Enlist Me – By Katherine Fawcett

I love lists.

• Writing them
• Reading them
• Discovering them
• Inventing them

But: does list-writing make one a writer?

• No.
• Yes.
• Maybe.
• Who’s asking?
• What kind of list?
• B-list at best.

If writing is writing is writing, then list-making must count. And if it counts, I must be prolific. Why, I write every day

• Shopping lists
• to-do lists goals
• wish lists
• lists of things I want to do
• places I plan to go lists
• lists of possible baby names
• resolutions
• resolutions I have broken thus far
• daily calorie lists
• lists of two-letter words and q-without-u words, for Scrabble

My lists appear on

• envelopes
• napkins
• the backs of receipts
• school newsletters
• inside book jackets
• phone bills

Although my lists are not clever top-10 lists like David Letterman’s, or fascinating fact-filled lists like Harpers Index, or quirky but useless lists like “the top 10 currencies no longer in circulation,” I don’t just make lists listlessly. Creating them is like quilting my life. And discovering other people’s lists is a secret joy. Like the faded list, in loopy handwriting, of “Appetizer Ideas” I found in my grandmother’s cookbook:

1. Broiled grapefruit
2. Melon ball cocktail
3. Sea food cocktail
4. Pastry snails
5. Dried beef rolls
6. Silver dollar hambugers
7. Bacon wrap-arounds
8. Herring-Appleteaser
9. Savory mushroom dip
10. Hot cheese puffs

Or the:

• Halloween costume ideas list in my brother’s yearbook.
• “Boys I’d kiss” list in the back of my sister’s drawer.
• “Super-powers I Want” list in my son’s math book.
• Anniversary Gift List in my husband’s wallet

Making a list is not only one way of organizing one’s thoughts—it also stimulates the imagination. The vertical nature of a list draws the reader’s (and the writer’s) eye down, rather than across the page. I believe this encourages reading between the lines.

simply
because
there
are
more
lines
to
read
between.

I found lots of reading between the lines in this fictional “List of Chores”:

Daily:

1. Make bed.
2. Pick up clothes.
3. Feed bird.
4. Take fresh water and scraps to Dad.
5. Unload dishwasher.
6. Sweep kitchen floor.
7. Do homework.

Weekly:

1. Vacuum bedroom.
2. Clean bathroom (yes, scrub toilet!)
3. Shovel attic floor.
4. Check status of Missing Person’s Report (on-line is fine).
5. Mow lawn.
6. Change Dad’s bandages.
7. Recycling.
8. Clean bird cage.

Lists of all kinds stimulate my imagination, give shape and order to random thoughts, and help me cut through writers’ block.

Lets face it: what writer doesn’t secretly hope she might one day see her own name on a Best-Seller List?

Being strange and writing by Penny Buswell

I likea challenge when reading or writing. When I was nine I read the whole of Dahl’s Matilda in one weekend, standing on my head. It’s a great book – even upside down with a headrush (and couch textiles imprinted on your face). Ever since then I’ve been contrived with my literary habits. I went through a phase of writing with a purple feather quill and after that I wrote only in intricate calligraphy – until my grade 5 teacher vetoed it.

These days I write on my laptop, initially with the screen turned off, to avoid censuring what I write. My most personal thoughts are freewritten in a journal. There I can dispose of overly emotional or petty thoughts without bothering anyone else. I write the very worst parts in Teeline shorthand.

I have some writing rituals that help me concentrate. The main ones are that I need headphones (no music), I like to be alone and I have to chew Stride Spark B6 B12 vitamin Kinetic Fruit gum. I start with two pieces and then pop another in when the flavour fades. The gum ball gets bigger and bigger and it gets easier to blow bigger and bigger gum bubbles. I like the SNAP noise when they pop and the suction sounds when I chew them in my molars. After a couple of hours the gum chewing gets furious and so does the typing. The faster I type, the faster I chew, SNAP-ing bubbles as I reflect on the next sentence. SNAP SNAP. I thunder on through.

A good bubble is satisfying, it fills out evenly, then tears and slowly expires. During a productive morning I’ll have seven or eight pieces of gum in my mouth, which blow such large bubbles they grow as big as a baseball. A beautiful petally peach baseball that looks like a deflated jellyfish when it pops.

Sometimes the bubble pops badly and sticks to the skin all around my mouth and I gurn wildly as I try to scrape it all back into my mouth. My skin feels sticky. Then chomp chomp chomp, I’m writing again and the pile of gum papers is growing.

