August 31st, 2011

*The Big Dream* Book Launch Facebook Invitation

Because it’s not an event until it’s a until it’s a Facebook event (at least, not in this town!) Hope you can make it!

August 28th, 2011

I made a tiny movie!

I think everyone’s heard of Xtranormal now. Even if you haven’t, you’ve probably seen one of those very static movies with people bantering in robot voices–those are done on Xtranormal. It’s a very tempting site for those of us who think it would be a fun to make a movie but don’t know how, and don’t want to invest the many hours necessary to learn.

All you do on this site is choose a basic setting, some characters’ bodies (well, 1 or 2–they can’t do more than that [yet]) and feed in your dialogue. You can make pauses, and some small gestures/facial expressions, but basically, it’s people standing around talking to each other.

A major criticism of my work might be that there’s too much of people standing around talking to each other, so I thought this site would be perfect for me. Bonus, I realized when I started making my film, that stilted robot voices are perfect for rendering awkward office talk, which is a major component of the dialogue in my book. Still, it was trickier than anticipated–I am really not a playwright, and a lot of my dialogue doesn’t make sense without the surrounding narrative, or at least more detailed action than Xtranormal is really capable of (yet).

So I’m not sure how great my movie is–it’s sort of…stilted and static. I was conceiving of it as a little book trailer (23 days and counting until launch!) as you’ll be able to tell by the bits of cover bumpf I’ve put on the intertitles. But as I say, it came out oddly, so I don’t know if it’s a great marketing device.

And yet, I sort of like it–maybe you will too? It’s only 2 minutes long! Please take a look.

If you love it, hate it, are indifferent to it, or have some Xtranormal usage tips you wish to impart, please let me know. I have some leftover $$ on the site (you have to pay for things in points, which you buy in bundles of more than you need–annoying) so I could maybe make another, better video later on. In case this one isn’t already awesome, I mean.

August 25th, 2011

Tonight (aka, Thursday)

I’m going to be reading with Mark Sampson and Jeff Bursey at the fabulous Type Books on Queen West. Even should go from 6ish to 8ish, and be fabulous.

I am calling this my “last” reading from *Once*, though in truth I’ll probably read from it again anytime anyone asks me to or if the occasion seems to warrent. But my next *scheduled* reading is the laucn for the new book, so it makes sense to read from the old. I’ll be reading from the first story in the book, which is the story I read the first time I ever read from *Once* as a book, so it’s all full circle, and sentimentally nostalgia-y. Hope you can be there.

August 23rd, 2011

The End of the Cohabitational Reading Project

Mark has really covered the wrap of the Cohabitational Reading Project: the boredom, the improbability, the strangely tepid wind-down of over 600 pages. The second half–well, latter two-thirds, really–of this book reads like a sad sophmore follow-up to a brilliant first novel. Only in this case, the “first” novel is part of the same book. The beginning of Owen Meany really is wonderful and deserving of much praise. I had wondered why I remembered the early bits 10 years later with such vibrancy, but couldn’t recall anything from the later sections. It turned out I remembered the good stuff.

On the topic of the Project itself–good fun. I did sometimes feel bad when M was 50 pages ahead of me and urging me to catch up when I wanted to nap, but by and large it was really nice to be sharing the experience and talking it over every day. I think we’re both happy to be choosing our own reading matters for the next little while, but I’m sure while try a sequel CRP at some point.

Anyone who has thoughts or opinions on Owen Meany, John Irving, reading with your partner, etc., feel free to share!

August 22nd, 2011

A Little Different Now

Mainly, Rose-coloured is the same as it ever was, but if you look closely, there are a few little changes. Most striking on this page is the big beautiful book cover to your right–the cover of the forthcoming *The Big Dream*. If clicked on, this icon will take you to the Books page, which has been updated to include an entry on this book, complete with back-cover bumf, reviews (hopefully to be expanded in future) and buying links. You can also see a new picture of me, if so inclined, on the bio page.

All this just one more step towards my very exciting BOOK LAUNCH, which did I mention is SEPTEMBER 20th at the DORA KEOGH???? I’m very excited.

Thanks to Stuart at Create Me This for design excellence (and alarcrity).

August 17th, 2011

Of course we don’t judge books by their covers…

But if we did, I’d judge this book to be honest, loyal, fun at parties, a good cook, really sexy…

*Thanks to Dan Wells and Gordon Robertson for making it so awesome.*

Addenda

Addendum to Myths of the Full-Time Writer
Myth #5: If I’m free during the day, I’ll run all my errands during the quietest times in stores, banks, post offices, etc., and save tonnes of time. Nope. As it turns out, the stores and banks aren’t empty at 10am–they aren’t packed, but they are populated with another breed of people–people who are self-aware enough to know they are inefficient, annoying shoppers, and are trying to stay out of the way of the busy 9-to-5ers. These folks include people in wheelchairs and scooters (very hard to navigate in the narrow aisles of urban grocery stores, inevitably snagged on half-a-dozen things before they hit the dairy case); parents with small children (who are hard to navigate, period, and inevitably want to push their own strollers directly into the bread shelves and then stand in front of it, wailing); people who do not speak English but have a complicated transaction they need to request at the bank; shut-ins hoping for an in-depth conversation about current events with the bank teller; and people for whom simple tasks like remembering one’s PIN or selecting a yam are deeply unsettling and hard.

