Still Writing

I began my writing career on a typewriter. A little green Olivetti that my dad gave me, as my handwriting was too messy for him to read the stories and poetry I wrote otherwise.  Possibly one like this, apparently dating to the 60s and currently selling on Etsy for $1,200. I have no idea what my typing speed is these days - thanks to word processing I can write fast and dirty and go back and fix it right way. I never took typing or keyboarding skills in school - afraid it would consign me to a future as a secretary, at a time when I had much grander goals! Actress. Foreign news correspondent. Farmer... In those days making corrections was a tedious thing involving dabbing White Out on the page and typing over it, or employing a kind of tape feature on my IBM Selectric machine (later in a job where I was in effect, a secretary) which always got tied in knots and made more messes than it fixed.  Making major changes often required cutting up the MS pages, arranging and rear...

For more than 25 years I have taught a six to eight session course called Writing from Life, about strategies for mining incidents, experiences and preoccupations for memoir, non fiction and fiction.  One of my 'success' stories is  Gordon Wilson , who since taking the course years ago has published a number of  books about aviation. Other writers in my course have gone on to publish personal essays in national newspapers (some, in the days when they still paid!), short stories, novels and memoir for both commercial markets and to share with family and friends. In early fall, I am offering an adapted online two-parter, called 'Memoir in a Moment'. Described in the poster below. It will be lively. It will be fun. And I hope it will arm participants with many 'germs' to work with, and strategies for continuing to develop them. Join from anywhere in the world. One session or two. Go away with the beginnings of full scenes and stories to share as is, or build into a...

This book sat on my shelf for years, briefly browsed a couple of times, then eventually dropped off at my local used bookstore - probably the wonderful Well Read Books in Nanaimo, whose profits all support programs offered by Literacy Central Vancouver Island.  I think I probably brought the book home again from the library later when I was actually experimenting with sketching. My original impetus being my desire to draw this great photo I found in the Globe and Mail newspaper about ten or twelve years ago. Look closely and you might be able to see the circle drawn around the segment of the photo I hoped to reproduce. (I don't know that I ever did. Although I have kept the clipping all this time.) Once again I eventually  removed Keys to Drawing   from my shelves. In the hopes someone else would find it useful, as I hadn't. Then. Today I found it again. In brand new condition at only $10.99 from Fireside Books in Parksville. I have only spent twenty minutes with ...

A Song of Cornish Summers :  The Church in the Dunes Leaving behind beach towels spread across damp sand gritty sandwiches crusts abandoned flip flops  men dozing in deck chairs their heads tied up in white hankies mothers warning offspring  not to swim so soon after lunch the rapturous cry of kids swamped by waves the rattle of the donkey’s bell and the cry of the ice cream man we escaped to the dunes.   It was an uphill slog sand filled our footsteps as soon as we walked out of them. We waded into the sun cut our hands on the sea grass we grabbed to help us up the unstable incline sand filtering into our sandals.   At last we reached the crest. Below, lay the central roofline of St. Piran’s church now enclosed in a concrete bunker fourteen hundred years after St Piran came here from Ireland in his small coracle. We knew all the tales of Celtic holy men St. Piran, St. Budoc and St. Blaise, the folk legends Tregeagle, Madgy Figgy and the piskie thresher, and eve...

 I bet it never happens to you!      You start off with an outline, or even just a clear idea of where you story is going and how it's going to get there. Then many scenes, chapters and words later you look at what you have produced, and see the storyline is all over the place with no direction home.      It can be a long and winding road to put it all in order. Even to figure out what you have to work with.      I have about 46,000 words of Return of the Summer Fish. Twenty-three scenes ranging from 750 to 2,000 words. Six of which I consider 'orphan scenes'. Some of which were written in the past few months. Most of which were written as much as 12 years go. The plot points seemed important at the time. Some I now doubt their value, and others I think are worth keeping, but where to put them?      I have five options for dealing with this 'dog's dinner' of a novel. One Write up a simple 'This Happened, Then This, Th...

Every writing project I have ever worked on, has worked differently. At least two of my ten books for children, I started writing, did not stop until I had finished, and then went back and revised . Each of my two non fiction books began with a detailed outline that I used like a road map, taking unmarked roads from time to time, but mostly getting where I needed to be by the end of each writing day. But my favoured way of writing long fiction--I did write short stories for many years, which were another story all together--is to write in scenes and cobble them together. I am most energized by the 'best bits', the scenes with tension, action and drama. I usually leave the connective tissue until later. And after the cobbling is over, I use a system of reverse outlining to evaluate what's on the page. But when I approached revision of  Return of the Summer Fish , it was a different matter all together. Once I dug up three different folders containing scenes--many of which I ...