agenda, but as usual when I go to the USA, the NZ dollar buys practically nothing there at the moment, unlike 6 months ago. How I wish I had discovered the delights of online clothes shopping back then...

I will try and report from Portland but I am not taking my laptop (which is too ancient to be of much use anyway). I'm looking forward to catching up again with Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation, who I shared the stage with twice at the recent Christchurch Writers Festival, but other than that everyone will be a stranger.

I have to say a huge thank you to the NZ Book Council for making this all possible through their international writers' programme.

New banner.

2008-10-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

Look at my new banner. Isn't it lovely? It was designed for me by the seriously talented Sarah Laing. I think it shows I'm serious about this blog thing, and that I don't just want my blog to look like everyone else's. But more than that, it captures the aesthetic that drew me to Thomas Edgar as a character in the first place. Before I started The Sound of Butterflies, I was already a collector of antique prints, the very kind that appear above. I never had any butterflies, but I have shells, bugs, birds, flies and plants, many of which I found in a funny out-of-the-way spot at the Portobello markets in London. I wrote about it on the Picador blog a while back (scroll down a fair way to find my post).

So I'm happy. Looking at this banner makes me happy, in the same way that looking at my prints made me want to write about the sort of man who might have done these drawings in the first place. And clearly I keep coming back to this aesthetic - my new novel has a collector as well. Two, in fact. I just can't leave them alone, it seems.

In which the author wishes she could work a bit more efficiently and then uses a train metaphor.

2008-10-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

I had an unexpected visitor this morning: the idea for my next novel. Once again it arose from some outside stimulus, and a serendipitous coming together of several elements to cause the spark. In this case, my husband mentioned that he had stumbled upon a documentary I might be interested in, based on where the research for my current novel is taking me (the research is actually taking me too far from where I need to be). Just after he mentioned that, an interview came on the radio and when the subject mentioned one of his previous jobs (he is now an actor), I could almost hear the cogs connect and the wheel start to spin. The whole next novel flashed before my eyes.

There is no danger that I will abandon my current one to start this new idea. I had the idea for The Sound of Butterflies while I was halfway through the novel I wrote for my MA and I managed to get that finished (though obviously not to the point that it was publishable). TSOB existed in notebooks for a long time before I turned my full attention to it, and I think the beginning was easier because of it. So I'm hoping the same thing will happen here.

That makes five projects I have in mind that I would like to see through to their end: a short story, two novels, a children's novel and a screenplay. I am a serial monogamist when it comes to writing. I am afraid of diluting projects if I work on more than one at once, but the upside of that foible is that I do finish things, eventually. I would rather have two projects finished at the end of (say) three years than four half finished things. I guess that is why, when I embarked on my Wuthering Heights essay, the novel part of my brain shut down until it was finished (although it did turn out to be valuable research; I just couldn't write any of the novel).

Around about now is when I wish I was some kind of writing machine, who could work quickly and efficiently. My residency finishes at the end of February, which is only 4 months away. I would like to think if I sped things up a bit I could have the first novel finished and the children's one nearly done as well.

So why do I work so slowly when these things are all there in my head? When I have the time and the space and the income? I wish I had done some kind of journalism training - the novelists I know who have are very very good at bashing out the words quickly and efficiently, where as I tend to go bash, bash, think, think, get distracted, another bash, go and have a nap. And that is not a typical day I am describing but a typical month, so those periods of not bashing are ridiculously long while I stew things over. I have talked before about the perfect novel in my head; maybe the problem is still that I am worried that when it comes out it won't be so hot. But I'm supposed to be over all of that.

The other thing I have noticed is that my new idea has arisen from the research for the current one. I go wandering along a path and realise that I am too far from the route I am supposed to be taking, so I promise to come back to that path another day on a new project. Just as my current one will be linked to TSOB because of my own personal interests, so too will the next one be linked to that (and probably so on and so forth). An image of train carriages being hitched together comes to mind. Each one will be connected to the last, but by a different link than the one before. I think that's rather a nice way to shape one's publishing career.

Bits & pieces.

2008-10-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

I am back from a great few days in Melbourne. I love that city so much. I would actually consider moving there. After all, I can work anywhere, usually. It would just be the logistics of moving the family there and finding the right things for everyone to do. I often think about the life that might have been. It's not that I wish I'd lived a different life - far from it - I just wish there was a way to live parallel lives. In one of those lives I would have moved to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and made an effort to stay there and learn. I know I can still do those things, but it doesn't seem as easy to move around. Of course, I am forgetting I had my own shackles in my 20s too, usually lack of money or useful work experience that would make it possible to uproot for foreign shores.

I worked in London a couple of times - once for a year, then again for six months - but it's not the same as the challenge of going so far outside your comfort zone you don't even know what the local words for 'comfort zone' are. I'm sure the reality wouldn't be as glamorous as I am imagining.