These people try to do us a favour by shopping at 10am, and I found that if I showed up at the grocery store also at 10am, I had to forbid myself from impatiently rolling my eyes at the lone parent completely outnumbered and overwhelmed by her children, who let them throw bananas on the floor because who could stop them. I didn’t cough aggressively at people who had *no idea* their credit cards had chips in them, and I never once glared (I don’t think) at someone who was simply standing in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare, blinking at the sky.

The daytime is for shoppers for whom efficiency is not the first priority, if indeed it’s even on the list of priorities. It’s wrong to bother those people when they try to avoid the crowded times, just like it would be wrong for them to show up at the post office at 5:30 and ask the pros and cons of bubble wrap vs. a padded envelope. You can run errands during the day if you want (I did, just to get out of the house), but it won’t save you much time.

Addendum to The Cohabitational Reading Challenge We both agree that *A Prayer for Owen Meany* falls off a bit in the second half, though I think, for a while at least, I was more dysphoric than Mark about the whole thing. I really love the high-school lit class discussions of *Tess of the D’Urbervilles* and *The Great Gatsby,* because I love a good close reading. But if you don’t, then those passages aren’t very well integrated and are too long–not good novel writing, even if good literary criticism. They exist mainly to unsubtly instruct the reader on how to read Irving’s own novel. Nick Carraway anyone? Ugh. I think Irving is a fine writer and deserving of respect, but no, not deserving of comparison with Fitzgerald. Yucky that he would suggest it, in my opinion.

In vaguely related news, I’ve ripped the cover partways off my copy, ensuring that Mark’s copy will be the one we keep. If you need a paperback of *Owen Meany* and don’t mind a ripped cover, I can get you one in about a week–for keepers!

August 15th, 2011

I am made of honour.

Thanks to P&J for making me a part of your incredible day. You guys go together as well as the delectable sandwich that shares your initials. May you be married forever, and always surrounded by friends. (P, thanks for picking such an awesome bridesmaid dress. And, everyone, would it be weird if I wore this to my book launch?)

August 12th, 2011

Myths of the Full-Time Writer

When I was in high-school, I read Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen (a great book, by the way). In the acknowledgements, she thanks her boss who let her write when she was supposed to be waiting tables. A light went on in my tiny teenaged brain–“Ah, that’s how you do it!”

That is not, as it turns out, how you do it. Most employers expect you to do the work you’re hired to do, and most writers, at least the ones I know, do something besides writing. Many of us simply have a full-time job and write evenings, weekends, and the occasional vacation. But even famous folks teach classes, edit journals and books, raise kids, and write for magazines–I can’t think of more than a handful of people in Canada who simply never do anything else than their own creative work.

*However*, there’s never and then there’s sometimes–many of us, if we are wily or lucky or both, can wrangle a period of time just for writing. I, for example, got to take a few months to focus on my new book, courtesy of the Canada Council, and I am most grateful.

However however, when you are slogging away in the salt mines, dreaming of perfect days spent with your perfect book, you might not accurately perceive how your life as a full-time writer might be. I didn’t, and since sometimes other people are like me, I thought I’d share my learnings with you, in hopes that your future transitions to full-time writing life, temporary or permanent, might be smoother than mine.

Myth #1: If I want to write full-time, I need to quit my job. This is totally true for some people, but not for everyone. It can’t hurt to ask for time off, if in fact you don’t *want* to quit. I like the people I work for and with, and most days enjoy my job pretty well, so I was eager to arrange my leave so I could come back at the end. On the other hand, if you hate your work, dread your colleagues, and dream of leaping into a fiery pit every morning as you board the bus, maybe you should consider quitting and using your post-writing hours to find a new job.

If, like me, you want to stay, think about the logistics. I was startled by how flexible and supportive my managers were about my leave, but they were also being logical–I wasn’t leaving work behind that would languish or be dumped on a colleague, and there was an easy way to suspend my pay. I knew colleagues had taken somewhat similar leaves and how it had worked for them, which is an important thing to know.

I think there are some companies that just have a “no leaves except for health” policy, and that’s pretty much that. If that’s the case for you, or you just don’t feel comfortable asking, another suggestion might be to try to scale back your hours and work part-time. I’ve done this in the past and it is *very* nice to have a day or two a week to work on nothing but writing. Just a thought!

