TOWRTA

(it's pronounced twer-ta)

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Muuum! He’s touching me! https://www.instagram.com/p/CMc_9NJJpkC/?igshid=189h2iij8a1ka

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When your dog is a purebred model, why even try? #shesbeautyshesgraceshesmissunitedstates https://www.instagram.com/p/CMVHTyBpoqk/?igshid=1250s9ynmgfi7

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Food revelation day! (From the diary of a recovering-disordered-eater who’s hoping not to sound too patronising!) In the photos we have my breakfast versus my afternoon tea. Breakfast was wholegrain seeded sourdough toast topped with blue cheese, a scrambled egg, and sliced tomato, along with some lettuce and wilted spinach. For afternoon tea, a little custard tart with cream and a strawberry chia smoothie. (Comparative calorie count? No idea.) Good news: both were delicious and filling. Bad: even though they filled me up almost as much as each other, having a full stomach does not mean your body has got all the nutrients it needs to perform at optimum levels - you learn the signals when you start paying attention to how you feel when you eat certain foods. Case in point: when I got home after the custard tart and smoothie I immediately raided the fridge for more wholegrain bread and a salmon avocado salad thing and had a celery stick and a pear and so much water, and afterwards felt uncomfortably bloated but at least my brain had shut up; whereas after breakfast I felt perfectly content to wait for the next meal because I had given my body a good enough ratio of fat:protein:carb (+lots of veggies!). We, as physical creatures, run on fat, protein, and carbs, and if food is about keeping our physical bodies running, then we kinda need to give them what they need. But then why is this so dang hard to do? I think it’s because we live in a world of mixed messages, false advertising, social pressure, and food often becoming part of our anxieties. Learning to feed ourselves means learning about what food does to our bodies, how each of us personally feels after certain foods, maybe even learning how to cook. It means ignoring the roar of opinions coming from the internet, our peers, even our families, and finding a quiet space within ourselves to pay attention to what we really need, and then trying to get it amidst the onslaught. There’s a lot of trial and error and frustration when you start trying to get control over food, but it’s definitely possible. With patience, persistence, and a whole lot of grace. #food #disorderedeating #disorderedeatingrecovery https://www.instagram.com/p/CMBds1uJf2F/?igshid=tkk3v27avtyc

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Good night, Wellington (rare photo in which my window isn’t banging about in a westerly and trying to amputate my arms) (at WellingtonNZ) https://www.instagram.com/p/CL1NFOwJnEA/?igshid=1qpxg0ypkcq7

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Cannot thank @blendtings enough for taking a walk-in with the mess of a hairline I’d been hiding under this mop and managing to wrangle a sweet as fade out of it. Add in the chill atmosphere, good yarns, and actually decent music, and I highly recommend! (at Blendtings Barbers) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLypaFBJNmF/?igshid=o9tvk82pnlv7

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Ahh, Wellington. To people who don’t know you, you can seem grey and dreary, windblown and a little bit tired. As they say, you don’t move here for the weather. But for those that live here, we have learned to look past that grey sky and howling wind and find those calm pockets colour that are waiting to be discovered all around. #lookcloser #wellington (at WellingtonNZ) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLs7A7PpzGT/?igshid=al6towkg244j

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So my cover artist sent through her sketches and ideas yesterday ... which means I feel compelled to finally read this thing (I haven’t touched it since November last year!). Considering The writing of this was like some weird fever dream, let’s see what’s ended up on the page, eh? 😅🤞 #Welcome2NY #editing #manuscript #yafiction https://www.instagram.com/p/CLqB_iKpsd3/?igshid=88wnia5yv5vs

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Bizarre trees, funky bus stops, weird statues, dogs who refuse to drink from their special bottle you’ve been carrying for the past 2 hours because they prefer the dirt-water bucket, accidentally ordering the wrong size phone case (that conveniently fits Mum’s new phone), and kimchi brown rice and tatsuta trevally for dinner. What a day! (You may be thinking my life is nothing but cooking, walking a dog, and waiting for a book to get published so people can read it. And you’d be right.) #foodie #dogwalker #author (at Polhill Reserve) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLlk4EDJaJz/?igshid=1qu59im9lw4u3