Anyway, back to Melbourne: I shopped, I drank, I ate, I danced, and best of all I caught up with very missed friends. You see, with friends like those I feel as though moving to another country with a small child might just be tolerable - there would be willing babysitters and lots of fun things to do with friends that don't involve finding a babysitter in the first place.

I had no literary activity whatsoever, except I did read some of the stories, as promised, in Paula Morris's Forbidden Cities. It was the perfect book to take with me (this from someone who regularly confesses to preferring novels over stories any day). I urge anyone to check out this book - there really is something for all moods, especially when travelling. My favourite stories so far are the ones with a satirical touch - I guess they are more like the Paula I know in person. But the one I loved best will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my own short stories: it was called Bright and it was quite short and finished from a dog's point of view. I like a good dose of whimsy and melancholy in my stories, and this one has just the right amount of both. I've still got a few stories to go and they are now my perfect travelling companion on short journeys too - the bus to work.

I have decided not to write about seeing Goran Bregovic in concert. Let's just say it was love. I am far too daunted at the thought of putting the powerful feelings the show generated into words. I'm sure you can imagine the awe of seeing "a 15-piece all-male choir; a 12-piece string orchestra, a six-piece brass 'Wedding and Funeral' band; two female singers from Bulgaria; a guest vocalist Alen Ademovic and, of course, Goran Bregovic!" I will leave you with this image though: I wondered as I looked at everyone sitting so politely in the four-tiered-seating State Theatre when we arrived just how we could experience the promised overwhelming urge to dance. I wondered if an arts festival crowd is the ideal crowd and a theatre the appropriate venue. I needed have worried. By the end they were dancing in the aisles, clapping and singing. Two middle-aged women at the very front finally got up the courage to dance at the very end and were so pleased with themselves they high-fived.

Maybe I will write about it another day.

Forbidden Cities.

2008-10-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

I was going to call this post 'Foreign Cities' and say how appropriate it was that when I go to Melbourne this week my book of choice is called Foreign Cities. But it's not; it's Forbidden Cities by Paula Morris (see Bookman Beattie's recent interview with Paula here). I was getting it mixed up (again - sorry Paula!) with Charlotte Grimshaw's novel Foreign City.

So. I am going to Melbourne this week to visit friends and have a small holiday, and I shall be taking Paula's new book of short stories, which I'm very much looking forward to reading. Even though I'll be in a foreign city with much to do, I will also be in a nice quiet hotel with all the time in the world, and if there's one thing that I don't get much of these days, it's lolling around reading.

I love Melbourne. I've only been once before but if I was going to move to Australia I wouldn't have much trouble settling there I think. It certainly isn't what I would class as a forbidden city; at least, nobody has forbidden me to go there. It might be forbidden in as much as I'm a bit worried about shopping temptations and perhaps drinking too much with my lovely friends. Ah, the decadence!

The Melbourne Arts festival is on and I'm going to see Goran Bregovic's Tales and Songs for Weddings and Funerals on Saturday night. Bregovic made the music for Emir Kusterica's films Time of the Gypsies and Underground, both films I loved, with the music contributing significantly to that love. Here's the blurb:

"The maestro of this timeless new sound, Goran Bregovic, melds a 37-piece ensemble from the best of the Balkans: a 15-piece all-male choir; a 12-piece string orchestra, a six-piece brass 'Wedding and Funeral' band; two female singers from Bulgaria; a guest vocalist Alen Ademovic and, of course, Goran Bregovic! The result is a recipe for riotous fun, passionate performance and exhilarating energy – featuring Bregovic’s much-loved film scores, hot-wired revivals of traditional tunes and new fusions of flavours from Gypsy to rock."

I can't wait. Perhaps afterwards I'll try and give another stumbling music review, where I try and put into words things that I only feel with my gut.

I'm also going to see if I can't get a bit of dancing in, since Melbourne supposedly has one of the most vibrant swing dancing scenes in the world. And speaking of early-20th-century-dance-styles, Melbourne is also home to one of my literary guilty pleasures: Phryne Fisher, the can-do 1920s flapper detective gal, the creation of Kerry Greenwood. If you want maximum escapism with fabulous frocks and mint juleps, you need look no further than Phryne.

The joy of tutu-ing.

2008-10-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

(Pronounced first 'tu' like 'foot', second like 'too'.)

I've been writing an academic English essay for the first time in years. This morning I spent about half an hour on two sentences. If I was doing that with my novel at the moment I would never get it written, so I just give things more a cursory stroking and move on, and then only if something is truly awful at the sentence level.

But I needed those two essay sentences to work hard for me - they were in the conclusion. (Snippet of memory from my BA days: I hate writing introductions and conclusions.) And I loved it. I loved pinpointing and refining and rewriting until I'd chosen just the right words to say just what I wanted to say with a lovely cadence.

