happy new year?

I wrote most of this post last night, then rewatched some 90s comfort television, then tried to go to sleep. A little after one in the morning, I checked the news and saw what had happened in Quebec City, and then sleep was no longer an option. I honestly thought I could not feel worse about the state of the world last night than I already did. Every day brings some new horror. I wish for the naivety of just a few hours ago.

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The end of 2016 was full of work of all kinds, including a few things I'd never done before. Lots and lots of intense writing and editing. I received a lot of requests about manuscript consultations and writing coaching, but I had to put everyone off until the new year. And I still haven't gotten back to everyone as I still don't have time to do the work, which I feel bad about. I'm thinking of putting such work on indefinite hold for the year unless I can find an established press or a writing program to work with...i.e. somebody else outsourcing manuscripts for professional edits for a set, flat fee.

The highlight of fall 2016 was teaching in the Emerging Writers Intensive program in Banff. Banff is a magical place, not just for its incredible beauty but for the special alchemy of a place dedicated to art and creativity.

My students were amazingly talented, kind, insightful, and generous. I hope they don't mind me posting this photo here from our last night in Banff. (If you're in it and hate it, let me know and I'll take it down!)

2017 has started out in such a frightening way. Like most people I know, I find the news these days to be a constant horror show, and yet I can't look away. I don't want to start writing about it now, as I'm not sure how to start...or stop.

David Sipress, The New Yorker

What else? There's never enough time to do all the things I want to do. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on time management, but it's never quite good enough. One of my resolutions for 2017 is to blog more, but this is one I have rarely been successful at fulfilling.

My other resolutions are modest. I want to have people over more often. Please, if you know me, invite yourself over. This is a link that was going around about hosting that I found inspiring:

http://www.mothering.com/articles/host-crappy-dinner-see-friends-often/

How to Host a Crappy Dinner (and See Your Friends More Often) 

by Kelley Powell 

(who, I just realized, is a novelist who lives in Ottawa. I have her book around here somewhere)

Just know that there are piles of books and magazines and toys everywhere. We desperately need to vacuum. That is just the way things are. Maybe someday it will be better.

Little L is growing a lot. Ninety per cent of photos of her are blurry as she's always moving. And she is funnier and sillier every day. I've called her a silly goose so often that now when she erupts into giggles at her own antics, she always yells out, "Goose!"

Here she is on her birthday:

Fall blur

The one good thing about a prolonged absence from blogging is that it sometimes means I have been doing other writing. In this case, it happens to be true. I'm probably jinxing my progress by mentioning it here (doh!), but I feel like I've got momentum right now and I can see my current draft taking shape. I think I've talked about this particular project being almost done for at least two years running, if not longer, but it has been stuck at the 70% mark for a long time. Even when I edge up the word count, the scope gets larger, so the progress feels negligible. Anyway, I think I was saying, yay writing. So yay!

I also never posted the result of the Montreal Tournament of Books at Paragraphe Bookstore. Bone and Bread won! They very kindly invited me in to sign some stock.

Signing stock at Paragraphe Bookstore

Ahhh, early September, when it was still warm enough to wear a sleeveless linen dress. What you can't see is that I'm also wearing my wedding shoes: yellow flower Seychelles heeled sandals. I am colour-coordinated infrequently enough (and restrained to just one colour even less frequently) that I think this fact needs to be documented here. Actually, for a pair of yellow shoes, it turns out they match quite a few things I own! I wish I could say the same for all my other brightly coloured shoes. Also: I like how long my hair looks in this picture.

I also asked for a photo in front of the tournament poster!

Yes, that is a French poster for a tournament of English books. 

Other semi-recent goings-on in the writing world include a reading at Drawn & Quarterly for the launch of Teri Vlassapoulos's novel Escape Plans. Here are some photos from the evening that I grabbed from Facebook!

With Ian McGillis (host of the evening and former QWF mentor to both me and Teri), Teri and Lesley Trites.

Just the readers. 

I have been saying no to a lot of readings because they are always scheduled at exactly my baby's bedtime, but I have long admired these ladies and a trip to my favourite neighbourhood bookstore is always a treat. Thanks for the invitation!

Singing at a holiday concert tomorrow afternoon, so I'm off to see if I still have my dollar-store Santa hat from years past. I have a feeling it was a victim of the fire, but I'm hoping to be happily surprised.

