Lockdown in Hawke's Bay inspires writer Chris Maclean

Author Chris Maclean took advantage of the sunshine - and the lack of traffic - to write in a new and unique space over lockdown.

Historian Chris Maclean found himself locked down in Napier and the result of his stay in the Bay is Anxious Autumn: A Covid-19 Lockdown Diary, a readable record of lockdown life that focuses both on the domestic - food, alcohol, Netflix - and the wider national and international picture, as the world changed with frightening speed. Louise Ward of Wardini Books caught up with Chris to get the lowdown on the book before he launches it at Wardini Books Napier on Monday, August 17.

Q: You're a historian, a chronicler of other lives and events. How did you find this leap to publishing such a personal account? Was it well outside your comfort zone?

A: Yes, writing Anxious Autumn was very different from almost all of my earlier dozen non-fiction books. And it proved to be well beyond my comfort zone. Yet I really enjoyed doing something new and challenging, as well as the freedom to use more colloquial language, less grammatical sentences and an almost 'stream of consciousness' style of reflection, that the other books never allowed. I did write and publish a reflective account two years ago, A Way with Words - A Memoir of Writing and Publishing in New Zealand that included some very personal recollections. But on the whole, it was more an account of my professional life than my personal one.

At first, I simply wrote Anxious Autumn for something to do, as I knew I needed to keep busy during lockdown or I would've gone mad. But when I sent the early days entries to a few writer friends they were unexpectedly encouraging, seeing it as a valuable historical record, so I decided to continue.

Q: There are insights into your writing process - tell us about how you go about it?

A: With both Anxious Autumn and my earlier memoir I adopted the same initial approach; just write a hard-out honest account without fear or favour to anyone, then refine it. Actually, it was my editor, Anna Rogers, who did that with both books. She reduced Anxious Autumn by about 20 per cent, down from 25,000 words to 20,000 and most of that was achieved by deleting what she thought was excessively personal material - so perhaps I embraced this new freedom too enthusiastically? I don't know, but I did enjoy writing it.

With my earlier landscape histories, biographies and other non-fiction titles, I usually wrote a first draft of several chapters, then sent them to selected readers; the commissioning client, plus other writers and historians, for their comment. But with Anxious Autumn I distributed it widely as I wrote.

You remember how lockdown was with friends and family all contacting each other to see how they were doing? Well, if anyone contacted me to ask how I was faring, I emailed them the diary so far. Unexpectedly, their responses were encouraging, and some offered advice. The most helpful was my friend Alan Wehipeihana, a Kapiti artist and writer, who challenged me to write less like a historian and instead include more dialogue. He advocated listening carefully to conversation and then incorporating snippets. Of course, novelists and other fiction writers do this habitually, but I had to learn this skill fast. And I loved it. Dialogue provides an immediacy, colour and sometimes humour that really enlivens the account.

I also learnt not to rush the day's entry, but to be patient and see what the tide brought in.

This meant being more open minded and receptive to everything big or small, as a potential subject. This way, I could move between describing personal, local, national and international developments with surprising ease. All I needed to do was conjure up a linking sentence between, for example, some whacky gardening idea and the Trumpian insanity of injecting patients with disinfectant to cure them of Covid-19, and I had the day's story.

Above all, I tried to include a range of other people's experiences. Lockdown was a universal phenomenon, yet it was different for everyone. I couldn't simply record Robyn's and my experience. To do this, I used a variety of voices; two people provided guest cameos, writing a day's entry each. My friend and fellow writer Shaun Barnett's entry is the longest in the book, providing the counterpoint of a family's lockdown reality, with competition for access to Wi-Fi paramount.

There are also two interviews included in Anxious Autumn; one with Jacinda Ardern describing her 'bubble', another with Dave Bamford, a tourism expert, outlining his thoughts on the future of the international visitor industry in New Zealand. I also incorporated the experiences of five friends in varying locations, with their reactions to lockdown often recorded, as Alan suggested, in their own words.