Reading Alistair MacLeod. A film review by Libby McKeever.

	Reading Alistair MacLeod.William D. MacGillivray (Writer & Director). Terry Greenlaw (Picture Plant Producer). Kent Martin (NFB Producer). Montreal, PQ: National Film Board of Canada, 2005. 88 min., VHS or DVD, $99.95. Order Number: C9105 185.Grades 10 and up / Ages 15 and up.Review by Libby McKeever. **** /4

excerpt:

All of us are better when we’re loved. (Alistair MacLeod.)

Reading Alistair MacLeod takes viewers into the life of the Canadian writer and the inspiration behind the storyteller. Filmmaker William D. MacGillivray has interspersed MacLeod’s personal annotates with various famous Canadian writers who read from his work. These writers include Margaret Atwood, David Adams Richards, Russell Banks, Wayne Johnston and Colm Toibin. Although they all read from different titles, there is a common thread of reverence for Macleod’s lyrical craft and a great fondness for him as person.

     Although MacLeod was born in Saskatchewan, when he was a boy his parents returned to resettle on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island. Macleod followed the path of many young islanders when he left the island to work in the mines. He eventually settled with his wife and children in Windsor, ON, where he taught Creative Writing at the university and returned to Cape Breton Island each summer with his wife and children. Macleod would set off early on these summer mornings to hike the headland to his writing shack and would return at lunchtime to spend the remainder of the day with family. Author Lisa Moore commented that MacLeod’s writing tells of the contrast between the tenderness and brutality of life in Cape Breton and of the tightknit community who live there. He builds his stories around characters, and, as one islander remarked, there is a common thread of Cape Breton Island people being both compelled to leave and then to return, if only in their minds.

MacLeod had early success with his short stories in the United States and was published in Best American Short Stories. MacLeod’s son Alexander reads from one of the early stories and comments that he feels these are his father’s very best work, stories that explore humanity while sometimes cutting deeply to expose the raw story underneath. Author Wayne Johnston states that MacLeod “writes prose as you would poetry,” and Margaret Atwood praises the “folkloric quality” of his work and the deceptive simplicity that reads so beautifully. Composer Christopher Donison has created an opera called “The Island” which is based on MacLeod’s short story collection of the same name. Throughout the film, viewers see McLeod and Donison confer over the music as performers sing his words.

Reading Alistair MacLeod is a delightful and inspiring glance into the life of one Canada’s foremost storytellers. MacGillivray has used a humorous and gentle lens to allow viewers some insight into the story behind the tales that have touched so many. The film’s cover photograph captures MacLeod and his battered briefcase outside a small white building, his writing shack. Perched on top of a grassy headland, the shack overlooks a pebbled beach and out towards Prince Edward Island, one of the beautiful images portrayed in the film. The back cover shows part of the MacLeod clan, some wearing tartan, gathered outside a small church. This is also the closing scene to the film and leaves viewers with the impression of family man who is touched by landscape of the human story.

Alistair MacLeod has published 14 short stories, collected in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986). His acclaimed novel, No Great Mischief (1999) received several awards and his most recent book,Island (2000) is a collection of his short stories. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2007.

Reading Alistair MacLeod would be well suited to English, media arts, Canadian literature and Canadian cultural students in the Senior Secondary grades.

Highly Recommended.

Libby McKeever is a Youth Services Librarian who works at the Whistler Public Library and at Whistler Secondary School in Whistler, BC.

The Strangeness of Writing By Sara Leach

I’ve been spending a part of every summer on Hernando Island, near Desolation Sound, since I was one year old. This island is probably one of the safest places on earth. Most of the time, the only predators are the ones who eat mice and fish. When I was about seven years old, however, a wolf swam onto the island. Yes, you read that right. Wolves swim.

            I never saw the wolf. I never heard the wolf. I never even saw any sign of the wolf. But it scared the scat out of me. Which is why 25 years later when I started writing a children’s novel set on an island just like Hernando, it featured a wolf. Two wolves, in fact.

This is where it starts to get strange. Because when I was seven, the wolf didn’t even last a full year on the island. It was scared off. Possibly by a shotgun, if the rumours are true. But years after I finished my draft of the novel, had it rejected, put it in a drawer, and then pulled it out to rewrite again, two wolves swam back to the island. They feasted on the deer. I saw their scat, their hair and their paw prints. I even heard them howling. All those details went straight into the rewrite.

