Why write a book?
I have loved books forever and wanted to create a book that gives me the sort of enjoyment I get from reading. As a child, I had my cache of precious items to take from the house if there was a fire or other disaster. It included a large tome of myths and legends that my Dad had owned. Books were the best Christmas and birthday presents. I still feel vaguely aggrieved if no one gives me a book for Christmas.
Recently, I pulled out my first attempt at writing a book, aged around nine. ‘The Princess’ extended to an impressive fifty pages, I don’t think I could handwrite fifty pages any more. The story was heavily influenced by my desire to read every fairy story in the Redwood Library, from which our family borrowed books on Fridays each week. I wrote it with the expectation of a sequel, which never eventuated. I got my best friend, who lived next door, to edit it.
My next attempts at books were my BSc Honours thesis on the volcanoes of Banks Peninsula and my PhD thesis on Ohai Coalfield – coal is a subject it’s now embarrassing to admit I studied, though at the time I thought I was studying something useful rather than an esoteric topic. I could have done with an editor for my PhD given I managed to have a spelling mistake on the title page. The experience of writing a thesis is enough to put you off trying to write a book for a very long time; thirty years in my case!
Why finally get around to writing a novel?
Living through the Canterbury earthquakes was profoundly influential for everyone. There’s no going back from life in a civil emergency. I conceived the idea of a woman making new creations out of the broken objects that were a feature of everyone’s life during and after the quakes. The idea nagged at me until the woman became Julia and the idea became a story in my head. How the story finally turned into a novel was very simple. I had a week with few commitments at the beginning of December 2021. It seemed like time I wrote this novel I had been thinking about, so I investigated how to structure a novel online (thank goodness for the internet, how would I live without that resource!) and started writing. Once I started, I kept going until I got to the end.
I visualised a woman making new creations out of the broken objects that were a feature of everyone's life in the quakes.
Is there any relationship between the blog, ‘Thoughts in Uncertain Times’ and ‘Broken is Beautiful’?
Sure is. I was inspired to start my blog by the announcement of the COVID-19 lockdowns. After the Canterbury earthquakes, I wished I had written more about what was going on. Very quickly, I forgot the order in which things happened and started to forget the events. It seemed a pity to lose the detail of such a significant time. Therefore, when our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, told us we were staying home for COVID-19, I rapidly investigated how to set up a blog (on that handy internet) and created a site the same night. I kept myself occupied throughout lockdown by writing a daily post and inventing photographic illustrations that I persuaded my partner Chris, my Mum and our cat Loki to participate in.
Of course, COVID-19 didn’t end with the one big lockdown, so I kept writing blogs. Then COVID-19 started to seem a little (or a lot) dull, so I wrote more about other issues of the day, or week, or month. I was brought up to think philosophically and a career of writing funding applications has led to my musings being written. Possibly my favourite University paper was Philosophy 101 where you got to think, rather than just regurgitate. Unfortunately in the 1980s you either did science or arts papers not both, so I didn’t go further with philosophy and studied geology and botany.
Now I have two and a half years of blogs and they are like the diaries I tenaciously wrote as a child (which I still have in a box in the shed). I can go back and see how what I thought two years ago is markedly different from what I think today. It’s always surprisingly surprising to find how your mind changes, no matter how many times it happens.
Back to 'Broken is Beautiful', earthquakes and COVID-19 left me feeling discombobulated, living in a surreal world. So I set 'Broken is Beautiful' in COVID-19 times and my blog then became a significant resource allowing me to relive 2020-2022 and give depth to the setting. 'Broken is Beautiful' has allowed me to record a slice of time in New Zealand that will be historic, even if in 2023 it feels more like recent past.
What fills up the day, other than writing?
Too many things to count! My partner Chris, my company resolutionz (which helps people get funding for scientific research), our family and friends, our six hectares of garden in Gibbston, singer-songwriting on the guitar – something else that COVID inspired me to take up – a bit of woodwork when I can squeeze the time in, tramping, mountain biking, skiing in winter, travelling ... There are never enough hours in the day for all the things that I love to do (possibly why I have never owned a television – when would I find time to watch it?).
When I was in Madagascar, I asked why the bones of the dead were kept in concrete houses more substantial and larger than houses occupied by the living. I was told, "You are dead far longer than you are alive." That sentiment parallels perfectly with my core tenet – I never know what will happen next so I’d best make the most of the time I have right now!