December 21st, 2010

Reverb 21

Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) (Author: Jenny Blake) (www.reverb10.com)

I do not understand this question; surely, if I knew what would lead to the best outcome 10 years from now, I would be doing it. In fact, what I *am* doing now is my best guess at what *would* make my future self happy (except all those Quality Streets I just ate, which my 42-year-old self is probably none too impressed by).

I don’t at all understand what I’m supposed to write here–a fantasy where my 2021, rich and famous and wildly adored self congratulates me on fine work ethic and great ideas? Or something silly, about how bad my skin will be in 10 years if I keep consuming chocolate at this rate? I just don’t get it; my life at the moment reflects the best information I have.

December 20th, 2010

Reverb 20

What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) (Author: Jake Nickell) (www.reverb10.com)

If you want to get technical about it, I actually should have moved in the summer of 2005, when my commute changed because I went back to school. and certain other issues began to emerge with the apartment. But I didn’t, because I was all of the above: worried, busy, etc. And really, I still am–but 2011 is the year nonetheless!

I will try to keep the “I hate wrapping things in newspaper and not being able to find things and chaos and confusion” posts to a minimum.

Reverb 19

What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leonie Allan) (www.reverb10.com)

Oh, crunchy! I actually had a very healthy year in 2010–one cold and assorted headaches and that’s about it. I feel lucky for that–all I really hope for in 2011 is that it continues. I promise to keep up my end of the bargain (sleep, gym, decent food, not eating my weight in Nutella, etc).

December 19th, 2010

Reverb 18

What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it? (Author: Kaileen Elise) (www.reverb.com)

Huh. This makes me seem uncourageous, but I can’t think of anything I specifically set out to try this year. Ok, maybe the big roadtrip to Charlottetown–which proved that I need to work on my driving skills and ability to mange stress. This has come up before in the Reverb process.

The thing I want to “try” in the new year is the new book–again, this has come up already (I’m finding some of these prompts a tad redundant). What’s new about it? Well, Iots of things, but I don’t suppose I’ll know exactly until I either do those things, or fail at doing them. Either way, much lies ahead.

December 18th, 2010

Reverb 17

What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver) (www.reverb10.com)

As it turns out, I can be slightly more flexible than I previously thought! I can get outside of my rigidly imposed systems and schedules and not completely crumble into dust. Guess who just at lunch at 2:30 in the afternoon and did not die? Me!!

Of course, what would be useful is to apply this skill beyond inane things like lunch and towards useful compromises with people I care about. I don’t always need to go my own way.

December 16th, 2010

Reverb 16

How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick) (www.reverb10.com)

This story is so sad and common it’s almost hackneyed, but I’ve had three acquaintances diagnosed with breast cancer in the past year or two. I don’t know those women well–two wives of friends, one a roommate of a friend–but it’s just really shocking to see something like this penetrate my social circle. By “something like this” I don’t mean cancer specifically; just any kind of major sickness. Isn’t that supposed to happen to people who are very old, who have already had all that life has to offer and raised their children and loved their partners and accomplished all that they wanted? It’s so baffling that these women could be so sick when it’s blindingly obvious that they need to live so much longer and do so much more stuff. As far as I know, all three have stayed pretty strong and are getting on with all the stuff they need to do, but I bet you think about a to-do list a little differently once you’ve had cancer.

I don’t know exactly how this has changed me, but I would file it in the “maturing” folder.

December 15th, 2010

What I’m up to

If you haven’t heard my voice in a while, you might want to check out a podcast of a reading I did on Hear Hear’s website. You can also hear Andrew Daley, Julia Tausch, and Adrienne Gruber, all of whom I had the pleasure of reading with that evening, and all of whom are fab. The piece I did was an excerpt from my story “The Weatherboy”–if it whets your appetite for the whole thing, you can download “The Weatherboy” from Rattling Books. That reading is done by Gerard Whelan, and is really much better than mine–warm and musical, arch in places, completely as I would have done it if I were a much better reader. Enjoy!

If you’d like to see what a bunch of the writers from the last issue of The New Quarterly (including me!) are reading at the moment, please check out TNQ’s Who’s Reading What feature. And did I mention that I wrote the letter for TNQ’s donation campaign this year? For those not on their mailing list and who are curious, I’ve copied in the text from the letter below–if it inspires you to give, hooray–but no pressure.

My second acceptance from a literary journal was from The New Quarterly. I still have Kim Jernigan’s shocking, thrilling acceptance letter from September 4, 2006. I was utterly amazed; I had sent my story off to strangers, and they liked it, and wanted to share it with more. Kim said, “We’ve all…recognized…the way [the protagonist] tries to remain aloof from the lives around her while also feeling disconnected from her own life.” It was such a joy to be so well read, so understood. I felt like I’d thrown something fragile that I loved up into the air and a stranger had gently caught it.

