The Countdown to Story Time is Over. The Whistler Readers and Writers Fest is here!

Yes, the countdown is over. Once Upon A Time is echoing from the hilltops – the 10th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival is here. It begins tomorrow. So brace yourself for an infusion of wordpower and entertainment… For anyone who has ever lost themselves in a book, in a daydream, in a blank page… the Festival has 6 reading events, 10 workshops and 3 panel discussions to ensure there’s something for every type of wordlover.  Here are some of the not-to-be-missed highlights:

Opening Night Gala kicks off with Madeline Sonik, Miriam Toews, Antanas Sileika, John Glenday, Angie Abdou, Randy Boyagoda and writer-in-residence Sarah Selecky, all MC-ed by local scribe Stephen Vogler.

The party continues at Saturday’s Creative 5 Eclectic eventwith spoken word artist Barbara Adler. This event will also host an open mic for musicians and writers alike.

Sunday starts with a lively Lit Grit Tribute Breakfast, where Miriam Toews, Wayne Johnston, Sarah Selecky and Andreas Schroeder debate careers, read from their work and answer your questions over croissants.

Sunday night closes with PechaKucha, Japanese for “chit chat” – a mixture of show-and-tell, open mic and happy hour, where 10 speakers show 20 slides in 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Presenters’ topics range from architecture, graphic design and sculpture, to the PooFont. Ten dollars gets you entry, and a drink.

If the reading events inspire you to write your own words, sign up to push your characters around with Angie Abdou or go on a writing adventure with Leslie Anthony (Whistler’s Indiana Jones of the outdoor – and the written - escapade).

The festival runs from 14 to 16th October, tickets are on sale at www.theviciouscircle.ca or at the door.

Full program details available at the same site or if you’re just interested in the reading events, you can buy tickets at this
link: http://www.theviciouscircle.ca/store/category.php?cat_id=26

Angie Abdou, in her own words, on Festivals

by Angie Abdou

Writers’ Festivals charge me right up.  Every time I go to one, I make a discovery.  At Campbell River’s Words on the Water, I was drawn into the multifaceted work of the beautiful and stirring Kate Braid.  At Saskatchewan Festival of Words, I was moved by the gutsy and energetic Elizabeth Bachinsky and her politically-charged poems.  What I admire most about both of these poets is the way they grab onto the inkling of inspiration and let it guide them, even (or especially) when it takes their work in unexpected and untried directions.

That same kind of bravery caught me again this weekend at the Lethbridge Word on the Street, this time in the presentation of Betty Jane Hegerat.  It’s odd for me to speak of Betty Jane Hegerat as one of my festival discoveries. I know Betty Jane.  Every summer, she teaches in my hometown at the Fernie Writers’ Conference, for which I sit on the program advisory board.  She has published her books with Oolichan Press, which (again) is located in my hometown and owned by my good friend Randal MacNair.  In fact, last spring, the marketer at Oolichan asked me to review Betty Jane Hegerat’s new novel, The Boy, for a local magazine.  I said no. The novel is about a horrifying historical incident, one that involves the death of children.  Quite simply, I didn’t want to read this book.  It sounds depressing.  Who needs it?

But then I heard Betty Jane speak of The Boy.   Like Kate Braid and Elizabeth Bachinsky, Betty Jane looked fully alive as she described the way this story grabbed onto her and wouldn’t let go, the way it demanded to be told.  She didn’t want to write this story any more than I wanted to read it, but the harder she pushed it away, the louder it got.  It left her no choice.  She would write this sad Stettler story, and since it would have to be at least partly nonfiction, she enrolled in the MFA program at University of British Columbia to hone her Creative Nonfiction skills. Again – there’s that bravery I so admire.

And again it is rewarded.  I buzzed through her entire reading at Lethbridge WOTS, each one of her phrases giving me a new jolt of energy.  This book contains that spark of life that comes along with risk.  Plus, her process (and the passion with which she spoke of it) fascinated me.  In the end, Hegerat wrote The Boy not only because it demanded to be written, but also in the way that it demanded to be written – part fiction, part memoir, part nonfiction.  Now, she has not only a book about unpleasant material, but also a book that’s very challenging to market.  I mean, where does a bookseller put it, right?

This is what I love.  Someone who writes a book with no thought to marketing: Halleluiah!

According to Mark Medley, there are over 100,000 English books published in Canada every year.   If an author only sort of wants to write a book, we don’t need it.  We have enough.  So, how’s this for a challenge:  Only write stories that demand to be written.   We can then hope that the initial spark of necessity will transform those stories into books that also demand to be read.  I certainly feel that way about The Boy after hearing Betty Jane Hegerat at WOTS.

