grub street -
Steve Braunias looks back on his year as a literary nobody

One literary fellowship, half a novel. I never had it so good as those five woozy, luxurious months of solitude and rare privilege as the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship writer-in-residence in an Albert Park tree-hut. I ate so many biscuits. Milk Arrowroot, Krispies – a packet a day, the happy satisfying crunch of their steadily declining contents the only sound to be heard in those lovely quiet rooms up the stairs. When it came time to depart, I left with crumbs: half a novel, half-empty.

But I arrived with nothing. Only a rough and ambitious idea, which began to find its way onto paper. It was the hardest thing I ever attempted to write and the best thing I ever wrote. It put one foot in front of another. Slowly, carefully. It moved like an old man.
The only direction it’s taken these past few months is backwards – rewriting earlier chapters, taking out the trash. Well, it had to be done. The book is better for it. Half a novel, half-way there. But how to move forward?
(photo right - Sunday magazine, Sunday Star Times)

Recent events in New Zealand publishing suggest a post-modern solution: plagiarise The Trowenna Sea, the new novel by Witi Ihimaera. He’s not exactly in any position to complain since Public Address blogger and Listener reviewer Jolisa Gracewood collared him for plagiarising about 20 passages from other books. Plus, I like Witi; he’s a good and decent fellow; it might take the heat off him if I got in on the act by re-plagiarising those same passages, then raised the stakes by plagiarising whole chapters from The Trowenna Sea. My novel would be finished quick sharp.
The worst that could happen is a $50,000 Arts Laureate award.

*
One television series inspired by a book I wrote two years ago. Apparently it rated very well. That’s nice. And it was a pleasant feeling to generate the spending of public money – NZ On Air forked out $433,855 to Birdland. I got an okay fee. A shame, though, that producer Phil Smith didn’t bother replying to any of the emails sent by my book’s publisher, who thought it might be good manners to include some mention of the book in the show’s credits.
Never mind. That’s television. But the book has enjoyed a second life on radio. Emails from a man in Invercargill and a woman in Katikati earlier this month alerted me to the news that National Radio replayed the reading I gave of How To Watch a Bird. The original broadcast was played in daily instalments over a week on the 9 to Noon show. The latest broadcast was played in nightly instalments over a week on the All Nighter programme.
I have always wanted to stake my claim to the dark 3.15am of the New Zealand soul.

*
One catalogue for an exhibition at the Christchurch City Art Gallery. Two broadcasting jobs - the reluctant decision to say yes to appearing as a regular guest bore on National Radio, another reluctant decision to say yes to appearing as a regular guest bore on a TV show. Three weekly columns - this page, a satire in the Sunday Star-Times, another satire syndicated to four newspapers. Four publishers wanting my unfinished novel, five travel assignments as a journalist – I survived Antarctica, also Mosgiel.
Working across different media really is known in the trade as a “creating a portfolio”. Engaging in so many fields really is known in the trade as “establishing a brand”, and “building a profile”.
I really must get around to lining myself up against a wall to be shot.

*
It gets worse. One, two, three...19 public appearances. Talks, lectures, speeches, that sort of thing, as well as a televised literary debate in an Auckland church. I watched the show when it went to air. When it came to my turn, I fled the house, and stood in the dark outside the living room, peering through the blinds at my fiance watching me on TV. I watched her laughing. I felt enormous waves of love and gratitude. I also felt terribly afraid that some Neighbourhood Watch busybody was about to call the cops.

The appearance I enjoyed most was talking about birds as guest speaker at the Ornithological Society of New Zealand’s annual conference in Orewa. It was held at the same venue where poor old Don Brash made his infamous speech about another kind of native species.
The appearances I hated most were at Otago University, where I gave a lame and incoherent speech in the evening, and gave an even more ridiculous address the next day when I took part in a symposium about the media’s role in reporting global warming. I had no right to be there. I don’t report global warming. I go out of my way to avoid reading about global warming. It was strange to talk in those two rooms in Dunedin, and feel the air freeze.
New Year’s resolution: no public appearances in 2010. I’m busy. I’ve a novel to complete. Its working title is The Trowenna Sea.

Footnote:
My warm thanks to prize-winning author/journalist/columnist/birdman Steve Braunias for kindly allowing me to reproduce this column which was first published in the Sunday Star Times, 29 November 2009.
Braunias is one of those clever writers who is able to deliver brilliant humour, (often quirky, laconic and/or ironic, always sharp), for which he is probably best known, but also he can be most serious and thoughtful as required. For example read him here writing about his daughter.

His published works include How to Watch a Bird, Fish of the Week and Roosters I Have Known, all published by Awa Press.
If you haven't yet read How to Watch a Bird then I warmly recommend it to you. It is a memoir of a year in the author's life, a year in which he became totally besotted with NZ birds, it is a wonderful, hugely entertaining read in the warm Braunias style.