Well, I haven't got much writing done this week, but I do have a shiny new website and blog over at www.natashajudd.com.

I'll probably keep this blog going for reading related posts, friends-only posts and when I just want to ramble, but for the most part, any news about "Lessons to Learn" and the launch next month (NEXT MONTH!), etc will be going on the new site.  So feel free to visit, leave comments, sign up for the mailing list, leave comments, add it to your bookmarks, leave comments...

Those of you who attended our wedding last year might recognise the top image from the invites, placemats, programmes and bookmarks.  I'll try and find a new one over the next couple of weeks, as well as adding some more static pages.  If anyone's got suggestions of what I could include, please suggest away.

This weekend there's an extract on the Guardian books online (which seems to be my main source of blog material at the moment) from How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors, edited by Dan Crowe with Philip Oltermann.  Writers talking about what motivates them to write - not in any deep philosopical sense, but on a day to day basis. 

Some, it seems, have objects in their writing spaces: Jonathan Franzen has a squeaky chair, Jay McInerney has an axe, Melissa Bank has a picture of a rhino.  Driving works for David Guterson.  For Jane Smiley, it's taking a bath.  Douglas Coupland keeps a packet of chocolate chips next to his keyboard.  Trivia like this fascinates me.  For my friends who write, what do you 'need' to get started on a session of writing?

Me?  I'm happiest writing in a quiet house - usually when others are out or before anyone else is up - with a computer to type on (preferably my own, but I still need to save for that one), a mug of hot water, and a deadline.  Deadlines were easy when I was studying - when there were workshops, and meetings with my supervisor, and certain things to be done each week.  Now that I'm working full-time I'm a lot less focused.  However, if I want to get this second book finished, if I ever want to be in a position where writing is my work, I'm going to have to change that. 

So I'm going to have a go at publicly stating my weekly writing goals, and whether or not I complete them.   I'll put this week's ones below, but I'll probably use 43things more often than not because I can't imagine lists of goals making for interesting blog entries.   Perhaps long term, this won't be any more motivating than dates on my calendar or competition deadlines in magazines, but so far today, I've written 1200 words of novel draft, read and written notes on one YA novel and almost finished this blog entry, and at least that's a start.

Goals for the week ending Sunday 22 April, 2007

• have 4,000 words of the novel draft written - done
• fill in the ‘needs research’ gaps in the novel draft so far - done
• read two young adult novels and write notes on them - done
  
• write a blog post - done
  
• write a haiku - done
  

Reward for getting all this done: next week’s 99p book with the Times.

This morning, I couldn't find my library card.  A long weekend is about to begin.  I had a spare five pounds in my bag...

Yesterday, as we waited for the train, my husband drew my attention to a discarded piece of newspaper at our feet.  At the bottom of the page, there was an advert for The Times'  "99p book-with-paper-purchase" offer.  On the grounds that new books are never even close to 99c in New Zealand, how could I resist?  Especially since this week's book was Myla Goldberg's Bee Season: the movie version definitely wasn't what the husband and I were expecting (based solely on the title), so it'll be interesting to read the original.

Also yesterday, as I rushed through the city station on the way to work, there was a girl handing out two chapter samples of Jenny Colgan's West End GIrls.  Two chapters is just enough to read on the way home on the tube, and after two chapters of almost any book, I can't just leave it.  I've got to know the characters.  I want to find out what happens.  So, I now have a WHSmith receipt for that one as well.

On the Lessons to Learn front, with the cover photo taken (thanks for the votes - this one was my publisher's favourite as well) and with the blurb in my inbox, waiting for feedback, the concept of marketing a book has become a little more concrete.  Surfing the Guardian Books blog this afternoon, I came across this entry by Will Davies who seems to share my discomfort with being on the other end of the marketing equation.  I can't say I'm not excited about the prospect of seeing Lessons to Learn as an actual novel, with a cover and on the shelves with other books.  But the idea of talking about it in marketing-speak, still fills me with dread.

But Will makes a good point about promotion.  It's not just about selling lots of copies, it's about the way that selling copies can have an impact on whether or not you can move forward with your writing career.

He writes: The direction of future projects, not to mention the likelihood of ever being published again, depends on sales. If the book bombs, as I have been assured it quite possibly might, I may find myself right back where I started, at the bottom of the rat race struggling to stand out in the slush pile.  more

So back to looking over the blurb it is, and back to thinking about putting together a website.  Oh and, back to actually writing the next book - otherwise there'll be no writing career to worry about. 

Then again, I do have two new books to read...

