Floods and disappearing cable needles

Well, it has been a week since my mom's operation, and she is continuing to do really well!  Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and good wishes.  (And if I owe you an email, I promise it's on its way.)  

It turns out that knitting is a better "sit and keep company" and "sit and wait" activity than writing fiction, so until yesterday, my hat-in-progress had come along further than my story.  (If anyone has a tip for how to not lose a cable needle, oh, about fifty times an hour, I'm all ears.) But now the story is coming on strong...I just need one of those pesky endings.  Right now I have the characters circling around one another, talking about this or that.  Before long they're liable to start checking their watches or something. 

In case you're not on Twitter (or maybe even if you are...some days there are a lot of links flying by), below are a few things I clicked on recently that were worthwhile...

This is a really interesting article by Samantha Francis for BookNet Canada on what makes a bestseller (according to sales data).  In case you've ever wondered what makes a bestseller in Canada.

We can’t reveal sales numbers, but to give you a very rough idea: when a book is in the “Top 10,” it’s usually sold several thousand copies across Canada in one week. 

An enjoyable Q&A by Ali Smith at The Daily Beast on "How I Write."  

A piece about how Canada's crime novelists are making a killing.  This was enough to make me pull out and revisit a plot outline for a light mystery novel I'd dreamed up last year during an idle afternoon, as well as another project close to my heart which has changed imaginary forms many times (TV show, screenplay, graphic novel), but which has finally come to rest (not surprisingly, given my actual skills) as what I hope will be a YA novel.  One day I'd love to write a mystery, and not just because it seems to be the one of the best ways for writers to make money these days.  

In other news, there was a ton of flooding at McGill yesterday (over 40 million litres!).  Below is a photo I took on Friday afternoon on my way across campus, of construction in progress on the reservoir pipes and the weathered old pipes on display (I think they're around  a hundred years old):

Does editing make you a better writer?

Editing is one of the few jobs where I think maybe I could do that.  Actually, I think that about lots of jobs, but it’s quickly followed by ummm no, I wouldn’t want to.  (And I really do try not to go around saying or even thinking this because, let's face it, writing has to be the #1 profession where loads of people think that they can do it and feel compelled to tell you about it.  So I conclude that no matter what my feelings are about my abilities, I  probably have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to what other people do for a living....) 

Nevertheless, given my editing aspirations, I was really excited and charged with a special feeling of responsibility when a friend  kindly asked me to take a look at her novel draft.  (“Allowed me” might be more accurate, given that there had been some pleading on my part to let me read it.)  She had very generously and rapidly and, most importantly, usefully given me notes on my own draft during my second-last revision, and I felt all the gravity of wanting to be as useful to her as she was to me.

And was I?  I hope so.  I’m a great admirer of her writing, so I knew that any comments I might have — if, indeed, I could come up with any at all — would probably have to do with structure or plot.  If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile (maybe…I can’t remember how much I might have ranted about it here) or have heard me lament about the process of writing my own novel, you’ll know that neither one is exactly my strong suit.  Not yet.

But I think this is something I’d like to do.  Editing.  I feel like I’m good at it, or I can be, when I can get inside a story.  And of course, half of writing, my own writing, I mean, is editing, too.   

I’ve edited things for people before.  I’ve taught creative writing, and I think I’m an okay instructor once I get past the stomach butterflies of speaking in front of a group.  It's true that sometimes I’ve found it a little hard in workshops I’ve been leading or participating in when it came time to giving comments on manuscripts that were very far removed from my own kind of writing (things in totally different genres or modes) or on things that seem almost beyond help (at least, in my point of view).  It’s not very constructive to say, Well, I’d start with the last word, hit the backspace key, and keep going until you hit the first word.  It's rare, but sometimes a very small part of me wants to say this.  But of course there’s always a way to improve something, even if it means keeping the idea and starting over with it from scratch.  

But will editing someone else’s work make you a better writer?  Or teaching craft?  I can only think that it will.  These are important hours logged with one’s mind and pen to the fiction grindstone. 

And yet.  What may be easy to see in someone else’s words can remain obscure in your own...I think we know this to be true.  And what could be worse than a little extra false confidence?  (Some false confidence is, I think, necessary for the basic act of writing at all.)  Or even the reverse: a more heightened awareness of the potential pitfalls?  Most of us are already too well aware of them, anyway — clichés littering the page, pet words creeping in again and again.  And whoops.  There goes the necessary false confidence.

So I'm not quite sure.  I think that editing and teaching must make you a better editor and teacher.  But when it comes to writing, I suspect we're all always in the same boat. 

this and that

I’ve been slowly updating the list of links in the sidebar. Since becoming a blog slacker, I’ve been relying exclusively on my wildly disorganized (or formerly organized but now ossified and only marginally useful) set of folders on Google Reader. Meanwhile, check out the new additions!