"yes, I'll be a writer, of course"

We've been doing a lot of organizing and decluttering, as well as finally combining (and maybe even thinning?) our book collections -- which is a post unto itself, really. But one of the things I came upon was an old diary I'd forgotten about.

I was obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery as well as very into the notion of a lockable diary, so it should have been the perfect gift except that it looks like this:

Augugh! It's so ugly! But it seems I took one stab at writing in it...although apparently only to write about other, better notebooks. This is also seemingly where I experimented with the notion of stream-of-consciousness writing as simply containing a lot of commas:

There is lots of stuff in here that makes me smile. My main thought, though, was what on earth is a Jimmy-book?? But in the middle of the night I remembered that that's what Emily Starr in Emily of New Moon calls the notebooks her Uncle Jimmy buys her. I can't remember exactly how they're described, but I pictured them as large square-ish hardcover notebooks with creamy blank paper. The red memo I mention is a little spiral notebook -- inspired by the girl detective Abby Jones in Patricia Reilly Giff's Loretta P. Sweeny, Where Are You? -- where I used to record various facts about any mysteries I managed to uncover.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

The more precise writer in me almost called this post Commonly held beliefs that I suspect of being untrue, but I suppose it's a little less interesting that way. Anyhow, here is where I randomly begin dismantling bogus advice that has come my way.

Never pluck the top of your eyebrows - WRONG

Okay, so maybe you shouldn't *start* at the top and most of what you'll want to remove is below the brow line, but the idea that there are no stray hairs creeping upwards to threaten the sanctity of the forehead has nothing to do with my reality. However, I used to see it printed in magazines like Seventeen and YM Magazine over and over again. Maybe it even appears in magazines not aimed at blond American teens. Pluck wherever you want. Only YOU can prevent forehead hair.

Never keep your coat on inside in the winter - WRONG

The logic of this one is all about relative heat, I guess (?!), but no matter what your mother told you, you will not feel colder once you go back outside even if you leave your coat on. It is just plain warmer to keep the warmth you generate with an extra layer of insulation around you before venturing back into the cold! Do you know how sometimes once you're cold, you just can't get warm again? Well, once you're warm, it's much easier to just stay warm. And I don't know much about science, but I'm sure it will back me up on this one.

Write what you know - WRONG

Do I need to dignify this one with a retort? Many of us know much more than what we've simply lived or been taught. The joy of writing (for me, anyway) is in imagining, dreaming, learning, and discovery. If I had to only write what I know, I would stop writing today. 

Summertime

I’ve been on vacation. Not just vacation from blogging and writing (although, yes, that, too), but from work and my regular life and home. Three weeks in the UK!

It was wonderful to have a day off yesterday to unpack, catch up on laundry, restock the fridge, and remind our place that people live in it. (Centipede hanging out in the sink: take note!!) I was even able to spend the whole morning writing, which was a relief. And I think now I have more of a handle on the story I’m working on.

Also, Montreal feels tropical compared to the Scottish Highlands. It is hot here. Shorts and popsicles weather.

While I was away, I took more photos than I know what to do with, so maybe I’ll post some here over the next few weeks. Get ready for an endless stream of scenic hills and ruined castles....

first drafts and writing longhand

I was looking for something else a few weeks ago, when I found the original manuscript of my story "Mother Superior" (the first and title story of my first book). I wrote the story in 2004. Here's a photo!

In this one notebook, there were actually lots of first drafts of the stories I ended up publishing in that collection. I'd sort of forgotten that I didn't initially write them on the computer. Maybe I should write in unattractive spiral notebooks more often.

I like seeing the evidence of the instantaneous editing that happens in the initial writing of a story. Choices and quick changes like this happen all the time when you're writing (of course), but they disappear just as quickly on the computer and leave no traces. 

Up close and personal

It disturbs me a little that it has been so long ( a couple of years?) since I've written any fiction by hand. I like seeing it on the page like this. Why does it feel like such a novelty? 

writing, word count, and sandwiches

Guess what? The silence here really does mean that I’ve been writing. Granted, most of that writing took place yesterday in a concentrated 10-hour flurry, but nevertheless…there was a certain amount of thinking and trying and failing and time-wasting that led up to yesterday’s marathon that definitely has to be counted as part of the process. As for whether or not the new story is any good, I’ll leave that to my writers’ group to decide. Even if it is only sort of good, I can make it better. It just feels good to do the work I need to be doing. 

