Not long after writing my novel The Hut Builder I was invited to speak to a group of book lovers in Fairlie, Canterbury. While I was happy to accept the invitation I was also extremely nervous about the event. The reason why I was nervous was simple — it was because a large portion of The Hut Builder was set in Fairlie, the town where I had spent the first three years of my life. I imagined that I would be facing a room full of readers armed with ‘bullshit detectors’ and that I would be placed under cross-examination.
Speaking to a room full of people is rarely a comfortable experience. I am socially awkward at the best of times and I often worry that what I have to say is not particularly worthwhile, let alone interesting. Part of my anxiety stems from the fact that I (still) have trouble thinking about ‘writing’ as a proper job. Perhaps, if I earned a living from writing novels, I would feel more confident talking about my ‘career’. As it is, I tend to feel like a failure.
Driving towards Fairlie I passed a dead wallaby on the side of the road. It was the first time I had ever seen a wallaby ‘in the wild’ (in Canterbury) and I pulled over to take a good look. It was quite small, bigger than a possum but not nearly as large as a kangaroo. For some bizarre reason, I thought the wallaby was a ‘lucky sign’ (not for the wallaby, of course) and my sense of dread began to lift somewhat. As I passed Albury I began thinking about Laughing Owls. Back in the 1880s, a local man, Mr. Smith, used to search for the birds in crannies in the limestone cliffs surrounding his estate. I’d read his observations — can’t remember why — and thought that he would make a good subject for a historical novel.
I arrived in Fairlie early and spent an hour or two visiting the local Heritage Museum and Heritage Motor Building. Wandering through the museum I was very taken with two displays: one of fencing wire and the other of model aeroplanes. I’ve always been very taken with the obsessive nature of collecting — and again both displays sparked that ‘would made a good story’ area in my brain.
It seemed then, that without even having to meet my audience or open my mouth, I had already gathered material for future use. That made me happy.
I arrived at the Whisk and Page — the café where my talk was to take place — to discover a room filled with people. Some had travelled from Tekapo — a fact that immediately placed pressure on me, as I could imagine the long drive, the longer round-trip.
My host ran the café and on the table was the biggest cream-filled sponge cake I had ever seen. It was baked with free-range eggs and was a vivid yellow. As we waited for the talk to begin, she placed a massive Christmas cake mix in the oven, telling me as she did so that it was my ‘payment’ for the talk.
It is very unusual to speak in front of a group of people who have read your book. More often or not, one or two people have read your novels and a few more intend to read them. But the Fairlie group was unique because most of them had read my novel. Learning this caused me to lose my nerve.
I remember reading a section from the book — an excerpt describing a child’s first sighting of the Mackenzie Basin — and then my brain kind of went blank. I started prattling about my own early memories of living, and visiting, Fairlie — mentioning a few local names as I went along. Someone in the audience laughed and said ‘I’m the woman you’ve just described being ‘dumped with’ while your parents went skiing’. That flustered me.
Someone else spoke up and said that it was a shame that so-and-so hadn’t been able to attend as she had found a few factual errors in my novel and had wanted to go over them with me. I then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to justify myself — explaining that I had undertaken a lot of research but that I didn’t want to be trapped by it. I wanted to write a novel, the story told through the experience of one man.
It was one of those talks that just failed to ignite. The more I said, the less confident I became. Every question put me on the back foot and by the end I felt exhausted. I also felt as though I had let the audience down, that I hadn’t put on a good enough performance.
But my interpretation wasn’t exactly accurate. The one thing that saved the day, from my point of view, was the fantastic discussion we had about ‘writing’. A number of women in the group — the Tekapo women — were keen writers and we had a lengthy conversation about the craft of writing. I didn’t feel like I was offering a lot but I could see that my words were somehow ‘inspiring’. And the enthusiasm resulting from our conversation left all of us highly motivated and burning with good intentions to put pen to paper.
At the end of the afternoon I was given the Christmas cake. It was hot in my hands and as I drove back to Dunedin it filled the car with the scent of cinnamon and spice. It was the best cake I had ever eaten. And, actually, it was also one of the best sessions I have ever had the privilege to attend…
roadwords 