Resolution time

Judith Timson, in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, argues the case against New Year’s resolutions. Although it’s persuasive (ie we don’t really need any more flagellation when we’re already getting whipped by the Late ‘08 Depression), we’re not quite willing to dump the list.

Here’s the Vicious approach.

1. Read more. Makes you a better writer. Makes you a better person. Even makes surgeons better doctors. ‘Nuff said.

2.Work out. We want to make it easy, cos’ we know, if it ain’t easy, it ain’t happening. Subscribe to the whistlerwriters.wordpress.com RSS feed, and every week, we’ll carrier-pigeon a writing exercise into your in-box. You can have all week to make time for it. It’s all geared at putting the care and feeding of your creative self at the top of your to-do list. Every week. Consider it your new year’s bootcamp. Booyah!

3. Avoid regrettable behaviour. And missing the February 18 gig with Joseph and Amanda Boyden, Shelagh Rogers and Steven Galloway would be regrettable indeed. Tickets are selling fast, so the Whistler-casual last minute dash might not be the best strategy. $20 via Paypal at www.theviciouscircle.ca. Too easy. Rogers will be taping some of the discussions for her new show, The Next Chapter, and probing Amanda and Joseph on life inside a literary marriage.

4. Embrace one’s inner double black diamond. For the green circle creative writers you know, don’t forget the Writers Group’s new 6 week course for Never-Ever writers. Because even the experts had to start at the beginning (Stance and balance). If your comfort level on the bunnyslopes is high then get writing and have your manuscript ready for the Writer-in-Residence program this coming fall, led by Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds.

Happy Old Year. ElVicious, Out.

The Quest for 10,000 hours

The Vicious Circle does maths.

Variable one, from Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers:

“The emerging picture from studies [in expertise] is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…Noone has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

PLUS

Variable two, from Brian Kitely, author of The 3AM Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction:

“Learning how to write is the same as writing. Golfer Jack Nicklaus said, ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get.’ All the other arts – as well as athletics, obviously – take the notion of practice and exercise very seriously. Too many writers make a fetish of the natural, untroubled writer who just breathes out a great story.”

EQUALS

aha.

Books are good for your health… (happy news for the new year)

And here I was, blaming my chiropractic issues on a too-heavy school-bag. The latest evidence from the white coats, however, give you all the ammunition you need for curling up with a good book.

American hospitals are adding the study of literature into medical residency programs because its making doctors kinder.

According to this New York Times article, residents who are invited to discuss poetry and short stories as part of their daily rounds are scoring significantly better on patient evaluations. They start doing radical things like always talking to the family, gently touching patients, and continually explaining the course of treatment and what the doctors are thinking so patients know.

Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons found that doctors interacting with literature were more willing to adopt another person’s perspective, sometimes after just four one-hour workshops.

Seems like an easy way to change the world. Read more. Grow your empathy. How radical.

Extreme writers step aside. This course is for Green Circle scribblers only.

Just announced today: the Whistler Writers Group offers a 6 week course for Never-Ever Writers, Wednesdays, from January 28 2009.

Think of it as a bunnyhill for aspiring creatives. Sharpen your pencils, and away you go.

Kind and patient instructor, Rebecca Wood Barrett, will deliver a weekly lecture on the craft of writing, give brief assignments in class, followed by homework assignments that will be brought back to the group to workshop so participants can learn how to critique effectively. Roundtable discussions on the practical aspects of being a writer are also on the agenda.

Rebecca has a one year old son, so she’s adept at fitting a lot of productivity into a short window of time. She’s also a published short story writer, an award-winning short filmmaker, a TV producer with Resort TV, winner of the 2008 Postcard Jam, and a soon-to-be graduate from UBC’s MFA program. Trust me, you’ll be in good hands.

Feeding the Seed : Growing the Brand New Writer starts at Spring Creek Elementary School on Wednesday, January 28. The 6 week course is offered for $120. Spaces are limited. Sign up soon. There’s a whole mountain of terrain awaiting you. www.theviciouscircle.ca

If a picture is worth a thousand words, who’s more important?

The illustrator? Or the scribe?

