Learning and writing from experience

Press, 12 July 1985, Page 5

Learning and writing from experience

Robin Booth was selling life insurance door-to-door in Christchurch one day when he met a man who said he was too busy writing a book to think about insurance. Mr Booth said he was writing a book, too. The man, who turned out to be a friend of Frank Sargeson, said to bring it round some time.

In the end, the man contributed enough money to the salesman to allow him to self-publish the novel he had written about growing up in Paraparaumu and various other places. Mr Booth now renovates houses to make some money and writes as fast as he can to build something worth while for the rest of his life. He wanted to explore interesting ideas in fiction, he said. Many writers had lots of style without much purpose.

“A Joker Like Me,” his first novel, is being distributed by Mr Booth, who published 1000 copies. He has already had the satisfaction of having some bookshops order more copies. The book, started after he

dropped out of the study of law at the University of Canterbury, took five years to write. He had put out a volume of poetry, also selfpublished, when he was 19. He is now 26.

He returned home after he left university, and “knocked out about 30,00 words, all day, every day,” he said. “Then I sat down and started. typing out the good parts. You write so much junk the first time.” Mr Booth, who damaged his health by using drugs, said the novel was partly a comment on New Zealand’s conformity.

“I have been trying to put a few things that are going on in New Zealand,” he said. “There is a lot of mob sort of activity these days. I believe the individual tends to be rational, but large groups tend to be irrational.”

He no longer drinks even coffee, and will not admit to any noticeable vice. “I try to knock them on the head because they cause people to decline,” he said. His mother, who put up with his struggles over the years, said that things in the book needed to be said. She

was even promoting the book round Paraparaumu. Mr Booth has travelled in Australia and Thailand, and spent six months hitch-hik-ing round the United States. A friend in Oregon said that Ken Kesey, the author of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” lived in the state, and so Mr Booth telephoned him. Mr Kesey’s wife said that her husband was watching his son wres-

tie at a community college near Mr Booth. Mr Booth told the American novelist that he wanted to be a writer, and would like an introduction to his agent. Mr Kesey said ,that his agent was not speaking even to him then. It would be better to go into selfpublication and distribution, considering the state of the publishing industry. “He said you would be better off going home where you know your environment,” said Mr Booth. It was frustrating trying to make enough money to pay the rent, using time that should be taken up with writing, Mr Booth said. At the end of the book, he invites people to get in touch with him if they liked it. He is looking for financial angels. “There is nothing more frustrating than to want to do something and have all these barriers in the way,” he said. “Books are pouring out of me. I am trying to buy a word processor right now so that I can write six at the same time. “They are there now. If I don’t write them down, they will be there to haunt me.”