Mentor’s April 2022 Newsletter

Samantha Montgomerie

by | Apr 1, 2022

Go Write Now

Writing Courses from Janice Marriott

 

Samantha Montgomerie

On Sunday April 3 at the Margaret Mahy Day in Auckland Samantha Montgomerie received the Janice Marriott Mentoring Award from me. It is an annual award . I look forward to working with Samantha as she develops her draft into a finished novel.

For more details about the award, this event, and all Storylines activities visit the storylines.org website.


For those writing for the educational market

The Storylines Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ National Hui will be held again this year.
Dates to put in your diary: July 15,16,17, in Auckland.

All the activities and workshops are on the website. This is a great gathering that brings together
writers, illustrators , published or unpublished, and readers from across the country. It’s a great
place to network and learn from skilled practitioners.

*

Good News for those wanting to find a publisher of educational texts for children in schools.
There is now a complete list of the reputable educational publishers in N Z, on the NZ
Publishers website and also at NZ Educational Publishers. Here’s the list.

*

List of some YA novels reviewed by students during lockdowns

Remember: No one can write without reading.

No Safe Harbour by David Hill
This was a great book! That I enjoy reading historical novels helped. Stuart and Sandra were
typical siblings in their love, hate relationship. Them being under sufferance at their grandfather’s
funeral and keen to get home, rang true for an average teenager. The disaster part was compelling.
A real sense of urgency evolved and grew, until they were spat out on shore to safety. Nice ending
in that they had new appreciation for each other albeit inwardly. Again, a teenage thing.

Slide the Corner by Fleur Beale
Loved this book too. My son a high school teacher, says: ’it is the closest thing I have to a ‘silver
bullet’ – boy doesn’t vibe with school, boy’s dad is a dick, boy’s mum is unreasonable…it gets the
boys in the first few chapters.’
And indeed, it does. Always great to see the underdog come out on top. I can see how teens would
relate to the nagging parent thing as well as his total disinterest in school. Greg’s character is
believable, as he stands up to his awful parents, pursues his dream and does a really good job of it in
the end. Great message to young readers.

Over the Edge by Fleur Beale
A quick read about two competitive skate boarders. This story has a message too i.e how bloody
mindedness, on the protagonist’s part, nearly cost a little girl her life. That the arch enemies
reconcile in the end rounds this story off nicely.

Dawn Raid by Pauline (Vaeluaga) Smith
This was a nostalgic read. Sophia is born the same year as myself. The things that she talks about I
know well, for example, television programmes of the day, music, film, the milk runs, bottle drives
and fashion etc. I mostly enjoyed this book. I expected more on the issue that it addresses – dawn
raids. The Bastion Point book in this series does that. A much better read in my view.

Another Me by Catherine Macphail
This was a gripping wee tale. Deals with teen thoughts and issues. The protagonist has a
bildungsroman moment where she sees and understands her mother, for who she really is. It’s an
intense story about a doppelganger. The storyline becomes very compelling as it nears the end.
Who will get to live Fay’s life? The real Fay or her shadow? The annoying neighbour grows into
handsome young man who naturally, asks her to school dance. An entertaining read. This is a
genre I wouldn’t normally pick up, but I enjoyed it. Lots of pathetic fallacy.

The Well by Mildred D. Taylor
Loved this book. The dialogue, the setting, the key issue (racism), convincing, authentic and
engaging. There’s a real sense of hopelessness and helplessness for the Logan family, yet sweet
vengeance when the antagonists Ed-Rose and Charlie get called out. A story about deep rooted
discrimination despite the so-called emancipation of black Americans. It stands the test of time as
it sadly, has relevance today.

Walkabout by James Vance Marshall
First published in 1959, this book was rich in description, mood and tone. A survival story that
crosses two cultures and a language barrier. It highlights the prudishness of Mary yet the
willingness of Peter to adapt to ‘darkie’s’ guidance and ways. They are reliant on him and would
not survive if it weren’t for his bush skills. When he dies, they are able to fend for themselves and
have a new appreciation for the environment and wildlife. This was a totally different read to the
other books i.e the style of writing and vocabulary. Quite delicious!
The thought processes of the protagonist are so unlike the teens in the other books. Refreshing and
enlightening.

Checkers by John Marsdon
This protagonist is in some sort of Adolescent Unit, due to a trauma. We don’t find out what this is
till the very end. The story jumps from present day, to the backstory leading up to why she is in this
place. It didn’t really grab me, but I read to the end purely to find out what had happened to her.
The book follows her thought processes and opinions on the other Unit dwellers, her family and
parents. This would appeal to an adolescent reader. It is her naivity that unhinges her in the end.
We the reader see this, but she doesn’t. It destroys the family and reveals what her father in
particular is made of and did, that put her in the Unit.

*

Comments on a Classic

Goodnight Moon


Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is 70
years old.

Published in 1947, the book didn’t appear on the
shelves of libraries until 1972— twenty years
after Brown’s death. It has now sold more than
forty million copies.
In the February 7 issue of The New Yorker thee’s
an interesting piece about the then revolutionary
new style of picture book, Goodnight Moon. This
is still the most popular American picture book.
You can look up the article if you are interested.
It’s on the New Yorker site.

“Brown helped create a new type of children’s literature that provided both aural and visual
feasts. She and her sister, Roberta, engaged in a bedtime ritual of greeting the objects and
the sounds around them and then bidding them good night. That’s where the idea came
from.

Powerful picture-book writing, she said, depended on “writing words that will be heard.”

*

A Rising Star
The Memory Thief. By Leonie Agnew.
(This is a review written by a student. )
“Wow! So original! Scary? Also, heart-warming but suspenseful. And with a mystery to solve! Then
watching trust and love built between the two main characters, sublime. This authors ‘good idea’ is
just so novel. A troll boy that eats memory but has no memory of his own. A human girl that has
memory but wants no memory anymore. Boy meets girl and you have the best story I’ve read in
years.”

The good news is that Leonie has another book underway , and this one has won the Tessa Duder
Award for Y A fiction, given out at the recent Storylines Margaret Mahy Day. and rumour has it that
it is exceptional.

More details are on the storylines.org website.

*

Beatnik Publishing has been awarded the Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publisher of the
Year (Oceania category).

*

New Website to keep you Up to Date

The Publishers Association of New Zealand Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) has launched
NewZealandBooks.com which will showcase the very best of publishing in Aotearoa. It lists fiction,
non-fiction, and children’s titles, promotes award-winning books, and celebrates the quality and
range of our local writing talent. NewZealandBooks.com was launched alongside New Zealand’s
stand at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

Monthly One Line Tip

Let your personality shine through in what you write.
*
For those who write poetry

The New Zealand Poetry Society’s International Poetry Competition
This is open for entires. Their website has all the details. You have to enter online this year due to
Covid. Deadline is May 31.
Or you could email the Competition Coordinator, Georgia Wearing,
at competition@poetrysociety.org.nz
Poetry isn’t really a competitive sport but every literary genre seems to use competitions as
publishing portals these days and the book the society publishes from poems submitted is certainly
worth being featured in.
*

Check the Phantom Billstickers website for fun ways of seeing poetry out there in the open.

This countrywide celebration of poetry is preparing to mark its 25th anniversary with plans for the
broadest range of events and promotions yet, as registrations open for participation in Phantom
Billstickers National Poetry Day on 26 August 2022.

National Poetry Day co-ordinator Erica Stretton says that after two years of largely online events,
the NPD team, poets and organisers are all eager and optimistic about a return to the usual feast of
in-person and community events across the motu.

*
Competition Deadlines
Flash Fiction Deadline 15 April
300 words. That’s all. Just make every word push the story forward. You can do this!

I’ve put this near the poetry section of the newsletter because it often helps to think of your flash
fiction piece as a form of poetry.Tips: from the judges. Anne Kennedy and Kiri Piahana-Wong

KPW:

Read a lot of short fiction so the cadences of the genre become fixed in your subconscious. All great
writers are also great readers.

As I mentioned earlier, my advice is to avoid overthinking the initial writing process as you can
always come back and edit later. Just write.

When you do come to edit your piece, that’s the time to pore and obsess over every word. With a
short fiction piece, make every word and every punctuation mark pull its weight.

AK:
1. Be daring.
2. Sound new. Avoid clichés.
3. Read your work aloud, refining it as you go.Just Google Flash Fiction Competition NZ and you’ll be impressed by the thoroughness of their
website. There are plenty of past winners’ stories to read as examples but remember: your own
writing is unique. It shouldn’t be just like someone else’s It is always about your own selfexpression, your narrative and your way of writing it.Never be afraid of your own creativity!
*
Poem of the Month

It Gave Me the Daring. By Laila, a Kashmiri mystic.

I didn’t trust it for a moment,
But I drank it anyway,
The wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
Of the darkness and tear it down
And cut it into little pieces.

*

For those who write memoir

Don’t miss out on this insightful book to read:
From the Centre: A Writer’s Life by Patricia Grace ( Penguin Random House)

This book is shortlisted for the Non Fiction Award in the Ockham Book Awards.
Winner announced May 11
Patricia Grace is a great writer and has much wisdom to impart.
And speaking of Book Awards: scanning the long list and the winning books is an effective way to
gauge what is being published and read in NZ right now, and its a good place from which you could
compile a list of books to borrow, buy or share.
*

Typo of the month

“I think this course would be an excrement stimulus for you.”
I typed this into m computer when replying to an email. Thank goodness I proofread the email. My
email wasn’t going to tell me anything was wrong with the sentence. After all it was correctly
spelled.

And the same applies to the following one:
I wrote in a letter to a client about their ‘steam of consciousness.’
I corrected it before it went out but I thought it was a good one to share.

Remember: Spellcheck’s are not human. They don’t understand the nuances of language.

*
Questions from clients this month

“Hi Janice.
Like the other stories you have read I’ve got artists notes, do I count those in the word count of just
the story words?”Answer: Word count is always just the words in the story itself, not in the illustrator’s instructions.
*

I leave you with this thought:

What is the use of a desktop computer without a mouse?
Nothing at all, says my cat.
Nothing at all, says frustrated me with fumes curling up from my skull.
My (Apple) mouse died.
It wasn’t due to maltreatment by the cat.
I wasn’t due to maltreatment by me.
It just stopped working, fully charged.

I went to the shop I most dread: the Ooby shop, licensed to sell Apple computers and products., and
specialising unmaking customers feel stupid.
I had already had a memorable meeting with them just a few weeks ago when they informed me my
iPad, which they sold to me just one year ago, was “too old” to be able to run Word documents.
This time they recognised me.
I explained about the death of the mouse.
I asked if it was worth fixing.
No, they said. It’s too old.
But it’s the latest –
Too old, they said. A new one costs $130.
Fine, I said. I’ll have to have a new one.
We don’t have any, they said.
I’ve got a business to run, I explained in little tiny punchy syllables.
We might get some in soon.
When?
Maybe a month.

So there we are, readers. This newsletter was produced with a geriatric, slow, non-smart mouse I
found at the back of the cupboard. Sometimes writing time gets eaten up by technology time. It is
the trial of the 21st century for those who work from home with no corporate Help Desk to call on
across a fluorescent-lit office.
Happy Easter!