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| Image: Tamara Friedmann |
Would you say a little about writing this short novella? — the time,
place, and any anecdotes associated with them/it?
It took me a long time to find the right form
for this story. Several years ago I wrote it as a novel but it never quite
worked. I changed point of view and tense, I drew certain characters forward,
slid others back, yet it never came right. But it never let me go either. Finally
I made it work by stripping the story back to its essence. I wanted to write
about a family who had grown up during the building of the Tongariro Power Development.
I wanted to write about the Central Volcanic Plateau. And that was one thing
that stayed in place for me through all of The
Desert Road’s incarnations – the land as a central character. I’ve known
the Desert Road all of my life and each time I drive over it I am excited by the
land’s beauty, rawness and volatility. I was, and am, interested in how it is
to live and work in such a dramatic landscape. I wondered how it was for the northern
Italians who came out to do the tunnelling for the development; what they made
of the place and what they brought to it.
The Central Plateau is spiritually and
culturally significant land for Maori, particularly the three sacred peaks
Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. In 1887 Horonuku Te Heuheu, on behalf of his
tribe Ngati Tuwharetoa, gave the three sacred mountains
to the Crown in the hope that they would work together to protect and preserve
the land forever. The gift initiated the creation of our first national park,
the Tongariro National Park which is now a World Heritage site for both its cultural
and its natural values. The land is powerful. It is among the most active land
on earth. When I go there I feel both lost and found. How could I not write
about it?
Are there writers whose
work or way-of-being you draw/have drawn on for encouragement or inspiration?
There
are so many novellas that have inspired me: Kirsty Gunn’s Rain and The Boy and the Sea,
Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, The
Dead by James Joyce, the Ballad of
the Sad Café (and anything else) by Carson McCullers … the list goes on. A
good novella is a gem; it shines with the compressed immediacy of poetry and a
lively sense of passing on the most interesting news.
What are your current writing challenges? What is delighting you? And what's in the pipeline for you in 2014?
I recently spent two months in the UK, one
month of that as a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle just outside of
Edinburgh. To live in a castle with other writers was thrilling and inspiring.
I was writing about islands; about returning to the Isle of Islay in Scotland
after 27 years and about Kapiti Island. I wrote poems in the voice of Kapiti
Island…that was fun. I’m currently immersed in a PhD in Creative Writing. My
goal for 2014 is to complete a collection of poetry for my thesis and to keep
remembering to write what most interests me no matter how singular or strange.
Thanks, Lynn, and for the privilege and fun of publishing The Desert Road.
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