See – Festivals get me all charged up.  Now, freshly fuelled from WOTS, I look forward to heading to the Whistler Festival, particularly for my workshop on characterization, where I know I will meet exciting new writers with stories that demand to be told.

Seeking Sanity from Angie Abdou

By Claire Piech

I’ve never gotten along particularly well with my characters. No matter how much I try to coax them into complexity, to elicit cautious sympathy or even love-hate, they refuse. They sit there stubbornly on the page, tongues hanging out of mouths, defying any form of literary prodding. I’ve done everything to get a different reaction from them. In one of my darker moments, I caught myself yelling at my characters, threatening to dump my laptop into a bath full of water if they didn’t shape up soon. Another time, I was so fed up with their laziness that I started killing them off, one by one, until nothing was left except for a story about objects sitting in a house, doing nothing except aging. It’s not that my characters are missing a motive or that they have nothing interesting to do. It is instead that they consistently fall into that black hole of literary missteps – stereotypes.

Seeking sanity, I turned to Angie Abdou, guest author at the 2011 Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, for advice.

Piech:  What, in your opinion, is the most essential ingredient to creating real characters that are believable, complex, flawed and authentic?

Abdou: Empathy.

Piech: Out of all the characters you have created, who is your favourite?

Abdou: For some reason, Fly from The Bone Cage jumps into my head when I read this question. I’ve always liked him – probably because he’s the most selfless of my characters. He cares about his friends. He’s not solely motivated by his own selfish desires. Most of my characters tend to be a lot more ego-driven than he is.

Piech: Do you find there is a common trait to many of your characters?

Abdou: My characters are all looking for a way to find meaning in their lives. They’re often at a crux where their identity is fluid. They tend to be somewhat isolated and have trouble making real connections, even with the important people in their lives – their identity and interactions have a performative quality to them.

Piech: How have the characters you have created for your stories changed over the last 10 years?

Abdou: You stumped me here. In some ways, my characters haven’t changed all that much. I am interested (and have always been interested) in deeply flawed characters who often make bad decisions but hopefully readers root for them anyway, simply because they’re human. My characters tend to be on the verge of transition – in Anything Boys Can Do that transition had to do with relationships, whereas in The Bone Cage and The Canterbury Trail the transition has to do with the looming responsibilities of adulthood.  In that way, my approach to characterization hasn’t changed.  As to the way I go about creating those characters, I hope I’m getting better at it… And will continue to get better at it as I grow as a writer.

Piech: In The Cantebury Trail, you write about a fictionalized version of Fernie. Was it difficult to create believable characters living in a town where you also live?

Abdou: The Canterbury Trail (especially its approach to characterization) stems more from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales than it does from the town of Fernie. Chaucer takes the main types from Medieval society and has a representation of each – the praying class, the fighting class, the working class, a woman, a teacher, upper class, lower class. The pilgrimage gives him an excuse to put together all of these people who would never normally associate. He starts with types and fairly clichéd representation, but the pilgrims (ideally at least) grow out of these types and become individuals. This approach lends itself very well to Fernie where there are clearly defined (and often referenced) types: the ski bum, the red neck, the hippy, the developer. I wanted more than one in each group to help me let them become individuals rather than types. For a pilgrimage, I used the mountain equivalent – a big powder day in the backcountry. I didn’t find characterization in this book difficult at all – I had great fun with it. Now that I put it like that, FUN is probably a key ingredient in writing most novels.

Piech: Did writing The Cantebury Trail leave you with any epiphanies about writing that you didn’t have beforehand?

Abdou: People who like The Canterbury Trail praise its fairness to all of the different groups and claim that it presents events evenly from each perspective (rather than favouring the nature lovers or the coal miners or the developers). I did work hard to get inside of each of these perspectives, which put me places I’d never been before… And that always involves epiphany.

Piech: What characteristic would you say contribute most to your success as a writer?

Abdou: Work ethic – I’m a hard worker, whether I’m running, swimming, teaching, writing, or whatever – I just like to work. That’s lucky for me because hard work is essential to being a writer.

Piech: Do you have any advice for beginner writers?

Abdou: Don’t quit your day job. Really. If you’re looking to get rich or famous, lottery tickets would give you better odds. Write because you love it, and write what you want to write. Of course, there are tips that can make you better at it and, therefore, make it even more enjoyable – but for those you have to come to my workshop.

To learn more about developing believable characters, attend “How to Create and Push Around Your Characters” with Angie Abdou at the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival from 1:15 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, October 15, 2011 in the Aava Hotel Boardroom 1.