Natasha Judd

So suddenly December’s ending and Christmas is over and it’s the last day of 2007.  I would have liked to spend today writing, but unfortunately I’ve got work – which has been a bit of a theme of the last 12 months… and probably of the 12 to come.  But I’m beginning to believe that I’m always going to need to work while I write, and that the working can be inspiring too, in it’s own way.

In 2007, I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo.  I didn’t finish the first draft of my work in progress.  I didn’t send any poetry to magazines.  And, yet, it was an amazing year: one where I read on National Radio, and saw a novel with my name on the spine on the bookshelves of Unity bookshop.

It’s a year where I’ve blogged, and kept a paper journal, sent letters and written travel stories.  Where I’ve read book after book, and been introduced to the work of some inspiring young writers, such as Faye L. Booth and Lili Wilkinson.  Where I’ve gotten so excited about the success of my New Zealand classmates, and just begun to scratch the surface of what’s on offer in London.

Next year, I’d like to be more focused.  I say that every year.  But more than that, I want to write things that I’ve started through to their completion.  Then, I want to have the confidence write new things: new genres, forms I’ve forgotten, to write just because I like the sound of my voice on the screen.

I’d like to thank everyone for all their support this year, and wish you all the best in writing and life in 2008.

This week’s writing about writing post on webstuff4writers.com asks for book recommendations. The focus isn’t just on good writing however. It’s on good writing about writing. There are a lot of writing resource books out there: books about how to sell your poetry, how to be a freelance journalist, how to punctuate your sentences.

On visits to bookstores, I often skim the writing resources shelves but I haven’t actually sampled too many of those on offer. However, when I wrote the original question, there were three books I had in mind.

As a teenager, I loved John Marsden’s Everything I know about writing. John Marsden’s one of my favourite young adult authors, and this book gives insight into his writing process for some of his earlier novels, alongside prompts and exercises for your own writing projects.

Another book that’s particularly relevant at the moment is No Plot! No Problem, by Chris Baty. Chris is the founder of NaNoWriMo – the month long 50,000-word-novel writing extravaganza that starts tomorrow. However, his book has some useful tips about the human side of writing that apply no matter which month you write in. And his talk of rewards allowed me to justify the large quantities of M&Ms I consumed while writing Lessons to Learn.

Finally, I’d recommend Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. There’s some great advice in there – from keeping morning pages (something I do every now and then when I find myself not writing regularly) to continuing to write while you’re waiting for a response to a submission. I’ve read this book so many times over the years, and yet, every time I finish it, I’m re-inspired to continue writing.

If there are any writing-related books you’d recommend, please leave a comment here, or on the entry at web stuff 4 writers.

This week’s topic over at web stuff 4 writers asks about the longest piece you’ve written.  For me, the answer is easy.  At approximately 57,000 words, Lessons to Learn is by far the longest piece I’ve written.

Of course, 57,000 words isn’t very long for a novel.  It’s no Shantaram or Edward Rutherfurd epic.  But for me it’s impressive.  Until I finished that first draft of Lessons to Learn, I considered myself predominantly a short story writer and a some-of-the-time poet.  Before then, my longest works were my failed NaNoWriMo attempt in 2004 (approximately 17,000 words) and the 12,000 word essay I wrote in my Human Communication paper in the first year of university.  The required word count for the latter was only 1,000 words I think, and I was most disappointed when I only got a B+.

I’m about 25,000 words into a new project now.  Will it be longer than Lessons to Learn?  I’m not sure at this stage.  For now, I’m just going to keep writing till I feel the story’s told. There’ll be time for editing and adding and taking out words, paragraphs, pages and whole sections, once that first draft is done.

It’s October, and the sign-ups for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) have begun. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo is a challenge that’s been running for a few years now, where participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That’s an average of 1,666 words a day!

I started NaNoWriMo in 2004. Every night for a week and a half, I typed out thousands of waffling words of a novel about a girl who was travelling across Canada. Every time I ran out of ideas, I had her move on to a new destination. And by that stage, my hands ached so much that I was finding it difficult to get my work done for the 9-5 job. So that was the end of my 2004 NaNoWriMo novel, and in truth, I haven’t looked at it since. That said, I think it was useful to have that attempt at writing a novel. In starting it, I began to learn the differences between writing a short story and a novel - differences that were going to be more and more significant over the next 12 months.

