Cane Toads and Underpants: A Pocket Guide to Writing for Boys

I gave a speech at my panel presentation on Friday. There were five of us talking about Teaching Writing, so I wrote the Dingbat's Guide to Writing a Boys' Bestseller (you know, in the same vein as the Dummies guides and Idiots guides for adults). None of the other panelists were children's writers so I thought it was a good niche to exploit. It also allowed for some humour, and little chance of me slipping into academic-speak. I rounded it off by reading out the beginning of Morris Gleitzman's Bumface, which demonstrated so many of the things I had included in my 'pocket guide.' Thank goodness everyone laughed in all the right places. It shows that New Zealand humour isn't completely unlike the rest of the world.

On the same day I read aloud from my own work at Shambaugh House - from my published work A Hairy Tale (Kiwi Bites series) and an excerpt from Sausage Sizzle (which isn't finished yet but can be read by following the link). I absolutely loved both the panel presentation and the reading. People are so supportive in the IWP and they enjoy hearing you share your work.

People like Osman from Sierra Leone (picture above) confirmed for me that my writing is funny and that I manage to capture the essence of children in my characters. That was hugely reassuring.

Literature of Desire

The first IWP (International Writing Program) panel discussion called 'Literature of Desire' began at the Iowa City Public Library on Friday. This was one that I said I was prepared to be involved in but they chose five others so maybe they thought a children's writer would be less knowledgeable on the subject of sex and desire. They're probably right.

Millicent from Jamaica read out a Shakespearean sonnet:

Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu.

Isn't it beautiful?

And this one by Tony McNeil, which is called The Catherine Letter. She read it with pauses where there are spaces and the way it appears on the page has significance, so I hope it replicates okay here.

Strange
my writing to you
Can I say a cliche

Never thought I would see the day when you would cut me
glimpsed you in
should have said at
should have said near
a bank one day; smiled; waved; and you cut me

Catherine
name from the north
Well
there's a mystery to women of frost
the young men stride to the woods and snip them dark lilacs
a wren wheels in the distance
the sun shells east of the lake

Couples kiss in the field across the wild cherries
In the dream the woman is sitting under a cotton
a man kneels on the slope
the pair meet in the mist, stuttering prayers

Have you seen lilies tilt in the wind
Do banks stretch shadows on people so that when they see the familiar they turn away


It reached in and touched my soul when she read it. I used to read and write poetry. I stopped. But I think I'm going to start again. These people are doing me good. Stretching me, opening me up, making me feel things unexpectedly. So much about a person is revealed in their writing - or it can be.

I felt closer to Hanaa from Saudi Arabia after hearing her choked up voice as she read her short story about walking in the street, in her white jeans, hair loose and blowing in the breeze. What a tortured twist to find at the end that it is not real and never will be. It's a freedom I take for granted.

Two more people in the group do readings at the Prairie Lights Bookstore this afternoon - a Tamil Indian woman called Meena and a Lithuanian playwright and scriptwriter called Marius. I believe it's broadcast on radio. Did you know that in rural parts of India, they still lynch people who have relationships outside of their own caste?

The struggles we face are different by culture, by gender, by religion, and by individual. But we also have so much in common. The more I listen, the more I like these people who write from their hearts.