Myth #2: The only thing holding me back from writing more is time. When I’m able, I will write all day every day. Who knows, this might be true for you–it wasn’t for me! I got a lot of writing done, yes–much more than if I’d had to jam it all into evenings and weekends. But I had a really hard time putting in uninterrupted days–at the very least, I had to go to the gym and run a few errands, and often I’d try to see another human being or something too (more on this below).

I got a lot of advice on how to be productive in unstructured time, most of which didn’t work for me but I’ll pass it on to you in case you can use it:
–write first thing in the morning, before doing anything else
–set a word-count goal and don’t stop writing until you reach it
–make a schedule and follow it every day, until it gets to be routine
–unplug the phone; don’t answer your email
–write in the morning, read in the afternoon (or vice versa)

Basically, I wound up doing whatever worked for the day–and mainly it worked pretty well. Some days wound up being wasted wreckages of clean floors and telemarketers, but I think that’s normal. Normal for me, anyway.

Myth #3: Writers are lone wolves, fuelled and solaced by their own imaginative creations. Again, maybe this applies to you. Actually, I’m one of the very few writers I know who self-identifies as an extrovert. That doesn’t mean that I’m not incredibly socially awkward, nor that I’m not often paralyzed by shyness–just that talking to other people, even just briefly, even about shallow or boring things, makes me happier than not doing so. And if I can actually have an interesting conversation with someone I like, home-run. One of my favourite things about my job is my varied and fascinating colleagues; I missed them and their daily chitter-chat intensely.

I would’ve been even worse off had I lived alone during this period; in fact, I probably wouldn’t have tried a leave when I did. As it was, I was octupus-like when my co-habitant returned home: clingy, intense, eager for mindless news of the outside world (ok, I don’t know if octopii enjoy mindless news). However, I did know about this extremely social side of my personality and took steps to bolster it accordingly–I made a lot of lunch plans with friends, used Air Miles to get gift-certificates to cafes and restaurants with Wi-Fi so I’d be able to work elsewhere than on the homefront, called my parents very often (they’re retired; it’s perfect!)

One of the best things I did on my leave was return to the habit of writing in the company of Kerry Clare. We used to do this after work in a cafe, but the birth of her daughter, Harriet, ended that. But this new version was even better, as we wrote during Harriet’s naptime and then, as a reward for all that work, we got to play when she woke up. Hanging around with a fellow writer gave me some good support, a spur to get to work, a source of baked goods and gossip in (somewhat) judicious amounts, and a place to go on Wednesday afternoons. If you, like me, like a little interaction with your literary efforts, I highly recommend a writing buddy. Though I doubt you’ll find one as great as Kerry, nor with as cute a toddler on hand.

Myth #4: A leave will build up some excellent writing momentum to carry me forward once I’ve returned to work and a more cramped writing lifestyle. I don’t know if many people even think about this, let alone believe it, but I did, and for me it totally wasn’t true. After so much time to do exactly what I wanted, even if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do nor even want to make my own decisions much of the time, it has been very very challenging, not to mention exhausting, to return to a more structured existence. I am still not really back on my part-time writing horse yet–if anyone wants to write a post on that, I’d be most interested.

August 11th, 2011

Update on the Co-habitational Reading Challenge

Well, Mark and I do agree that Irving is starting to rely more heavily on contrivances to make the plot work, but who cares when it is so funny? I was lagging behind in the reading, so when Mark was chortling away at my favourite scene in the book–the Christmas Pageant, of course–I wasn’t there yet and he couldn’t read to me. So when I finally got there, he made me read it to him, though he’d just read it to himself an hour before. So great, at few places I couldn’t speak, I was laughing so hard (mainly to do with the cows and donkeys). The kitten seemed to enjoy the read-aloud too; at least, he fell asleep without biting anyone, which is positive for him.

I’ve also been carrying the book around town and mentioning that we’re reading it, and reactions are always the same–everyone’s read this book, and everyone loves it. How amazing! My reading tastes aren’t avant-garde or anything, but I’m usually reading something most people haven’t heard of, or have *only* heard of but not read. It’s a rare pleasure to be able to have a fairly in-depth conversation about my current read with almost everyone.

A few people have made comments on how neatly Irving straddles the literary/commercial fiction line. One friend put it most succinctly when she said it wasn’t stressful to read, but she didn’t feel dumber afterwards. Actually, when I stop to analyze, I find the book pretty complex, especially th222222222 (kitten interference) the time structure. But as I read happily along, I’d don’t usually think about structure–I think about Owen, Johnny, Tabby and Dan, Grandmother Wheelwright, Lydia and Ethel and Germaine, and all the rest of them.