How fear can be ‘a great spur’

Kate De Goldi is a novelist whose latest book Eddy, Eddy is set in a post-quake Christchurch. Her latest young people’s project, Annual – a collection of essays, comics, poems, and the like – she edited with Susan Paris.

Where do you get your ideas from, and how do you know which ones have legs?

The idea for a book usually comes in increments. I know my pattern pretty well now. Something – a character, a place, a relationship – asserts itself and hangs around, sometimes for years. Over time, other characters or situations attach to the original idea and eventually I start writing, trying out the voice of a possible story. My most recent book (Eddy, Eddy) started with a friend taking a constipated parrot to a vet. Suddenly I had a character with a job, and within time – a long time, 10 years! – he became a 19-year-old in post-quake Christchurch juggling a portfolio of pets and humans.

Name a book that changed your life.

There’s no single book. Reading – wantonly and widely – formed me and made me a writer. Certain writers were important: Jane Gardam, Elizabeth Enright, William Mayne, Alan Garner, Alice Munro, Ellen Gilchrist. The Americans, Baby by Frank Moorhouse introduced me to discontinuous narrative which made me start writing. David Ballantyne’s Sydney Bridge Upside Down was significant. Critical writing has had a big impact.

What makes you most productive as a writer?

Fear of not finishing is a great spur. So is reading. I often finish a wonderful book feeling charged, wanting to do better. I distinctly remember that response after reading Elizabeth Knox’s Mortal Fire, Damien Wilkins’ Max Gate, Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Red Shoe and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. When things are going well I write in the morning. Occasionally with music.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading a few books at once – Sweet Home, short fiction by Belfast writer Wendy Erskine; the latest issue of Counterfutures which has essays on landlordism, penal culture, absurdist art, colonial capital in Aotearoa; and A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti – an exquisite series of reflections on music. And I’m listening to Fabric; the hidden history of the material world, by Victoria Finlay and an unusually subtle crime novel, The Complicities by Stacey D’Erasmo.