Which made me realise how much I love rewriting sometimes (and at those times I would say, as others have said before, "writing is re-writing"). Today anyway, most definitely. And now I can't wait to get to the third draft stage of my novel, because by then I will have sorted out most of the big structural hiccups, captured the plot and the character and the voice and all those big picture things and I will be able to blissfully roll around amongst the minutae of the sentences for a while until they say exactly what I want them to. And I will enjoy just fiddling and wearing away at those words, turning them inside out and breaking them down.

But I'm still only on the first draft, which of course has its own charms. I just thought I'd stop work for a bit and sing my little ode to tutu-ing. Carry on.

24 more sleeps.

2008-10-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

As the Wordstock festival in Portland, Oregon is my first international literary festival (let me rephrase: my first overseas international literary festival) I think it's only fair that I am feeling ridiculously excited about the whole thing. According to the schedule, I will be giving a presentation along with another debut historical novel author, David Boling, at 3pm on Saturday November 8th, and I will also be appearing on a panel about first time novels at 3pm on Sunday the 9th. It's an auspicious time: I fly in on the preceding Wednesday (the 5th), the day after the US general elections, so Portland will either be rejoicing or commiserating; I guess by the time I stand up on Saturday I will know whether or not Helen Clark is still Prime Minister; and on the Sunday my son will turn two without me. I am fairly certain at this point he doesn't even know what a birthday is, but I plan to burn up the credit card to make up for my absence and yay, he gets to have two birthdays. Such are the sacrifices we make.

I was reminded by the election situation that I was in the States last time a Bush left the White House. I found myself in New York on the day that Clinton was elected in 1992, at an Act Up (Aids activist group) party, and when the results were in the whole place was jumpin' with the sound of 'ding dong the wicked witch is dead!'. It was exhilirating; as I stood there I realised I was experiencing a very important part of history first-hand and would remember it forever (although I have to admit that in my old age the details are somewhat hazy).

How strange then, on my fourth visit to the States, to potentially witness my second Republican/Democrat changeover. I will report back with glee.

Life outside of writing.

2008-10-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

Wearing:

Little Tweeters Necklace from mammaslittlebabies at etsy.com

Wishing I was wearing:

Ashley dress from Trashy Diva

Listening to:

Beirut

Watching:

Dancing:

Lindy hop!

Playing with:

A ball - a lot! With my son.

Reading:

A crazy mix of blogs by women who are heavily into clothes. Blame a cat of impossible colour for introducing me. These aren't shallow blogs by fashionistas wanting the latest Prada handbag; they are usually about creative things to do with home-made and thrift store clothes. I am rediscovering my 20 year obsession with vintage clothes.

Sometimes there is life outside of writing, we just don't talk about it on blogs about writing.

Real-life conversations.

2008-10-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

I went to Wellington last week and came to this realisation: the reason I have been so prolific on this blog since moving to Christchurch is that I don't have any writer friends down here. You may have noticed that I haven't posted for more than a week, and that even that post was hardly a deeply thought-out essay on the pleasures and agonies of writing a novel.

It's because I met up, separately, with two of my writer friends in Wellington and we talked about writing. How I miss those conversations! They are so vital, so important in the life of trying to write a novel, or simply leading 'the writing life'. I'm sure some people would disagree, that they need solitude above all else; well, this is true when you are doing the actual writing, but when you're not, it is so great to have others to discuss things with. It doesn't even need to be the work itself that is being discussed, although this can help too. I have a Wellington writing group that is wonderful for critiquing, egging each other on, and even just sitting around for a wine (and a whine) and a gossip. But then it's great to have a quick fix, where you meet one person for coffee and you don't pull each other's work to pieces but just talk about how things are going. Sometimes it can be intimidating, when one's own work is going badly and your friend is so focused you can see lasers coming out of her eyes. But mostly it is just plain inspiring and can give you the boost you need. Writers can offer each other advice when they hit a wall, or even just a sympathetic ear.

So that is why I blog - to try and recreate the feeling I get from those cosy chats in cafes with my writer friends, and which is why I love it when people leave comments and it becomes a discussion. The downside of keeping a blog about writing is when you do have a real-life conversation and your friend says "I know, I read it on your blog", and you can no longer remember what you've written and what you haven't and whether you are boring the person who is too polite to tell you they've heard it all before.

But as far as not having posted for a while, I blame my trip to Wellington. I am sated. For now.

Sunday Salon - my office and my job.

2008-09-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked me to post photos of my office. I think there is a whole new phenomenon here - office porn, or, the art of looking at writers' desks. I am happy to oblige. So here they are: I have two desks, one with the obligatory pin-board with inspiring pictures, photos, index cards etc, and the other housing my computer. Above that are the images from A Cabinet of Curiosities. I have included the outlook from the window, although it was the university holidays when this was taken, so there are no students sullying the view!

