New Zealand Writers
BURNSIDE, Deborah
Links
KAPAI: Kids can read about Deborah here
BURNSIDE, Deborah (1969- ), was born in Napier and now lives on a rural block in Jervoistown in Taradale in the Hawke’s Bay with her husband and three sons. She runs a waste disposal company with her husband.
In her spare time she writes in a cottage by the sea.
Burnside took part in the NZSA mentoring scheme in 2001, working with Tessa Duder. This was the catalyst for her first novel, On a Good Day (2004), published by Penguin.
She has also produced Sky Fishing, an adult short story which was published in the anthology, Hot Ink (Steele Roberts 2002), a picture-book, An Everyday Sunday, which was runner-up in the inaugural Joy Cowley Awards in 2003, and It’s True! This book is a load of rubbish, which explores facts about rubbish and recycling (Allen & Unwin 2005).
Burnside has also combined her creative talents with her business acumen and has been instrumental in setting up The Hawke’s Bay Writing Competition, which has proved popular with writers in the region.
Updated Information
Night Hunting (Puffin, 2008) is Burnside's first junior fiction book, and tells the story of a young boy who is finally old enough to go hunting with family friend Rotorua Bill.
Writers in Schools
Deborah is available to visit schools as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She is prepared to discuss writing, waste disposal, environmental and teen issues within books, and the theatre, dance and drama business. She will work with any class size, and is prepared to run workshops that are applicable to the student curriculum in consultation with teachers.
Where do you live?
In sunny Hawke’s Bay, Art Deco Capital of the World. More precisely, in Taradale on a rural block that grows heaps of broccoli (if you like that sort of thing).
What books do you read?
Anything that makes me laugh, cry or feel terrified – books that somebody else says, ‘you’ve got to read this book, it’s so good’. I read books out loud to my three sons. I know Bad Jelly the Witch off by heart and once frightened a little Scottish boy who had never heard the story before with my Bad Jelly voice (by mistake – I thought everyone knew Bad Jelly the Witch). When I was growing up I loved to read Milly Molly Mandy, Famous Five books and especially a book called The Headless Cupid...my most loved book is a copy of the Lion in the Meadow signed by Margaret Mahy…but as a small child and when I could read for myself, Dr Seuss topped the list.
Who is your favourite writer?
Hmm…difficult question, I have been helped in my writing career by some well-known New Zealand writers and they of course are my favourite writers because I love them to bits and appreciate what they’ve done for me, some of them have also fed me excellent meals and delicious cakes and biscuits so I especially like them…but writers I like to read depends on the story…sometimes writers don’t always write excellent stories one after the other so I don’t really have a favourite.
How do you come up with your ideas?
I don’t know if I really consciously think of them…sometimes I just have an idea of something I’d like to write about and then I might see something or hear something or read something and I start wondering what if…and then make up the ‘what if’ part. Usually a character, event or theme comes before the story or I imagine whole scenes in my head and conversations that my imagined characters might be having and just follow through with it to find out what happens myself.
What is the best thing about being a writer?
Meeting someone who has read your work and then have them tell you about your story because they’ve made it their own and they describe your characters as real people or get cross with you because of something you made a character do or say. Holding your own book in your hand is the very best thing.
Primary School Students
What sort of pets do you have?
A malamute (snow dog) named Blaze and a yellow bird called Narcissus. Lots of steers and quite a few sheep but they’re more like dinner than pets. We used to have some pigs called Pork and Bacon but…we don’t now.
What is your favourite colour?
Purple and Silver
What is your favourite food?
Real Turkish delight bought from a tiny sweetstore in the middle of Eastern Turkey. Or if that’s not available, anything with ginger or eggplant.
What is your favourite movie?
Anything with Johnny Depp/Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan/Emma Thompson/Viggo Mortensen/Meryl Streep – our current family favourite (or the one that we all like to repeat lines from, like “Tell’im he’s dreaming”) is The Castle.
What is your favourite game?
Scrabble and Monopoly. I have two sets of scrabble – one is a very posh set made by Franklin Mint and the other is a old tatty set that was my Nana’s. Sometimes I use Nana’s letters on the posh board – I think she’d quite like that. No one will play Monopoly with me because I always win, even if I don’t manage to buy Mayfair and Park Lane or all the Railway Stations.
What is the most fun thing about being an author?
