Felicity Price's Blog, page 5

Adoption is more common than you realise

Ever since I started mentioning the book I've been writing (and have now published) about being adopted, about finding my birth family and finally feeling that I fit in, I've discovered that I'm far from alone. At times it seemed that just about everyone I spoke to had their own personal experience of adoption - whether from a brother or sister they never knew existed suddenly turning up in their lives, from being adopted themselves, or from having adopted - or their partner having adopted - a child, often many years ago. [image error] Being adopted has always been integral to the way I am, to my DNA! From the time my mother sat me on her knee and read "The Chosen Baby" to me, I knew I was someone special. But when I became a teenager, I wanted more than that - I wanted to know who my "real" mother was, where I came from.Later, when I had children and the doctors asked me what hereditary diseases were in my family, I wanted to know what was in my genes that they might inherit.Eventually, my search provided the answers. Now I have two families - my genetic family and my adoptive family - and I am doubly blessed. Writing about the adoption triangle - standing in the shoes of both my mothers, hence the title - has absorbed me for several years now. It's been a story I wanted to tell. I knew it would have to be fiction, because there are so many details of my birth mother's life I simply don't know and similarly, details I know she would prefer to keep a secret. And I knew it would have to be written in a different style from my earlier novels. That's why I enrolled in the Victoria University creative writing course last year. It gave me the motivation, the encouragement,  the advice and assistance that I needed to get the story down on paper. I'm so glad I took the course and finished the book.You can have a free look at it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008KQ4G42

Visiting the edge of experienceMany people were surprised...

Visiting the edge of experience
Many people were surprised I wanted to go on "the Manhire course" as it's been known - the creative writing class at Victoria University - because I’d already had several novels and other books published. Why would an established author need writing lessons? they asked. There were indeed some things I thought I could do well enough already, like structure and plot and character and dialogue.  Lesson Number 1: You can always do a lot better.Lesson Number 2: You're never too old to learn.
There were revelations I never expected, such as the discovery of a literary genre I’d never heard of, and probably won’t bother to explore again: transgressive fiction. I now know it covers graphic exploration of aberrant sexual practices and mutilation – visiting the edge of experience, someone called it. I’m amazed that I managed to read it all without throwing up. Ironically, one of the three beautiful young women in the class came up with that one and it was a matter of principle not to seem old school about “visiting the edge of experience”. That is, after all, why I wanted to go on the course in the first place.
What did I learn about writing? 
Here are some of the key things I learned:
How to recognise clichés and, for the most part, lose themHow to stop over-explaining and running on, and accept that less is moreSeverely prune adverbs (I don’t think I could ever drop them entirely – there are two in this list already)Dialogue doesn’t have to follow on – people often don’t answer a question or say the logical next thing Writing what you know is safe. Sometimes you have to go outside the boundaries and “visit the edge of experience” – though preferably not through transgressive fiction!

Frankfurt the impossible dream

Several months ago, I was over the moon to learn my 2010 novel Head over Heels had been chosen to go to Frankfurt - one of 100 New Zealand books to be featured as part of our country's special guest spot at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But with the book fair looming in October, it would seem that being featured doesn't necessarily lead to anything much at all. However, if I was a New Zealand chef, dancer, film-maker, opera singer or visual artist I'd probably be clutching my air ticket right now ready to board the airline equivalent of a gravy train. As former Penguin editor Geoff Walker so astutely puts it in the latest edition of the NZ Society of Authors newsletter, there's been criticism already that "there's too much emphasis on travel, food and drink in New Zealand's Frankfurt approach and not enough on literature"...."Music and dance might be great for tourism - but for literature and book rights sales? Will the singing and dancing swamp authors and publishers trying to do the business?"I think Mr Walker has nailed it. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage has poured megabucks into promoting New Zealand at Frankfurt, at the expense of promoting New Zealand authors.
It's exactly the same with NZ Book Month, which book stores have turned into an excuse to promote sales of books like Fifty Shades of Grey and the usual blockbusters from overseas that are going to sell anyway. Their claim is that it promotes reading. Their omission is that it does very little, and possibly nothing, to promote sales of books by New Zealand authors.I've enjoyed getting that off my chest! Does anyone agree?