My word count in this current project is now up around 65,000, even though many of those are rough and unpolished. I know that obsessing about word count can cut both ways (writing to a target might produce too much filler, or useless dialogue or exposition or otherwise rambling prose), but I find it a really useful way to move forward. And let’s face it: books are built out of words. 

               Here is the lunch that my husband brought me yesterday to keep me going!

Fiction dream and reading lunches

We all had friends come over this weekend, which is always a big help in making a place feel like more of a home. Thanks, friends! Let’s do it again sometime soon.

On Saturday, I had a small victory: I managed to sort through and empty two small containers full of randomness that had begun accumulating when we were staying with my in-laws: buttons, earrings, business cards, Sephora samples, receipts, hair elastics. To give you an indication of my pack-rat tendencies: when I was done sorting, I was left with a pile that can only be categorized as “interesting string.” 

I was also pretty happy on Saturday afternoon when we were gathered around our new table eating a late, informal lunch. My husband was sitting at one end of the table, working on his lunch along with his poems, and my stepdaughter and I were cozied up on our new banquette (i.e. a loveseat, pushed up to the side of the table), reading novels and eating soup.  Maybe it’s not a surprise that I had a moment of feeling truly grateful for my life when everyone was sitting around together quietly reading. (For the record, we also have meals where we sit at the table and talk to one another!)

It was nice to have that time to do lots of reading this weekend, and I did quite a bit of thinking about a new story and even wrote the first scene.  There was also time for a nap on Saturday, in which I somehow continued planning the story and had what seemed like a great idea involving a Saint Bernard. I don’t think the dream idea makes any sense, but I’m tempted to put a dog in, anyway.

And on Sunday, I managed to purge five items in my closet: two skirts, a dress, and two tops.  I’ve stashed them in the giveaway bag in my closet that I'm storing up for the next clothing swap.

I neglected my email and the internet in general, but that seems to be the weekend pattern these days and I’m okay with that.

January cures

I’m slowly reading The Little Friend. It’s unfortunate that there doesn’t seem to be much time for reading these days. I know that a major part of the reason I managed to read 50 books last year was largely because of the first five months of the year in which I was taking the subway every day.  It makes me a little sad to think about all the reading I was doing over the holidays and how the only book I’ve managed to finish in the past couple of weeks was Deenie. But that’s modern life these days– overly scheduled busy-ness. I was reflecting this morning that for someone who prefers to be at home, I definitely seem to spend a lot of time out of the house…

But it’s a hard thing to complain about when I’m doing so many things I enjoy. I met with my writers group this week, which was immensely helpful not only for the insightful feedback but also for the deadline to produce something. Deadlines are a gift! If I can stay on track to produce a story or a chapter every month for the rest of the year, as per my 2014 resolutions, I will definitely be in good shape to finish one of the things I’m working on right now. It’s so exciting to look at a project and realize that you’re past the halfway point to a complete first draft.

The January Cure on Apartment Therapy is continuing to inspire me. I haven’t completed all the daily assignments (some aren’t really applicable…and some are TOO applicable/impossible right now, if you know what I mean), but I’ve done a few and have gone above and beyond on some of the others. I did a quick reorganization on my closet after I finally switched up my summer and winter wardrobes, and now that my hangers are full of things I haven’t looked at (much less worn) in months, I’ve got that impatient, tingly feeling that suggests I might be able to get rid of a few more things soon. I have too many skirts where the waistline is at my hips (why??) that I never feel good wearing anymore.  And though there is something nice about my thrifted cashmere sweaters (um, mostly that they are super soft lovely cashmere), none of them are cut to fit in contemporary or flattering ways. You’d think the fact that I paid $1 for each of them would make it easier to let them go, but I get so excited about bargains and thrifty finds that sometimes it actually makes it harder.

The other good thing about organizing my closet – even with the rushed, incomplete job I did – is remembering what clothes I have and actually wearing them. This is another good reason to try to thin things out: so that I can actually see what’s there. It has been a major help to have most of my dresses temporarily packed away because I have a lot of them. (With dresses, it is definitely harder to concede that there are too many. There are just enough!)

I’ve still been taking a photo every day, but at least half of them are pretty mediocre or random selfies. This one probably seems equally random, but it was a lovely breakfast prepared by my husband last weekend:

The most important meal...of the week

Yum!! In other news, I am really ready for this cold weather to be over. It's so stabby cold and sunny bright out there that it reminds of me of Winnipeg. I can hardly wait for it to be -16 tomorrow, which is rather a sad observation.

