Interview with debut author Josie Shapiro

ARTicle

First of all, huge congratulations on winning the Allen and Unwin Commercial Fiction Prize.  What does winning this award mean for you?

Josie

Well, it's completely changed my writing career. I have had a couple of short stories published in some journals and in a few places online, but that idea of having a book, it felt like a dream that probably wasn't ever going to happen.  It's completely life changing as well. Validating. That feeling of oh wow. I must be writing something that people want to read. That's a really exciting feeling.

ARTicle

What was the most difficult part of writing this particular book?

Josie

I think the hardest part for me was figuring out how to write something that read like a novel. I know that sounds kind of basic, but I wrote this big draft with lots and lots of different scenes and all these things that happened to Mickey (the main character) in my drafts that didn't make it into the final book because I wasn't sure how to take the story from A-Z,  from beginning to end when I have never finished a novel before. I have written another one, that's still just a big mess. So the hardest thing for me was understanding how to finish something. How do I take something from my mind and get it into a story that people could read. That was really challenging for me to figure out.  A lot of learning and a lot of exasperated sighs in the kitchen. What am I doing? How do I do this?

I was lucky that I had some people who helped. I did an online course with Whiti Hereaka (who wrote Kurangaituku which won the Ockham Book Award last year) which was called Weaving the Threads. It was about taking a first draft to a second draft and a few things like that. Learning how to take a big idea and make it into a more cohesive finished idea.

ARTicle

Your main character, Mickey, is a powerhouse of a character. How much of her is you? Or somebody that you know?

Josie

When I started writing, I was trying to imagine that it was me running. I was trying to write it as though I was running, but once I started creating the character of Mickey, she really became quite different from me. It was quite interesting how she became her own being. Really quite aside from me. I'm taller than she is. Not much, but I am taller and she's a lot tougher than me and a lot grittier. She was really awesome to write. She's sort of like my dream person, a dream woman. Someone just taking things on and really going for it and moving and trying to learn and move past the damage and trauma that happens to people as they grow. Trying to show her moving past those things.

In the end she was quite different from me even though originally I had started writing the race part of the story as though I was running because I wanted to feel like maybe I could run a marathon even though I can't.

ARTicle

Did you have to do a lot of research to write this book? And did you enjoy it?

Josie

When I started writing it, I wanted to write something where I didn't have to do lots and lots of research. Like a historical novel where it sits in a time that I don't understand. I did set it in places and in emotional truths, places that I understood.

I have run in the past quite a lot, not a marathon length, but half marathons. And I did a lot of competitive swimming as a teenager, so a lot of the things Mickey goes through, in the sense of what those things mean, I could provide my own knowledge.  And then in terms of the things I didn't understand, I spent a lot of time researching what runners would do, how they train, what that dynamic might be like. What sort of training they do. And what the programme is like for athletics in New Zealand, because I didn't really have an idea about how that worked.  I did fudge around with the dates and places of competitions because I wanted it to fit into my story.

The other thing I did, I spent a bit of time learning about female runners. Contemporary female runners, as well as the runners of New Zealand’s past.  I read a really good book. The Kiwi Runners’ Family Tree by Dreydon Sobanja. I actually acknowledge it in the back of the book. I read that book - he has two books, this guy - and it's a complete history of New Zealand running. And it's profiles of all the runners, long distance and short distance, and talks about Arthur Lydiard. That really was the big research I did to show that Mickey's in a long line of great New Zealand runners.  I wanted to acknowledge them. So I tried to talk about the runners who came before. My big research was learning about the history of New Zealand runners that you've heard of and others I've never heard of before, like Millie Sampson and Anne Audain. I had never heard of some of these runners before, and it was really interesting to learn about how incredible these female runners were from the history of New Zealand.

ARTicle

Has the book changed significantly since your original, messy draft?

Josie

Yeah, quite a lot. I mean parts of it are the same. The structure is the same, but all the things that happen to Mickey as she grows up...   I had ideas about things that could happen to her and her family, and I wrote all these times that the kids went up to visit their dad. And all these times that they had other events happen to them. In one version, she was in a car crash. All these things happened.  I just kept taking the novel down these little turns. So it did keep changing every time I finished a draft and I’d think this doesn’t work, or I talked to somebody who I trusted with the narrative. And I'd say, I’m thinking that maybe someone gets sick and they ask her to give them her kidney, and then does she keep going - she wants to run the marathon - or does she have to donate the kidney?

And as I worked on it, I kept realizing that certain things didn't work for the story, and I had to keep finding my way. It did change quite a lot, although the idea of her trying to understand what it takes, what you have to sacrifice to become somebody who wants to achieve a big dream like that remains the same.  So the idea was the same;  just the roadmap was different.

ARTicle

This is your debut novel, but is it the first you’ve written?

Josie

I do have a couple of secret ones in my drawer and I have things I’ve started working on. I have a few things I'm excited about and that very first novel that I wrote that I haven't been sure how to finish. I'm still working on that. It’s sort of science fictiony. And it's a love story and it's so complicated I can't quite figure out how to make the story work.  I think that maybe I just have to take time with it. And that as I hopefully grow and learn new things as a writer, I'll be able to bring those to that story and make it better. It might be asking a bit much of me!

ARTicle

Did you come up with the title or is that something that happened once you had a publisher on board?

Josie

When I submitted the manuscript, I was just calling it by the name of the character because that was how I'd been referring to it to myself.  We all agreed that it probably could work as a title, but once we got further down the line into the publishing process we agreed that maybe the title could be stronger, could be something else. They came up with some ideas and I came up with a few ideas, and finally, I thought I'll just look through the book and see if there's something else that jumps out at me. It was the second to last paragraph and I saw that line: "everything is beautiful and everything hurts", which is a sort of a play on the Kurt Vonnegut quote,  "everything was beautiful and nothing hurts", which is quite a famous quote from Slaughterhouse 5. And Mickey thinks about that at certain times and some ideas about those elements in your life. We all have hurting things and beautiful things and the balance changes and shifts. It’s not just running that it represents, obviously. Life to me is both of those things and when I read the line that I'd written right at the end, I thought I would love to have a novel with that title. I just thought that would be really cool.

ARTicle

What are your ambitions for this book?

Josie

I really hope that people enjoy it. That lots of people enjoy it.  I'm obviously a debut novelist and there's lots of nerves and apprehension around how it’s going to be taken.  I really, really hope more people enjoy it than people who don't enjoy it. I know there's going to be people who don't. I guess that's part of the bargain of creating art. People have different tastes.

I hope that it does well and that people enjoy it and that I am able to publish more stories for people to enjoy. That's what I hope. That it's successful in a way that allows me to have a longer career.

ARTicle

What have you been reading lately? Do you have any recommendations for our readers?

Josie

I read Daisy Jones and the Six, and I really liked that. There’s just been a TV series made of it. And I did mention her before, but I'll mention her again because I just really liked it -  I finally read Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka. Yep, amazing. Fight Night by Miriam Toews. She's the writer of that film that just came out, Women Talking. She wrote the book that that's based on. She's Canadian, I think. Also, Ruin by Emma Hislop. She's a Taranaki based writer who's just had a book of short stories come out. They're really great.

ARTicle

What’s next for you?

Josie

Well, next I'm really hoping to get another draft of the current novel finished so that I can maybe get that closer to being a finished draft. And outside of writing, later this year we're taking our kids on a holiday to see family in the United States. So that will be the next big thing for our family.

ARTicle

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Josie

I'd just like to say thank you if you read my book. I really appreciate the support that I've had so far, and hope that Mickey inspires you, if not to go running, but to chase your dreams.