In November 2005, I had just finished writing the MA portfolio version of Lessons to Learn. In November 2006, I was travelling around Europe.

This year, I’ve got a project that I’m already working on. The rules of NaNoWriMo state that you need to start a new novel on the 1st of November, rather than work on an existing project. So I won’t be an official participant, but I’m hoping that the knowledge that so many people, all around the world, are also writing, the conversations on the message boards and a large quantity of M&Ms will spur me on to complete the first draft.

If you’re also participating in NaNoWriMo this year, or working on another project to another deadline, let me know, and perhaps we can cheer each other on.

 I’ve started a new blog.

It won’t take the place of this blog, though.

It’s about writing.  And the web.  It’s called webstuff4writers.com.

Inspired by ‘Booking Through Thursday’, I’m going to post weekly writing topics that can be used in blogs about writing (like this one).  These topics will usually be posted on a Sunday, unless there’s another day people prefer.

Anyway, here’s the first one, and my answer.

Writing about writing: Week one

 Do you think keeping a journal or blog is a useful practice for writers?  Why or why not?

webstuff4writers.com is my new attempt to keep a regular journal.  I’m not good at keeping a regular journal.  This blog in itself is evidence of this.  There’s more evidence of it in a wardrobe of my parents’ place, where there’s a pile of notebooks, each about one quarter to a half full.  In both 2006 and 2007, my New Year’s resolution was to keep a journal every day.  This year, I made it to March.

That said, I do think that journaling is a useful practice for those who want to write.  A lot of my short stories have come from journal and blog entries – both from those entries where I’ve recorded something that’s happened to me, and those entries that I recorded something I’ve observed happening in the world at large.  Some of the scene-setting in Lessons to Learn was based on my travel journal from my time in Korea, and from the emails I sent home which became almost like a travel blog.

The other advantage that I’ve found is that keeping a journal is a good way to start writing each day, and that when I’ve written one piece – whether it’s non-fiction, stream-of-consciousness, or a poem –  it’s easier to write something else.  If I had all the time in the world for writing then, this process would be ideal.  However, most days there’s only half an hour before work, a couple of hours after it.  And then, if I spend too much time blogging or writing about my day, then no novel writing gets done at all.

Still, I’ll give webstuff4writers.com a go, and see how long it lasts.  Hopefully others will find it useful.  Hopefully I’ll managed to keep it out of that virtual wardrobe, where abandoned blogs go to die, for a couple of months at least

Reading through my online subscriptions this morning, I came across a YouGov survey reported in the Guardian which found that more people from the UK aspired to being an author than a sports personality, pilot, and in fact, any other job.

Why’s there such a widespread appeal in authorship, I wonder.  The article goes on to suggest that the job’s popularity might be something to do with the success of JK Rowling in recent years.  And sure, we’ve all heard the story of the struggles and the rejections before the million pound income, but that’s unlikely to be a reality for all authors (or even most). 

There’s the idea of creating something that other people will consume.  But don’t artists do that as well?  Film-makers?  Television producers?  And I’m told that a lot more people watch films and television.  Perhaps, then, it’s that books stay around longer.  Antique books do have a certain appeal, after all.  The classics of the book variety have been read for hundreds of years.  But surely I’m not the only one to be less than enchanted with a 10 year old paperback, one where the paper has turned yellow and the pages are falling out.

I guess when I was young and dreaming of being a writer, it did seem to be somewhat of an easy job.  I imagined the days disappearing as I tapped away on my keyboard, the words flowing effortlessly.  Then I learnt about writer’s block, and word counts, and the edits that need to be done.  And marketing, and talking about your writing, and all that scary stuff.

And yet, I still want to write.  I’d still be in that 10% who’d rather be a writer than a sports personality or event organiser, and it’d great if one day I could call ‘novelist’ my day job.  There’s just something about writing, I guess. 

For anyone else out there who writes, or would like to, what is it for you?