It’s too vexing to consider, really. Especially given a recent move to outsource news reporting to writers in the developing world who work for $7 a day. (See here.) For now, I will be happily rendered mute, and stand aside for Amelia Rachlin, Marketing Coordinator at the Whistler Arts Council, who designed the poster for the Feb 18 reading event. Watch for it around Whistler soon. Says it all, really.

My new crush on Amanda Boyden

Gasp! So I admit, I’ve had a little crush on Joseph Boyden every since he read in Whistler in 2007. But I’m switching allegiances. I just finished Amanda Boyden’s newest novel, Babylon Rolling, and would have to dub it my Pick of the Year 2008. Assured, compassionate, un-put-down-able… I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been a contortionist – you become skilled at holding people’s attention with dazzling feats, and making them look easy…

So, here’s my bedside table round-up for the year, Top 5 Reads 2008

1. Babylon Rolling, by Amanda Boyden.

Because it’s pitch-perfect. Here, from the early days: “There, there, there. The grill is on top of Roy. Cerise rushes down the stairs and goes to lift the grill. Her body and her brain both have nothing to do with it. She lays her hands on.”

2. The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall.

Because of the 6 page shark attack rendered only in typeface. 

3. The Flood, by David Maine.

Because someone finally answered my Sunday School question of where the women in Genesis were.

4. Charlie Wilson’s War, by George Crile.

Because the book is always better than the movie, and in this case, the movie was surprisingly good, and the book tells the backstory to Afghanistan that we oughta know about.

5. Charlotte Gray, by Sebastian Faulks, and The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway.

Because it’s a good exercise to imagine your town in a state of siege, and what would become of you, your crazy neighbour, your best friend, your boss…

Shelagh Rogers gets between the sheets with Amanda and Joseph Boyden

What is a literary marriage made of?

That’s just one of the intimacies to be revealed on February 18, when the Vicious Circle, in conjunction with the Whistler Winter Arts Festival and 2010 Cultural Olympiad, presents Between the Sheets.

Shelagh Rogers, host of CBC’s Sounds Like Canada from 2002 to 2008, and the new program The Next Chapter, gets up close and personal with Giller Prize 2008 winner, Joseph Boyden, (Through Black Spruce, Three Day Road) at Whistler’s 8th annual Literary Leanings in February. What will his wife, novelist and former trapeze artist Amanda Boyden (Babylon Rolling) have to say about that? How will Steven Galloway(The Cellist of Sarajevo) round out the threesome?

Join the Vicious Circle on Wednesday February 18 from 7:30pm at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, as we host three of North America’s leading novelists. Cash bar, hosted by the Four Seasons. Tickets available at www.theviciouscircle.ca for $20.

 

Joseph Boyden sitting pretty after his Giller 2008 win

 

 

Whistler invites perpetrators to commit random acts of poetry by Jan 28

Whistler’s newest public art projects will commit poetry-by-stealth – which is arguably the best way to be assaulted by words. Artist Joan Baron has created a sculpture project called “Poets Pause”, which will confront Alta Lake Park passers-by with an invitation to smell the roses, or pause to consider a poetic contemplation of themes like listening and togetherness.

Poems are invited for consideration. The selected poems will be on periodic display, joining the 2008 poems by Vicious Circle members, Pam Barnsley and Mary MacDonald. 

Submissions are due by January 28. Download the information package from the RMOW.

Leslie Anthony’s Snakebit wins two (opposable) thumbs up from Vancouver Sun

In the weekend Vancouver Sun (Dec 13) Colin Holt reviews Snakebit and The Lizard King, two new releases featuring the legless, cold-blooded and phobia-inducing fauna that define a herpetologists world. And Anthony’s Snakebit comes up trumps. “Laugh out loud funny” and “leaves the reader wishing there were more.” 

Leslie Anthony

Leslie Anthony’s Snakebit wins two thumbs up from Vancouver Sun

In the weekend Vancouver Sun (Dec 13) Colin Holt reviews Snakebit and The Lizard King, two new releases featuring the legless, cold-blooded and phobia-inducing fauna that define a herpetologists world. And Anthony’s Snakebit comes up trumps. “Laugh out loud funny” and “leaves the reader wishing there were more.”