Thought I'd write a belated entry about last weekend's "Stranger than..." non-fiction event at Foyles.  I only found out about it on the Wednesday beforehand, booked a ticket online, didn't get any form of email confirmation but my name was on the list at the 'door' (or the entrance to the gallery at least).  Arrived early, all self-concious because I didn't know anyone.  After living in Wellington, it is strange to be at a book event and not know anyone. 

I did know a few of the writers, of course - in that I've read their books, seen their photos and profiles inside the covers: Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black), Simon Singh (Fermat's Last Theorem), Jung Chang (Mao, Wild Swans).  And, as always with these events, I came away wanting to read work by a whole host of other authors. 

I bought Xandra Bingley's memoir about her war childhood, Bertie, May and Mrs Fish, because there was only one copy left and after hearing her read, I didn't want to miss out.  The extracts that Salena Godden read from her memoir, Springfield Road, also left me wanting more - so I was disappointed to discover that it hasn't been published (or even finished) yet.  All the memoir writers acknowledged the difficulties of capturing past events accurately, even when dealing with their own lives.  Sometimes, it's more a matter of "exaggerating in the direction of the truth".

Hilary Mantel talked about writing historical fiction, and about the responsibility of the author.  She believes if the facts are there to had, it's the job of the historical novelist to work with them and to find the drama within what actually happened.  Makes sense, even though it means a lot more work.  She also talked about incorporating your research into your novel - making it seamless, rather than having your characters thinking or stating facts that are obvious in their own time. 

The next session, From the Page to the Screen, was difficult to hear from the back of the room. 

The one after that, A Life Writing Masterclass, with students and lecturers from the Life Writing course at the University of East Anglia, made me want to do another MA.  Could I do another MA?  I'm such a writing course junkie.  I need to be given assignments and deadlines.

The final author of the day was Jung Chang, who spoke about growing up in China, about growing up wanting to be a writer in a time when the writing she wanted to was not allowed.  I remember reading Wild Swans when I was at high school.  I don't think I realised then that it wasn't fiction, which makes me want to read it again.

Overall, a fantastic day.  If I had to pick a highlight, it might've been Hilary Mantel describing writing as "the shy person's revenge on the world".  Or it might have been the goody bag we got at the end, with a book journal, magazine, a couple of CDs and an advance reader's copy of A Long Way Gone.  But it was also the breaks between the sessions, where I got to talk to other authors, literary agents, and book-lovers...  London's not Wellington, or Auckland, or Melbourne - but maybe next time I go to an event like this, it'll feel a little less strange.

Currently reading:
The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank. And because I can't just read one book at once, also The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi.

Next reading:
Probably Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird - that's on my borrowed-from-the-library-due-back-soon pile.

Last read:
The Favoured Child, the second book in Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy.

Last book bought:
I'm trying to be good and use the library rather than buy books this year, so I think the last book I bought was a 50p copy of Nicole Krauss' The History of Love from the Library sale shelf not long after we arrived in London.

Shortest book owned:
Difficult to say as most of my books are in storage boxes or shelves on the other side of the planet. Taking a guess, I'd go for Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy which I bought for a publishing assignment last year.

Longest book owned:
Probably the complete works of Shakespeare, though Shantaram would get the award for the longest book I've attempted (and failed) to read cover to cover.

Favourite book:
It's difficult to pick just one here. If I had to say the one that had the most emotional impact on me, it'd probably be The Time Traveler's Wife… but maybe that was just a case of the right book at the right time. Another recent favourite was The gangster we are all looking for by lê thi diem thúy which I read twice in one night. 

Book read the most times:
I haven't read it recently, but Julia Cameron's The Right to Write used to get me writing again when I hit a wall (maybe I need to pick it up again now).   The short story collection I've read most often is probably Emily Perkins' Not Her Real Name.

Least favourite book:
I don't think I have a least favourite book. I have books that I don't like, but I just don't like them - because of the plot or the writing or the characters or a hundred other reasons. But I couldn't rank them in terms of least favourite ever, second least favourite and so on.

Favourite 'serious' fiction:
I'm not sure what to categorise as 'serious fiction.' To me it suggests high school English, and being graded on the intense essays I used to write… so in that vain, I'd have to go for To Kill a Mockingbird or 1984.

Favourite comedy:
I found parts of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated pretty funny. Then again, other parts made me cry.

Favourite classic:
Pride and Prejudice - the book, and all the movie/TV series versions.

Favourite Shakespeare:
Hamlet.

Favourite poetry collection/poet:
I should read more poetry. I really enjoyed what my classmates were writing, and the selections from other poets they brought along to class, but I don't feel qualified to choose a favourite.

Favourite fantasy:
The Harry Potter series, and if I have to choose just one, then Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Apart from that, I don't read much fantasy.