So, it’s been almost a month between updates, and what have I been doing? Somehow I’ve managed to fill in the time.  I know I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but that only took a day. I’ve been writing up some of our travel stories for the Cosmotourist website. I’ve been swamped at the day job. And I’ve been, very slowly, working on the next novel. And other things, I guess.

Meanwhile, Lessons to Learn is out there in the world, and every now and then, I get to hear from people who’ve read it. Just today, I noticed that it was called a ‘delightful’ on Beattie’s Book Blog.  A couple of weeks ago, a classmate forwarded me a Sunday Star Times review which contained the words ‘gifted with a flair for deadpan comedy’ and also ’sex-mad Aussie sloven’ (the latter luckily referring to a character). 

And then there’s Fiona, the editor of AUT’s student magazine, debate, who has forwarded me some copies of Issue 16, which contains an interview and a way-too-large picture.  And there’s the people who’ve read it through Bookcrossing, and my lovely friends who pre-ordered their copy or have bought it from the stores. 

It’s strange to think of the book in other people’s hands at the other end of the earth.  It’s like leaving a part of me at home, it’s keeping that connection, while here in London, I catch the tube and walk along South Bank, and what is normal life for now continues.

At 7.50pm last Thursday, I got on the overnight bus from Auckland back to Wellington, home to Matt and me from February 2005 to September 2006. It was wonderful to be back, and Wellington turned on its best weather for me. The sun and blue skies almost made me forget about those mornings when I needed to wear my gym track-pants under my skirt and over my stockings on the windy walk to work; those afternoons when just getting across the road to university would leave me soaking wet, and my useless umbrella turned inside out.

Arriving before 7am on Friday, I was too early to check into the hostel. But I left my bags there, and checked through their book exchange for Bookcrossing labels (none found), and waited for the cinemas to open, so I could see the day’s first screening of Becoming Jane. And I know I’m back in Wellington, when I can go to a central city cinema, for a current release, and share my theatre with six, perhaps seven, other people. And I think that it would’ve been so much more romantic to be a writer in Jane Austen’s day. But there would’ve been disadvantages too, such as having to write by hand.

In the afternoon, I went up to the IIML, where I studied Creative Writing and wrote the first drafts of Lessons to Learn. It’s still there. The view is still incredible. The Cable Car up the hill now has Melbourne-style ticket gates and increased prices.

That’s what is perhaps most obvious, going back. The things that are new. There’s a new supermarket in the train station. There’s a huge new Borders in Lambton Quay. They didn’t have Lessons to Learn in stock, but further down the road, Dymocks had 10 copies – the most I’ve seen in a single store so far.

But it’s also a good reminder of how things were in a place where you often accidentally run into people you know on the streets, where you can get fish and chips from the store next to New World and eat them in the grounds of Parliament.

And there were things too, that I didn’t remember. One such thing was the exact location of The Chocolate Fish Café. I thought it was a bay or two around from Oriental Bay. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t in the bay after that, or the bay after, and so on. Eventually, I started seeing signs to the airport, and I was probably closer to there than to Wellington City so I walked all the way to the terminal then paid $5.00 for the bus back into town. I never found that particular café.

But later on Saturday, I had hot chocolate and a bagel in Olive Café with a Bookcrossing friend, who goes by the username Sherlockfan. I caught up with her news and shared mine, and signed another copy of the book.

That night, I went to an art exhibition in Guznee Street, where prints had been made to accompany poems by well-known New Zealand artists. The prints and poems were auctioned off for what seemed both less than they were worth, but more than I could afford.

On Sunday morning, I went to the Katherine Mansfield birthplace, but I’ve already written about that. Later in the day, having collected my bags from the hostel lockers, I was back at Olive Café, to catch up with some of my classmates from the IIML in 2005. It was great to be there, and to hear what they’re working on now. I miss our classes, and the food that was brought along, and being so familiar with a group of other writer’s projects. Much as I’m enjoying London, I do miss Wellington; as I do Waitakere; and Melbourne; and Vermont; and all the other places I’ve lived. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve already lived in too many places.

Sunday night and I was back on the bus. Many unsleeping hours later, I arrived in Auckland.

