Hope you’re having a safe summer. It’s hard not to be anxious with these unprecedented fires in Yellowknife, Kelowna and Maui. In May, I was telling just about anyone who would listen to read John Valliant’s Fire Weather. I’ll repeat myself here. Please read this book! Please cooperate with any emergency directives. Read about Britt Wray of Gen Dread further on.
A Busy Six Months
This is my excuse for the extended gap in posting. In mid-July, I wrapped up a virtual manuscript completion course, led by Aislinn Hunter through The Writers Studio at SFU. Along with five other students, we met bi-weekly to review our writing, encourage each other and incorporate teaching points into our revisions.
The group was six professional women—three memoirists and three fiction writers. Ann’s working on the story of a female conductor, Jac, who is balancing the demands of a punishing career in a misogynist environment against the demands of family life. Cate is writing a collection of stories based on the letters and published writings of the late novelist, essayist, and LGBTQ activist Jane Rule.
Alaa is writing a creative non-fiction tribute to mothers in war zones by telling a mother’s story in the context of the Iraqi-Iranian War and subsequent Gulf War. Dani’s memoir recounts the challenges of raising an autistic child in the setting of her own loss of her mother at age ten. Laura’s memoir is a braided story of her life caring and advocating for her handicapped child and her pilgrimage to The Island Walk on PEI to reflect on her experience.
I entered the course with a collection of related short stories of varying quality that I’d written over the last four years. I’d worked on four of them previously with the guidance of Traci Skuce, a Comox Valley writer. (“The Road Trip”, “The Hummingbird” and early versions of “Untethered” and “Saving Things”)
With Aislinn’s inciteful comments and frame working of the craft. We discussed the optimum POV, clear and adequate signposting, and the balance between the backstory and the front story. I improved specificity and character arcs—even the dog needs a character arc! The deadlines motivated me to revisit the stories that were waiting patiently for a refreshed and more experienced writer to revise them. Every story was improved.
They say (I don’t know who said this originally but it was recently repeated to me by Anosh Irani at last year’s DIRWF) a short story is like a place on a river, there is an upstream and a downstream to it, the time before the story and the time after it. The creative challenge is to know when to start and stop your short story. I’ve spent the last four years hanging out with this family and I think I’m ready to let them go. Three of my stories have already gone out into the world and with a little more perseverance and luck I’m hoping the collection will find a publisher. My current step is learning how to find an editor.
I haven’t chosen a book title. Surfacing is already taken! An author recommended that I try ChatGPT. Well, there’s an adventure. I signed up and gave the bot some keywords or asked a question. “Is the Rules of Flotation a good book title?” I tried water and adversity and so on but the whole thing was very uninspiring.
I’m looking forward to seeing this collection published and sharing it with you. In the meantime, you can read early versions or excerpts of some stories here.
Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival
In July, I attended the excellent Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. I met Britt Wray, the Author of Generation Dread—Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety. Her Substack Gen Dread is aimed at finding “community, comfort and practical coping and acting strategies.”
Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies gave a revision workshop. I learned about the American Korean writer, Matthew Salesses’ book, Craft in the Real World. He challenges the structure of traditional workshopping structure and the implicit and explicit cultural expectations of these encounters. He describes alternate formats where the dynamic remains writer focused instead of reviewer-focused. His book should be mandatory reading for anyone supervising or participating in the workshopping process. I’m hoping to incorporate some of his suggestions in the writing circle I’m leading this fall with the Federation of BC Writers. Check out the groups that are offered here. Registration opens on Sept 13th.
What am I reading?
I’ve been reading a selected collection of autobiographical short stories, This Time, That Place by Clark Blaise. “Most novels are watery, diluted, and bloated. They do not have anything like the richness of a short story.” “I’ve always favoured the short story for its energy, a result of its confinement, and for the fact that its length reflects the author’s ability to hold it entirely in his/her head like a musical note.” There is a wonderful forward by Margaret Atwood.
So good-bye for now and I apologize for no photos in the post.