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (here illustrated by the brilliant Rose Garcia) has been another huge influence on my writing - not so much his prose but his unimpeded creativity. It was like a permission slip to let my imagination run wild when I needed a break from trying to make my alternate-NYC as realistic as possible. I love creating worlds; trying to describe them in semi-poetic language less so. Breaking free from the constraints of logic and realism by sending Alyssa’s brain tumbling down the rabbit hole on occasion made writing this novel bearable (and a much more interesting read!). #welcome2ny #aliceinwonderland #rosegarcia #yafiction #novel https://www.instagram.com/p/CLjGZcxpfhN/?igshid=1412jyf36zd7f

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Few things today: ever been to Gemini cafe on Tory Street? Whoever the barista is, your coffee art is fab! Also, I found the fix and foggs window!! For all your peanut butter on toast needs, right in the centre of the city (if you can find it). Finally, SOMEONE watched both last week and this week’s episodes of WandaVision without me. Gosh. She rewatched for my sake, and golly gosh, what a plot twist! How they’re going to wrap this all up in two episodes, I have no idea. Excited!! (And shout out to all the English teachers out there - like @catherine_flora - who go above and beyond the call of duty for their students even 9 years later!) #geminicafe #fixandfogg #wandavision https://www.instagram.com/p/CLgdqQGJa8p/?igshid=scnahm0m10hl

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NYC is closed off from the world, and as we know, necessity breeds innovation. Trust me, there have been a lot of innovations over the past three decades. For example: FlowerPower. There are fields of sunflowers along the deserted Jersey coast and the southern half of the Bronx. These seven-foot-tall monsters ripple and nod from the Bronx wall to the centre of the borough, a weird golden army rooted to the spot. It’s beautiful, and bizarre . . . Nothing gives away the soluble wiring threaded through their xylem, the hacked photosynthesis that releases electrons to be collected through their roots and shuttled to storage sites. These flowers, smelling of clean earth doused in honey, power the Bronx and most of Queen Bee. The rest of NYC’s electricity comes from solar arrays and offshore windfarms and waste treatment facilities. Apart from the water sucked up from the ocean and purified, and the over one-thousand square kilometres of permaculture farms tended by the New Yorkers themselves, electricity is the most important component of the city’s functioning. No gas, no oil, no steam. Just electricity. The EVs that the world drives guilt-free were perfected in NYC. #welcome2ny #nyc #yafiction #novel #sustainableliving https://www.instagram.com/p/CLd51R5ptHv/?igshid=1p2n25krmchyn

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Adventures with Poppy! Isn’t she just the cutest ray of sunshine? Gah, everyone needs a Poppy. (at Brooklyn Wind Turbine) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLbNvkIJWWD/?igshid=1cnfh5dt1pako

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(So, Sarah, what’s next?) Well, not book two. Let me explain with some context from this photo: this was taken at our end of year Carrington College dinner. My first year of uni was almost over and I was dead set on getting into med school, having gotten a miraculous UMAT score and being certain of God’s plan for me. Also, I’d told everyone that God wanted me to be a psychiatrist. Fast forward to halfway through 2018, third year of med, and I’m begging God to get me out - out of med, out of my flat, just OUT. I’d done what I set out to do by getting in, but please don’t make me stay! And He Came Through. I got a new flat the very day I needed it. I quit med the next week. Suddenly I was on holiday in a fantastic new flat and nothing to do but focus on the book I’d set aside for med. Bliss! Otago also offered for me to take 3rd year English papers next semester, but the catch was that the room I was in was intended for someone else that next semester, depending on if she accepted her uni offer. So I put it to God. If she didn’t come, I’d stay and do English. If she came, I’d go home and finish the book. In the end she came. I went home, and discovered, while writing drafts 4-6, that I had a lot of issues that needed working through which had caused the whole med mess in the first place. Yeesh. Those issues have been dealt to (sort of - sanctification is an ongoing process), and now I’m sitting here, looking at the future, with no degree, no qualifications beyond NCEA, no job, and a single book that could not have been written without the mad journey it took to get here. That fire I had for novel writing is gone, burnt out over the last year of isolation. I’ve done what I set out to do and I don’t want to stay. What’s next? A new dream, that’s what. I never started this book so I could be a writer; I only said I’d be a writer because people like having their questions answered neatly. In truth I wrote it because I wanted to BE my protagonist, to act out this alter ego I have carried around for the past 7 years and know as intimately as I know myself. It’s mad, it’s impossible, it’s going to need a miracle. God, I would like a miracle. #welcome2ny https://www.instagram.com/p/CLYZavupZKw/?igshid=3o4vbgcfexn9

