Me and the most important part of my writing process
"Scotty too Hotty" Andrew Giles, my husband and the chief lolly buyer, bill payer 
enthusiasm encourage-er and cup of tea maker


The End....well not really, finishing a book doesn't end until the thing is on the book shelf, you, the author open it randomly and find a fecking typo...get depressed and go to bed for six months with ice cream and 'Darling Buds of May' videos.

It's been a long time coming, and now I think the book is finished, of course that won't stop me from titu-ing around with it.  As the great Peter Jackson says...there is no such thing as perfection there is only as much as you can do before you run out of time.
I am so happy this is almost over, this is the end of a fourteen year journey which started in the world of 'Lord of the Rings'
I was watching the appendices as I am a complete nerd, and I was hoping to see some of my mates on it, as 90% of the artists in NZ worked on LOTR.  They will always be my favourite movies, even though I am not a fan of fantasy...it was the sheer magnificence of the movie making genius that got me.  
I was watching the appendices from LOTR: Return of the King and the actor Lawrence Makaore was being interviewed.
 I remember thinking, that guy should be a romantic lead, he is just the loveliest man...'  
That was the spark that bought this the story of Heart of the Tapu Stone into being, a story, which has been sitting in my brain for about twenty years.  He is my Robert, and he might not be yours, but hey that's cool. 



Lawrence Makaore

I actually got to tell him this, this year.....yeyyyyyyyyyyyyy...and I was a complete nerdy flake of a fan-girl and couldn't even look at him I wrote it down.

The truth is 'Thread through the Whariki', was two years of not really knowing what the feck I was doing, most of the time...
a moment of revelation...
deleting 80k words of 132k words that Id written and rewriting to 128k...yeah k means thousand...then editing it back down to 84k...
and it took a long long long arse time.  
I write a LOT of words, knowing I am going to lose heaps and this is how I write, and I do not reccommend this as a process to ANYONE...
because and this is gross but accurate, it is like picking the carrots and corn out of vomit.

Over the last two months Ive written some stuff on the facebooks, usually at about 3 in the morning when I'm eating green jelly jet-planes trying to stay awake but avoid the sugar shakes.

  • I've had some unbelievably huge failures - best way to learn and also a great way to get fantastic material AND keep yourself humble - start getting big headed and you're f*cked.
  • I like my book, I have no idea if anyone else will like it, if they do cool, if they don't...meh...ya know how it is. But after months in a dark room, alone with cups of tea, documentaries (instead of music, i'm super nerd) and my laptop, click click clicking away...I'm happy.
  • omG, I created a character 2 years ago and just found out she has the same name as an ancestor on my mothers side that I had no idea existed...freaking myself out right now
  • Learned something....if writing a trilogy put part one, part two and part three on the fecking books, ahhhhhhh duh
  • omg editing is brutal - dead babies and drowned puppies all over the show
  • I made myself fall asleep last night at 2pm, woke at nine and straight back into writing. Need to eat but can't tear my fingers off the keyboard...for me writing is being the most alive I ever am, inside my head, while the rest of me is begging for sleep, food, cups of tea and sunshine
  • Every time I write the burning guilt of all the other things I should be doing bubbles in my gut. I wish it would f*ck off.

okay okay okay...I will finish with the 28th of June which is when everything turned around...

Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *loud scream as she dances around the room* I have FINISHED ,Thread through the Whariki' Five attempts then got rid of it all and waited for my muse...about bloody time she showed up...thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Love to all
Olivia

PS :By the way, Lawrence Makaore ended up being as lovely as I thought he would be xxx