When I first started sending out work, I was 28, and had been writing stories for maybe 15 years. It took so long, but I had finally reached that crucial point: my terror of rejection had been exceeded by my desire to share my stories, which I loved so much, and see if they resonated with anyone else. Publication in a respected journal gave me a sudden audience of serious readers, often subscribers who know the magazine well and are loyal to the editors; they’ll take a new writer seriously because they know who chose the work, and they’ll take the time to listen for that resonance. Publication in a literary journal is an invitation to join the conversation.

But let’s back up, to before acceptance or publication or that reading audience of subscribers–it’s thrilling just to have a reading audience of thoughtful readers on the editorial board. You can’t really ask for a more attentive audience than editors, who have read 100s or 1000s of stories and devoted their time to really listening to what each story is doing and why. That attention can be terrifying, too—if something is going wrong in a story, a casual reader or even a serious one reading for pleasure might miss it. Someone with years of experience critiquing and selecting stories, and who puts his or her name on the masthead won’t. When TNQ accepts a story, you can know it’s the real deal.

When I submit to a journal I respect, when they don’t take a story I can often learn something from that too. Even if they haven’t had time to offer criticism, knowing that the editors think it’s not quite there can be enough encouragement to go back to the drawing board. The TQN eds are notably generous with their time and criticism, however, and their feedback can be so valuable when I’m searching for direction. The story “The House on Elsbeth” was rejected by The New Quarterly in the summer of 2007, but with their feedback I revised over the next six months, and it was published in the mag the following summer.

But there’s so much more than just giving us a place to publish! The New Quarterly is good reading, and a pleasure I look forward to every quarter. More than entertainment, I and so many other writers count on the lit journals to bring the news: what new things are writers doing? What new forms or adaptations of old ones have the poets found? What are ways story-writers are solving issues of style and structure? And how are the lines being blurred between the genres in ways that expand them? I’ll never forget reading Elizabeth Hay’s “Last Poems” at three in the morning and feeling like she had told the utter truth, and yet made it more than just truth. How did she do that?

Every issue of TNQ—or any worthwhile litmag—brings me 20-30 voices, that many conceptions of the universe and the written word. Not all are my cup of tea, but heaven help the writer—or the human being—who drinks only from her own cup. I like reading something I didn’t expect to read, or to like. I like to be surprised—it’s very close to being inspired, I think.

I also like feeling that I’m part of this group of surprising writers and insightful readers—the team that goes out to the readings and applauds, the team that makes comments on each issue in emails and blog posts. On the famed TNQ/CNQ (Canadian Notes and Queries) tour of 2008, Kim and TNQ managing editor Rosalynn Tyo drove a few of us story-writers, plus a very little, very cute, very vocal baby, from Windsor to Waterloo in a blinding snowstorm. Some of us ate chicken with our fingers in the back seat, and everyone was in a strangely good mood, and I don’t think any of us will soon forget it.

Literary journals do so much to foster a sense that we are all—writers and readers, poets and artists, fans and friends—part of something we can work on, separately and yet together. I am so happy to write this letter for The New Quarterly, to remind everyone (including me) how much good they do.

Reverb 15

Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010. (Author: Patti Digh) (www.reverb10.com)

Ok, here goes–no particular order:

–L dressed as a bee with Homer Simpson mask on top
–North Bay Saturday night, -10 C, girls in tank tops running down the sidewalk
–blood red jellyfish in PEI
–K’s gorgeous dining room at Women’s Writing Salon
–Josey Kitten hiding behind the drier cord
–working late and sort of liking it
–the afternoon I spent writing at the airport (and riding the monorail)
–N making little animals out of squished up Tootsie Rolls at D’s birthday party
–running down a hill with the Divine Miss M, then running back up and running down again
–when M and I found the oatcakes at Second Cup in Halifax
–walking around a corner with F and suddenly, blammo, the White House
–finally meeting my penpal of 13 years…for brunch
–this really pretty salad I made one day when I was working from home
–this really good talk I had with my brother one night while I was making dinner
–Grand Beach in Winnipeg, and the discovery that it’s strangely like Florida
–the really fluffy cat I saw on Thanksgiving night

Whew–hey, that was fun!

Reverb 14

What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)

Toronto transit.

So yesterday, I got as far as to decide what I wanted to write about, but then I had to leave and actually take transit. This is what happened:

My first bus is notoriously unreliable–sometimes you wait 20 minutes and then 3 of them show up. I’m sure you know; there are lines like this all over the city. Anyway, I only need to go 4 stops on that line, so when there is no bus in sight I walk, which I did last night. It was snowy and cold, but not as cold as in the morning, so I was more or less ok.

