A Fellowship in review – by Sue Orr My tenure as the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow began on 1 February 2011. I collected the keys from Davina at midday and walked up to the Sargeson Centre. An hour later, I’d found my special writing spot in the flat and begun typing the first words of my novel. No cups of tea. No exploring the drawers and cupboards. Certainly no time for stretching out on the couch for a conversation with those writers on the top of the book shelf. The urgency I felt that day reflected my appreciation of the most wonderful gift for any writer – time and space to write. I’d spent the earlier months of summer resisting the urge to start the project, yet planning, over and over again, the opening paragraphs of my story in my head. On that first day, it felt as though a starter gun had gone off. I wanted to write the first 50,000 words during the five months. I wrote more than that, then less. For the first time, I was so deeply involved with my work that weaknesses screamed at me from the page immediately. I lived and slept, uninterrupted, inside the world of my story. Some nights brought dreams about my characters, the following days delivered frenzied editing. I might never experience this again as a writer; I’m deeply grateful that it’s happened to me once. I began working before 7.30am most days. From my seat overlooking the treetops of Albert Park (I spurned the writer’s desk in the bedroom, too many distractions outside in the university courtyard) I was only vaguely aware of hours passing. The sound of children laughing and playing at the university crèche next door alerted me to the fact that it must be after nine o’clock. The children fell silent late afternoon and I’d notice how hungry I was, lunch time having long passed. Sometime after that, the natural light left the window and I’d switch on a bulb to keep working. Other people would stand under that open window and exclaim at the building’s glorious ivy pelt. They loved its greenness, then its redness, finally its golden yellow. Listening to them upset me. I’d walked through the park in July last year and seen the building stripped bare. I slammed the window on their commentaries. What could be improved at the apartment? From my point of view, very little. I found everything I needed to write was there (including the delightful gift pack of Smiggles pens and stationery, thank you!). Past fellows provided disapproving glances at times of procrastination; the results of their own toil on the shelves below offered inspiration to keep writing, keep writing. My final words are of deep gratitude for the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and the generous support of all trustees. The fellowship has produced – in (for me) an amazingly short period of time – the beginnings of my first novel. I intend to repay this debt by completing it and slipping a copy on to those shelves one day. Sue Orr has been a full time fiction writer since completing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2006. Her acclaimed first book, Etiquette for a Dinner Party: Short Stories, published in 2008, made the long-list of that year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was listed in the NZ Listener’s Top 100 Books of 2008. One of her short stories, The Stories of Frank Sargeson, based on her finding a second-hand copy of the book in Dunedin, was published in 2007 and her second story collection, From Under the Overcoat, was published by Vintage Random House earlier this year.
A work-in-progress – by Mark Broatch Like Sue, I remain hugely grateful for Buddle Findlay's sponsorship of the writing fellowship. It is not often that a senior journalist in a full-on job gets a few months out to do something entirely different, challenging in a completely new way, and, sometimes, fun. It's true: time is money, and money buys time.In eight weeks I have written 40,000 words, and some of them might even be worth reading. I still have plenty of way to go to get to a full-length manuscript, and then there are the rewrites. All part of the fun.  Mark Broatch took up his residency in July 2011 having taken time out from his current job as editor of Culture, the arts and entertainment section of the Sunday Star-Times. His word-finder book In a Word was short listed in the 2010 PANZ Book Design Awards. Mark is using the Fellowship to complete the first draft of a novel dealing with contemporary New Zealand society, blokes, journalism and food. | 
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