I am happy to inform my readers that if they like the look of what they see, my position as the Ursula Bethell writer in residence at Canterbury University is up for grabs next year. For details of how to apply, go here. I can't recommend it enough - an office, a computer, a salary, access to the library (and gym!) and almost complete solitude. I can go for days without talking to a soul, but if I need company, it's easy enough to find, too. A very productive environment for any serious writer.

The perfect novel.

2008-09-23T17:06:00.001-07:00

I have written the perfect novel. It is complex, multi-layered, gripping and very important. The story is fantastic. It will move readers, and sell extremely well. The critics will laud it, and of course, it will win the Booker. Or the Orange. Or both. How could it not, when it is perfection itself?

The trouble is, so far I have only written it in my head. In your head, things can afford to be perfect. And effortless. The novel assembles itself with precision; all you need to do is get it down on paper, right?

Wrong. In making the transition from head to page, that perfect creature becomes a baggy, twee, trite, lack-lustre, confused monster. I wonder how many great ideas never make it into book form because people can't bear to see their precious darlings being born a bit spotty, or, OK, hideously deformed.

But this, I have to remind myself, is what writing a novel is all about, and those of us who persevere - who don't abandon our ugly babies but work with them to make them achieve all they can in life - are the ones who get the books finished. And OK, they might not be the flawless art that we first imagined, but we have to at least try and mould that first effort into something as close to our dream as we can manage. We can't give up.

On a personal note I thought I could get this novel out in a year, no worries, because it was all there in my head. The days when I hated what I saw appearing on the screen sometimes crippled me for the rest of the week. I have come to realise that I was being a bit optimistic. Sure, I will try and write it in a year, but with a few exceptions, novels can - and probably should - take a lot longer that that.

A few weeks ago, a night class student asked me how many words I like to write a day and I said a thousand (this wasn't a lie - I do like to write a thousand, but I usually fail at this target miserably). He said with a very confused look on his face "But this isn't very many at all!" People have this image of the full-time writer sitting at their desk banging away on their keyboard for 8 hours straight, but those who have actually been there know that this is virtually impossible. Sometimes I sit in my office all day and only write for an hour. But try and explain to people what you're doing for the rest of the time and you realise that to the outside world writing a novel looks an awful lot like laziness.

Other people have also said "If you write a page a day, that's a novel in a year". I think those people have never written a novel either. They must be the kind who think that the perfect novel in their head will pour out of them at a perfect page a day, and at the end of that year all they need to do is print it out and send it off.

The conclusion to this rant is that I am going to go back to trying to write 1000 words a day, and if they look nothing like I was hoping I will shrug my shoulders and tell myself that I have all the time in the world to shape it once the first draft is out. If I hate it, I don't have to live with it. I have the power to change it to the best of my ability. And I don't need to rush it out. If I take the time to research, and ponder, and read things that inspire me, I am not being lazy; I am being kind to my baby.

"Oh, I don't read novels."

2008-09-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about how often I meet people, men usually, who say "I don't read novels". They usually say they only read non-fiction. One of the main reasons seems to be that they have little time for reading, so if they're going to read, they want to learn something.

Of course I think that you can learn something from novels, but that's beside the point. I just realised today that you never hear people say, when talking about films, "I only watch documentaries." Surely there are so many people (*cough*men*cough*) who think nothing of flopping down in front of TV for the evening to watch a drama or a comedy, and certainly those who, even if high-minded and anti-TV, will go the the movies to watch a good shoot-em-up or a well-crafted, thought-provoking piece of arthouse cinema.

So why don't they look at novels in the same way?

Incidentally, those readers who claim to only read biographies etc, also seem to take forever to read their chosen books, reading a couple of pages a night before falling asleep. I would venture that if they gave a good novel a try, they might learn something and be engaged enough to read a good chunk at a time. They could even read a book instead of watching TV.

Any thoughts?

Actually, further to this, I was interested in a survey the Guardian did recently about male and female reading habits. Men read significantly less fiction than women (no surprises there, I worked that out when I was a shopgirl in a bookstore - they also don't read books written by women*), and the novels they name as being their favourites seem to be the ones they read as angry young men or studied at university 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago. Anecdotally, I have come across just these types, who name books such as The Crying of Lot 49 as their favourite novels, but who haven't ever bothered to pick up something that's come out in the last 20 years which might be just as good. One guy even said to me once "fiction these days is crap"! Well how does he know if he never reads any? Oh, that's right, he doesn't have time, and he wants to learn something when he reads. As far as he's concerned, he's read a good novel. Why bother looking for any more?

*Of course I'm not talking about all men; there are plenty of exceptions, including my husband who not only reads novels, but novels written by women. I think that might be why I married him. But on the flipside I have a male novelist friend who says he doesn't read novels. That's even more scary.