Q: You end up writing in the sunshine, sitting outside your partner Robyn's house in the street gutter, meeting many people passing by. Are there any weird or wonderful observations from the gutter that didn't make it into the book?

A: No, I would've included anything weird or wonderful. I did describe two minor gutter incidents in Anxious Autumn; a man stopping his car to have a long chat, and another braking hard to avoid running over Fluffy, the neighbourhood cat. But that was as dramatic as it got. Mostly, people simply wanted to say 'hello'. What was significant about writing in the gutter was that lockdown made this possible. Normally, the street would be lined with parked cars, with more cars speeding by. But during lockdown Shakespeare Rd was instead a river of walkers and cyclists passing by. Most were keen to make brief contact, as strangers were more inclined to do at that time, another feature of lockdown.

In Asia and many populous Third World countries numerous people live on the streets, doing all manner of things. During lockdown, the roads on Bluff Hill were largely reclaimed by pedestrians and cyclists with only the occasional motorist encountered. Often we and many others walked down the middle of the narrow roads, in part to maintain 'social distancing'. Perhaps it wasn't like this further afield, I don't know? We tried to stay local, between one or two kilometres of home ...

Q: You come across as a quiet, contemplative person, and Robyn as more of an extrovert. How did you balance personalities in lockdown?

A: That's an interesting idea, isn't it? I'm not sure we are one thing or another - introvert or extrovert. Maybe we are all a bit of both, perhaps some more at one end of the continuum than the other.

For sure, Robyn's an extremely gregarious person who loves people and enjoys helping them. Yet she is also keen on meditation and yoga and often does both each day. Yoga requires a calm awareness of one's own breathing and body, best achieved with a quiet contemplative mind. She also loves silence and the serenity of nature.

Equally, while I live in my head as a historian with a mind full of ideas, I find that it is often through conversation that ideas coalesce. In talking about something, it takes shape and coherence. Discussion helps to clarify expression. Especially during lockdown, we would review the day and chat about what to write about it. Robyn was also one of the guest writers, her contribution a balance to my view of things. Her entry is amusing and insightful.

We didn't try to 'balance' our different personalities. What we did do was to talk about our varied characters, an Aries and a Capricorn, to better understand how to navigate those inevitable moments when we saw things differently. Perhaps you might call that intuitive balancing?

Q: I'm fascinated by the idea that we all ended up doing things we don't normally do, or never have done, in lockdown. What were the big new experiences for you?

A: Well, I didn't get into baking bread from scratch as some people did, struggling to get a sourdough starter working properly. And I've already mentioned writing in a new genre, out on the street with plenty of casual community contact, another novel thing for me.

I guess the big new experience for me was living on Bluff Hill. What a great place to spend the five weeks of lockdown! Napier is a very compact and alluring architecturally unique city, with Bluff Hill an equally distinctive enclave within it. As you know, it's an elevated labyrinth of narrow windy streets that follow the steep contours of a block of rock thrust up above an alluvial plain on three sides and the sea on the fourth.

We found it a wonderfully rewarding place to explore. There are sets of steps hidden away in all sorts of places linking the higher and lower levels, like a 'snakes and ladders' board. Walking and cycling around Bluff Hill, we came across many historic houses, surprising views, a cemetery full of historic notables and the serene Botanic Gardens, laid out in a sylvan amphitheatre.

All this against a background of gorgeous autumnal trees. This was complemented by an almost unbroken spell of fine weather which surely made lockdown much easier for us all here in the Bay. I reckon it might have been a far more difficult time if lockdown had happened three months later, with persistent south easterlies and the winter cold.

I know that lockdown proved difficult for many; with the burden falling unevenly across the community. I count myself fortunate to have spent it in one of the country's finest cities, with a wonderful partner who made it memorable. Robyn also took photographs throughout the period, often of quite mundane scenes and activities such as house painting and doing yoga. When I decided to publish Anxious Autumn, her diligence with a smartphone proved invaluable.

- Chris will be signing books and talking about his Anxious Autumn experience at Wardini Books Napier on Monday, August 17 at 6pm, with special guest Stuart Nash. All are welcome.