Voting

Aug 24, 2022 | Blog

Kia ora koutou, 

Its in our bones. We male an effort to vote in the general elections, or at least the large majority of us do, but the local? Its seems not. I have to admit to a feeling of ‘can’t be bothered’ myself.

I don’t think its my fault.

I think it’s the fault of those few who get elected. I have never seen one, not one of them has ever knocked on my door, texted, emailed, or rung me. In the last weeks leading up to election I might get a couple of publicity emails but that would be pushing it. If you asked me if that woman or that man was a councillor I would have no idea.

The problem is that, unlike their counterparts in government elections, they probably don’t have much of a publicity fund and also perhaps, they are untrained in putting themselves up for public scrutiny.

I might also be that a few well-heeled and well-connected ones are simply voted in because something about their name seems familiar.

I read emails, I read Newsroom and Spinoff, I listen to the radio. I have a microscope which helps me read the local papers. I don’t watch TV because I have difficulty seeing it and gave mine away, but I could say, truthfully, that I’m fairly well informed. Also the only time I see much about councillors or hopefuls, is at this time every three years. Is it three years even? Maybe its four?

I tend to think I’m not alone. Unless you’re behind the scenes, or a family or friend of one of the contenders, its hard to work up any enthusiasm at all. I used to have a friend who would take his wife for a Sunday afternoon drive to look at telegraph poles because he’d made the poles. Its hard to work up much enthusiasm about telegraph poles (except when they’re down and not working) and she very soon ran out of adjectives to describe just how beautiful they were and what a marvellous telegraph pole-maker he was. She told me on the Monday she’d be studying Roget’s Thesaurus before she went on another Sunday drive. I found this attitude puzzling but decided it was her life. If she wanted to spend it waxing eloquently about telegraph poles who was I to interfere?

The only time I’ve ever got vocal about the local council was a few years ago when they dug up Main Street and in the ensuing chaos did nothing to help old people or those in wheelchairs, on walkers, disabled by poor eyesight or other problems, traverse the site to go to the supermarket or medical centre. I thought at the time, they don’t care about us, why should we care about them?

My conscience tells me I should vote in the local elections so I probably will but I have no criticism of those who don’t. I’m sure there are dedicated, energetic, intelligent people standing — its just that I have not met them. They are a grey nebulous blur or a misty photograph on a page or email and I’m sure I’m the same to them.

However, what this attitude of mine says is that I cannot blame them if things happen that I don’t approve of. If I can’t be bothered to organise going out and voting, why should they care about anything I want? 

Hmm…

Renée

Here’s to the Editor

Aug 17, 2022 | Blog

Kia ora koutou,

Its been a busy two weeks editing my next novel Blood Matters. I’ve been starting work around 8.30am and stopping around 5pm. In a way editing is rewriting the entire work because most small changes result in needing to make other changes throughout the draft.

I am lucky to have worked with two brilliant editors and I know it. Editors have to enter into someone else’s story, not to make it their own, but to reveal to the writer what else they need to do to make their story shine. Sometimes suggested editorial changes might be big, you might have to rethink, reinvent another sub storyline, other times it might be turning three paragraphs of storytelling into dialogue, other times it might be a request for two or three extra pages. Then there are the smaller changes of words, points of view, alternative ways of saying something.

Its hard slog but its also rewarding and satisfying. You are often working against the clock or feel that you are. The work has a kind of fascination too, like you and the editor between you, are creating the thing you really wanted to do but were too close to the work at times to see how you could do it.

And then there are the times when, unwittingly, unknowingly, you write some curve, a plot point, a twist, that someone else has already written. It’s the editor’s job to find this, so they check everything. Every single fact, every single word.

Then, then, one day you reach the page where three quarters of the way down the page you write The End, not always on the page because the ms has to be read by the editor, but in your head.

The guts of the writer/editor relationship is that both have the same goal. One works towards creating the story she wants to write and the other points the way to achieving it.

Thanks Mary,
Renée

So here we are…

Aug 3, 2022 | Blog

Kia ora Koutou,

It was a lovely weekend. The First Night of Wednesday To Come at Circa, saying hello to old theatre friends, old friends, whanau, new friends. And ten days late, celebrating my birthday.

There’s something very pleasurable that only happens once in a blue moon for most writers and that is the feeling that yes, you definitely did a good job there.

Writing is a solitary business. Its between me and the screen. Once it used to be between me and the typewriter, the piece of paper and the dreaded Twink. Whatever medium, a cave wall and a sharp stone or iron chisel, a pen and paper or pencil and slate, a typewriter or a screen, the process is the same.
A writer always starts with a story to tell and whether the medium is fiction, poetry, nonfiction, writing for stage or screen, writing the news bulletins, columns, editorials, reviews, essays, a newspaper column, the process is the same. An individual gets an idea, does some reading, gathers some info and wants or is being paid to write it down for a reader or viewer, poetry lover, theatregoer or reader.

There might be a flash of insight that swerves a little from the original thought, a change of direction, a new setting, all these can happen once you start writing. Writing is hard work both physically, mentally and emotionally and the rewards, for most of us anyway, are few and far between so its good to make the most of them when they happen.

I wanted to write a play about a bunch of women, a girl, a boy, one live man and one dead one. That in itself was a hurdle. Usually plays had male heroes and casts, women had side roles, supporting the male hero or the boss, or were housekeepers or maids. Blondes were always dumb, brunettes were always evil, old women were always crafty and sly and all were written to support or argue or break the hearts of male leads.

I didn’t need to do any research. As far as the times and the setting were concerned I knew it, I grew up with it, lived with it. I thought of the reaction to having a coffin on stage. I thought of class. Most plays featured upper or middle class characters and if there was a working class character they spoke badly, were dumb as wood, and were usually there to be the butt of jokes.