Exchanged some more emails today re: a freelancing payment I am still waiting on from something I wrote back in August. In this case, and upon request, I had invoiced promptly – the very same day I filed the story. But such is the life of a freelancer. I am full of admiration for people who can survive on this kind of piecemeal salary, and no doubt those who are most successful at it have (one hopes) at least a few reliable gigs to bank on. But I am far too practical/anxiety-ridden when it comes to money matters to be able to try this at the moment.

The best thing I have read lately is a letter from John Steinbeck to his son on the subject of love. It has reminded me of grandness of Steinbeck’s heart, and it is good, warm, soul-expanding advice. I found it via the wonderful Classic Penguin tumblr, but it was originally posted on Letters of Note, a site I'm very happy to know about.

The best thing I saw earlier this week was the amazing Can Lit is Sexy tumblr. I hope whoever is doing it keeps it up!

And the last thing worth sharing is the great sale being run by ECW Press. Buy any Spring 2012 title and get the eBook for free. A terrific deal!

Career options for fiction writers

I've been getting a bit restless working from home all day, every day, and I've started to think about day jobs versus career matches for professional fiction writers.

I'm familiar with the concept of a day job: employment, unrelated to writing, that pays the bills. I've worked at a video store, a community centre, for the police, and as a university administrator, all while pursuing writing as a calling --- in my spare time. And I thoroughly enjoyed all of those jobs and the different skill sets they entailed. I wouldn't hesitate to do any of them again, either. Part of me really thinks that it might actually be better in a writing life to have a job that gives you a break from writing.

But part of me is a little bit envious of my peers who are developing careers as professionals in other, non-artistic fields. I've never let myself consider anything (e.g. educational choices that might lead to practical career options) that might derail myself from "becoming a writer." I didn't go to law school, or library school, or even do a Ph.D. because it seemed to me that I could probably only productively pursue one goal, the only one which has ever had real ambition behind it. (What's the point of going to law school if you don't *really* want to be a lawyer? What's the point of doing a Ph.D if you don't *really* want to be a professor?)

But with a certain (admittedly modest) amount of credibility as a writer established, I've been wondering if there's anything else I'm suited for, beyond the solely administrative-type jobs I tend to gravitate towards, given my undying love of a nice spreadsheet. What do other writers do to pay the bills (besides writing gigs of varying kinds)? What should fiction writers naturally be good at? Here's what I've come up with so far:

Teaching (literature, language, writing), library sciences (I've been thinking seriously about this), journalism, publishing, editing, communications. And what about more overtly creative communications jobs? Advertising? Marketing? These seem like they would be good fits, too.

What am I leaving out? I'm remembering now that T.S. Eliot worked for a bank.

Judging stories

I recently finished a stint as one of several first-readers for a literary journal's fiction contest. I had a stack of 50 stories to read, which I had to whittle down to a top five that were sent on to the final judge(s). This was my first time on the other side of a literary journal, reading submissions instead of writing them, and though I was initially alarmed at what I foresaw as an agonizing slog of painful decision-making, it turned out to be easier than I thought.

There were a number of stories I set aside right at the beginning:

Genre stories: types of stories not published by the magazine in question, e.g. fantasy, horror, science fiction ---- I was surprised by how many of these there were. Probably at least a fifth of the pile I had, maybe more. Many of these were well-written, but didn't establish any kind of specialness outside of the traditions they were working in.

Stories with almost nothing at stake, e.g. twenty pages of how to get a kid to eat his vegetables. Ones that were boring from the first page. Again, many were technically well-written.

I was also surprised by the number of stories about someone on his/her deathbed, looking back on a life (a potential variation of nothing at stake, in a way, if there's no present conflict or narrative line through the reminiscences) or set in 50s-style small towns (nothing wrong with this -- I was just taken aback by how many there were).

At the end of this process of removal, my pile of still-viable stories was significantly smaller, and finally there were a few hard decisions, after all. But not as hard as I expected.

I don't know if I'll ever get the opportunity to try this experiment, but I think I could have sorted the stories into three piles (Yes, Maybe, and No) based on the titles and first sentences alone ---- and the piles would not have looked very different from the ones I ended up with after reading all of the stories. Well, perhaps the Maybe pile would be bigger if my selections were based on just the first sentence. But the No pile would be the same, I'm sure of it.

All in all, it reminded me that the short story is a difficult animal. It is not enough to be a good writer to win a story contest. You need to read a lot of short stories and try to understand how they work. And it REALLY helps if you read previous issues of whatever magazine you're trying to publish in. (Until this experience, I could never understand why so many writing resources harped on this point.)