Blogging blackout and the QWF Awards

Well, it seems that my immense backlog in things I want to blog about (the Victoria Writers Festival and the Vancouver Writers Festival being foremost among them) is leading to the inevitable blog avoidance. I’m so behind! There’s so much to write about! There’s also something else going on that I’ve noticed, which is that when I’m actually getting writing done…that is to say, actually moving forward in a project…there is a lot less blogging. Or sometimes no blogging. So there is at least one good thing about my silence here. I have been doing some writing.

Tomorrow is the Quebec Writers’ Federation Awards gala, where Bone & Bread is up for the Paragraphe Hugh MacClennan Prize for Fiction. There’s not much more to say about it than this, except that I am trying very hard to simply be satisfied with the nomination and not end up too attached to whatever the final outcome is tomorrow night. After all, the book is written. It’s done! It’s too late to change it and pointless to wish I’d written anything differently. I’m mostly looking forward to seeing lots of writing friends and celebrating our small but sturdy English writing community in Quebec, such as it is. I'm also very excited that the evening is being hosted by none other than Ann-Marie MacDonald! Fall on Your Knees was a very important book for me in high school.

Maybe I’ll see you there? (For ticket info, see here.)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend full of yummy food, friends, family, and relaxation --- or at least one of the above!
 
This year's Thanksgiving was a musical one. I sang in a beautiful concert on the top of Mount Royal with the McGill Choral Society Chamber Choir. It was the same material we sang in June at Loyola (in preparation for this concert), and it was an incredible place to perform. It was a huge audience and more and more people wandered in and stayed until the end. It was also an unbelievably beautiful sunny day -- I was walking around outside in short sleeves afterwards!

 Waiting to sing.

The night before, my stepdaughter and I baked two desserts for Thanksgiving dinner: a devil’s food chocolate cake with maple icing and a pumpkin layer cheesecake.

 The fruits of our labour!

Halloween came early for my co-baker

We headed out to the Townships right after the concert, where family had kindly waited on supper for us (and delayed Thanksgiving until Monday). It was a brief trip, but I managed to  squeeze in a walk and even a few rows of knitting with my morning coffee.

We also walked some paths I'd never been on before.

A new path beckons

A mother bear with three cubs has been spotted a few times around the area, so we tried to remember to make noise.

 D. walking with a big stick

The ground beneath our feet

Ce pont n'est pas...

 ...a metaphor

We missed the peak of the fall colours, but there were still a few leaves clinging to the trees.

 Leaf-blanketed road

As always, the fallen leaves made for some irresistible piles.
 

 Mandatory frolicking

And I'd show you a picture of the turkey, but it got eaten too quickly!

One of the surprise highlights of the weekend was turning on my computer Monday night after 11 p.m. to check on something, and somehow, without planning to, starting work on a new story that had been percolating for a few days.  Sometimes 400 words take forever and sometimes they spill right out. Another thing I'm feeling grateful for this week.

Friday and what I crave

This week has gone by so quickly I can scarcely believe it’s Friday already.

I’m craving two things simultaneously: 

• A relaxing weekend in my sweatpants, spending quality time with my knitting and with the PVR and everything that’s been taping over the past month.

• Some time to work on the new novel, which lately, does not seem at all horrible and for which I have had a few interesting new ideas. I have an admittedly completely unrealistic fantasy of finishing it within a year, which really could happen if I just managed to spend some time working on it every day.  NB: this kind of self-delusion is the kind of propulsion necessary to produce a novel.

I’ve been feeling that change-of-season sense of creativity, of possibility. I want to listen to new music, read new authors, make something, do something.  But first…a nap. As soon as I get home please.

Oh! And last Sunday we finally made it out to the last day of Mosaicultures, an incredible exhibit on at the Botanical Gardens of Montreal. If you haven’t been yet, you should go…and I can say this now because they have extended it by a week! It’s on until this Sunday. Here's a photo before my phone died....I'll share some more when I get the photos off of my husband's phone. This was one of the smaller installations -- some were truly amazing.

last day of August

I’m not sure what it is... writing an email or a blog post feels inordinately difficult these days.

The summer has felt a little too quiet and inward, a little bit like I’ve been spinning my wheels on the writing front. I started working on a story that wasn’t working, then kept working it to try and finish a draft, convinced throughout that it wasn’t working…but that maybe I could go back and fix it?  And sometimes it does happen that things you aren’t sure about turn out later to be okay.  But not so in this case.

