Early this summer, the Vicious Circle (Whistler’s Writers Group) announced that Candas Jane Dorsey would serve as the 2008 Whistler Writer in Residence.
Dorsey will be installed at the heritage Alta Lake House in Whistler for a month from September 1st through to September 30th and will meet weekly with ten writers in one-on-one sessions and weekly workshops.
The Vicious Circle had the chance to check in with Dorsey and discovered that strangers have tattooed her poetry on their body parts, that she bids on thesaurauses at auctions, and she thinks the reason for bad writing making it into print is more attributable to cock-ups than conspiracies.
Q: Are you superstitious? Do you knock on wood, refuse to talk about a work in progress for fear of stalling it, have weird little rituals or worry about jinxing yourself?
I’m not so superstitious, but I have learned one or two things over the years. Refusing to talk about a work in progress, for instance, is not a superstition but a safeguard. As Dorothea Brande wrote in 1934 in Being a Writer, the subconscious doesn’t care what form the creativity is expressed in, only that it gets expressed. For many writers, talking about it is a surefire way of not writing it. If a person is a writer like that, it’s better to be silent.
That doesn’t mean that people should be shy about joining this writer-in-residence programme — that delicate point is very early in the process for most of us.
Just remember that you need 20 pages ON PAPER. As Natalie Goldberg’s Zen roshi said to her, “Thinking is thinking. Writing is writing.”
Read the entire interview here… http://www.theviciouscircle.ca/retreat/index.php?id=51
I can’t wait to work with my fellow ink-slingers at the residency on that gorgeous deck. Nothing like a million dollar view to inspire. Signing up for the residency with Candas has given me the impetus to finish another draft of my children’s novel before then! Aren’t deadlines great for lighting a fire under one’s tukus?
Rebecca, you’re so right about deadlines. Candas talked about Colette’s husband locking her in the basement until she’d produced a certain number of pages of writing. Sometimes, it’s the gun to the head that makes things happen. How do you create that sense of urgency and discipline, though, when noone is waiting for your pages???