Favourite sci-fi:
Do books like Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid's Tale count as sci-fi? If so, those two. If not, I don't know.

Favourite non-fiction:
The Guardian newspaper.

Favourite historical fiction:
I've been reading more of this recently, particularly novels set in Renaissance Italy… but all time favourite historical fiction would probably be Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl.

Favourite chick lit/lad lit:
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

Favourite horror:
Red Dragon - the only one of the Hannibal Lecter books that I can say I enjoyed reading.

Favourite Young Adult:
Anything by John Marsden, the 'penpal' books by Jaclyn Moriaty (Finding Cassie Crazy, etc), and Anne of Green Gables.

Favourite manga/graphich novel/comic:
None at the moment, but I'm looking forward to the arrival of the Season 8 Buffy comics in March.

Favourite 'other':
I guess the 'other' category for me is New Zealand fiction even though titles by NZ authors appear in other categories, because back home that's the shelf I spend most of the time browsing. Again I've got lots of favourites, but if asked right now, I'd choose Emily Perkin's Not Her Real Name, Maurice Gee's In My Father's Den and his Plumb trilogy, and My Real Life and Other Stories by Julian Novitz. On a different day, I'd probably have different favourites though.

Favourite series:
Again the award goes to Harry Potter. I'll probably need counselling after Book Seven.

Favourite short story:
Again, difficult to choose. Perhaps Charles Baxter's Kiss Away for the way it plays with point-of-view, or Jo Randerson's The Penguin People for the emotion and the way it flows or Katherine Mansfield's At the Bay because its just a classic.

Favourite play:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

Best book read this year:
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson.

Worst book read this year:
Actually they've all been quite good so far, but as scaeriefaerie13 wrote, it's early days yet!

Well, the boy-love has finally got himself a blog for posting his book and film reviews. He's far more disciplined at recording his thoughts than I am (I'm doing well if I manage to record the titles of the books I read). He's also somewhat funnier than I am... So if anyone wants to pop over to the new MediaCuisine and leave him some comments, well then he'd have some comments by people who aren't me.

And while I'm shamelessly plugging, now that our wedding's over and there's a picture of me up on their site looking frustratedly at my computer in wedding attire, I can say that yes, I was the previous "Diary of a Bride" columnist on the NZ Wedding Planners website. So if you want to read about our wedding plans (albeit with some fake names and a fake date), you can check out Belle's diary here.  

And while I'm talking about the wedding, here's one of my favourite wedding photos.  Our photographer was telling us she was getting ready to take the photo of all our guests, but she was sneakily taking close-ups of the two of us instead.

While I've always loved travelling - moving cities, catching trains, meeting new people - I'm happy now that we've stopped for a while. It's nice to have a place of our own, a job, and while I'm still getting used to the human-crush nature of commuting into the city, I think I'll like it here in London.

It's been a very book-y sort of week. Last Sunday, I sent off a chapter list for Lessons to Learn to the text editor.  It's kind of surreal to think of my manuscript being a file on someone else's computer.  I find myself wondering geeky things like what shade of black the text looks like on their screen, are their margins exactly the same, do they have all the fonts I used...  I imagine it's going to be even more strange to see the text in the pages of a book.

I learnt that on unexpectedly rainy days, you should not use the free morning newspaper as an umbrella. The paper gets wet, the news print runs, and you arrive at work with black streaks down the side of your nose.

I went along to a writers group, held in a room above a pub.  I joined another library, checked out more books.  I subscribed to Mslexia magazine and discovered the London charity, Spread the Word.  After months where my focus has been elsewhere, I've been thinking about writing again.

My novel, Lessons to Learn, will be published by Cape Catley around the middle of this year! 

Yay for Cape Catley and yay for Creative New Zealand who have given us a grant towards publication.

Well, I didn't do too well with my writing goals this year - I didn't come close to getting 12 stories written or 3 poems published. I guess I found it easier to read rather than write around wedding planning and travelling.

I've just finished JPod by Douglas Coupland (one of the best authors I've discovered this year, others include: Jonathan Coe, Jaclyn Moriarty, Paul Auster and Joyce Carol Oates).

The complete list is included under a cut below, but here's my 2006 top five:

The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory
The Brooklyn Follies – Paul Auster
Essays in Love – Alain de Botton
The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
Rape: A Love Story - Joyce Carol Oates

( The Complete List )

I'm reading Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence at the moment, and honestly the year is passing by so slowly!  I've been reading this book for three weeks now, and I'm only up to October.  Maybe it's because I've got too much else on my mind at the moment, but I can only read a few pages of his descriptions of food and country life before my eyes start getting heavy and I fall asleep.