But the setting was beautiful, even if the writing was not.

        

    

Since I've been back in the city, though, things have been better. Old works-in-progress have been looked at, and I've taken heart from how much I like them. I've also been trying less hard to make the summer about work...and make it more about summer, with reasonable success. And there's still a couple of days left...

A writer to watch!

It made my Canada Day to be named one of CBC Books' 2013 Writers to Watch!  Along with a lot of writers whose books are in my TBR pile.

You can click through the full list here. 

For another amazing list, check out Amanda Leduc's Up-and-Comers on her (lovely!) blog . This is a update on a group of writers she profiled a year ago...although if you are a writer be warned: it may make you feel insecure and unproductive or (better yet) inspired to to work harder.

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I started this post over three weeks ago now. Travel and vacation has kept me away from the internet a little more than I'd like. 

To celebrate our anniversary, D and I went on a weekend trip to Franconia Notch State Park, where we saw bears (in the backyard of our B&B!), hiked a gorge, had some amazing pizza (jalapeno-cream-cheese-stuffed crust....YUM), backed some plastic duckies in the town Lions' Club annual duck race fundraiser, caught the 4th of July "Home Day" parade, swam in the lake, visited Frost Place on Frost Day, and fulfilled a long-time yearning (er, of mine) to go to a drive-in movie, something I haven't done in almost twenty years. I am going to suggest you peruse the snack bar menu of the Northern Nights Drive-In because it is American thing of beauty. We took full advantage with chocolate milkshakes, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers...and even a meatball sub. When in New Hampshire... 

Pickup trucks are de rigeur at the drive-in

Small town drive-in

The Frost Place, one of Robert Frost's former homes

Walking the trails behind the Frost Place

Hilarious scrambling at the end of the duck race

We topped it off with an amazing meal at Manoir Hovey in North Hatley on way home. It was the kind of meal I can barely describe because it was so delicious and delightfully detailed on the menu.  Fine dining menus are a complex conceptual/literary/culinary art form, don't you think? Basically (in a prosaic, incomplete summary that does little justice to the meal), I had asparagus soup, halibut, cheese risotto, a bunch of amazing chanterelles (pilfered from D), and notably, as a pre-dessert, some apple-tarragon sorbet. Notable not only for the delicate and (at least to me) surprising combination of flavours, but also just for the concept of a pre-dessert, which strikes me as a useful one that might have almost as much mileage in it as second breakfast.  

A week after our return, we came back out to the country for a working vacation which has included lots of swimming (initially, during the heat wave), reading, writing, and napping. Just a few days left, but I hope to try and squeeze in the time to finish a second story...

Behind the Book... and behind in everything else

I'm feeling behind in everything, and all I want to do is sit around and read and write.  And rewatch episodes of Arrested Development.  Maybe it's a side effect the allergy medication, but I seem to have less of an ability to stare at a computer screen without getting a headache after I get home from work.  As a result, I haven't sent any emails in at least a week, which is kind of a disaster.  Maybe it is some belated fire/moving/general stress exhaustion, but it is harder than usual to get motivated.

I think I neglected to post this, coming as it did right after the fire, but writer Chad Pelley of Salty Ink (one of my favourite sites!) also did a Behind the Book with me on Bone & Bread that you can read here.  I really liked his questions! 

Salty Ink is also one of a few must-read sites celebrating short story month.  Steven W. Beattie of That Shakespearean Rag is taking it to the next level with daily nuanced short-story reviews. And Steph at Bella's Bookshelves has started something called #shortstoriesforbreakfast, which is a great bite-sized teaser for things to read.  Short stories and breakfast are the perfect pairing!

I'm sure these aren't the only sites doing special features for short stories this month, but they're the ones on my daily rotations.  Let me know of any others you come across.

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At my workplace, we have to use up our remaining vacation allotment for the year before the end of May, so Tuesday morning I stayed home from work and tried to write. And I did. (Hurray!)  Though I did something I really shouldn't do and started writing something new, in a style and genre I don't really work in and which I probably won't be able to sustain.  It was fun and satisfying, though.  I really want to decide what to focus on this summer among all my different projects and make a big push forward in something because I think the summer is when I do my best work (or, at least, my most work).

when books disappear

I've been thinking about the strange luck and wonderful luck Bone and Bread seems to be having in terms of coverage leading up to its release, and I want to try and get done some of the thoughts that have been swirling around over the past couple of weeks.  Since I'm about to leave for the airport to head to Toronto for the launch, now seems as good a time to post this as any!

