The writer's blog

It was my birthday this week, 9 October 1962 and I turned 62. 

I have actually been saying I am 62 all year because I never get my age right.  Not that age matters.  Inside I am still 12, just the exterior is falling apart, literally. 

 At the moment It is half past five on Sunday arvo and I am sitting in bed with a hangover because my husband and I had a party in the gazebo in our garden last night, with vodka, sprite, cashews, loud music and disco lights.  Luckily for the neighbours we are such old fuddy duddies, we were inside before it got dark. 

I got verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry merry, which is rare for me, as I don’t drink very often. 
For the past twenty years it used to be once a year, Christmas day, but I’ve been a little bit more lenient with myself over the last few years and have up-ed my imbibing to perhaps three times a year.  

With strict provisos of course. Only ever at home with my Scotty too Hotty.  Our drinkies always involve snacks and youtube music videos and sometimes, if we are really well lubricated, Karaoke.  

Years and years ago I used to drink a lot.  I was a very happy but irresponsible drunk and spent an awful lot of time drowning in shame and regret over doing really dum arse things, while under the influence. 
I am a binge drinker, and if I have one drink, I need to drink all the drinks... Now, the reason I can go for such vast periods of time without drinking is because I am a binge drinker, and all I have to do, is not have the first drink. 
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 
Hence, I only drink three times a year max have a shitty hangover for the entirety of the next day and then I’m fine for months until I feel like a drink again.   I’m in the middle of that shitty hangover right now and it sucks.

So, on my birthday, day, I had lunch with my brother Johnny and sister Lynda at my favourite spot which is Harrisons Garden centre in Pekapeka which combines three of my favourite things, plants, my siblings and yummy food.  We then went for a drive and had dessert at this cool café down ‘Coastie’ on the beach at Waikanae. 

Now if you know me you know that I do not eat carbs, no sugar, no pasta, no potatoes, no bread blah blah blah, except for my birthday and Christmas.  So, I had eggs benny with sourdough, carrot cake and an iced chocolate.  And man, the sugar hangover that afternoon was worse than the one I am having right now.  Every joint in my body including my fingers and toes ache like a mutha fluffa.

Which is the reason I don't eat freekin carbs.


This weekend I am speaking at the Kupu Maori Writers Festival in Rotorua.  I am talking about my new book, which is coming out before christmas so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BUY ONE, OR GO TO THE LIBRARY AND ASK THEM TO GET IT IN!!!!!!!!!!  Consider yourself yelled at.  Because I gotta earn my advance people.  
My book is called "The Eldest Girl" and it is a love letter to my amazing daughter, who lights up the world with her presence, Jenna-Rose Maharata Astwood, and to my late Father in Law, Mr T, or Mr Thomas Gregg Thornton, who was a ten pound pom from Newbiggin by the Sea, in the county of Northumberland and is about 10 miles or 26 km north of Newcastle.  Yes a Geordie who NEVER EVER EVER lost his accent. 
He is grandfather to my son Tamati who was named after him and he was one of my most favourite people in the entire world.  I love love loved him.  When I wrote my first published book which was My two homes, he was the grandfather who helped me take care of Tamati after his father David, Mr T's youngest child,  died as the result of an accident in 1999. He was so lovely to me and treated me like his daughter.  The story of him and Uncle Jimmy coming over to New Zealand on the Captain Cook in 1957 was amazing, that a boy from Newbiggin and a boy from County Durham became life long friends. 
His story inspired me.

I am very proud of this story, I wrote it for me and women like me, the 'eldest' girls who were brought up to never put themselves first.  It is funny and full of familiar relationships.  It is the story is about 3 brilliant capable complicated women, from different generations and two time periods, who yearn for more from their lives than what is mapped out for them by others. 

For me, writing fiction is creating characters and letting them run amok.  Their dialogue and actions are words that rain down on me and I have to run around with a bucket trying to catch them.  If I try to direct the narrative in any way I'll always end up in a cul-de-sac and have to back out and start again. 

That's the first draft. 

Then the actual craft of writing.   Stabilising the structure and slenderising the prose until they are skinny as hollow eyed starving waifs begging on a streetcorner.  This takes pass after pass after pass after pass (however many times until it feels right)

Only when every word has duked it out to earn its place on the page will I scrub and polish them to their shiny best. 

From the first draft to the last I'll lose at least a third of the words.  Believe me if I could streamline the process I would, but I can't.  Sometimes it's months, years even before I can bear to show it to anyone because everything  I write, I write for me.  Once its out in the world its not mine anymore.

Maybe this is a long way of saying every writer is individual with their own voice and their own way of creating a story... but the skills of crafting that story into its best possible self are tools that can be taught.

At the moment I am writing a whodunnit detective story, ya know, just so I can freak myself out with how intimidating it is.  My detective is called 'Te' he is a small wiry deadly Māori guy who was in SAS for seven years and then the French Foreign Legion for 5 years and now works in wellington....I am LOVING IT, but it is taking me on a real journey into 'WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING'

Love Olivia