The winners.

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.

Lucky me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.