Part of what enables the kind of fearlessness and lack of self-consciousness necessary to writing is the ability to forget that anybody is ever going to read it.  It also helps with keeping expectations low, which I think is important for the writing life.  But some of the coverage and general interest from people I know is forcing me to swerve out of this admittedly somewhat delusional course of thinking.  And it brings me to some unnerving destinations...  

Already spotted in the wild... (Indigo in Montreal)

Will anyone actually like it?  Will people's expectations be so high that they're bound to be disappointed?  This is a completely immobilizing type of thinking to have while writing, and one that I would say is not generally recommended.  But now that the novel is making its way out into the world, and there is absolutely no way to change anything at all, I'm occasionally seized with stomach-churning bouts of uncertainty.  Why didn't I think about what people like reading?  What if it's too /sad/complicated/political/emotional? Why didn't I write something else...something funny, or about a man??  Or a dog or a war or or or or......

Then I breathe and remember there's nothing I can do.  Some people -- people whose opinions I value deeply -- have read it and liked it.  Not everyone will like it, and that's okay.  Even if almost nobody likes it, it isn't even the end of the world as long as I can keep writing.  (I suppose whether I can keep publishing is a somewhat different matter, but one that it is probably equally unproductive to consider.)

So many books are released every season, and all of those books represent years of work and sacrifice on the part of the writer, and additional careful work and effort on behalf of the editor and the publisher. Most of them have already achieved certain standards of excellence.  I don't know what the acceptance rate is at literary publishers, but I would be surprised if it were very different from that of literary magazines, which often hover around 1-2% of work submitted.  So most of what makes it out into the world in the form of a book has already been vetted again and again, by people whose lives revolve around literature.  People who know what they're doing.  And there are so many excellent books/movies/tv shows/articles/responsibilities competing for our attention.  It kind of feels like a special kind of magic any time a book makes it through the maelstrom of the daily media barrage and the craziness of everyday life and finds its way into the hands of a reader.  Any time I meet somebody I don't already know who has read my short-story collection, it feels like nothing short of a miracle.  And I'm grateful.

People compare books to children all the time, and although I know there are lots of obvious reasons why it isn't a perfect analogy, there's still something to it.  All the books on the marketplace are special to somebody, there are good reasons for buying and reading all of them.  They're all different and unique and contain a world of their own...but chances are that most of them won't stick around forever, or even for very long.  Most books go out of print sooner or later.  Some get released, receive excellent reviews, then disappear.  Some get released, receive almost no reviews, then disappear even faster.

All of this is to say that I'm grateful for this chance that Bone and Bread seems to have.  I hope it finds its readers.

See some of you tonight!
xo

Writers' endings versus readers' endings

I finished reading Juliet, Naked the other day.  It was a shockingly fast read, and it was another book that fell into what I've been thinking of as easy reads -- the kind of book I've been admiring lately.  Funny, straightforward, gently observant and sometimes melancholy and imaginative.  I liked it a lot, although I got to the end and (without risking spoilers) thought huh, that's not what I want to happen.  I had a memory, too, of my friend J. reading this novel and asking me if I'd read it and wanting to chat about how things turned out.  (Note to self: follow up on this.)

At the same time, though, the ending as written feels realistic, at least realer than what I wanted to happen possibly could be.  Of course, much of what happens in the novel is improbable and a little fantastic, and I think Nick Hornby could have, if he'd wanted to, written an ending that might have been more satisfying in terms of wrapping everything up neatly.  But I got the sense when I was reading that Hornby was deliberately resisting that kind of ending, and I respected the choice, as much as I wished for something else.  I had the thought as I closed in upon the final pages: this is a writer's ending.  The writer feels some kind of responsibility to the truth, to the truth of his characters or the world as it really is or he sees it.  But as a reader, I wanted something else.  I wanted to know everybody I'd come to care about was going to be okay and get what they wanted.

But then I thought, well... I can just make up my own ending anyway.  That's the beauty of fiction.  I kind of closed my eyes and forgot the last ten to twenty pages and made up something else instead.

