Wednesday, April 5, 2023

What is important?

 


Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. 
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

The awesome co-hosts for the April 5 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, Nancy Gideon, and Natalie Aguirre!

April 5 question - Do you remember writing your first book? What were your thoughts about a career path on writing? Where are you now and how is it working out for you?

hmmm...my first book...insert those swirly camera shots here designating a flashback.

The first one I attempted was when I was in grade seven with my best friend Sheila McClow. She did the illustrations and we both worked on the story. I think I still have it somewhere but we didn't get very far. It involved three tiny dolls (yep, still have them) and a tiny teddy-bear (nope) and a trip on a turtle's back somewhere. I do not remember the name. We were hugely inspired by E.B. White's Stuart Little. And yes that is the same E.B. White who co-wrote with Strunk The Elements of Style, which I presume you keep to hand.

For many years after I did not attempt a book-length story. I wrote poems, and I wrote some journalistic pieces and I wrote plays. But I always wanted to write the great Canadian novel. I started up again in 2000. My first one that I finished all the way through is a novel called Feckless. It went nowhere but I still like it all the same. Then I wrote a mystery called The Rock Walker which I believe I talked about endlessly on this blog. It too went nowhere but perhaps I didn't try too hard as I don't think it was really that good. It has some good bits that I mourn still and I suppose I could go back into it. Then I wrote True. I really liked that book, but it again did not inspire any publishers. My next one is Bright Angel. It is a YA I guess, though I didn't think that it was while I was writing it. I worked very hard on it and got some outside help. It has received some positivity from publishers and was being considered two years ago when the publisher who was thinking on it died. It is still out there because I think it is a damn good story. 
About six or seven years ago I began The Crooked Knife. I started it in a NaNoWriMo (which had kick-started several of my projects) and I sold it about two years ago to an independent small publisher (Boulder Books in Newfoundland - you can go there and see their other books and maybe buy mine if you like mysteries set in Labrador). Now I'm working on a second Nell Munro novel that I'm calling Butter and Snow until someone tells me different.

As to my thoughts on my career path as a writer I didn't have any. I had fuzzy dreams and so forth but no. I think maybe the closest I came is to have some career plans around my play writing. After all those mostly happened. I wrote some plays, mostly with other people, and then they were on the stage with people stomping around speaking words I'd written. But my thoughts as a writer were mostly that I'd sit around in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, puffing on a pipe in some bar with Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje and wouldn't we laugh! Apparently I'm sort of a guy in my writer fantasies. 


An important aside: The other day I was feeling kind of punk about the whole writer thing. Or the whole selling books thing. (that's possibly why the notion of writing being a career kind of evades me right now) Anywhoozie - I was a bit down and not able to talk about it because I should be nothing but excited because I got a book published and that was my dream and yada yada you know. And then I got a fan letter - the person had actually labelled her email as a fan letter. And this person wrote about how much The Crooked Knife meant to her and described to me why and it was for all the reasons I wrote the book and my heart got too big for my chest because I remembered that is why I write. I write so that a stranger can see the world the way I do for a moment, or can be touched because I see the world the way they do. I was thinking about percentages and book sales and so on and she cut through all of that and reminded me about what was important.

 



6 comments:

Liza said...

"I write so that a stranger can see the world the way I do for a moment, or can be touched because I see the world the way they do." What a perfect way to describe it. I am so very pleased that you received the fan letter and I'm delighted that you are working on a new story. Glad you are having a lovely day. Cloudy and cool here, but the daffodils are blooming, so there is that.

Natalie Aguirre said...

That's great that you sold a book. But I understand the down feelings about the selling part of writing. That's great that you're working on book 2 in your series.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Those fan letters are what saves us sometimes!

jabblog said...

What a lovely story. Sometimes it just takes a kind comment at the right time to change one's perspective.

Nick Wilford said...

What a great email to receive. That's the moments that make this worthwhile.

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