In the course of reading the submissions, I happened upon this blog post on How Not To Write a Story (written by a writer judging a story contest) and it was an eerie echo of many of the things I saw. Good advice.

The most exciting part of the process, though, was finding the gems and being surprised by where they took me. All the best stories were surprising.

WESTFEST in Ottawa, June 13

Last Saturday I participated in Ottawa's WESTFEST, a free arts festival in Westboro. It went pretty well! I think I'm getting a little better at these things.

It was a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot -- very key since the festival took place outdoors. I was happy the weather cooperated with my plan to wear a new sundress. And I was excited to be on the lineup with the other excellent writers (Priscilla Uppal, Nichole McGill, who also curates WESTFEST Lit, Mark Frutkin, and Mike Blouin, who was shortlisted just this week for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award), and I really enjoyed all of the readings. The never-ending stack of books I want to read is always getting longer!

WESTFEST itself was a really fun weekend event. Since everything is free, it makes for a really great atmosphere and a really diverse mix of people. We caught part of the Spoken Word sets, and saw Prairie Oyster later that night. Also, I pretty much just love a street festival. Any street festival. If there is a street blocked off for pedestrians and food vendors, I'm there.

One thing: it was a family-friendly event, and I'd chosen my selection accordingly, but I did have one line with the word "crotch." I saw it coming on the page, but I couldn't think of a way around it on the fly. In context, I think it was more or less innocuous, but maybe my own self-consciousness came through and made the word feel more loaded. Two women with a few small children between them got up from the front row and left shortly thereafter. But maybe it was a coincidence, yes? There were other supportive audience members smiling and making eye contact. Love supportive audience members. Maybe even more than a street festival.

Here's the whole WESTFEST literature crew, photo courtesy of Nichole McGill:

(L to R): me, Priscila Uppal, Mark Frutkin, host Lucy van Oldenbarneveld, Mike Blouin and Nichole McGill

classroom visit to Concordia

So at the last Pilot Reading Series at Blizzarts a few weeks ago, I met someone who, upon introducing herself, told me we'd just missed meeting the night before at the roller derby (we were sitting close to one another in the stands, with a mutual friend between us) AND that she, K, was teaching a story of mine in her Canadian Literature summer class at Concordia.

Teaching my story in a university class. My story. University class. (!!!)

It was so shocking that I didn’t even ask a single follow-up question, not even to ask which story. I think I changed the subject back to roller derby. I was thrilled and too bashful to bring it up again. Then a few days later K emailed me to ask if I'd be willing to visit the class on the day they were scheduled to talk about the story. I could come at the end, after the lecture, and do a brief reading and answer questions. So I did!

Really, the headiness of the whole thing is enough to dine on for months, if not a lifetime. But I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to give it its due here, so let me do so now.

I’m a Can Lit student myself, and the other story on the syllabus that night was Lynn Coady's wonderful "Play the Monster Blind" (from the collection of the same name), which was a story I'd studied in one of my graduate seminars. The idea that 70-odd students also had a story by me in their coursepacks is still almost more than I can really take in at the moment. (In case you're wondering which story, it's "Bloodlines" -- incidentally, the story I'm currently developing into a novel. A fact which was also brought up during the question period by one of the students, who had done some Googling!)

It was a diverse and very bright group of students and they were very nice to me and asked lots of questions and made me feel welcome. I could tell, too, that a number of them were writers themselves. One of them put me on the spot with a question about whether or not I consider myself a Quebecker (I'm still puzzling this one out. I said, Montrealer, absolutely. But the implications of this are a bit tricky.)

One of the first things I told the class was that I no longer commit the intentional fallacy --- that is , I don't think that what the author says about his or her story is the final word. I was nervous about inadvertently contradicting or undermining something K. had said in her lecture. (I needn't have worried, of course. She had already warned them that I might have a different take on things.)

One of the questions from the students did give me a clue as to a bit of what was discussed in the lecture: “If hair is such an important theme in the story, why didn’t you bring that out more?” Good question!

(My answer, minus a bit of extraneous babbling: it's difficult as a writer to know what's coming across as blatantly heavy-handed or overly subtle. Walking that fine line is a what a lot of the work of writing is about, and editing even more so.)

So all in all, it was an amazing experience. I left the loneliness of my apartment where I'd been shut up working on the novel all day long to go an evening class full of smart and enthusiastic students who were asking me questions about the very same characters. To say "renewed sense of purpose" would be an understatement! I'm so grateful to K. for having read and liked the story enough to include it in her course, and for inviting me to do the visit.

