Rebecca Among the Stars

Let me introduce you to the fifth and final book in my Whakataukī Among the Stars series. Whakataukī Among the Stars: Volume V brings this series to a close. I’m proud to share it with you, although I’ll admit I’m a little reluctant to say goodbye. Across these books, I’ve taken stories far into the future and kept coming back to the same thought: however much our worlds and machines change, people are still people. We grieve, hope, make mistakes, laugh at the worst possible moment, and try again. Each story in this final collection grows from a whakataukī. The stories take those words into strange places and difficult situations, where the characters have to decide what wisdom means when it asks something of them. In Volume V, you’ll find grief and kindness, consequences and second chances, stubborn bureaucracy, moments of absurdity, and people doing their best to put things right. Some stories are sharp-edged; others are gentler. A few made me smile while I wrote them. A few ...

Today I have officially reached retirement age, which feels rather odd when I consider that I do not feel particularly retired and have no intention of becoming especially good at it. I might not have been working for the last two years, but that is not exactly true. I have not been getting up every morning and heading off to a conventional workplace, I have not been answering to a manager, watching the clock or waiting for Friday afternoon to arrive, but somewhere along the way I have managed to turn what was supposed to be a quieter period of my life into something that looks suspiciously like another career. I write. That still feels slightly strange to say because, for a long time, writing belonged in the category of things I enjoyed rather than things I regarded as work. It was something squeezed into spare moments, something thought about while doing other things, and something that could always be put aside because there were jobs, family, responsibilities and all the or...

I have always believed that writing is a skill that can be learned. Talent helps, imagination certainly helps, and having a brain that insists on inventing conversations between people who do not exist is probably useful, but writing itself improves through practice, patience and a considerable amount of stubbornness. You learn by writing something that does not work, trying to understand why it does not work, changing it, reading it again and occasionally wondering who on earth wrote such nonsense before remembering, rather inconveniently, that it was you. That is part of the process, and I think what surprises many people when they first imagine becoming a writer is just how much work exists behind the finished book. The romantic picture is rather lovely. A writer sits beside a window with a cup of tea, gazes thoughtfully into the distance and waits for inspiration to arrive before producing several beautiful pages. There are days when writing does feel a little like that, ...

One of the great myths about writing is that you need the perfect room before you can begin. You know the sort of room I mean: a beautiful desk beside a window, shelves full of reference books, tasteful lighting, perhaps an inspirational view across rolling hills, and absolutely nobody wandering through asking where the scissors have gone. Most of us do not have that room.  We have a corner.  And a corner is enough. Create Somewhere That Belongs to Your Writing A writing space does not have to be large, expensive or remotely impressive. It simply needs to become somewhere your brain begins to associate with writing. It might be a desk in the spare room, one end of the dining table, a chair beside a bookshelf or a small corner where your laptop can remain undisturbed for a few hours. My own writing space is surrounded by books. Some are books I have already written, sitting there as a quiet reminder that ideas really can become finished stories if you keep working a...