An elephant in the writers' room

Today at the Christchurch Writers' Festival I was able to enjoy the rare experience of being a writer for a whole day, and the feeling will continue over the weekend, talking to other writers and editors and publishers and booksellers. But the elephant in the room that no one has mentioned so far is the future of publishing under the onslaught of the internet.  

That aside, the festival represents a bit of a turning point for me, being an accepted writer now compared to my first writers' festival when I'd just had my first novel published by a small local publisher and was overwhelmed by all the famous literati. Now I feel I can stand among them, at least to some extent. Now I have an online presence, a website, a twitter account, and this blog.

Now I am part of the onslaught of the internet. Outside the writers' hall (well, it's actually a giant blow-up igloo), in the coffee shop, they're keen to ask how the books sales are going, how I did it, was it difficult to publish online, to get copies printed too. Inside the writers' hall, ebooks aren't part of the conversation - not yet anyway - and they aren't mentioned in the programme. They weren't even mentioned during the special session yesterday on how traditional books and social media might exist together. Why wasn't it part of the conversation, I wonder? Have they buried their collective heads in the sand on this big, scary subject? Does it actually not matter? The festival's focus is definitely on writers, their craft, their inspiration and this is how it should be. But something in me stirs. Surely the product of their labours should be considered too - the printed word in the printed book. The conversation needs to be had. Because if we don't advocate for the printed word, we might lose it.

 

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.

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