At 7.50pm last Thursday, I got on the overnight bus from Auckland back to Wellington, home to Matt and me from February 2005 to September 2006. It was wonderful to be back, and Wellington turned on its best weather for me. The sun and blue skies almost made me forget about those mornings when I needed to wear my gym track-pants under my skirt and over my stockings on the windy walk to work; those afternoons when just getting across the road to university would leave me soaking wet, and my useless umbrella turned inside out.

Arriving before 7am on Friday, I was too early to check into the hostel. But I left my bags there, and checked through their book exchange for Bookcrossing labels (none found), and waited for the cinemas to open, so I could see the day’s first screening of Becoming Jane. And I know I’m back in Wellington, when I can go to a central city cinema, for a current release, and share my theatre with six, perhaps seven, other people. And I think that it would’ve been so much more romantic to be a writer in Jane Austen’s day. But there would’ve been disadvantages too, such as having to write by hand.

In the afternoon, I went up to the IIML, where I studied Creative Writing and wrote the first drafts of Lessons to Learn. It’s still there. The view is still incredible. The Cable Car up the hill now has Melbourne-style ticket gates and increased prices.

That’s what is perhaps most obvious, going back. The things that are new. There’s a new supermarket in the train station. There’s a huge new Borders in Lambton Quay. They didn’t have Lessons to Learn in stock, but further down the road, Dymocks had 10 copies – the most I’ve seen in a single store so far.

But it’s also a good reminder of how things were in a place where you often accidentally run into people you know on the streets, where you can get fish and chips from the store next to New World and eat them in the grounds of Parliament.

And there were things too, that I didn’t remember. One such thing was the exact location of The Chocolate Fish Café. I thought it was a bay or two around from Oriental Bay. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t in the bay after that, or the bay after, and so on. Eventually, I started seeing signs to the airport, and I was probably closer to there than to Wellington City so I walked all the way to the terminal then paid $5.00 for the bus back into town. I never found that particular café.

But later on Saturday, I had hot chocolate and a bagel in Olive Café with a Bookcrossing friend, who goes by the username Sherlockfan. I caught up with her news and shared mine, and signed another copy of the book.

That night, I went to an art exhibition in Guznee Street, where prints had been made to accompany poems by well-known New Zealand artists. The prints and poems were auctioned off for what seemed both less than they were worth, but more than I could afford.

On Sunday morning, I went to the Katherine Mansfield birthplace, but I’ve already written about that. Later in the day, having collected my bags from the hostel lockers, I was back at Olive Café, to catch up with some of my classmates from the IIML in 2005. It was great to be there, and to hear what they’re working on now. I miss our classes, and the food that was brought along, and being so familiar with a group of other writer’s projects. Much as I’m enjoying London, I do miss Wellington; as I do Waitakere; and Melbourne; and Vermont; and all the other places I’ve lived. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve already lived in too many places.

Sunday night and I was back on the bus. Many unsleeping hours later, I arrived in Auckland.

One of the things I always meant to do when we were living in Wellington was visit Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace. A year and a half of residing and working and studying there, and I didn’t make it. However, with a morning spare yesterday, I decided to make the trek across the city to the house at 25 Tinakori Road in Thorndon.

Katherine Mansfield is arguably New Zealand’s most famous short story writer. A young woman who left home for London and to write journals and letters and nearly 100 short stories, to befriend D.H. Lawrence and to be part of the Bloomsbury Group, and to suffer from tuberculous and die in 1923 at the age of 34.

My favourite of her stories have always been the ones from her New Zealand childhood: The Doll’s House, Prelude, At the Bay... These are the stories which we studied at high school, at a time when I was only just starting to discover the magic which words can do. I spent three or four hours wandering the rooms which these stories were set in, and then, in one of the upstairs bedrooms, watching a video about Katherine Mansfield’s life.

