Writing

I don't like calling myself a writer. It feels pretentious. I prefer to say I write. But then I haven't actually written during much of my life and certainly not regularly, at least not for the long haul. And I'm not published. That actually feels like a relief. Gawd nose what my life would become if I ever became a successful writer. I don't really like idea of notoriety, of interviews and having to travel from city to city to speak to burgeoning crowds of half a dozen or more to flog a book. Then there would be the publisher's expectations that I produce yet another marketable creation. Makes me want to hide under the covers.

I am part of a writer's group, just three of us actually nearing the ends of our respective first novels. Ronnie's book is about the lives of four different gay men between 1979 and 1983 told in four parts, one for each man, as they intertwine and link to one another as they move across western Canada. It's almost like a play in that there's little author comment and it is told in the first person, present tense.
Stitch's book oscillates between two very different lives, a 12 year old boy in central British Columbia living on a farm and an underemployed 33 year old gay man in Seattle, whose lives never intersect at first but they seem to reflect each other. They are both having a rather traumatic summer. They meet at the end of the book 20 years later at the historic first Radical Faerie gathering in the New Mexico desert (I think).

Mine is an historic piece set on the north coast of British Columbia. It traces the impact of European (British Anglican) culture on the native Tsimshians of that region over a period of 50 years. It is told through the eyes of a gay Tsimshian man who is raised in a traditional village, then around a White trading fort where guns and alcohol start tearing his people apart and then in a Christian Utopian village guided by an Anglican missionary. It's half fiction and half historically--to the best of my ability--accurate. I wanted to reveal a very interesting piece of Canadian history, the story of this amazing Christian community that thrived for 20 years but which has now almost totally been forgotten, and detail what happened to native people in Canada, by far the weakest link in Canada's human rights record. I also wanted to show how Anglican Victorian and Tsimshian values clashed and how someone might survive spiritually after the life he has discarded all his traditional values to embrace betrays him completely.

I loved the idea of having my first novel being an historical one. So much of the plot is decided for me. Each historical event or recorded happening is like a fence post for the novel, which itself is the fence. Then it's only a matter of creating the characters and plot details that will move the plot believably from one fence post to the next. Of course it means much more research if one cares about authenticity, which I do. And research is not always rewarding or successful. If you find anything useful it always comes out of some text like a dried flower that you find pressed, forgotten and missing a few pieces between the pages of a rarely used dictionary. You then have to try to imagine what it would look like rehydrated, reconstructed, growing and blowing in the scented breeze in amongst the all the other flowers around it. The other challenge in trying to write about a lost culture is to reveal it slowing and clearly, step by step without sounding like an encyclopedia, while the plot compels the reader along. If you don't explain enough you will lose the reader and if you explain too much.... well, you know.

It is a lot of work, but more than that too. I let the whole project go to fallow three years ago after it had soaked up over half my free time for 17 months. It seemed to grow just to big for me so that I lost my clear perspective of what I was creating. It was over 300 pages at that time.

The other thing that bothered me at the time is the degree to which the writing 'took over me'. I honestly feel much of the time that I had little to do with the writing. The words seemed to come from elsewhere, some other plane perhaps, and that I was just channeling what someone else was writing through my mind and body. After all, none of the characters resemble anyone I know but they each come out distinct and well-formed (I think). Whole conversations and developments came out of nowhere without planning. Often I'd sit down to write just to find out what was going to happen in the plot that day. I'd get so engrossed that I'd short-change my sleep and forget to eat meals. My whole body seemed alive, filled with some strange energy I always associate with creating. Amongst my friends I became a total bore, only talking about what I was writing and having little interest in anything else.

Of course, friends don't want to hear about it because they don't want to read it. They fear they will insult me with their lack of enthusiasm or by saying something they shouldn't. I don't blame them--I've read some stories that really were poorly done, though I'm not usually very critical. Sharing creative works is almost as dangerous as borrowing and lending money between friends. Something could go terribly wrong and destroy the friendship. I don't fear that but they often do. I love some of the excuses they make up though.... "O, my doctor says I should avoid reading because it might cause cataracts," or "I'm sorry, I only read cereal boxes..." Well, I suppose one can't go around with an open mind all the time. He might get something in it. :o)

Somewhere along the line I have lost my fear of receiving feedback, a necessary survival skill if I ever do find a publisher. What I'd like to do is to lose my need to be interesting or to win people's approval. Then of course there's my fear of publishers......

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by."
. - Douglas Adams