When is the right time to stop writing? It’s a thought that often invades my thinking. Am I too old? Are my instincts and word-knowledge waning? Maurice Gee announced he was stopping at eighty years old, after a full life-time of writing. Then he went on to write at least two more books, one of... Continue Reading →
I am struggling at the moment trying to write an ending that feels exactly right, properly balanced, emotionally satisfying. One writer I know always writes her last chapter first. Others like to say that they let their characters develop a will of their own; the writer just follows them to wherever they’re going. I think... Continue Reading →
I thought Harbouring was going to be my last novel. As retiring broadcaster Kim Hill has said recently said: it’s better to leave before you’re pushed. But it seems the habit of writing is too ingrained in me. New stories keep clamouring to be written. Now that a new novel is in the third draft... Continue Reading →
Some of you may have noticed an opinion piece I had in the Listener this week. My editor of twenty years has been made redundant by Penguin Random House. In my opinion a real mistake. Harriet Allan has been publishing editor for all my ten novels and also for many other senior New Zealand authors.... Continue Reading →
At a funeral recently (a common event for someone my age) a woman I wasn’t aware of meeting before came up and spoke to me. ‘When you and I were children,’ she said, ‘you used to holiday at your aunt’s bach in Paekākāriki, and I holidayed across the road at my grandmother’s. Do you remember... Continue Reading →
My first novel The Denniston Rose was published twenty years ago. This year two new versions of that novel are coming out. My publisher, Penguin Random House NZ, (PRH) is celebrating fifty years of publishing in New Zealand by bringing out New Zealand classics in the original orange and white Penguin format. When Penguin began... Continue Reading →
My stylosa are coming out in bloom. The first spring flowers to appear in my garden. They are beautiful, fragile, perfectly formed. The clump that produces them gets little sun, no care and is an unkempt tangled mess of stylosa leaves, long grass and ivy. If only the tangled mess of ideas in my head... Continue Reading →
My oldest grandson and his partner came for dinner the other night. I was going on a bit about how nothing seems to work in the writing department for me at the moment. They urged me to write a memoir. I have been toying with that idea (and rejecting it) for some time. But I... Continue Reading →
Alex Miller is an Australian novelist whose writing I greatly admire. I’ve just read his 2022 novel - A Brief Affair - and enjoyed it immensely. It’s a gentle, loving look at family relationships, memory, and the importance of finding your right place in the world. We tend not to read Australian novels and they... Continue Reading →
A friend who helps me with the garden asked yesterday if I could give her some tips for writing a children’s story. ‘A chapter book,’ she said. I have never written a chapter book for children, but I made suggestions which have been made to me over the years and which seem to work whether... Continue Reading →
Jenny Pattrick 