Like Mansfield, I can understand the excitement of living in London, amongst it all, but also the need to write about the home-across-the-seas, the memories of the landscape and the weather. And while, I can’t hope to match her cleverness, the strength of her descriptions, and while I perhaps don’t want to match the way she struggled for her art, it was inspiring to wander round those dark rooms with their black and white photos and period furniture. If I want to be a writer, I have to keep writing, here in New Zealand, in London, round everything else, somehow, it has to happen.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield

More information

• Wikipedia article: Katherine Mansfield
• Katherine Mansfield House, Wellington

Just sent off my membership renewal for the New Zealand Society of Authors, and this year I could tick the full membership “had-a-book-published-by-an-established-publisher” box.

*Squeals with first time author excitement*

I was lucky enough to be able to take three weeks of annual leave for the book launch.  Three weeks without work, on the other side of the world – I thought I’d be able to get a lot of the new book written.  One week in, and I’ve only done about 4,000 extra words.

I’ve also signed my name quite a lot.  Yesterday, as I was listening to the radio interview, I was sticking post-it notes onto copies of Lessons to Learn which have been pre-ordered by family and friends.  The day before, I signed 20 more, which are travelling back to Australia for Matt’s family.  They looked so pretty, all stacked up on top of each other.  I had to restrain myself from taking more photos.

This morning, as she dropped me off for my appointment, Mum pulled out a copy to show her dentist.  He started reading it in reception, asked what it cost, and bought it off her – which was great, but didn’t quite make up for the mouth pain inflicted on me a few minutes later.  And I’m sure going to have to sell a lot of books before it becomes a feasible way of paying dental bills!

And there’s always the distraction of looking for copies of Lessons to Learn in bookstores.  The first place we tried was Time Out bookstore in Mount Eden.  It wasn’t on the shelves when we went in last Monday, but when Matt went back in and asked, “Do you have Natasha Judd’s book?” the staff member he spoke to said, “That’s Lessons to Learn” and produced a copy from the back room that had been pre-ordered (I know a couple of the readers of this blog have pre-ordered from Time Out, so thanks if it’s you!)

The first place I found it on the shelves was in Dymocks Newmarket.  Walked past the New Zealand shelf, and there was the familiar green cover.  Facing out too, so that everyone could see the title, those apples, the picture of the cover girl who everyone says looks so much like Charlotte.  It was amazing to see it there, alongside other New Zealand authors whose names start with letters close to J: people like Elizabeth Knox,  Stephanie Johnson, Witi Ihimaera, Lloyd Jones, and then there’s Natasha Judd… It’s surreal!

Also quite surreal is the thought that people I don’t know are now reading Lessons to Learn; that people are buying it as a gift for others.  Before she left for work, Mum had me sign a copy “To a very special lady.”  It’s going to one of her colleagues, who wants to give it to her mother-in-law.  I put the New Zealand/Australia Bookcrossing copy in the post today too, so that’ll be soon arriving at the first stop on its ring of readers.

Still, this week should be quieter, and once my mouth stops hurting (I’m such a wimp when it comes to dental work), I should be able to concentrate on getting more of this new second-book-first-draft written.  I’ve talked about it on National Radio now, after all…

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a message on the book-swapping website Bookcrossing.com, saying that I was going to start a bookring to celebrate the launch of Lessons to Learn.  The response has been incredible, with over 40 people signing up to join the ring from places as far apart as Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tasmania in Australia.

As it might take each ring participant up to a month to read the book and pass it on, I’ve decided to set up a separate ring for New Zealand and Australian Bookcrossers.

If you’re a Bookcrossing.com member (it’s free to join) and are interested in joining either bookring, please send me a message through the Bookcrossing site.

Alternatively, you can following the travels of Lessons to Learn at the links below:

• Europe/North America bookring
• New Zealand/Australia bookring

This week is passing by in a blur, and it’s difficult to keep up with the blogging. It’s now Saturday afternoon, and this entry is about Wednesday morning: the morning after the book launch, when I was interviewed for Radio New Zealand.