And then I thought to hell with it. I want these people, this situation, thier heroism to be remembered. I wanted to reverse the usual situation and have working class women as the true heroes. And I wasn’t going to use the word heroine either.

I wanted to do all this and I also wanted to win the Playmarket competition because then the play would get a week long workshop with a professional director and actors plus a public rehearsed reading at the end of that week. That year, 1984, the Playmarket conference would be in Auckland where I lived at that time so all I’d have to do was catch a bus or walk to the conference and rehearsal space. I began to panic and rang Nonnita Rees to ask for a couple of days more and as you all know she said ‘No.’ Dear Non, I’ve never let you forget it. You were absolutely right of course.

And you all know that it ended happily.

I thought of all this as I stood in the Circa foyer last Saturday night but once we went into the theatre and the lights went down I forgot all that history and just let myself be swept into the spell of the world of the play that Erina Daniels, cast and crew, so deftly and so memorably, created for me. And listening to the lines, I had that oh so rare experience, when I could say to myself, ‘Well at least you did something right.’

Renée

It had to happen once

Jul 27, 2022 | Blog

Kia ora Koutou,

Well. That’s the first in 93 birthdays that I’ve ever been sick. In all those decades I’ve been happy, sad, angry, cold, ecstatic but never sick. I suppose it had to happen once.

Lying in bed gave me time to think about those nine decades and other birthdays. In 1939 I was ten. There were 103 males to every 100 females but war was coming very fast and the next decade those numbers would change as young men scrambled to join the armed forces and march off to their Blue Smoke days along with a group of nurses. The ones who came back four or more years later were not only older but changed forever because of what they’d seen and done, because of what had happened to them and their mates.

And all of a sudden I was about to celebrate my 14th birthday and without a moment’s hesitation I decided I would give myself a birthday present. I would make a dress. Rose had an old treadle sewing machine so why not?

I wanted a new dress. Needed a new dress. I was going to a dance. My brother had agreed to double me on his bike the five miles into Napier to the Forresters Hall dance on the Saturday night.

I knew I had to buy a pattern and some (not fabric, that term came later) material. Shops sold material.
I’d hated sewing class. I did not want to learn blanket stitch, I got very cross indeed doing cross stitch and my sewing teacher got very very cross when she saw the results. I had no patience. I did not want to learn, I wanted to do.

I looked at the pictures on front of the pattern packets and chose one with a round neckline, not too low or Rose would put a kibosh on the whole thing, and I bought two reels of cotton, the zip (small word — large bloody sodding shouting effort), then I went home, spread the material on the table, sorted the pattern pieces, pinned them to the material and began cutting. It might have been easier if I’d decided to climb into a Boeing 17 Flghting Fortress (or whatever), turned on the key and taken off for a nice Saturday afternoon fly over.

Fortunately the material was plain because it would never have entered my head that I should match the front and back seams if the material was spotted or floral. I put the cotton reel on the little stick thing, threaded it around the hoops and into the eye of the needle and then, watched excitedly by my sister Val, I managed to treadle the needle down and it caught up with the little reel underneath and all was ready. I put my foot down gently and the machine began to sew.

Fitting the sleeves, I have to say, was a bit of a mission, but after one go when I sewed it to the garment inside out, I finally got both sleeves sewn on. The dress had a round neck so that needed to be lined and between us, Val and I eventually worked it out. So that was that, except for hand sewing the hem.

‘It has to be invisible sewing,’ said Val. Helpfully.

‘Who the hell gets down on the floor and peers at hems?’

‘They don’t,’ said Val, ‘they can tell by looking. Hems have to be hand sewn. They have be invisibly hand sewn.’

I got a needle, threaded it, and sewed the hem. Sadly the stitches were not all invisible but I decided I would just dance faster. I ironed the dress and tried it on. It was too long.

‘I think I’ll just cut it off,’ I said, ‘no-one will notice.’

‘They will,’ said the Voice of Doom.

So I unpicked the damn thing, cut some off, hand sewed the hem.

‘Its too short,’ said Rose, finally looking up from her book.

So I unpicked it again and made it an inch or so longer. Ironed it, put it on, waited…

Rose looked at it for what seemed like ages.

Finally.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’ll pass with a push.’

Renée

Yellow bulbs in an old pot…

Jul 13, 2022 | Blog

Kia ora Koutou,

July is living up to its reputation. I thought for a couple of days that it was going to turn over a new leaf but that was just a tease and here we are, heavy rain, roads closed, slips, same old. This happy trio is a feature of winter anyway but as we are already grumpy, angry, resigned, irritated re the pandemic (just wear a mask, you idiot), it just seems to underline the things we cannot control like place of birth, genetic inheritance, etc etc…

Recently I was given a couple of packets of seeds and I got someone to scatter them over the garden. They’ve had time to get a little bit established and I imagine they’re now swimming valiantly to stay in the one place. I got the same friend to move my pots of bulbs, flowers, from the back near the line to the front where they’ll get any sun that’s going and start warming up, grow and flower. The rain and cold might be a little bit daunting but they’ll get there. They’ve done it before — they can do it again.

We’re a bit like those bulbs and seeds, we’ve met hardship, illness, yes, even epidemics before and coped and we can do it again. For those who’ve never experienced an epidemic before and want to blame someone well — tough, darlings, shit happens, join the club.

For those of us who’ve been here before, its July. We’re a little bit nearer to spring. One morning we’ll look out and see the sun and then we’ll go outside and dah de dah — yellow bulbs in an old pot.

Renée