One of the things I always meant to do when we were living in Wellington was visit Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace. A year and a half of residing and working and studying there, and I didn’t make it. However, with a morning spare yesterday, I decided to make the trek across the city to the house at 25 Tinakori Road in Thorndon.

Katherine Mansfield is arguably New Zealand’s most famous short story writer. A young woman who left home for London and to write journals and letters and nearly 100 short stories, to befriend D.H. Lawrence and to be part of the Bloomsbury Group, and to suffer from tuberculous and die in 1923 at the age of 34.

My favourite of her stories have always been the ones from her New Zealand childhood: The Doll’s House, Prelude, At the Bay... These are the stories which we studied at high school, at a time when I was only just starting to discover the magic which words can do. I spent three or four hours wandering the rooms which these stories were set in, and then, in one of the upstairs bedrooms, watching a video about Katherine Mansfield’s life.

Like Mansfield, I can understand the excitement of living in London, amongst it all, but also the need to write about the home-across-the-seas, the memories of the landscape and the weather. And while, I can’t hope to match her cleverness, the strength of her descriptions, and while I perhaps don’t want to match the way she struggled for her art, it was inspiring to wander round those dark rooms with their black and white photos and period furniture. If I want to be a writer, I have to keep writing, here in New Zealand, in London, round everything else, somehow, it has to happen.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield

More information

• Wikipedia article: Katherine Mansfield
• Katherine Mansfield House, Wellington

Just sent off my membership renewal for the New Zealand Society of Authors, and this year I could tick the full membership “had-a-book-published-by-an-established-publisher” box.

*Squeals with first time author excitement*

I was lucky enough to be able to take three weeks of annual leave for the book launch.  Three weeks without work, on the other side of the world – I thought I’d be able to get a lot of the new book written.  One week in, and I’ve only done about 4,000 extra words.

I’ve also signed my name quite a lot.  Yesterday, as I was listening to the radio interview, I was sticking post-it notes onto copies of Lessons to Learn which have been pre-ordered by family and friends.  The day before, I signed 20 more, which are travelling back to Australia for Matt’s family.  They looked so pretty, all stacked up on top of each other.  I had to restrain myself from taking more photos.

This morning, as she dropped me off for my appointment, Mum pulled out a copy to show her dentist.  He started reading it in reception, asked what it cost, and bought it off her – which was great, but didn’t quite make up for the mouth pain inflicted on me a few minutes later.  And I’m sure going to have to sell a lot of books before it becomes a feasible way of paying dental bills!

And there’s always the distraction of looking for copies of Lessons to Learn in bookstores.  The first place we tried was Time Out bookstore in Mount Eden.  It wasn’t on the shelves when we went in last Monday, but when Matt went back in and asked, “Do you have Natasha Judd’s book?” the staff member he spoke to said, “That’s Lessons to Learn” and produced a copy from the back room that had been pre-ordered (I know a couple of the readers of this blog have pre-ordered from Time Out, so thanks if it’s you!)

The first place I found it on the shelves was in Dymocks Newmarket.  Walked past the New Zealand shelf, and there was the familiar green cover.  Facing out too, so that everyone could see the title, those apples, the picture of the cover girl who everyone says looks so much like Charlotte.  It was amazing to see it there, alongside other New Zealand authors whose names start with letters close to J: people like Elizabeth Knox,  Stephanie Johnson, Witi Ihimaera, Lloyd Jones, and then there’s Natasha Judd… It’s surreal!

Also quite surreal is the thought that people I don’t know are now reading Lessons to Learn; that people are buying it as a gift for others.  Before she left for work, Mum had me sign a copy “To a very special lady.”  It’s going to one of her colleagues, who wants to give it to her mother-in-law.  I put the New Zealand/Australia Bookcrossing copy in the post today too, so that’ll be soon arriving at the first stop on its ring of readers.

Still, this week should be quieter, and once my mouth stops hurting (I’m such a wimp when it comes to dental work), I should be able to concentrate on getting more of this new second-book-first-draft written.  I’ve talked about it on National Radio now, after all…

Continued from Part III

16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?

