It's a common dilemma for writers: How to find time to finish your novel and still pay the bills. If you're lucky, you'll get some funding, or maybe your partner or family will support you. But what if your other half's also a writer and the funding fairy won't be visiting for a while? Then it's time to get creative. In Bianca Zander's case, she hatched upon a plan to turn her friends, family, acquaintances and anyone else who felt like it into mini-philanthropists. Through her website, www.sponsormynovel.co.nz, you can sponsor a sentence, a paragraph or a page. Donate $1,000 and you can even be a character in her novel.It's a common dilemma for writers: How to find time to finish your novel and still pay the bills. If you're lucky, you'll get some funding, or maybe your partner or family will support you. But what if your other half's also a writer and the funding fairy won't be visiting for a while? Then it's time to get creative. In Bianca Zander's case, she hatched upon a plan to turn her friends, family, acquaintances and anyone else who felt like it into mini-philanthropists. Through her website, www.sponsormynovel.co.nz, you can sponsor a sentence, a paragraph or a page. Donate $1,000 and you can even be a character in her novel.Although she's a first-time novelist, Zander's no newbie to writing - she was a staff writer on The Listener for two years. The as-yet-untitled novel (she's open to suggestions) was started early this year during a summer workshop at Victoria University with visiting American author Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, The Man of My Dreams). She churned out 75 pages and, buoyed by Sittenfeld's feedback and that of her classmates, kept writing.

Zander also kept working, but realised a month or so ago that the novel would only stand a chance of getting finished if she stopped pouring all her energies into paid work. What happened next, of course, was that she ran out of money. She says it was out of desperation that she came up with the website idea.

"Why not get a whole lot of people to sponsor me to write a page, a paragraph or a sentence of my novel? That way, instead of asking one person for $8,000 - which is the minimum I need to write full-time for six months - I'd ask for small donations from hundreds of people. The long tail of arts funding, I guess."

So far she's raised $1362.00, and says that the vast majority of people have been really positive and generous.

"I'm blown away by how many people have sponsored five or more pages. And I just received an anonymous donation of ten quid from someone in Oxford called Rose, who sandwiched the money between the pages of her university department's annual report. That made me feel so chuffed!"

Of course not everyone supports the idea: "One guy wrote to criticise my 'business model' and asked, 'What's in it for me?' but he's the only one who's wanted something apart from an acknowledgement in the published book."

Zander describes the novel, which follows a girl called Suki Piper from childhood to her late 20s, as an "epic coming-of-age novel set in London, Greece and New Zealand. "There's drama, mystery, death, humour, sex, forbidden relationships and even a sinister streak."

"And yes," she says, "I know how it ends."

19/9/07