Sunday, April 14, 2013

This just in:

The next Still Point Arts Quarterly will be out in early June and will include my piece called Transcend.
Here is a preview of the magazine and for those of you who don't live out here in lotus land with me, a preview of spring. (Hang in there!)http://www.stillpointartgallery.com/uploads/files/SPAQ10_SUM13_PREVIEW.html


Conversations

The piece posted below came from a writing assignment in a workshop to "write a conversation". It was amazing the things people came up with. Try this one for yourself. Do a little eavesdropping. Well, a little extra easesdropping, then. Write it out. Or write one half of it. Look at it with no visual cues and see if it is the same conversation or not. Quite a fascinating exercise. But first, from many years back, I offer my first ever stolen snippet of conversation, from a table of 60-something women having coffee in a fast food joint. This was the only line I heard as I walked past: "You're the same as me, Gladys: my girls can do anything and my boys are useless." Now, how could I not write that down? http://www.sawmillmagazine.com/vancouver-conversations/

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

New directions

So I've been thinking about this blog and the fact that I teach a lot less now and write a lot more. Interestingly, I spend the same amount of time thinking about behaviour. But that's why I write, really. Writing is my way of understanding behaviour; that of the characters, the real people who inspire them, and ultimately, my own. And because I am working on projects for kids (YA and MG novels), I am still spending lots of time thinking about kids. In the early stages of the YA novel, a writing group gave me the feedback that they just couldn't relate to the main character - for a variety of reasons - and when I spent some time with it, I realized that I was a little annoyed with my grieving 15 year old protagonist, Andi. I was not creating any sense of compassion or connection between Andi and the reader because of my own feelings for her. You see, I was a grieving 15 year old once, and unlike my protagonist, I did not start partying or lying or generally falling apart. I was a good little soldier. And I was resenting my character because she got to be a "normal kid". That was the underlying issue beneath my "annoyance". I gave her the space to grieve in a very real way and then I was annoyed with her when she took it. The upshot was all good: 1) I finally acknowledged that I didn't get a lot of help with my grieving and (apparently!) that pissed me off a little. Some healing occurred for me. 2) Once I decided Andi did deserve to work through her grief however she saw fit, I found some compassion for her. When I rewrote, the tone was completely different and the problem resolved. 3) I learned that writing is just like teaching that way: if you ask a student - or character - to face something difficult, you better be prepared to deal with your own issues.