Grumpy old woman moment #2.

2008-09-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

I take the bus every morning to work and most evenings home again. There are only a couple of seats I can bear to sit in, and I'll tell you why. Buses these days seem to be plastered with advertising, or if not advertising, then some kind of decoration, which spreads up the side of the bus and over the windows. The decal stickers they use are sort of pixilated to let the light in and to allow passengers to see out. The trouble is that if you look through them, everything is blurred - it's like watching things move under water without goggles - and once the bus starts moving, it just makes you feel plain sea-sick. So I always try to choose a seat that has a clear view to the outside, otherwise I have to stare at something inside the bus for the whole 30 minute journey to settle my stomach.

Bah! Who had this bright idea? Clearly someone in an advertising agency who drives to work. Bah!

Sunday Salon - I am Heathcliff.

2008-09-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

I am still on a 19th century novel kick - both as 'research' for my new novel and taking advantage of my academic setting this year by attending lectures on the subject.

I can't remember when I last read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, but it must have been a long time, because I am finding it as fresh and interesting as if it were the first time. There is so much I could say about it here, but I'll be saving it for the essay I'm going to write. Yes, you read correctly - I have decided to tackle a third year academic essay 18 years after I last studied Victorian literature at university.

Let's just say that for what is arguably the greatest romance ever written in the English language, the lovers are two of the most unlikeable heroes and heroines you are likely to meet, and the love story unconventional to say the least. I remember thinking that the first time I read it, but now my reaction is a bit more complex.

For example, everything we know about Heathcliff and Cathy is not from their point of view, but through the eyes of Nelly Dean, the nurse, and she brings all her morals and standards and prejudices to her view of them. I feel as though I understand them so much better now that an older me is taking the narrative with a grain of salt and reading between the lines.

Cathy is certainly spoiled, and Heathcliff a bit of a thug, but that doesn't stop me from feeling for them when they are kept apart and their love is unrequited, save for some kisses and tears just before Cathy's demise.

I love reading it at the same time as gong to lectures, which are opening my eyes to so many aspects of the novel as I read it. I had always imagined, even after I read it, that WH was so evocative in its descriptions of the wild Yorkshire moors; in the edition I'm reading, it even says as much on the back cover. But the moors are never described directly; all the action takes place either at Wuthering Heights or Thrushcross Grange. Instead, the moors are really brought to life in the descriptions of Heathcliff, when he is compared to the natural landscape. Heathcliff is the moors.

I could go on but I think I'll save it. I am thoroughly excited by the prospect of writing an essay and putting into it everything that I didn't when I was younger and more distracted. I am also excited by how re-immersing myself in the world of the Victorian novel has reinvigorated my own novel and taken it in a new direction, which proves once again that you can't write a novel without reading and appreciating those who have gone before.

Writing and babies.

2008-09-11T18:28:00.001-07:00

Many of us have done it and failed. Some have succeeded. Some of us are thinking about doing it. I recommend Making Babies by Anne Enright for those who have done it and those who are thinking of doing it, and also the latest post by Lauren Groff. I just read it, smiled, and thought, ah, yes. You can't ever help seeing the humour in such endeavours, and this is what keeps you sane. I can't believe I went through it all and out the other side. And could quite possibly think about doing it all again.

Right back at ya.

2008-09-10T19:51:00.003-07:00

Mark Sarvas has written about his time in New Zealand and at the Christchurch Writers Festival on his blog, The Elegant Variation. He says very good things about everything and everyone. What a nice man. He can come again.

A couple of my favourite things.

2008-09-09T19:21:00.001-07:00

I was going to say "a few of my favourite things" like the song, but realised I only had two for now.

1. Not For Robots. ("Writing is hard. People for whom writing is not hard are robots and should go away. Thank you.") I have spoken before about how sometimes when my novel is going badly I start scouring the internet for answers. The trouble is I don't really know what the questions are. But I think this website might actually hold the answers to them, whatever they are. It's written by American YA author Laini Taylor, which is everything she knows about writing and the process of writing novels. It's great. I have already picked up some very useful suggestions, such as keeping two documents open side by side as I'm writing: one for writing the actual novel, and one for twittering on as I'm thinking about it, or trying stuff out (similar to what Peter Carey refers to as cantillevering), so I'm always getting down what's in my head. She says it helps her enormously and I'm going to give it a go. I could go on about all the great advice, but you should probably go and check it out yourself.

2. The smell of the printer/photocopier room. I had to print out a couple of boring invoices today and when I walked into the room that houses the enormous Deathstar of a printer here in the English department I was hit by a smell that simultaneously excited me and reassured me. Why? I think because usually when I go into that room it's to print off pages of my novel. It makes me feel as though I've been working and I have something to show for it. Of course, today I haven't earned that smug feeling the room has given me (perhaps it needs more ventilation and I am in fact high on ink fumes), but I have it anyway. Come to think of it, I think I'm getting a headache.

