Kerre Woodham - Musings from Middle Age

T o be honest, it wasnt my idea to write this book. Ive written books before that were my ideas I wrote a couple of books on marathon running a few years back which I know a lot of women have read. I was delighted with the response to them. To date, Ive received about 800 emails and letters from women and four from men whove told me that the books inspired them to run marathons, take up triathlons, give up smoking and in general do all sorts of amazing things, and that was really gratifying.

But these readers werent inspired because of the brilliance of my prose or the beauty of my composition. Im not a dazzling writer. Oh, there was a time when I dreamed of writing a work of great literary and artistic merit. When I had my daughter, at twenty-four, I imagined that Id take maternity leave from Fair Go , the television programme I was working on at the time, spend the day loving my beautiful girl and the nights writing the great New Zealand novel. I assumed that writing the great New Zealand novel would take me about six months, and after that I would resume my normal life, albeit with a gorgeous daughter and a couple of literary prizes to show for my six months off work.

Hah! I soon realised that if I got out of my dressing gown and had washed the sick out of my hair before dinner time (the babys sick, not mine), that was a good day. My daughters dad, who travelled away during the week on business, would return on Thursday night and I would greet him in an old pink velour dressing gown that my mum had passed on to me. I think she was terrified I was going to wear something slutty and black in the hospital when I turned up in the delivery suite to produce her first grandchild.

Alastair would look wide-eyed at the dirty plates and the soaking bottles and the piles of laundry in the lounge and would, quite legitimately, ask, What on earth have you been doing?

Shes alive and Im alive, I would snap, shoving into his hand a pizza discount coupon that had been posted through the mailbox my idea of a cooked dinner for the hunter and gatherer of the family. No wonder we didnt make it as a couple; although, as parents of our daughter, weve done a pretty good job, even though I say so myself.

Needless to say, not a lot of writing was done during those first early gorgeous, sleep-deprived, life-transforming months, and since Ive become a book reviewer, Ive realised I will never be an award-winning seminal novelist. I would love to be, but I simply dont have the talent. What I am is a storyteller in the confessional genre and thats okay. I dont pretend its art and after the response I had to Short Fat Chick to Marathon Runner , I have realised I dont care that I cant write words of beauty that will resonate in the heart forever. I will leave that to true wordsmiths and I will love and appreciate them for doing so. What I can do, however, is tell a yarn. And hopefully thats what happens in this book.

The gorgeous blondes at HarperCollins, Vicki and Alison, had been taking me out for lunch regularly, trying to get me to write another book. I wasnt keen on writing a third one for so many reasons. For one thing, the first book was a fluke. It wasnt particularly well written I cringe when I reread it on the odd occasion but it hit the market at the right time. Women like me were looking for a challenge, and although many women before me had trained harder and achieved better times in marathons, I was the first overweight booze hag to write about training for a marathon and finishing it alive.

I wrote another one on marathons at their behest which did moderately well but I really didnt want to become the Edmonds Cookery Book of running manuals. On another more mercenary level, I didnt want to put the long, lonely hours into writing a book when all an author gets in return is a percentage of the cover price. And the New Zealand market is so small that if you sell 5000 copies of a book, its considered to be a bestseller. And, besides, I hadnt done anything of note. When Vicki and Alison were tossing ideas around at various cafs in Auckland, I was all meh and whatevs. I didnt feel passionate about any of the subject matter until one day, when we were sitting at yet another caf, having yet another lunch, Vicki said in well-contained exasperation, You must have done something recently!