Teacher’s encouragement bears fruit 30 years later

When Amy McDaid was a student at Titirangi Primary School in the late 1980s, her teacher Mr Smallfield, told her she would be a writer one day and she believed him.

Just over 30 years later Mr Smallfield’s encouragement and faith in Amy’s early ability came to fruition with the recent publication of her debut novel Fake Baby.

Much of the novel is set in the Titirangi and Green Bay area where Amy still lives and she says she was driven to write from childhood.

“I love language, words, books. I was an early reader and hardly ever watched TV,” she says. “I love to write, I need to write. Writing is part of who I am.”

She says she was “middling in high school English” and after leaving school did a nursing degree but continued to write short stories and poetry. For the past 12 years Amy years has been a neo-natal nurse at NICU, Auckland Hospital’s newborn intensive care unit.

But writing never went away and as well as her fulltime job and a little girl of her own, Amy undertook a masters degree in creative writing at Auckland University in 2017. She won the Sir James Wallace prize which recognised the student taking the degree as having completed the highest-quality manuscript.

She says the financial prize bought her time to take a year off work and help pay childcare costs for her daughter while she wrote full time.

“I didn’t expect to get published,” Amy says. “Publishers only take on about one book a year from about 1,000 applications.” In 2019 she was the one selected by Penguin Random House New Zealand, and a year later Fake Baby was launched.

The book tackles the themes of grief, anxiety and mental illness in a story of three intersecting lives over a nine-day period in Auckland.

“I didn’t set out to write a novel about mental distress and while the characters are very much invented, I have worked in mental health areas in my job as a nurse. I’ve had personal experience too. I had a brother, Carl, who committed suicide when 16, and my brother Nicholas has bipolar disorder. I’ve had depression and anxiety on and off.

“I didn’t know what I was going to write and had no structure when I started it,” Amy says.

“I started with characters and took time to get to know them. I had an idea, then another idea and then another. I had to spend time in the characters’ worlds to see how the story unfolded.

“Walking is extremely valuable for writing. Many of my ideas came from walking 35-40 minutes each day. There’s something in the repetitive nature of step after step after step that just triggered ideas and thoughts.”

Readers have been quick to comment on Amy’s vividly drawn characters. “A sharp satire on modern life. Wonderful dialogue. It was hard to put down,” wrote one.

Others have admired this ‘intelligently written novel’; ‘superb, darkly humorous’; ‘a beautiful story of three characters with varying mental health issues. Their stories are told sensitively with laugh out loud moments’; ‘wry, lyrical and touching – a beautiful work.’

“The whole process has been stressful but also really enjoyable and exciting ... a bit like a roller coaster, but I’m really happy to have the book out there.”

Amy says the seeds of another novel are already planted in her mind. “The character is called Cerys and she’s a bit of a trouble-maker. That’s all I’ll say but I’m looking forward to spending more time with her.”

And Mr Smallfield? “I’ve been able to track him down on the North Shore and I’ve sent him a copy, thanking him for his encouragement.”

– Moira Kennedy

Local writer Amy McDaid: “Walking is extremely valuable for writing.”

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Writing from inside the disappointment that is Level 3, where the magic of where we are and who we are wasn’t quite enough to thwart the invisible menace of Covid-19, this quote from Gertrude Stein has got me thinking: After all, any-body is as their land and air is. Any-body is as the sky is low or high. Any-body is as there is wind or no wind there. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of looks, their kind of thinking, their subtlety and their stupidity, and their eating and their drinking and their language.

Another writer on the demise of America as a world power talks about the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place. I love that notion of fidelity to the land. Maybe the art of being in Aotearoa is that we are constantly in conversation about place as an entity, the environment as a treasure to be nurtured, language/s and the dignity we accord them in our public life. FRINGEADLTD.pdf 1 15/11/16 16:33 The arts contribute significantly to that conversation. (Note: If you want to hear te reo Māori seamlessly EST 1989 Cut Vases woven into conversation in a wonderfully accessible way, tune in to Breakfast on TV1 and listen to Jenny-May Clarkson.)

Back in the real world, you may be reading this in an Auckland released from restriction. However, in that perilously poised world of events and specifically arts events, decisions must be made. We now know that we can go from relative freedom to lockdown in 24 hours. Talk about ‘pivoting’ (currently a much overused word)! We’ve discovered that Covid-19 can pivot too.

Events on the cusp of happening are being cancelled or postponed. Titirangi Theatre’s Waiting for God now consigned to a November season. That means the arc of a production; cast rehearsed and ready to fire; now on hold and rhythm lost for the time being.

For those with a more generous timeline there is still a gamble. How to calculate the risks? What are the costs, both literal and figurative, of retreating to the online world.

The Going West Festival has been much blessed by the time and resources to create a podcast platform of broadcast quality recordings from its 24 year archive. The joy of releasing this work into the wider community has been such a blessing. But naturally the conversation has turned to a live event and to new content, especially in this 25th anniversary year. And there is so much that writers and thinkers have to contribute to the discourse around our dance with this pandemic; as do poets, playwrights and songsters. At this point it may be an online forum of celebration, of serious conversation, of music, theatre and oratory. It may be able to showcase the beauty of the Waitākere Ranges and the character of urban West Auckland. Keep an eye on all this through the goingwestfest.co.nz website. In the meantime dig into the podcasts.

Te Pou Theatre on the Corban Estate has been faced with the same dilemma. Traditionally their Kōanga (Spring) Festival occupies the month of September with stories told through performances, play readings and whānau celebrations. It’s a time for new and sometimes controversial work and a launch pad for emerging Māori writers. WHYTANGI??, set for a touring season, will now be filmed and go online.

Inspired by a cover-note from Henry Williams, I certify that the above is as literal a translation of the Tiriti o Waitangi as the idiom of the language will admit of,

P R E S L A N D a n d C O LT D

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WHYTANGI?? brings together six Māori playwrights to porcelain clay, glaze