After I finished my last draft of Lessons to Learn, I got married and headed off to Europe for two months. However most of the time, the celebrations are a little more low-key: perhaps a trip to a café for a hot chocolate with a new book or magazine. It’s a chance to print off a complete copy of the work-in-progress, then shut down the file, and leave things be for a couple of days, a week, a month, before I start editing it again.

17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?

So far, I’ve only been able to deal with one novel-sized project at a time. But I’m also usually working on other mini-writing projects, whether it’s short stories, articles, poems, blog entries, letters, and so on.

18. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?

Lessons to Learn and the current work-in-progress both started out as short stories, so they’ve definitely grown from that format!

A couple of years ago, I would’ve said that I was a short story person; that all my ideas for stories arrived in an under 3,000 word format. Now, I do think about an idea in terms of a novel-length plot and complexities, but even so, my books still tend to grow in revision.

For me, the first draft of a novel is about getting the bones of the story down. It’s about working out how I’m going to get to that end point which I have in my head. Revising is about expanding the story around that, so the word count definitely goes up during the editing process.

19. Do you have any writing or critique partners?

Not at the moment. I know I’m going to need people to critique this draft when I’m done, but right now I have to just write it.

20. Do you prefer drafting or revising?

Let’s see. I enjoy the freedom of drafting; the feeling that when I sit down and write that I could take the story anywhere. However, it’s hard work to get the words flowing sometimes, and the finished product always seems so far away.

When I’m revising, I’ve got the full story there in front of me and I’m working to make it better. It can be tedious at times, going through chapter by chapter with the red pen (or the red track changes function on Microsoft Word), but at the same time I like having the opportunity to say ‘what if?’ What if I remove this character? What if she said something different here? What if I took out this paragraph or removed this sentence? Would the meaning still be there?

When I’m drafting, I say I prefer revising. When I’m revising, I say I prefer drafting. Actually, that sounds like I don’t enjoy writing at all, which isn’t true. I’ve loved to write since I learnt I could write, and it’s something I want to continue doing for a very long time.

Any other questions?

• 20 writing questions: Part I
• 20 writing questions: Part II
• 20 writing questions: Part III

If anyone has a question which I haven’t covered here, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll try and answer it as soon as possible.

About a month ago I promised myself that, if I got the work-in-progress to 10,000 words by the 8th of June, I could have new books for the flight home. New books are even better motivation than M&Ms so, in the weekend, I kept pressing that word-count button until I reached 9,998 words, 9,999, 10,000.

But which books? I went into Waterstone’s at lunchtime yesterday, and didn’t know what to choose. All I could see were shelves and shelves full of the final product; each one the result of typing and deleting, research, sending off manuscripts, crossing fingers, coming up with a blurb and so on.

So, which books? I’m looking for your recommendations. What have been your books of the year? What have been the books you’ve escaped in? That have made the time fly by just that little bit faster? They don’t have to have been published this year of course. I think my choice of 2007 so far has to be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closeby Jonathan Safran Foer.

Since we arrived here in London, I’ve also fallen in love with British historical novels. Matt and I visited Hampton Court Palace over the Spring Holiday long weekend. It rained, so the hedge maze wasn’t much fun. But as I wandered through the rooms once occupied by kings and their courts, I wanted to fill them with stories. I’ve read almost everything by Philippa Gregory, but if anyone’s got any other historical novelist suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Other genres (including “no genre” or “difficult to classify, really”) also welcome.

Continued from Part II

11. What do you do when you get writer’s block?

To tell the truth, on most occasions when I get writer’s block, I just don’t write. I guess that’s a luxury of still considering writing as something I love to do rather than something I need to do to bring in an income.

However, if there’s something that I need to get written for a deadline, I’ll try to break it down into smaller chunks and set myself rewards for meeting each one. For example, if I write 50 words then I can have one M&M. I will write lots of words for M&Ms.

12. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of word-count, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)?

At the moment, I’m lucky if I get any writing done on a weekday. When I do, it’s usually to insert a particular idea or piece of research into the manuscript – so I write as many words as I need to get it in there.

If it’s a Saturday or Sunday where I’ve got a full day to write, I try to write in sessions of at least 500 words at a time. Sometimes that’s a struggle, sometimes I can easily write 2000 words or more without stopping.

13. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?

I remember throwing away a whole vacuum cleaner box full of Lessons to Learn print-outs when we left Wellington. That’s a lot of red pen covered drafts.

14. Have you ever changed a character’s name midway through a draft?

Yes, Charlotte in Lessons to Learn only became Charlotte half-way through the first draft of the novel. By that stage she’d assumed her own identity and character, and was ready for a new name.

And I’ve changed names in other stories when I’ve realised that I’ve done things like given every character who appears in the scene a name that starts with “T”.

15. Do you let anyone read your book while you’re working on it, or do you wait until you’ve completed a draft before letting someone else see it?

I wrote the first few drafts of Lessons to Learn as part of an MA in Creative Writing, so my supervisor read it regularly, and there were two workshops during that year where my classmates gave feedback on the work-in-progress.

Mum and Dad have always been incredibly supportive of my writing, so they tend to get chapter-by-chapter updates as I write. Over the years, it seems they’ve come to know my ‘writing voice’ almost as well as I do, and can usually tell me when something doesn’t sound quite right.

I also get my husband, Matt, to read short pieces now and then. Because he’s the one I bounce my ideas off on a day-to-day basis, he has a pretty good understanding of my characters and plot and tends to know whether a certain scene fits with the overall story.

Any other questions?

• 20 writing questions: Part I
• 20 writing questions: Part II
• 20 writing questions: Part IV

Continued from Part I

6. How do you come up with the perfect names for your characters?

It’s usually a process of trial and error. I give a character a name, and then use it for a few paragraphs to see if it sounds right. Sometimes a character name just comes to me, as if the character already knows the name that he or she should have. Sometimes it’s a matter of trawling through baby-name databases on the internet, trying to find something that’s suitable.

Sometimes, character names – and place names too – make into the story because they have special significance to me. For example, the Matt who appears on page 68 of Lessons to Learn and tries to copy Charlotte’s homework, is named after my husband, even though they share no defining characteristics. And on page 10, the Waiteata School that Jack mentions is named after Waiteata Road, the address of my writing workshop when I was writing the novel.

7. When you’re writing, do you ever imagine your book as a television show or movie?

I could give two answers here: no and yes. No, because I don’t see my books as actual televisions shows, with title sequences and end credits and actors playing the characters.

But yes, because as I write, I do picture my characters themselves acting out the scenes. I can see what they look like, what their environment is like. Sometimes this awareness translates to the page, sometimes it doesn’t. After reading an early draft of Lessons to Learn, someone asked me, “but what does Charlotte wear?” I knew what she wore, but I guess I hadn’t put that into words. In some ways, I’d rather my readers come up with that kind of descriptive detail for themselves; for them to have, in this case, their own Charlotte.

8. Have you ever had a character insist on doing something you really didn’t want him/her to do?

There have been times when I’ve been writing the story, the characters have been progressing well, and suddenly they’re in a situation which I don’t really want to write about: it’s dangerous, or awkward, embarrassing, frightening, they’re going to get hurt, they’re going to say something that I really don’t believe in.

But if the characters are going to have their own lives, independent of mine, I’ve got to take a deep breath and just write them through it. I’ve found that if I try and back out, the story tends to suffer for it.

9. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?

For the two novels I’ve worked on so far, I’ve had a good idea of what’s going to happen at the end, or at least the final decision that the character’s going to have to make – even if I’m not 100% sure about how they’re going to get to that point.

I find that short stories work on more of a find-out-as-I-write sort of process. Usually, I start with characters in a certain situation, and what’s going to happen to them in the end only becomes apparent as I write their story.

10. Where do you write?

I don’t really have a proper writing space here in London. For the most part, I write on a laptop on the dining room table, in-between my diary, 2 for 1 promotional vouchers, Christmas themed tablemats, candles, dice, burnt backup CDs and coffee mugs. Occasionally I take the laptop into the kitchen, or into the bedroom, but that’s about as adventurous as it gets at the moment.

Any other questions?

• 20 writing questions: Part I
• 20 writing questions: Part III
• 20 writing questions: Part IV