You might expect that, compared to speaking to rows and rows of people at the launch, it might be easier for me to speak into a microphone in a room that was empty (apart from me and my husband Matt, sitting on the other side of the table, wearing a second pair of headphones). But in truth, despite all the Radio New Zealand staff being absolutely fantastic, it was still a kind of scary experience.

Embarrassing too. There were some issues organising a link up between the Auckland studios and Wellington, where the interviewer, Lynn Freeman, is based. So we were sitting there with the headphones on, and there was just buzzing on the line, and Matt asks me if Lynn will have read my book, and I say something like, “Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure that Chris sent her a copy.” A minute or so later, Lynn’s on the line, and she’s lovely and friendly, and one of the first things she does is reassure me that she has read the book. Not sure whether she’d heard me or not, but the microphones were probably already on… and either way, embarrassing!

Most of the interviews I’ve done so far have been about the writing process: about studying at the IIML, about things I’ve written before this, about how I turned the short story into a novel. Lynn asked those things too, but there were also a lot of questions about the book itself – the themes and the characters, such as the father and Greg. I guess I should’ve been expecting this (after all, the characters are hopefully more interesting than me talking about how I write). Oh well, something to think about for next time. I read the ‘Lean on Me’ section again – I’d practised that and also read it at the launch the night before, so hopefully that bit sounded okay.

I’ve been told that the piece will be on sometime tomorrow (Sunday) between 2 and 3pm. For those of you in New Zealand who want to listen, there’s a list of Radio New Zealand frequencies here. For those overseas or those not by a radio tomorrow, the audio will be available for download for a month from the Arts on Sunday section of the Radio New Zealand website.

Continued from Part III

16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?

After I finished my last draft of Lessons to Learn, I got married and headed off to Europe for two months. However most of the time, the celebrations are a little more low-key: perhaps a trip to a café for a hot chocolate with a new book or magazine. It’s a chance to print off a complete copy of the work-in-progress, then shut down the file, and leave things be for a couple of days, a week, a month, before I start editing it again.

17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?

So far, I’ve only been able to deal with one novel-sized project at a time. But I’m also usually working on other mini-writing projects, whether it’s short stories, articles, poems, blog entries, letters, and so on.

18. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?

Lessons to Learn and the current work-in-progress both started out as short stories, so they’ve definitely grown from that format!

A couple of years ago, I would’ve said that I was a short story person; that all my ideas for stories arrived in an under 3,000 word format. Now, I do think about an idea in terms of a novel-length plot and complexities, but even so, my books still tend to grow in revision.

For me, the first draft of a novel is about getting the bones of the story down. It’s about working out how I’m going to get to that end point which I have in my head. Revising is about expanding the story around that, so the word count definitely goes up during the editing process.

19. Do you have any writing or critique partners?

Not at the moment. I know I’m going to need people to critique this draft when I’m done, but right now I have to just write it.

20. Do you prefer drafting or revising?

Let’s see. I enjoy the freedom of drafting; the feeling that when I sit down and write that I could take the story anywhere. However, it’s hard work to get the words flowing sometimes, and the finished product always seems so far away.

When I’m revising, I’ve got the full story there in front of me and I’m working to make it better. It can be tedious at times, going through chapter by chapter with the red pen (or the red track changes function on Microsoft Word), but at the same time I like having the opportunity to say ‘what if?’ What if I remove this character? What if she said something different here? What if I took out this paragraph or removed this sentence? Would the meaning still be there?

When I’m drafting, I say I prefer revising. When I’m revising, I say I prefer drafting. Actually, that sounds like I don’t enjoy writing at all, which isn’t true. I’ve loved to write since I learnt I could write, and it’s something I want to continue doing for a very long time.

If anyone has a question which I haven’t covered here, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll try and answer it as soon as possible.

After an hour on the crowded tube, another getting through security at Heathrow, 22 hours in the air, half an hour looking for gate E20 at Singapore, 15 very long minutes waiting on the tarmac, I arrived back in Auckland at 8pm last night.

