His publisher is urging him to get going on his fourth novel but he has the screenplay for his first novel Iceland (2018) to finish and a festival to go to.
"I think it’s just that thing of being like, OK, once I start this it’s probably going to be a year and a-half, two years. So I think you’re a little bit reluctant to start."
But the Readers and Writers Festival is in Dunedin, which is where he plans to set his next novel. The suburb of Port Chalmers is somewhere he has wanted to set a novel since he wrote the first draft of his second novel Poor People With Money (2022) there.
"I sort of thought this would be a great place to set a novel before, the mists and the old buildings and stuff."
He hopes the visit will get the ideas flowing. He has done the research and just needs to knuckle down and write the supernatural mystery with a multi-generation family at its heart.
"I feel like it’s time to start pulling the trigger, you know? Once you get going, I find it’s actually quite enjoyable."
But before he does, he wants to get the screenplay squared away. It is his first feature-length film, although he has written a few short films before which have been accepted into various festivals, including Palm Springs, The Orlando Film Festival, The New Zealand International Film Festival and Show Me Shorts.
Writing a feature film has been quite a learning curve, surprising Hoey.
"Like I think a lot of things, I thought I knew about structure and stuff and then you sort of, you know, you’re halfway through and you’re like, oh, I didn’t actually know that at all. But it’s been cool; I love learning."
It was also an opportunity to revisit his first novel, written 14 years ago.
Learning, or the struggle to learn, has played a big part in the former cook and rapper’s life. Unbenown to him, as a child he was dsylexic, so he did not learn to read until he was about 9.
As a child he was put in special education classes with other children with learning difficulties. While he would rather have not had that experience, he believes starting from scratch learning to write meant he took more risks and experiemented more than people with a more formal education did. But teaching himself how to write took a long time, especially to get to a professional level.
"Nowdays I find it easy. So I think it’s kind of an advantage."
Despite those struggles, he has always been fascinated by writing.
"I guess it’s a way to sort of take life and ups and downs and sort of re-tell it the way that you want and to make the tragic funny and to make the sort of ridiculous beautiful and all that kind of thing. I think it feels quite exciting and kind of powerful in a way."
However, writing did not become a major focus until another struggle reared its head in his early 30s — autoimmune disease. It meant he had to give up cooking and rapping as he became very sick. He could hardly walk, lost lots of weight and was bedridden for about six months.
"I didn’t really have a choice, I suppose. So I think I was definitely glad not to do the cooking any more, but I think maybe the rapping, I sort of wanted to hold on to that but I think it was a good time to stop as well, you know. I was in my early 30s and probably had done everything I was going to do with that."
But at the time it was quite a lot to grapple with. Once he got a diagnosis and he received medication, things started to improve.
"I was just f ... ing frail and then I got the drugs and I think, within like a week or two, I was back to normal. Pretty lucky because I know other people with this condition that that’s not the case for."
These days the medication is still working, but the disease is degenerative, so it is slowly getting worse. He exercises and tries to eat healthily and do all the right things.
It meant he had to seek out other work and an ad for a youth mentor reminded him that it was something he had always wanted to do. So he works with youth struggling with depression and anxiety through the Atawhai programme, teaching art, yoga and meditation to help them with their mental health and self-esteem
"I guess similar to the writing, it’s sort of like a way to take a lot of negative experiences that I might have had in my life, and especially my upbringing, and sort of use those to help other people and maybe help people maybe not go down the sort of same paths and make those same mistakes, potentially."
He wrote a one-person play, a dark comedy, about living with the disease —Your Heart Looks Like a Vagina — which had three sellout runs in New Zealand and was performed at the Brisbane Poetry Festival in 2017.
Hoey also likes to include characters with autoimmune diseases in his books and is often contacted by sufferers with whom it resonates.
"I guess it’s just because it’s my reality and I think there’s a lot of sick people out there in the world and I think, especially with a disease like this which they call like an invisible disease because I guess you look relatively normal.
"I just enjoy writing about it because I think any time you find something that you have a bunch of knowledge about, it’s always good to sort of put that in the writing to add sort of texture to it."
He also shares the skills he has gained through his creative writing course, Learn To Write Good, and co-founded Dead Bird Books, which publishes marginalised writers.
His approach to writing depends on the medium. With novels he likes to think of a story, while his poetry is more like a "glorified diary entry", detailing whatever is happening in his life or what he is thinking about. Then he likes to play with the concept and see what comes.
He considers novel writing is what he is best at — Iceland was a New Zealand bestseller, long-listed for the 2018 Ockham Book Award; his short story 1986 won the 2021 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award; and his third novel, 1985, was released this year to rave reviews. And he has also published a poetry collection, I Thought We’d Be Famous (Dead Bird Books, 2019) looking back at his days pre-chronic illness.
"I like all of them for very different reasons. I mean, like I really like performing, so the plays are good in that way and I think they’re collaborative too, because I think the problem with the novel is that you spend two years sitting around by yourself, you know, so it’s sort of lonely."
"Because it’s not like you really have any money. You get up when you want to get the work done. So I think the last novel, I kind of wrote it all from about the hours of like eight to midnight or one in the morning."
To avoid the lonliness he often meets up with friends who are writers and likes to perform his poetry. He recently performed alongside poets from around the world at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
"I got to perform with a lot of really incredible poets and then do some talks. I was a little bit nervous because I was jet-lagged and then also I was like, oh my God, what if I get up there and suck, but it went really well.
"I think there’s something really satisfying, especially to a crowd of people that don’t know you and so you’ve got to win them over."
The experience gave him the confidence to see that his craft was as good as anyone’s, but did make him realise he probably needed to be more proactive in promoting his books overseas.
"Being around writers at the top of their game like that, as well, is always quite inspiring."
So he is looking forward to coming to Dunedin for the readers and writers festival. He had never been to a writers festival until after he published his first book and still finds them quite a new thing.
"It’s always cool to come and hang out with other novelists and see how they do what they do and stuff."
TO SEE:
Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival October 17-19, Dunedin Centre; Dominic Hoey: How to Write Good, 1pm- 2.30pm Sat; Politics in Miniature, 11am Sat, with Duncan Sarkies and host Claire Mabey.
