The Finer way to write a family affair
From out of nowhere the father and daughter Finer duo have hit South Taranaki literary circles like a whirlwind. Catherine Groenestein reports.
Sasha Finer is 17 and she’s been a writer for 14 of them. She wrote her first book before she even started school.
Her father Bruce is much younger than his daughter when measured in writing years. He discovered his own talent only four years ago, when he picked up a pen to encourage Sasha to enter those stories she had been writing for years into a competition.
The pair, who punch out their stories on a shared laptop on the family’s dining room table, have been a formidable literary force ever since, almost making South Taranaki’s annual Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards a Finer Family appreciation evening.
This year Sasha dominated the secondary school section like never before.
She won first and second place with her short stories Immortality and The Magpie,
and first and second place with her poems Forbidden Fruits and Long Distance Calls.
Story judge and author MaryAnne Scott describes Finer as a remarkable talent, while poetry judge Airini Beautrais has already made a plea for her to keep writing.
Her dominance in the competition is not unexpected. She’s been building up to it since she first entered in 2015.
Her first short story was highly commended, in 2016 she won that section, then in 2017 she won both the secondary school short story and poetry sections.
Bruce had his first big win this year, taking out the coveted open short story section with Heartwood, a hilarious yet poignant tale of freezing cold forestry workers.
His success came after two second placings in a competition he has entered just four times.
Talking writing in a busy Ha¯ wera cafe, the two Finers take turns answering questions, finishing off each other’s quotes.
T-shirt clad, engineer-turnedfarmer Bruce is shy but his pride in his articulate, effervescent daughter spills out over his reticence.
‘‘She wrote a book before she went to school. I remember that,’’ he says with a gleaming grin. ‘‘It was only one sentence per page but it was a pretty good effort.’’
As if they have practised it, Sasha deftly avoids responsibility for her talents.
‘‘I had a really good teacher at primary school, Mr Garland, who showed me that writing was more than ‘in the weekend I went to the pools’, you know, pushed us beyond that.
‘‘And I’ve had really good support from the English department at Ha¯ wera High School,’’ she says.
Sasha who reads ‘‘anything and everything’’ – fiction mostly – has a writing style that others in the game, including her father, envy.
For her the toughest part of writing a story is getting started.
‘‘I always struggle for ideas, but once I’ve got my idea, I know how it’s going to go. I don’t even have to know how it ends before I start writing,’’ she says.
‘‘It probably takes me a couple of hours to put out a story and there’ll be another hour of tweaking.’’
Poems get a bit more editing time though.
‘‘It’s satisfying to write poems, once they’re all polished,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s like doing a crossword, you know when they’re done, although sometimes you can push it too far and end up mutilating them.’’
In contrast, Bruce labours over his stories. Ideas comes thick and fast but turn to treacle on paper. It takes days to mould his stories into shape and it’s never so much finished as finished with. ‘‘It’s 20 per cent talent and 80 per cent work for me, whereas for Sasha it’s the opposite. She’s got miles of talent and she only spends a fraction of the time on what she writes compared to what I write.’’
Bruce gets up at 5am to write. He has to. His stories are written on a shared laptop at a small table in the dining room of the family’s villa-style farmhouse.
His stories at first appear rough cast and off the cuff. But like a Frank Sargeson story, they gleam brighter in retrospect when the huge heart and intense control of the writer can be appreciated.
‘‘I end up writing about uneducated people because I’m not educated myself I guess. And it’s more fun writing about people who are struggling, rather than people who go through life easy,’’ Bruce says.
‘‘I was a fitter-turner for most of my life working for wages, working with different people over the years which helps with characters. It’s a fairly rough and tumble sort of environment, the engineering world.’’
The two vie for time in their writing space.
‘‘With the TV going and all the arguments and battles raging around the house,’’ Bruce says.
‘‘You get quite good at blocking it out,’’ Sasha adds.
The Finer farm where the blocking out and the writing takes place is 15 minutes drive into the hill country inland from Ha¯ wera, under a big South Taranaki sky.
Neither Bruce or his wife, Heather, had a farming background. Their move into the country was really a move to concentrate on their family.
‘‘We had various blocks of land before we had kids, it was a hobby kind of thing, farming, and we were both working,’’ Bruce says. ‘‘Then when we started a family. Instead of coming home and rushing out to do farm stuff, I wanted to spend time with the kids. So we had to either give up the farming or give up the day job.
‘‘We borrowed lots of money and came out here 14 years ago, and I gave up the engineering.’’
Farm life has been good for the kids, he says. All three, Sasha, Liam, 15, and Matthew, 12, pitch in to help at calf rearing time in the spring, and all have regular chores.
Bruce says he isn’t sure what they did to foster their multitalented brood. There’s loads of books on shelves around the house but they don’t own a gaming machine, and one or other of their parents is usually around.
When Scott judged Sasha’s winning story Immortality, she was adamant it had been written by a man. It was just so assuredly from a male perspective, she said at the awards ceremony.
As is the case with literary competitions, the judges have no idea who any of the writers are or if they had written more than one story. Scott was surprised when Sasha’s entries topped both sections. ‘‘She’s got a great sense of unfolding with her story. I don’t reckon that’s something you can learn. Her father’s certainly got it and she has too, without a doubt.’’
Beautrais described Sasha as ‘‘a standout talent’’. Like Scott, she picked two of Sasha’s poems from hundreds. ‘‘I really hope she will keep writing. One thing that strikes me about Sasha is her commitment to writing. Entering multiple divisions of a competition in multiple years demonstrates a strong work ethic. Many people are interested in writing but not many are willing to commit the hard yards.’’
Awards organiser Pam Jones says the annual awards aim to encourage literary endeavour.
Many requests from writers and schools outside the region to open it to others have been turned down, with organisers preferring to retain a Taranaki flavour, Jones says.
The awards started 31 years ago as a small competition for students in South Taranaki, but grew to include secondary schools across the region, then after many requests, to include open sections for adults resident in the district.