My parents were waiting at the airport, embarrassing and supportive as ever, with helium welcome home balloons and ribbons; flowers and signs that said “Lessons to Learn: Available in All Good Bookstores Now” (apparently it should be in bookstores now, though none of us have yet seen a copy on the shelves). It was late at night. Hopefully not too many people noticed.

Waiting at home, there was an article about the launch of Lessons to Learn in our local newspaper, the Western Leader. There’s the picture that Matt took of me in the back streets of Wimbledon, on page 4, surrounded by stories about a young cyclist, a 100 year old woman, and a call to change the booster seat law. Online, I found that the interview I had last Thursday morning had become a press release. I checked my email in Singapore, and discovered that next Wednesday morning an interview has been organised with Lynn Freeman for the Radio New Zealand Arts on Sunday show.

Today, across the road and next to where I used to catch the bus to primary school, they demolished an old shed. Wood and corrugated iron were pulled off bit by bit, until it collapsed. The neighbours stood around on the grass at watched, took photos, ate sausages in bread. Mum brought along a copy of Lessons to Learn and took orders. I practised talking about it.

What it’s about, when I wrote it, is it me on the cover (yes: on the back; no: on the front). I feel that I’m going to be talking about it an awful lot in the week to come.

About a month ago I promised myself that, if I got the work-in-progress to 10,000 words by the 8th of June, I could have new books for the flight home. New books are even better motivation than M&Msso, in the weekend, I kept pressing that word-count button until I reached 9,998 words, 9,999, 10,000.

But which books? I went into Waterstone’s at lunchtime yesterday, and didn’t know what to choose. All I could see were shelves and shelves full of the final product; each one the result of typing and deleting, research, sending off manuscripts, crossing fingers, coming up with a blurb and so on.

So, which books? I’m looking for your recommendations. What have been your books of the year? What have been the books you’ve escaped in? That have made the time fly by just that little bit faster? They don’t have to have been published this year of course. I think my choice of 2007 so far has to be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closeby Jonathan Safran Foer.

Since we arrived here in London, I’ve also fallen in love with British historical novels. Matt and I visited Hampton Court Palace over the Spring Holiday long weekend. It rained, so the hedge maze wasn’t much fun. But as I wandered through the rooms once occupied by kings and their courts, I wanted to fill them with stories. I’ve read almost everything by Philippa Gregory, but if anyone’s got any other historical novelist suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Other genres (including “no genre” or “difficult to classify, really”) also welcome.

So, it’s the first of June, and there’s only 12 days and a very long flight separating me and the launch of Lessons to Learn. Takapuna Library has details about the launch up on their website now, so it must really be happening!

It’s been a busy week, with a lot of firsts. I did my first two interviews about Lessons to Learn: one over email, the other by phone at 7 o’clock yesterday morning. Being a writer rather than a speaker, it’s probably not surprising I found it a lot easier to coherently answer the written questions. And indeed, later I had to send an email to the person who called me, once I’d got to work and remembered all the things that I’d forgotten to say on the phone. It’s strange to be asked how I feel about Lessons to Learn being published: excited, overwhelmed, impatient and quite terrified all at once.

I also signed my first book this morning, before packaging it up for a friend in Italy (you know who you are!). Normally, I can’t bring myself to write on books, but it seems to be less sacrilegious when my name’s on the front cover. I still haven’t finalised a good “Natasha Judd” signature, and when I’m not thinking about it, I’ll still start the “L” of “Leitch” and then try and convert it into a “J” and fudge the rest from there.

I opened a new bank account, and my occupation was listed as writer – that’s definitely a first!

And on the subject of firsts, congratulations to all the finalists of the Montana NZ book awards, with particular YAYs to my IIML classmates, Michele Amas and Airini Beautrais who are finalists in the First Book – Poetry category.  I can’t wait to pick up copies of both their collections once I’m back in New Zealand.  Not long now!