A small voice.

2008-09-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I wrote this post, which I ended with suggesting that the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, which is arguably New Zealand's highest-profile competition, should perhaps think about employing a different judge. I was worried that employing the same judge year after year would lead to writers tailoring their stories to one person's taste, and that the fact that those stories get published in the newspaper and exposed to so many readers might produce a uniformity in the types of stories that are considered excellent. I was worried that diversity might be at risk.

This year, Owen Marshall is no longer judging the competition; Stephanie Johnson is. I am delighted. No doubt she will have different ideas to Owen as to what constitutes good writing, and I for one welcome the change. Who knows why they changed, whether they had intended to have someone different all along, or whether Mr Marshall wasn't available this year, or whether the organisers had heard my small mumblings from cyber-space and it gave them some food for thought.

Festival report #1.

2008-09-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

The Christchurch Writers Festival is over. It was a great but exhausting few days, and I didn't even go to as many sessions as I would have liked. I think I'm tired from a combination of going to hear writers, being a writer on panels myself, being 'on', partying (ie drinking) more than I'm used to, and still having to be the usual mother when I came home. But hell, it was fun.

Chairing a session in particular takes it out of you as you're responsible for the whole thing running smoothly, and I am a compulsive over-preparer for that kind of thing (although strangely when I am there as a panellist I find it easier to prepare nothing at all), so it took me all week to write introductions and to generally feel anxious. Well, I'm happy to report that the Friday session did run smoothly, despite being told when I arrived that Mark Sarvas wasn't going to make it (which would have meant rewriting my introduction, coming up with more questions and dumping the rather nice intro I had written for Mark). Luckily I found out in time that he would in fact be coming; he'd just be a little late. This actually provided a bit of flair to the session as Mark arrived in a flourish about halfway through.

I couldn't have asked for an easier group of writers (Anya Ulinich, Christine Leunens, Maxine Alterio, Mark Sarvas) to chair. They all had plenty to say, and rather than sticking rigidly to my plan for the session, I just let it flow organically, with readings and questions that arose out of the pieces that were read. I do wish we'd had more time, as we were really only just getting warmed up when it came to an end. Four writers is one too many for a session such as that, even if we did have more time. Mark Sarvas in particular could have had a session all to himself to talk about his book, Harry, Revised and his blog The Elegant Variation (more on this when I write about the blogging panel we were both on). But I guess no matter how well a writer performs on the day, the nature of festivals and their resources is that sometimes people have to share the stage, and it would have been a gamble to give a writer who is really unknown in New Zealand a session all to himself.

I did, however, get feedback that it was a good taster for the works of the writers involved and that plenty of people went out and bought their books after.

I have to say that a highlight of the festival for me was meeting and hanging out with the wonderful Anya Ulinich. She is one cool chick and we had lots of laughs. And quite a few drinks.

More on the festival here, here, here and here.

Festive.

2008-09-03T19:28:00.001-07:00

The Press Christchurch Writers festival has started. Just a reminder, if you are in Christchurch, the events I'll be appearing in are in the column to the left, under the big blue festival ad.

Chairing a session is a challenge - as the chair it is up to you to make the session run smoothly and to make it interesting. This means giving good introductions to the writers but not rambling on for too long, which sadly happens all too often at festivals. I hope I can get the balance right. I have certainly done my preparation - to the point that it has consumed everything else this week, and that's not to mention all the reading (which has luckily been enjoyable).

With four authors to read and interview in one hour I won't get to ask probing questions about their work, but I hope some interesting anecdotes will come out of it and that it will be an entertaining and informative hour.

As always with these festivals I'm looking forward to the parties and meeting fellow authors from far flung places - Kate Atkinson and Kate Mosse among them (I'm sure Robert Fisk is very interesting but what would we find to talk about?) - and catching up with my publishers and writer friends.

I shall report back next week.

Spring has sprung.

2008-08-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Right on cue, first of September, first day of spring. And the weather is playing along. On campus this morning it even smells like spring - something to do with the new mulch they've put on the garden beds probably - and on the walk to the bus stop I waded through petals from trees overladen with spring buds. I even shrugged off my winter comfort/shabby clothes, put on a polka-dot scarf and red lipstick and did my hair (still with my usual work attire of jeans and Converse sneakers, but the result is more retro-glam than the slob I was becoming).

Welcome Spring!

But while we're welcoming some much-needed good weather, please spare a thought for those less fortunate. My friend Paula and her husband have had to abandon their home in New Orleans once again. Paula has just arrived in New Zealand, while Tom is driving through heavy traffic to St Louis, so they can't even be together to support each other. Meanwhile they are waiting to find out what Gustav does to their home and much-loved city. My thoughts are with them today.

