How I write:
Andrea Graves
Dr Andrea Graves has zoology degrees from Waikato and Oxford universities and did her doctoral studies at the latter on stress in chickens. Her new book, What Your Chickens Want You To Know: Backyard Chicken-Keeping in Aotearoa, is published by Potton & Burton.
Which book do you wish you’d written and why?
A small part of me wishes (still, always) that I’d studied history and English at university and written books like Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites or Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. At school I didn’t take history because I had the idea that it was boring, despite having been fascinated since I was very young by how people used to live (and what did that have to do with dates of wars?). Those two wellresearched books plonk us right into 19th century rural Iceland and 16th century Stratford-upon-Avon in full-colour daily life, blood, love, death.
What book do you go back to time and time again to re-read?
I’m not a re-reader, but every decade or so I read Wuthering Heights and it’s a different book each time. I’m returning to Johan Rockstro¨m’s Planetary Boundaries for some climate-related writing I’m doing, because it has such a good explanation of historical climate fluctuations, how we know this time is different, and the likely tipping points of Earth’s systems.
Have you ever finished a book and gone straight back to the start to read again?
I recently gorged on West With The Night by Beryl Markham and immediately had to re-read my favourite chapters because I’d failed to savour them. Ernest Hemingway did not exaggerate when he wrote of this book: ‘‘She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen.’’
When it comes to a memorable book, what is more important, a great plot or great characters?
As a nonfiction writer I can throw stones from outside the glasshouse, but I think a lack of either is terrible. I have a low threshold for abandoning fiction. I persisted with Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For The Future – which was prophetic, wise, informative and definitely worth the read – but I struggled with the robotic prose and mostly shallow characters. It’s an acclaimed book, though.
What’s your writing routine?
That’s the kind of thing I like to discover about other writers, hoping I’ll magically follow their routine and life will be perfect, but I actually hate routines. I mostly write in the mornings, either when I first get up before doing anything else, or after a walk or maybe some gardening if I don’t have a deadline. By late afternoon I’m spent, unless I’m terrified I’ll miss a deadline or produce something weak. Fear of shame motivates the heck out of me. Without it, I can only write for maybe four hours a day, then my brain turns to fuzz. But there’s always admin, too.
And where do you write?
In the lounge at a cobbled-together standing desk. Or at the kitchen table if I’m tired. I don’t have an office but I’d like one. Fortunately I often have the house to myself. My son has just moved home and it’s hard to say no to good conversation with your 19-year-old.
What’s on your summer reading list?
There’s a teetering book pile by my bed instead of a list. I have AC Grayling’s latest book, For The Good Of The World, ready for when I finish The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. Annette Lees’ Swim is also waiting, and I’ll definitely check out Greta Thunberg’s new effort.
What books will you be buying people for Christmas?
New Zealand Nurses: Caring for our People 1880–1950 (for an exnurse), Regenesis by George Monbiot, and Kath Irvine’s Edible Backyard. I was just given a Two Raw Sisters cookbook, and I recommend anything by them for healthy foodies.