Bright lights, Nuit Blanche

I had a great writing morning today.  I brought my laptop into bed with me and sat propped up in bed and wrote for two hours.  Then I had some food and came back and kept going for another two and a half, with minimal interruptions. (My husband, bless him, made breakfast and even let me out of the cleanup.  And the breakfast included bacon.) 

Part of my amazing productivity (by my standards, since I'm a rather slow writer) is probably due to the fact that right now I'm writing something fun.  I don't want to jinx it by talking about it too much, but it's a YA project I've had planned forever, right down to most of the nitty-gritty details, and whenever I work on it now it just seems to flow out into the keyboard.  I'm pretty much rolling with what I wrote the other day about easy reads and following it through with some easy writes.  Right now, anyway, it's working, and that's enough.

Today is a good day to have a good writing day because tonight I am giving a reading at Nuit Blanche as part of this event in conjunction with Maisonneuve Magazine, and it's always nice to feel confirmed in one's writerly sense of identity before doing things like this.  Although it might be a bad thing, too, since good writing days can also result in me feeling extremely socially challenged -- like I've stepped out of a different gravity and everything I say goes unheard or misunderstood and I feel like there's a piece of glass between me and everyone else who is actually normal and doesn't spend half of their time making make-up people walk and talk.  Oh well. I guess I'll find out!

Nuit Blanche is also known as Montréal en Lumière, which is probably partially why this Cult Montreal listing calls us "some of the local literary scene's brightest lights," but it is nonetheless a thrilling designation.  I'm really looking forward to hearing the other readers and hoping my cold doesn't wipe me out too early tonight.    

admiring the easy read

I just came back from the gym, where I went to buy food and read a book.  This is not the most intelligent behaviour for somebody who is doing a photo shoot for this good cause in the very near future.  Oh well. 

I’m happy I took some time to read.  I’m reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and I had one of those fleeting moments when I’m enjoying a book and I think ALL books should be just like the one I’m holding.  It’s funny and sad and smart and it just flies by.  I think, I want to write a book that just flies by. 

But so far, I don’t think this has been my style in anything I’ve published.  And I might be wrong or misremembering things…it’s almost certain, anyhow, that the way I feel when reading through one of my own manuscripts is not the same way anybody else would feel.  I’ll read something and get tripped up on whatever else I know went into a particular sentence (what I was thinking about when I wrote it, or that tricky clause I took out of it, or the word I wanted to use but couldn’t manage), while someone else finds it all wonderfully lucid.  Or at other times (and this is by far the more common pitfall in writing), I know exactly what I’m trying to say and I breeze through it all without a problem, congratulating myself on my clarity while readers are stuck trying to follow my analogies from point A to point B.  

It would be nice to write something as straightforward as talking or thinking, so there is nothing for a reader to bump up against and get shaken out of the spell.  That’s something I’d like to do. 

But I still appreciate other styles of writing!  I enjoy and admire difficult books as well as straightforward ones, and I guess I’m saying I’d like to write lots of books and lots of different kinds of books, if that turns out to be possible.  

Whew.

If you haven’t yet, and you’re behind on your internet reading, you should check out the wonderful LitBits gathered over at Bella’s Bookshelves. 

On a less literary note, check out this hilarious Get the Look over at The Hairpin.

writing links open in my browser

Time is running out for me to finish my 2012 update.  I’ve been strictly informed that January 15th is the cut-off date for wishing people Happy New Year or posting best-of lists or year-in-review lists.  So I guess that’s happening tonight.

In the meantime, here are some things I’ve been reading:

Lena Dunham interviewed by Miranda July for Interview Magazine.  Some of my favourite parts of this interview are where she talks about what it was like growing up with parents who were artists.

Cynthia Newberry Martin's inquiry into good sentences for Brevity i.e. the novelist’s perennial  question as she beats her head against the keyboard: does every sentence need to be great?  (The answer is that they at least need to be very good.) 

Related to the last:  Michael Cunningham’s New Yorker Letter From the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year.  (In case you didn’t hear, in 2012, there was no Pulitzer Prize awarded for fiction.) 

Nova Ren Suma "On Chasing Ambition and Being a Girl and a Woman."    This post resonated with me so much, especially lines like the ones quoted below: 

I have and want one thing, and I’ve been single-minded about it since high school: I write. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, to the detriment of everything else.

I think more needs to be written about women and ambition.  Or maybe it’s already out there…perhaps I ought to say I’d like to read more about women and ambition.  If you know of any good books or articles, send them my way, please.