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Cooking day! Blueberry coulis for my whole-wheat oat pancakes, some quinoa and kumara muffin things, a veggie casserole, and my homemade Buddha bowl complete with homemade sriracha mayo! Ahh, when food becomes fun, life is so much better. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLWREtwpoW3/?igshid=xkq63awfgcnv

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(So, Sarah, how did you learn to write a book?) I can’t remember being formally taught grammar (I still don’t know what a preposition is). I just liked telling stories and writing was the easiest way to do it (tbh, I really wanted to be acting those stories, but fat and the horrors of ballet have a way of crushing a preteen girl’s self esteem). So I focused on writing, and imbued with gross ambition and my parents’ work ethic, I decided I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be. Writing for me was kind of like learning how to speak, this weird osmosis and regurgitation, over and over, without knowing when you’re screwing up until a few stories later you look back at a past work and see how much you’ve improved. It takes practice, and lots and lots of reading. Eventually you develop an ear for what word is right in a sentence; OF or TO? ON or UPON? And if you do it for long enough, the words begin to take on your tone of voice, littered with quirks of grammar that are particular to you, accents of your prose style (journaling is helpful for this - and this book on Elements of Style would have been, if I got it earlier, before I got stuck in my weird fanfic-diary-classics hybrid style). Undoubtedly your prose style will be influenced by the books you’ve read on this journey (I am in awe of and will never be able to match Daphne du Maurier’s descriptive powers). It’s also important to learn from those who have been there, done that, and can admit that it’s damn lonely work that just has to be done, but you have a life outside it too (even if cocaine or alcohol (or sugar) makes you feel more creative, drugs are not your friends - thanks, Stephen King!) And more than all of this, you’ve got to love stories. Humans are wired for stories - some just need them more than others. For me, A badly told story stresses me out. A well told story makes me happy to be alive. I love for stories, the more personal the better. I love to hear about people being people. So that’s it. That’s how I learned to write a book. No formal training or anything. Just time, persistence, and a fascination with the human experience. #Welcome2NY #nyc #yafiction #novel (at WellingtonNZ) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLTqUFcp-e8/?igshid=yahkoz16tu16

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Blueberry Day with some delightful gals. Good haul if I do say so myself. Should see our porridge through those lean winter months (along with LSA, yoghurt, peanut butter, apples, cinnamon, and oranges)! Also, super weird to see Somes Island from Petone. It has a windmill. Who knew? (at Bluebank Blueberry & Emu Farm) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLRE1RDJOyh/?igshid=qmcwaspjmwc0

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Before and After; 18 kg and counting. I suppose I should explain. I have been lucky enough to have people around me who have never made my size and issue, never told me to lose weight, never shamed me. And I truly believe that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And yet I was never comfortable in my body. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise myself. So I tried the gym, tried going vegetarian, tried lots of things without lasting results, all done half-heartedly because I wasn’t ready to confront the real issue - my eating itself. Stress, confusion, anxiety, food was my self-medication and I didn’t have the mental space to deal with it. Until last year - when I realised that I could stay weighing 83+ kg for the rest of my life or ... I could ask God for help. So I did. I said ‘let’s do this Your way.’ And GAH. When You ask God to take over, He shows up in a big way and it’s never how you expect. Day by day, hour by hour, He’s pulled apart all the insecurities and anxieties that I had knotted around food and forced me to face myself. I am no longer who I was, yet I am more me than I ever was. It’s been hard. It’s been long. It’s ongoing (abs! Me want to see my abs!). But I’m not alone and this time, the changes are going to stick because God doesn’t do temporary. Hallelujah. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLLVTGaptsn/?igshid=12clstb0h9dvo