A visitation.

2008-08-29T20:52:00.001-07:00

I was out of action for a couple of days this week past, having and recovering from minor surgery. I took Friday off work to stay in bed, but did a bad job of it. It's not often I get to be at home alone (child at creche) without feeling I should be doing something, and what do you know, with no guilt in my brain a new idea floated in unannounced.

Now, normally I would be very suspicious of a new idea while I'm at this stage of writing my novel, and frankly, I'd be a little worried too, as it would make me think my novel was going badly to be letting this usurper come a-knocking. But the big surprise was that it was an idea for a film, not a novel. And as I was having a guilt-free day of doing nothing, my mind was open and it just kept coming and coming in that delicious way that my (infrequent) ideas seem to do. It's one of those ideas that is so simple and obvious that it's unbelievable that it hasn't been done before. I even jumped on the internet to do a bit of research and all my ideas were backed up by real, live, juicy facts.

No, I'm not about to turn away from my job as a novelist and become a screenwriter - I have never really had those kinds of ambitions. But I would like to moonlight for a wee while. Indulge myself in tutu-ing away on something that has no deadline or expectation. I think I'll write a treatment and pass it on to friends and family in the film business and see what they make of it. If they think it has possibility, I might take it up as a project once the novel is finished. Or I might not. It depends how loud it gets.

I know how annoying it is to me when people say "oh, I had an idea for a novel, I might just tippy-tap away and see what happens," so I will acknowledge that screen-writing is every bit as hard as writing a novel and I shouldn't be taking it so lightly. I much prefer novel-writing for the control it gives me over my material. Screenwriters I know are bound by producers, film commissions, and that's just at the script stage; then there's the fact that in order for it to be fully realised, someone has to come along with pots of money, whereas if you write a good novel it is relatively inexpensive for a publisher to produce.

So it is not without a bite of humble pie that I am taking on my new little project, and acknowledgment that it's not as simple as it sounds.

US paperback cover.

2008-08-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

I have just seen the lovely new US paperback cover of The Sound of Butterflies on the Barnes and Noble website, so I am taking that as the go-ahead to share it on my blog. It is to be released early November, under the Harper Perennial imprint, just in time for my trip to Portland, Oregon for the Wordstock festival. I think it's gorgeous - one of my favourites. Harpercollins US have also updated their website so all their authors get a new page (or series of pages). Mine is here.

Donna and me.

2008-08-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

I can see now why some writers take ten years to write their second books. I’m thinking of people like Donna Tartt and Junot Diaz. Second books are hard. Well, technically speaking it’s not my second book I’m working on; it's my third, although as a follow up to my first published novel, I will call it my second.

It’s not that I’m paralysed by anxiety. If I go looking for the anxiety, I can find it easily enough, and find plenty of things to feed it – will this one be better than the last? Will my publishers like it or reject it? Will I be able to finish it before my residency (and salary) runs out? – but I’m not feeling that anxious, honestly. I’m just looking from the outside in for a moment, cool and detached, at the process I am going through with this one, and it has made me think of Donna Tartt writing The Little Friend. Of course she had extra pressure – how to follow up a mega-hit – that thankfully I’m not burdened with. I’m just really interested in the way this novel keeps slipping out my grasp, like soap in the shower. Just when I think I’ve got it, it twists away again. One moment I think I know exactly what it is, and the next it morphs and changes and I realise that what I have written so far is no more than a bit of dabbling to get me ready for writing the novel properly.

I imagine Donna Tartt starting The Little Friend with an idea: little girl’s brother gets murdered; little girl is kind of quirky, with a quirky Southern family; quirky little girl sets out to find her brother’s killer. I bet she doesn’t even know until she gets to the end that Harriet isn’t going to find the killer. Tartt probably thinks the whole time she is writing, ‘Well I don’t know who did it, but I’m sure if I keep writing it will all become clear.’ Except it doesn’t. So she keeps writing. And as she writes, the book changes – she needs to introduce a strange misfit family into it as suspects and she becomes enamoured of them and wants to give them a point of view. She starts to love writing their dialect. For a while, she follows them to see where they will take her.

She finishes a draft and goes back and changes lots of things. She rewrites passages so they sing, so she can really feel under the skin of the character, view everything through their eyes and write the world accordingly.

In the meantime, some years have gone by. She still doesn’t know who the killer is. She changes some more things, rewrites some more. Another few years goes by. And so on. She knows this whole time that it has to be better than it is, that if she just keeps working away at it, it will get better and better until it is finally worthy of releasing into the world.*

I understand now. I just hope and pray that I can condense that process into a much shorter time.

*Warning: may not actually be how Donna Tartt wrote The Little Friend. In other words, don’t quote me.

Sunday Salon - Revisiting Jane.

2008-08-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest things about being writer in residence at a university is the access it affords to that wonderful thing that universities supposedly stand for - knowledge.