Then I got to my second bus line–this one normally totally reliable and frequent, which is a good thing because the distance I need to go on it is totally unwalkable. Except, last night it didn’t come for 25 minutes. By that point, I’d lost feeling in my nose and toes, and a little bit of faith in my sympathy for my fellow human beings. The two people behind me in the crowded bus shelter had the loudest voices and the most obnoxious relationship on earth–of course, the people behind me always do. But what *was* their relationship? Because it was too dark to read and my iPod wires tend to freeze in the cold, I had plenty of time to contemplate this. A couple? Maybe, they were around the same age, but I don’t think I’d order *my* partner to blow his nose (but maybe that’s just because he’s pretty well on top of things and doesn’t need my intervention). Brother and sister? They sure did bicker a lot; my favourite part was the screaming (but at least brief) argument over how much sugar was too much in the cup of coffee they were sharing (why? why?), which resulted in packets of sugar being thrown at my feet. Then, for a while, the male left the bus shelter and wandered around in the snow, which the female stood where she had been left and wailed, “Get back in the bus shelter, get back in the bus shelter!”

The man beside me attempted to say a couple things to me in a sympathetic tone of voice, but between the wind, the yelling behind us, and his thick accent, the only word I could make out was “fuck.” I smiled pacificistically at him.

By the time I wished I was dead, the bus came. Of course it was packed–by my count, at least 5 scheduled busses hadn’t arrived. I determinedly slithered my way to the back. Something makes Toronto passengers very reluctant to move back–when you ask them, they always say, “I don’t mind standing here, I’m getting off soon.” But *I* am going nearly to the end of the line, and I do mind. After only a few stops, I got a seat at the very back, by a window. I couldn’t look out, because it was coated in grime. I tried reading for a while, but something weird was going on–the bus was moving very slowly and jerkily, stopping and starting. Were we stuck in traffic? It was hard to concentrate. Finally I tipped my head against the window (toque providing some cushion) and fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had no idea how much time had passed, and because I couldn’t see out, I didn’t know where we were, either. I kind of panicked, unreasonably–there is no where that bus goes that I don’t know well or couldn’t deal with, but it was weird not to know where I was. I finally stood up in my seat, panicking the guy beside me with the giant grocery bag in his lap, and looked out the front window–we’d gone about six blocks. We were still stuck in some sort of mystery traffic-jam, the likes of which I have never seen in that part of the world before. I actually couldn’t even see traffic around us from where I sat, I just know that we were going 10km/h with frequent stops–for all I know, we were stuck in quicksand or molasses.

So we staggered along, I read a bit of the New Yorker, and the guy beside me ate two bags of salt’n’vinegar chips in rapid succession. When we finally got to my stop, I had been in transit for a grand total of 90 minutes, about twice as long as it usually takes. I got off with the same two people I’d been waiting with. I overheard them talking about which bus they would take next (those poor people–where were they going?) but then they walked right past the stop. I have absolutely no idea what was going on with those two.

And after all that…I STILL say I appreciate the TTC. For one thing, I still got to my appointment (only 3 minutes late) and there wasn’t any other way for carless me to do so–the TTC is not annoying enough to cancel out being able to go anywhere in the city for $3. And although if I win a car in Roll-Up-the-Rim or something, I would probably be pleased, I wouldn’t have really wanted to driving in all that…whatever was going on with traffic. Also, the people I was travelling with, the crazy ones? I’m *really* glad they weren’t in charge of 1000 pounds of hurtling steel and glass. On the bus, they could only damage eardrums.

Because I’m getting older, so are my friends, and I hear more transit-bashing than I used to. Common threads are: “There are too many weirdos on TTC” “I hate having to brush against strangers to get around them” “You could get bedbugs from sitting in a subway seat” “People always try to talk to me on transit” etc., etc. So much of the negativity I hear about transit basically boils down to: strangers are bad, being alone in one’s car is good. Which may well be true…for some people, people who lead lives with a lot of people in them already. For example, I drove when I worked at a fast-food joint, and was pretty happy to spend that time alone with the radio. But now I have in essence two jobs that both involve being all alone for hours at a time, and I crave strangers. I crave people, eavesdropped conversations, strange ideas–maybe not brushing up against people, certainly not bedbugs, and likely not an extend conversation on nose-blowing technique. But it’s what I’ve got, so I’ll take it and hope it gives me some insight into the world.

Maybe I’m just trying to make the best of the situation; after all, I really did sort of want to die during the above debacle. If I do win that roll-up-the-rim, I might never look back. But as long as things continue as they are, I don’t mind; I think the TTC makes my life more interesting. Also, if I drove, I couldn’t sleep on the way.

December 14th, 2010

Reverb 13

When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky) (www.reverb10.com)

I’m pretty sure writing it here qualifies as the idea, and not the making-ideas-happen, but I guess in January (or sooner, if being a giant slacker gets boring) I will begin another book. I’m looking forward to it, mainly, but also–what else would I do?