I’ve been wanting to tell you this story - the truth - for a really long time. But the reality is, I feel a bit embarrassed.
On 28 July 2020 at 9am I am going to start crowdfunding my first book on PledgeMe, a book that focuses on the stories of 30+ inspiring Wellingtonians from food, fashion, small business, arts and the public service.
It has been my dream since I started this blog to turn it into a book and become a published author.
Scratch that.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I first read Little House on the Prairie when I was seven. I loved the idea of how narrative can transport you to a different place and time.
However, I’ve never quite known whether that dream was ‘realistic’.
I chose law over modern letters at university, knowing I have an insatiable love of expensive scented candles. I’ve always believed that the doing is more important than the credentials when it comes to writing and so setting up this blog was always purely based in forcing myself to do the doing, even when I couldn’t afford the luxury of studying again.
Even though I have been critiqued at times, I knew my reason for setting this blog up was my love of the written word and that I passionately felt that someone like me shouldn’t have to ask permission to start.
I’ve interviewed 175 people over 5 years. And yet I still come to you feeling under-qualified to tell this story. So I am going to take a deep breathe and just go.
2019 was a really tough year for me. I got caught up in some internet trolling, criticised in the media for working with Wellington City Council and I moved 10 times in 10 months. On top of that, there was organising a wedding and some other personal family things I was living with.
I also embarked on the hardest thing I’d ever done. Writing my first book. And to make everything more tricky it involved interviewing and photographing 30 people from scratch and turning their stories into a coherent narrative.
It all began because I got some backlash online I foolishly walked into and was blindsided (I’ve learned a lot since then). I suddenly was forced to reckon with the dire truth that this is not what I signed up for and I didn’t want to be associated with the people involved. I just wanted to be a writer but had somewhere taken a wrong turn. This negative experience made me push my then agent to ask their contact to consider a book proposal I’d been working on (after 18 months, I’m no longer working with them but I wish them all the best).
My agent was good to their word and contacted a person with 40 years experience in publishing working for one of New Zealand’s biggest bookstores. They liked and agreed to my proposal and told me I’d shortly receive a contract confirming our relationship. I was so excited hearing this. I was finally going to be a published author - with a real publisher. It all seemed so real.
A few weeks went by which bled into a few months. Nothing happened. Then I found out that the bookstore had decided to sell its publishing arm to another publisher in New Zealand. I was assured that this wouldn’t impact me and would only take a few months. Having worked in a commercial law firm, I knew this wouldn’t be the case because company acquisitions are a big thing and it would take much longer. Still, in good faith, I trusted the person.
Meanwhile, I started to prepare my book, setting up spreadsheets of who I wanted involved, emailing them and conducting interviews. This process took about 4 months (the first round anyway). Around October 2019 I started to transcribe the interviews and finished this by the end of December 2019. However, some more bad news was in the post.
One day, a week before Christmas, I got an email from the person and they told me that the new publisher had considered my project at long last. They had decided to pass on it because ‘a book about Wellington doesn’t have enough of an audience’. I was quite lost. I suddenly realised this was not looking good, despite the person assuring me that they would still support the project and shop it to other publishers. By this stage, the book was too far underway for me to give up.
Over the start of 2020, I decided to take a break. I might have lost the book deal, but I had been told that it would be shopped around. Surely someone would want it. While I said this was for my wedding, it was mainly to give me some time to start to write my interview transcriptions into stories. This took up many weeks and I really needed that extra time. By my wedding, I’d made a good stab at it and by the time we were in level 4 lockdown I had completed most of the chapters.
During level 4 lockdown I phoned the person and they spoke with me frankly about their personal situation and that of the publishing industry. It wasn’t in a good way. My proposal had also been declined by another publisher, also because they thought a book about Wellington was too niche. On the best of terms, I explained to that person that I felt I needed to keep moving with my stories and we amicably parted ways.
The Residents book ‘Made in Wellington’ is a set of stories that focuses on the resilience and creativity of Wellingtonians. Although written predominantly before COVID-19, the love local sentiment is more important than it has ever been. I sincerely feel the time to publish this book was now. It really couldn’t wait until some vague future date anymore - I needed to take back control and get on with it. I couldn’t wait for permission anymore.
After talking with people I trusted, I therefore made the decision to back myself and to crowdfund this book on Wellington’s own PledgeMe. While this wasn’t my original plan, I feel so strongly that this is a book unlike any before and the benefit is that now I’ve been able to have much more creative input into how it looks and feels (typically, writers get very little input into how a book looks).
I hope you’ve enjoyed a bit of background on why the book has ended up the way it has. I really hated not being able to bring you along for this part of the journey to date but I needed to work it out by myself before we could come back together. In some ways I am so honest with you here, on my blog, it felt dishonest to not tell you all along. But now you know all.
So I am going to keep telling you all about every step I go through - here on The Residents - as I go for my crowded published author dreams. I do hope you’ll enjoy all the highs and lows.
I also hope you’ll pledge to buy a copy of the book!