Teaching writing workshops at Blue Metropolis

Last week I had the pleasure and honour of teaching a couple of sessions of creative writing to 15- to 17-year-old high school students through the Student Literary Programme at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. If I hadn't been too stressed out and busy in the lead-up to the festival, I would have written about it here already, but I was just preoccupied enough to have to keep my pre-workshop jitters and neuroses to myself. You're welcome.

In preparation, I revisited old class notes from workshops I've attended, I lurked on the blogs of other writers who have recently been facing this challenge, I pulled out a few creative writing books I'd purchased but never read, and I polled writer-friends on what they wished they'd been taught about writing in high school but didn't end up learning until later. I ended up with a jumble of thoughts on inspiration (don't wait for it!), first sentences, "show, don't tell," ideas for timed writing exercises, and editing tips. Then I spent some time making up handouts --- as much to give myself a roadmap as to give the students something to take home and look at later.

In the first session, I tried to do too much. There's only so much about writing that can be conveyed in two hours. The second day, I mostly skipped over the material I'd prepared on point-of-view and narrative voice and boiled down my editing tips to cutting down on adverbs and reporting tags.

In some cases, I was truly astonished by what was produced in our 10-minute timed exercises. The students were writing at different levels, but the more experienced writers were very impressive indeed. I was also thrilled by how many of the students were willing to speak up and share what they'd written. And I was grateful to the teachers, all of whom participated by doing the exercises and who seemed to share a terrific rapport with their students.

All in all, it was a great learning experience for me, especially in terms of reconnecting with teenagers (I spend a fair amount of time writing about them, in my novel-in-progress). I hope the students got something out of it, too!

more good news

I forgot to mention that I received a statement for my short-story collection sales, along with a (very small) cheque. A cheque! This means that the book has earned out its (very modest) advance! I *think* this means that I am officially not a liability for my publisher, which is a good feeling.

I also reviewed Ali Smith's new short-story collection for the Gazette a few weeks back. It made me want to reread The Accidental, which I remember thinking was perfect when I read it. I recently decided to add in another voice to my novel-in-progress, and I remember this being an example of a novel that really manages to pull off different perspectives. (Although I do feel a bit guilty re-reading something when there are so many new books I want to read. Not guilty enough to not do it, mind you.)

good news things

There's been a bit of good news coming my way lately, which is always nice, but particularly nice in the deep dark of winter cold.

I've been invited to two upcoming writers festivals, both of which I'm thrilled about, and at one of them I've been asked to take on the additional role of leading a creative writing workshop for 15- to 17-year-olds. Very exciting and potentially nerve-wracking! I went to the site and noticed the participants signing up can rate their choice of workshop leaders in order, so if I happen to be last on everyone's list, at least maybe I'll have the slightly-less-intimidating advantage of a smaller group. Or maybe not...I'm not sure how many teens the festival attracts to the workshops in general.

Two of the three stories I had published in journals last year are being put forward to various award competitions that I don't have any expectation of winning --- but it's a very nice vote of confidence from the journals to nominate them and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy and like a maybe-okay writer, which is the best one can hope for most days.

The current issue of the McGill Reporter has a profile on me here.

PLR - The Public Lending Right Commission

Over on the Guardian Books Blog today, David Barnett is talking about the Public Lending Right award. In Britain, the PLR pays authors according to how often their books are checked out from public libraries. The payment is issued once a year, based on available funding and data submitted by libraries. The minimum payment is £1 and the maximum £6,600.

Writers, take note --- this glorious scheme is not only available in Britain, but in Canada, too. In Canada, however, the PLR is administered in conjunction with the Canada Council for the Arts and it works slightly differently: the payment is not based on how many times your book is checked out, but only on how many registered library catalogues your titles are found in. I have heard rumours of writers going from library to library, "donating" their books with the annual PLR payment in mind, but I suspect the actual cheque amounts to be too paltry for this kind of enterprising to be of much concern. In fact, kudos to them for doing the legwork! I wonder how many authors in Britain are coaxing friends and families to borrow their books from their local libraries?

The Canadian Public Lending Right Commission, like the British one, is also based on "available funding." As you can imagine, amounts have dwindled over the years as arts funding has been cut (boo!) and the amount of eligible Canadian writers has increased (yay!). From what I would guess, a good PLR cheque would be a couple of hundred of dollars. But it also sounds as though they have adopted a sliding scale scheme whereby newly registered books are at a premium, with payments reduced over time, shifting the support of the program to currently working writers.

So registering for the PLR is a must if you are a newly published author! The annual registration period doesn't open until February 15, but you can go to the PLR's website to sign up for a reminder email.