The wolf population on the island swelled to eleven. The number of deer shrank from 400 to 2. The wolves, growing hungry, started coming closer to humans. You aren’t allowed to relocate a wolf—another detail that made it into my book. You are allowed to shoot one. Which is exactly what happened. A hunter was hired, the alpha male was shot, and most of the pack swam away. Last year there were two wolves on the island. No sign of any this year.

It’s a shame. Because, unlike when I was seven, I would love to see a wolf now. From a distance. I don’t need to relive my book too closely.

It’s probably just as well that I haven’t seen one. Because the other strange thing about writing, especially writing fiction based on a real place and a few real events, is that the lines between fact and fiction get blurred. Did I really see an eagle almost snatch a seal pup, or did I imagine it? Did my daughter’s finger get bitten by a chicken, or was that only in the story? One thing I can say for certain is that I have never faced down two wolves while lost in the middle of the island during a thunderstorm.

Let’s hope I never do. After all, the book is published now and it’s too late for a rewrite.

My favourite place to write – Stella Leventoyannis Harvey

In the wilderness with my head stuck outside a tent, a headlamp on, an hour before dawn in a valley surrounded by mountain peaks. In the bathroom late at night with only the scratch of my pen keeping me company. In the garden, wrestling with my great nemesis, the common weed (well that and my unrealistic need for perfection). At my laptop with its bright light guiding me forward, early morning, every morning when I’d rather be asleep like everyone else in the quiet world. Ideas can’t wait for a proper time and place even as I wish they would. Like all writers, I’ve written in many places, have notebooks and several scraps of paper I have misplaced. When I’m lucky enough to find these scratches of ideas again, I find a character who refuses to leave me alone, an ending with no beginning, a beginning with no middle, a question that can only be answered in story. Yes, I write in all these places and others too, but my favourite place is sitting here at my desk. It was specially designed and built for me and when I sit at it, I feel the love that went into making it, I marvel at the craftsmanship and I push myself not to disappoint. At this desk I suffer uncertainty, humility, terror, frustration, hopelessness and joy. The former happens frequently, the later not so much.

I used to write at a beautiful antique desk I found in a small shop in Rome. I walked past it several times over several days before I went in and bought it. We still have it, but it was never meant for the computer age and the long hours spent staring at a screen wishing somehow the right words would appear, hopefully in perfectly formed sentences.  Then one day I got an email. My step son-in-law, Arnel was doing an assignment for his furniture-making program. He’d heard me complain of stiff shoulders and an achy neck long enough and wondered if he could build me a desk.

So we started on the road to designing a desk. Along the way, my mom got sick. I couldn’t give Arnel much advice. Then my mom died and I really didn’t care about having a desk. I could barely think, let alone write. It seemed so frivolous to spend so much time in the imaginary world when my real world was, real and heartbreaking and overwhelming. Arnel kept at it. Even though his emails went unanswered. One of the last conversations I had with him before my mom died was to say I couldn’t think about the design right now, I trusted him to go with whatever he wanted to do.

Here is the gist of one of the emails Arnel sent me regarding the design of the desk. His poetic words not mine:

Reflecting on the old design centered around carving and shaping (a direction I’d like to explore in my work), and I want to incorporate some of this in the rails and legs. But, I really thought about you, who I see as you, what has influenced you, and I always think about the diversity in the places you have come from, lived, travelled and been. You are constantly on the move, on the go. Then I thought, and I am not sure why, but your being born in Egypt has always been the one thing that has struck me. So I looked at it. The arch in the legs and rail was inspired by the flow of curves in Egyptian art – long, subtle and blended. I think of rivers and grasses. I find a tie to nature, with a stylized, elegant look. I can achieve an aesthetic and functionality that I think will satisfy you, I think will complement your decor, but stand on its own as a piece, satisfy my craving to carve and shape and my schools technical requirement for a mark. I will expose selective joinery as well, to add some character and designate the piece as handcrafted, but keep it hidden like a hieroglyph. And thank you again for the opportunity to make the table, I think it filled a lot of things in life that I needed to do.

When I told Arnel about this blog idea, here was his response.

Very cool blog idea – where you write – I definitely thought of your workspace while I was designing and constructing. A woodworker’s bench is much the same – a place for tools, functionality, expression, inspiration, a place to create.

His very best was what he delivered last summer. My desk, complete with my name and his etched into the wood at the back, a mark that we have been here, have actually lived and breathed and brought this desk to life (him more than me). It has curved and tapered legs and is made of beautiful cherry wood so clear you can see the ripple of the grain. It has dovetail joints, a floating top and all sorts of woodworking cuts and seams I will never know the names of. But what I love most is that it fits me, it doesn’t hurt to sit here hour upon hour. I especially love the small drawers. They hold all my scraps of paper, the stories I have found again.

