Kenn Benn didn’t see the advertisement about the residency until the June 30 deadline was only three weeks away. Never mind. He’d have a go anyway.
So he spent the next 10 days resurrecting a book idea buried at the back of his mind. That involved writing a synopsis and up to 10,000 words in sample chapters as part of his proposal. Then, three days from the deadline, he tossed his work out and started over from scratch. ‘‘I got it away by courier at the last minute,’’ he says. Then he relaxed and got on with something else.
There’s plenty of that, because he teaches at Palmerston North Boys’ High School, works as a storyteller, and makes frequent trips to the South Island to play the role of Leonardo for groups visiting the touring Da Vinci Machines exhibition. In fact, it was business as usual until he received a phone call. That last-minute proposal had won and the 2008 WGS Children’s Writing Residency at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport was his.
‘‘It was a very pleasant shock,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime and I’m certainly grateful to Jill Marshall and the Michael King Centre [the joint sponsors]. I’m extremely grateful to Palmerston North Boys’ High too, for allowing me time to accept it.’’ The official announcement was made in Auckland last night, and he will travel to Auckland on Monday to meet Jill Marshall, who operates the company Write Good Stuff and will act as his mentor during the residency.
She is an experienced adult trainer and consultant, a published author (including the Jane Blonde spy series for children), with record book sales for Macmillan UK, and a member of the New Zealand Association of Manuscript Assessors.
During the residency, Benn will be eligible for up to 10 weeks of paid accommodation at the Michael King Centre, mentoring from Jill Marshall, potential access to an agent at the end of the project, and access to the writing and school community in Devonport. Benn is likely to spend only five weeks at the Centre – from August 25 to September 28 – but says he’s looking forward to having ‘‘dedicated time to write, instead of getting up at 4am, and to be able to focus and produce.’’
He won’t give away plot details about the effort that earned him the residency, because he wants to get the story down on paper before he talks about it too much. All he will say is it is a contemporary story for 14-16-year-olds, that will be ‘‘challenging, entertaining and informative’’.
The brief for residency applicants was their proposal should be a work of fiction for children or young adults with universal appeal and good prospects for commercial success. So how will he go about it? ‘‘I work with a mind map,’’ says Benn. ‘‘I know all about my characters, their traits, idiosyncrasies and tendencies. I work out the entire narrative on the mind map alongside a superimposed timeline for the characters, showing the developments they will be subjected to. Once I have all that, I write very quickly.’’
But the residency isn’t the only good news Benn has had lately. ‘‘My last book, Lethal Deliveries, a thriller for 14-16-year-olds, was really successful, but my publisher was bought out by a large Canadian publisher that didn’t want to take on the second book. Recently, a second publisher expressed a strong interest in the book.’’
Evening Standard 10 July 2008