This Saturday, I will attend a writing workshop with author Stephanie Johnson. Today, I started on what I am calling my 2013 Writers' Retreat, taking in many of the sessions offered by the Writers' and Readers' programme as part of the Tauranga Arts Festival. I am an avid note-taker, so decided I would write up today's experience, if only for the purposes of a writing exercise. Hopefully you will be enlightened a little on these three current bestsellers from the talks given today by the authors.
Tauranga
Writers' and Readers' Programme, Tauranga Arts Festival
Thursday
31 October
Happy
Endings - Graeme Simsion and Julie Thomas
How
does a holocaust novel sit alongside a romantic comedy, on the
platform of discussing the importance of a 'happy' ending? The
contrast between the respective novels, The Keeper of Secrets
by Julie Thomas and The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion,
initially seemed a bit like blue cheese and pear on a digestive
biscuit: That tart, biting sweetness has a hint of discomfort
prickling around its edges, with a lingering aftertaste causing the
tongue to go searching for remnants.
However,
that sensation of intriguing discomfort is what real life is about.
Real life is not a one-dimensional, cardboard cut-out, as Graeme
pointed out. (As our recently elected local councillors know, the
demands of the Tauranga public require them to provide more
satisfying and realistic solutions than what was possibly advertised
on their streetside billboards.) Graeme concluded that a “happy
ending is perhaps not so much about the (idealistic) 'happily ever
after', as about the (realistic) 'happy for now', a 'status report'”,
doffing its hat to the unpredictability of human life.
Without
further ado, I find myself buying both books from the first session.
After all, you have the chance to have them autographed! My hand
shakes as I write the cheque. I am happy to part with the money so I
raise an eyebrow questioningly at my hands. Were my hands fatigued
from their frantic note-taking? Was the excitement of intellectually
stimulating literary conversation that uncontainable?
I
stand in front of the authors, tongue-tied, realising with an element
of surprise that I have been given privileged insight into the minds
of two successful authors for the last hour and they know nothing of
me. Nothing.
“Are
you a writer?” Julie asks, pen hovering, eyes questioning.
Obviously, my recent virtual brain surgery at her hands is just an
everyday occurrence for her (the surgeon with knife hovering, skull
open in front of her, commenting with bemusement “It's been a while
but it'll be here somewhere!”)
“Budding...”
I stammer. She must have removed the part of my brain that deals
with language – the stolen violin of her novel is trivial. I
watch as she writes: “Good luck”. Seems so banal. I'm obviously
not used to getting autographs.
“Just
do it. Doesn't cost anything”. Yep.
I
fumble with putting that book away and getting out the other, ready
for Graeme. First name basis (in my thoughts only, as yet uncoaxed
through my lips), a level of intimacy that Graeme shares with his
main laugh-out-loud-funny character, Don - a once in a lifetime
relationship, he says. He's earned that relationship over a span of
at least five years.
“Which
colour pen?”, Graeme asks, reaching into a breast pocket rainbowed
with colour.
I
smile. “Oh, um, good idea. Red. Please.”
I
watch as he scrawls: “Best wishes”. Thanks.
Will I ever sit like this, autographing my work for enthused supporters, unsure what to write for strangers who think they know me? It is a possibility now, with extra inspiration from these two authors who experienced the initial rejection we are all fearful of, yet followed that with dedication to their own convictions, culminating in successful debut novels.
The
Creation of New Zealand - Paul Moon
The pattern of authors' rejection, perseverance and success was echoed in the second session of the day by Paul Moon, who spent ten years working on his book Encounters despite receiving an initial rejection of his proposal. To send the full manuscript back to the same publisher after ten years and ask for a blind review (that is, a review from an independent reviewer who is not privvy to the title or the author) is the kind of tenacity that seems to exemplify the successful writer.
That tenacity appears
to be evidenced also in the content of the book itself. The
questioning of ourselves as Kiwis and our assumptions about the
various aspects of our ingrained cultural identity/identities was
relentless, often unapologetically dissecting touchy subjects, and
showing a relentless determination to question, research, then
question again.
Moon spoke of the
natural evolution of culture, which can be stunted when we try to
capture the spirit of it in repetitive cultural demonstrations that
possibly don't remain current representations of reality. Our
fondness for aligning ourselves with stereotypical cultural
identities may be explained by an idealisation of that identity as an
'antidote' to our 'boring' lives, but Moon points out that Michael
King's description of our NZ identity as 'good-hearted, practical,
commonsensical and tolerant' is the same as that described by
Australians and further afield in the western world. It is not
unique.
Moon describes a
tension between the nostalgic view of our world (in the good old
days) and how it is in our current reality; and on the other hand, a
tension between the utopian desire for how we want our world to be,
and how it is in our current reality. His bottom line being that
views on our identity can vary between groups (carrying different
historical and cultural baggage) and are fluid and evolutionary over
time.
I imagine Encounters
would be a fascinating read but not one that the reader could come
away from without a recognition of the extent of their unchallenged
assumptions about our Kiwi identity.
As a writer and as a Kiwi, I was challenged today, possibly summed up by this passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson (quoted at the front of Encounters).
“Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”
by Jeanette Jones