We're leaving for Europe in a week and a half.  Anyone got any suggestions for a book to read on the plane?

062.    Arthur and George - Julian Barnes
063.    Mort - Terry Pratchett
064.    Possession - AS Byatt
065.    The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie - Jaclyn Moriarty
066.    Neither Here nor There - Bill Bryson
067.    The Vine of Desire - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Not much time to read this month and I fear September will be similarly lacking.

And so we leave Wellington next weekend, and so I have to pack up all my books, all my writing, all my folders and papers and notes from the IIML.  But of course, I can't just pack.  I need to sort and order and re-read all my classmates' feedback, all my old exercises.  I need to throw away some of the multiple print-outs of previous manuscript drafts.  But even that is difficult.  My MA year, the year just past, already seems like a different life.

I was flicking through the reading journal we had to do for the course and found an entry from when I first discovered Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (whose novel The Vine of Desire I just finished reading yesterday).

6 August 2006

Reading The Unknown Errors of Our Lives this afternoon reminded me why I want to both read and write short stories.  This has been a very long-fiction and non-fiction orientated year, with all the preparation and work I've done for Lessons.  However, I still wonder if the short story is more my natural form than the novel is - whether I'm happier with moments rather than full experiences; with character suggestions rather than character development.

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives is a beautiful collection of stories.  Divakaruni has created a set of nine different female protagonists, all facing conflict between their American lives and their Indian culture - the old woman whose Indian habits are an embarrassment to her daughter-in-law; the second-generation American woman on a pilgrimage to Kasmir; the painter who draws on memories of her grandmother's advice to deal with her fiance's past.  I felt for them all.  I sat up in the library cafe and tried not to cry.

Within those limited number of pages, even within that limited number of words, Divakaruni had made me care about the characters as much as I would for characters in a novel.  When I return to writing short fiction, that's the kind of short fiction I want to write.

Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep, is running the Iowa Workshop at the IIML this summer... and I won't be in Wellington. 

Am going to miss this city for its literary events and workshops, among other things.

055 .    A Breed of Women - Fiona Kidman
056.    Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald
057.    Wish You Well - David Baldacci
058.    Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende
059.    Reality Chick - Lauren Barnholdt
060.    Eragon - Christopher Paolini
061.    The Man on Platform 5 - Robert Llewellyn

As some of you might know, I've been working on the relaunch of the Tearaway website over the past couple of months: doing some editing, creating some guidelines, forming some partnerships, etc.  Anyway, the new site's now gone live at www.tearaway.co.nz. 

If anyone wants to join up and leave comments, or even just increase the number of hits by checking it out, I'd be very grateful!

From liamere

The current top 46 books from whatshouldireadnext.com. Bold the books you have read. Italicise the books you are going to read. Leave the rest.

1. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
2. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
4. The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgeraldy.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
7. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
9. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
10. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
11. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
12. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
14. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
15. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
16. 1984 - George Orwell
17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez [currently on my to-read pile]
19. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
20. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
21. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 
22. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
23. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
24. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
25. Neuromancer - William Gibson
26. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
27. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
28. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
29. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
30. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
31. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
32. Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
33. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
34. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
35. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
36. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
37. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 
38. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
39. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
40. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
41. Atonement - Ian McEwan
42. The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
43. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
44. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
45. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 
46. Dune - Frank Herbert

So much still to read (particularly between 22 and 34).  Meanwhile, I'm slowly making my way through Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, which is failing to draw me in. 

Finished my editing paper last week.  Send off my final assignment to the South Island, packed up my textbooks. 

And ever since, most of my free hours have been spent editing - with the new Tearaway website going live soon and my novel manuscript to edit before we leave for Europe, I have many pages to red-pen before I sleep.

047.    Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
048.    The Accidental - Ali Smith
049.    A Patchwork Planet - Anne Tyler
050.    The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
051.    A Needle in the Heart - Fiona Kidman
052.    The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
053.    The Dark Room - Minette Walters
054.    Coastliners - Joanne Harris

Again this month, the travel guides got in the way of my reading of books that have a plot.  At the start of the sixth month, I have 46 books read.  54 to go.

041.    Jinxed  - Carol Higgins Clark
042.    Life is so Good - George Dawson and Richard Glaubman
043.    The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
044.    Baby-sitters' European Vacation - Ann M. Martin
045.    The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt
046.    The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

Decided today to give up on the journal-entry-a-day goal.  I just don't have the time for it this year, and besides that, the daily entries I've been writing aren't nearly as interesting as those written when I actually want to write.  Maybe I'll try again next year.  Or some other year.  Meanwhile, I've got an editing test to study for and bags to pack before I head up to Auckland tomorrow morning.