Arnel’s completed project

The desk hard at work

Introduction to the Blogs

With just under three months to go before the 11^th annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, we reignite our blog machine with a theme provided to us by our very own, Libby McKeever. The theme this year: The strangeness of writing, odd places we write, odd things we write on, and with. Guest and local writers will share their thoughts and experiences. Enjoy the ride; see you in October at the festival.

More Than Bibliotherapy

by Libby McKeever
Writing is more than entertainment, escapism or bibliotherapy. It scratches at the corners where the things you’re not even aware of like to hide. It brings them to the surface, turns them around in the light, inside out and sees them anew. Reshaped, reformed, wrought, wrote and written just for you.

THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY

We sang “Happy Birthday” to Sarah Selecky at the Station House last night. We kind of forgot Sarah was vegan. The cake was for the party, it just wasn’t for Sarah. But, it was delicious, very lemony.

If Sarah were a cake, I would say she is a money cake (how come no one makes those anymore?). She is a surprise. She is a gift. She is as sparkly as a new loonie.

I’ve taken a lot of courses and workshops, so while I was excited about the one-on-one sessions, I didn’t really expect to Sarah to have anything too new to say about writing. If I come away from each session with one little tidbit, even if it’s just a reminder, I thought, I’ll be satisfied. Ha! I’m like Levi after his first day of Kindergarten.

Last night’s lesson was about creating subtext in dialogue. We were each given a character and a desire. We had to write four lines of dialogue. In the first line, the reader does not know the desire. Second, it is hinted at. Third it is suggested. Fourth, it is stated clearly. Then with a partner, we read our lines alternating between our characters.

Since I botched the in-class exercise, I thought I’d try again. Here’s the result (my prompt is a question Sarah asked at our first workshop: How are you and writing doing these days?)

Writing: With Levi starting Kindie, all the kids are in school now.
Karen: Didn’t I just vacuum in here yesterday?
Writing: Karen, bring your coffee and sit with me before you get too busy.
Karen: Last night’s dishes are still in the sink.
Writing: We missed date night again last week.
Karen: Do I really have to fold the kids’ clothes? I mean, couldn’t I just toss them in the drawers?
Writing: You always say we’ll sit down after the kids go to bed, but then you’re too tired.
Karen: Housework is so tedious. I’m meant for bigger things!
Writing: Karen, we need more time for us.
Karen: I want my housekeeper back.

~ Third time festival goer, second time writer-in-residence student, first time blogger,
Karen McLeod

It Never Gets Easier: Antanas Sileika to himself ten years ago.

You were working on a big novel with big themes at the time – art and the meaning of images in the twentieth century, and you thought once you had this book written and published, everything would be OK. You could even die in the knowledge you had leaped over some new bar.

And in the end, the reviews across the country were very good indeed.

Then you worked for three years on a novel that washed out. It’s still in a drawer now. You showed it to three people and decided it was not good enough.

It was harder to start again after that than at any other time in the novel-writing game.

Only moronic self-help strategies, such as listening repeatedly to Stan Rogers’s song, The Mary –Ellen Carter (whose chorus is “Rise Again”) managed to sustain you.

It was an exceptionally dark time, made worse with a son as a front-line soldier in Afghanistan while I wrote about death in another war zone.

I kept writing. It was a struggle, but in the end it worked out OK. The young man survived and the new novel was written and again, most of the reviews are pretty good.

Here’s the message to my younger self and to others in this pursuit – one thinks of publishing books as a high jump. Just write that one book, just get over that bar and everything will be all right.

But that image is wrong. Writing novels is closer to jumping hurdles, and those hurdles go on to the horizon like the railroad ties in Gordon Lightfoot’s song.

~ Antanas Sileika

What the hell are we doing with our time?

“By the time (Anton) Chekhov died of tuberculosis at the age of 44, he had written, in addition to his plays, approximately six hundred short stories. He was also a medical doctor. He supervised the construction of clinics and schools, he was active in the Moscow Art Theatre, he married the famous actress Olga Knipper, he visited the infamous prison on Sakhalin Island and wrote a book about that. Once, when someone asked him his method of composition, Chekhov picked up an ashtray.
‘This is my method of composition,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I will write a story called “The Ashtray.”‘”
(from Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer)