Deliriously happy to be back with my fingers tapping my own clean keyboard and not sticking to the keys in every seedy Internet cafe on Queen Street, I’m ready to share my last random thoughts on the festival.
Best chair
- Kate De Goldi.
Best session
- Songwriting with Don McGlashan and Jason Kerrison.
Best dressed audience
- the ladies who lunched with Judith Thurman.
Best answer to a question
- When asked “what do you like best about writing”, Martin Edmond replied “sentences”.
Most mentions of libraries in a session
- Martin Edmond and Peter Wells in an hour with Martin Edmond.
Really random observations
- Non-fiction sells – these were the sessions with the big audiences
- Men come out to Writers and Readers in Auckland
- Good writers don’t just sit down an produce deathless prose. They actually apply themselves consistently, they overcome procrastination, they ditch things that aren’t working and some of them spend a lot of time lying to their publishers.
Admirable trend
- Wearing apron-like garments. Apparently it’s been around for at least three years according to an Auckland friend. Not in the South Island I don’t think but then I don’t get out much.
Deplorable trend
- The tendency for the few who can’t hear to shout this fact at panellists the rest of can hear perfectly adequately. Lloyd Jones handled it deftly last year in Christchurch when he invited a belligerent woman who felt compelled to share that she had paid to hear him but couldn’t to share the sofa on stage. Max Cryer told me once that if there are grey heads in the audience the amplification can’t be too amplified but do the rest of us have to suffer interuptions and just plain rudeness? Get a hearing aid and concentrate I say.
Festival resolutions
- Be more tolerant
- Read a little poetry every morning, like Stu Bagby
- Always take the opportunity to tell a writer you admire their work
- Stick to fiction (mostly)
- Read more
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 