Writing (yes, I do find the act of writing a lot of fun), meeting interesting people, being able to put ‘writer’ on the declaration card when you travel overseas and receiving a first copy of your book in the mail is a tremendous amount of fun.
How do you make books?
I’m not sure because I don’t make books…I write a story and then the publisher makes the book with paper, glue, ink, photographs, logos and lots of input from all the people at the publishers. I used to make books when I was young (we always had plenty of paper because my Uncle worked for a printing firm and my mum used to buy the ends of rolls from the newspaper) but I didn’t do any writing in them, I’d just draw pictures with a ballpoint pen and make up the story as I went along. I also made a book for my brother when he got married and that involved asking everyone in our family to submit their favourite recipe, then typing them all up, buying special paper and having it bound for them at a printers shop.
Where do you go for your holidays?
Camping at Lake Okakuri, lazing at Whirinaki Beach or somewhere like Fiji when we can afford it…basically anywhere warm and sunny, but we don’t have a lot of holidays because I run a rubbish disposal company with my husband and people want their rubbish picked up pretty much every day.
What was the naughtiest thing you did at school?
I was a very good girl throughout school…except I did have to go to the headmasters office once at primary school because a boy said that boys were stronger than girls and I said ‘no they weren’t’ and he said ‘put your dukes up then’ so I did, and I got into trouble! To this day I do not think I ought to have got into trouble for that.
Secondary School Students
How did you get started?
I’d always wanted to write and my husband and I were having a little debate about how and whether or not I would become or ever be one…I then telephoned a quite famous New Zealand writer and said ‘I want to be a writer, what do I do?’ and she said ‘Well, I think you should just begin.’ At the time I thought those words were most profound and declared to my husband, she says I should just begin…so I did.
Who inspired you when you were getting started?
Every writer or teacher of writing ever involved with me who said I should keep at it, the competitions I entered and the other writers I mixed with who were very supportive of me. I’m very easily inspired to be perfectly honest, over-blessed with enthusiasm and inspiration…but specifically friends from the Fiction Kitchen and my immediate family. Tessa Duder was my mentor when writing my first novel, On a Good Day, and she must have felt more like a personal trainer than a writing mentor at times since I was very good at trying to get out of it when it got tough. Her most often said words to me were ‘books have their own time’ and that was very inspiring because I write in my ‘spare’ time and often there wasn’t a lot of it.
What advice would you give an aspiring young writer?
‘Well…I think you should just begin’. Because that worked for me, but all the usual things like reading a lot, writing a lot, completing work either to submit to publishers or send to competitions and learning the skills and technical tools about writing and applying them to your work. Nothing you write the first time is ‘right’. Give up now if that’s what you believe because writing is the same as any other job. So you’d better truly love it and be prepared to work…or it would soon become as boring and unsatisfying as anything else you might chose to do believing it to be either lucrative/glamorous or sexy…when it’s still just a job.
Is it difficult to make a living writing in New Zealand?
I’ve heard that it is - but money is not a key motivator for me about my writing - I write because I cannot, not write. I’ve tried ‘not writing’ and I just get cranky and irritable until my husband says, would you go to the beach and write something please? If you applied discipline to your writing day and wrote for an established market, there’s no reason why you ought not to make a ‘living’ – because I already make a living doing something else, my writing is simply pure fun and enjoyment – without the pressure of having to ‘make it pay’.
What were you like as a teenager?
Introverted, fairly quiet, wore glasses, had skinny legs and knobbly knees and was ‘good at English’ – I argued with my mother just the right amount since we still get on fine, had the obligatory crush on a boy at school (much to the amusement of his group of friends), attended ballet, hated cross country and did my homework – almost all of the time. A very close friend died when I was 15 and that sort of shaped up for a sad and lost time as a teenager, as I was grieving and stopped doing a few things that I was good at, like dance, during that period. I wagged quite a bit too, which I don’t recommend unless you’re exceptional at catching up all the work.
Is there anything else you could tell students about yourself?
As a small child I had an invisible friend called Zebedee and Mum had to empty the vacuum cleaner bag to let him out once when she vacuumed the seat beside me, and Dad refused to go to the fish and chip shop with me again when I mimed, with sound effects, a terrific death scene from smoke inhalation (the shop was full of smokers). I think the most telling thing that I was going to be a writer was that once, after winning a beach beauty competition, I used a substantial amount of the prize money to buy a very good dictionary.
Deborah is available for school visits as part of the Book Council's Writers in Schools programme.