This means I have free rein (reign?) of the libraries, which has proved very useful for research for the latest novel. I even think that being here has changed my novel significantly: as I make use of the resources, the characters, story and structure of the novel are all making use of them too. I think it is very interesting how outside factors, such as where you are when you write a novel, can have such a powerful influence, but that's another post topic altogether.

The point of this post is that this week I attended a lecture: my first English lit lecture in about 13 years. It was a stage 3 course on the Nineteenth Century Novel, a subject that was very close to my heart when I did my BA in English many moons ago. This particular lecture was on Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë. Due to all the reading I've got on my plate for the festival, I didn't get a chance to re-read the novel before the lectures began, but I was pleased to find that I still scored 8 out of 10 on the quiz the lecturer gave to see who had actually finished the book, so it has stayed with me for many years.

I loved the lecture. It made me, once again, wish that I could do my BA all over again, or at least transport myself back in time and make the younger, distracted me pay a bit more attention and get a bit more out of it. I loved the books then; I didn't love the lectures or the coursework or the exams. Older me would relish the lectures and the essays, if not the exams.

I loved hearing about the context in which the book was written, the life of the Brontë family - all which I knew about but enjoyed hearing in such an intense, distilled environment as a lecture on the novel.

At the beginning, after the quiz, the lecturer asked the class what they thought of the book. One young woman said that she was a huge Jane Austen fan, and that when she started Jane Eyre she was disappointed that it was so different in style, that she couldn't get into it, but that by the end she was won over. It reminded me that when I studied stage 1 nineteenth century lit, I had the exact opposite reaction when I started Pride and Prejudice. I was a big fan of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I wrote in my journal at the time that I thought P&P was boring, that it was so mannered and dispassionate. I don't even think I got past the first chapter. Now I love Jane Austen, but it was interesting to realise so many years on why I had that first reaction to her. Charlotte Brontë herself said of Austen that she was "only shrewd and observant" and not passionate, that her work was "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck".

I'm looking forward to diving back into Jane Eyre when I get the chance, and upcoming lectures include Wuthering Heights and The Woman in White, both of which I plan to read (re-read in the case of WH) to get the most out of the lectures. And yes, they do all have something to do with the novel I'm working on; I'm just not sure exactly what just yet, but I'm sure that all will become clear.

Life is just busy. That's all.

2008-08-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this blog will notice that I haven't been posting as much of late as I usually do. That's because I've been crazy busy and the blog seems to be the first thing to fall away (well, maybe not the first, that would be housework, packed lunches, and on some days, novel-writing). Apart from trawling second-hand and vintage clothes shops for the perfect outfits for husband and me to wear to the big band ball a couple of weeks ago, I have been teaching some classes. The first was when I spent a day back at my old school, the second was a continuing education night class at UC Opportunity. I guess it would be useful to tell people about these things before the fact rather than after, but that seems a little too organised, and I haven't quite got the hang of using this blog as a publicity tool.

Anyway, the point is that my headspace has been taken up with preparing for those classes and they have nudged nearly everything else out if the way. I definitely enjoyed the classes, but was also glad when they were over, as it's usually the time leading up to them that I find the hardest. I probably need to train myself to only think about them a day or two in advance, thereby shortening my anxiety and preparation time.

Next up, after one more UC creative writing class, I have the session I am chairing at the Christchurch Writers Festival, so I am still reading around that, but at least that's the kind of prep I can do while lying in bed at night.

I saw a writer friend in the weekend who will also be at the festival. He said that he had been asked to be on my panel about blogging but had turned it down. I pondered aloud as to why he would be on the panel when he doesn't have a blog and he said "because I hate blogs". Which seems to me to be the most pointless reason to have someone on a panel about blogging. It would be like having someone who hates crime fiction on a panel about crime fiction. Presumably if you hate crime fiction, you don't read it. Presumably if you hate blogs, you don't read them, so what could you possibly have to add to the conversation? Sure, it's good to have someone to play devil's advocate and ask the hard questions, but surely that is the job of the chairperson?

My reaction to people who say they hate blogs is to simply suggest they don't read them. It's like any medium - there is good stuff and there is bad stuff. Just because there are a lot of bad magzines out there, I wouldn't say "I hate magazines" and write them all off.

But maybe this friend hates them on principle because he is a columnist and he makes his livelihood this way. Blogging to columnists probably looks a lot like reality TV does to writers and actors of legitimate drama. There is so much crap out there, and people wanting to get their 15 minutes of fame without getting paid for it, that it devalues the genuine talent of people who need to make a living in the print media. But I think it is wrong to write the whole medium off.

And I guess to hear more about my thoughts on why, you'll have to come to the session at the Press Christchurch Writers Festival*.

*Maybe I'm getting the hang of this promotion thing.