Author: Paula

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The writer’s room by Yvonne Maximchuk

After fifty plus years of at least semi-con­scious in­tro­spec­tion I con­clude I am some­what dis­or­gan­ized. I no longer fight this, but ac­cept it as an es­sen­tial ele­ment of my cre­at­ive be­ing. A cer­tain amount of or­der is ne­ces­sary to ac­tu­ally pull a concept into tan­gible mani­fest­a­tion; how­ever this does not be­gin in a writer’s room.

The first writer’s room is in my mind, in­de­pend­ence from dis­tract­ing stim­uli the only re­quire­ment. Because I live in wil­der­ness and con­sequently am ex­tremely sound sens­it­ive, earplugs are some­times needed for this writer’s room.

IMGP0085 copyLuckily the cre­at­ive force is power­ful and ab­sorb­ing. Mrs. Ferguson, my grade five teach­er, called it ‘day­dream­ing’ and en­cour­aged me to write down the beau­ti­ful thoughts and word strings so I could weave them to­geth­er into a lar­ger nar­rat­ive. Hence a pen and note­book are also needed in my writer’s room.

Often a writer, in­clud­ing me, takes years to birth a book from a stew of in­com­plete ideas so, at a cer­tain time, a phys­ic­al space be­comes im­port­ant. I must be com­fort­able to write; good back sup­port, pad­ded arm rests, feet at the right height from the floor. In my writer’s room a black ‘wheel­ie chair’ has pride of place. My neigh­bor built a ce­dar pic­nic table for me, which I painted white and is now stained with lay­ers of paint splashes. The half of it ded­ic­ated to writ­ing is stacked with piles of notes rel­ev­ant to sev­er­al projects.

When I raise my eyes from the com­puter, one win­dow re­veals the camel­lia, clematis and Japanese maple tree – col­or for all sea­sons and a rest from the screen. The oth­er win­dow shows ever-chan­ging sky, dis­tant is­lands and closer con­ifers. Both views al­low me con­tem­pla­tion space and eye re­lax­a­tion. Windows are es­sen­tial for my writer’s room.

On a shelf be­low the win­dow sits a CD player/​radio. Often my daugh­ter Theda’s in­spir­a­tion­al mu­sic plays. Nearby, a book­shelf rich with the beauty and mean­ing of the ages; dic­tion­ary and thesaur­us, books about root words, the writer’s art and artist’s rights, books of oth­er au­thors’ jour­neys of dis­cov­ery and on every as­pect of my fa­vor­ite top­ic, the coastal world I inhabit.

My writer’s room is my artist’s stu­dio, which em­braced its dual role around 2000. It was a com­fort­able trans­ition as my writ­ing habits are the same as my paint­ing habits… no­tice, con­tem­plate, ima­gine, not­ate, gath­er, as­semble, sit in one place of­ten enough to shape some­thing new and in­ter­est­ing. I love my writer’s rooms.

Paula’s note: Yvonne Maximchuk is an artist and au­thor of three books in­clud­ing a Tide Ripsmem­oir of her wil­der­ness life in the Broughton Archipelago, Drawn to Sea – From Paintbrush to Chainsaw, Carving out a Life on BC’s Rugged Raincoast. Yvonne and the le­gendary Billy Proctor are tour­ing Vancouver Island with their new pub­lic­a­tion Tide Rips and Back Eddies, Bill Proctor’s Tales of Blackfish Sound. Dates and ven­ues can be found at www​.yvon​nemax​imchuk​.com.

 

 

 

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A writer’s space

“This isn’t work­ing!” I said over and over as I shif­ted my com­puter desk from the bed­room to one liv­ing room wall and then another.

In my writ­ing work­shops I al­ways stress the im­port­ance of a place to write. But all of a sud­den Rick and I were crammed into a liv­ing space less than half the size we were ac­cus­tomed to. And carving out a cre­at­ive spot for both of us was threat­en­ing to turn into a make or break issue.

In our three-storey her­it­age house, I had a spa­cious room with lovely big win­dows. Rick had even more space in his of­fice on the lower level. Selling our home of 25 years and tem­por­ar­ily mov­ing into an apart­ment meant go­ing from sev­en book­cases to one, six fil­ing cab­in­ets to two and three big desks to two.

Of course — even though I me­tic­u­lously meas­ured rooms and fur­niture – my care­fully planned place­ment of of­fice fur­niture didn’t work out. As non-fic­tion writers we seem to need an ex­traordin­ary amount of space to store and in­ev­it­ably spread out books, news­pa­per clip­pings and pho­to­cop­ies of old doc­u­ments, as well as our own scribbled notes.

020So now, after nu­mer­ous trips to our stor­age unit, we live with boxes of file folders and stacks of books. I’ve ad­ded an­oth­er large desk to our writ­ing space and also a small table in the kit­chen. Whoever gets there first of­ten claims the kit­chen table as a work sta­tion out­side meal times. And from time to time, I even use the top of the mi­crowave as a stand-up desktop.

The largest wing of the L‑shaped liv­ing room has be­come our shared of­fice. That’s where we spend the bulk of our writ­ing time. And that’s the biggest chal­lenge of all. Before, we worked in sep­ar­ate rooms on dif­fer­ent floors of the house. Now, seated at our com­puters, we can just about shake hands.

Rick’s work­ing on a book about West Coast rum run­ning. He tries to re­strain him­self but sev­er­al times a day blurts out, “Listen to this!” and pro­ceeds to read me a quote by some pro­hib­i­tion era li­quor dis­tri­bu­tion entrepreneur.

I must ad­mit I’m not much bet­ter. I’m re­search­ing wolves and it’s nearly im­possible not to ex­claim, “Look at this photo!” Or to keep the volume down dur­ing a chor­us of wolf howls in a doc­u­ment­ary I’m watch­ing online.Wolves Gary Allan 039

But our trans­ition work space hasn’t been all struggle. Rick’s “of­fice” is closer to the main liv­ing area than in our pre­vi­ous home and he finds him­self at his com­puter earli­er in the day, thus pro­du­cing more. And the move has made us both ap­pre­ci­ate just how im­port­ant a suit­able work space is to our cre­at­ive well­being. All things we’ll con­sider while look­ing for our next house.

 

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Cougars and lions

It’s walk­ing into the jaws of death,” I whispered. Two zebras had broken away from the herd and were mov­ing through the tall grass to­ward three lions snooz­ing in the sun. One zebra lowered its head to graze. The oth­er set a course straight for the lions.

Suddenly the doz­ing fe­lines were alert. Heads raised, they watched lunch on the hoof come closer. One li­on­ess crouched with the tip of its tail twitch­ing. We could see the muscles bunch­ing and re­leas­ing be­neath her tawny coat as she stared in­tently at the zebra. Then,  ever so slowly, she began to slink through the grass.

Walking toward the jaws of death.
Walking to­ward the jaws of death.

I was with a group of friends and fam­ily on sa­fari in Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park. These weren’t the first lions and zebras we’d seen. But it was the first stalk and po­ten­tial kill we’d wit­nessed. The si­lence in the jeep was palpable.

Then the li­on­ess broke cov­er, ra­cing to­ward the zebra. It turned to run but with­in a few strides the lion leapt and sunk its claws onto the black and white striped haunch. There was a col­lect­ive “Oh!” from our vehicle. The zebra bucked and kicked with its rear legs caus­ing the lion to lose its grip. It chased the flee­ing an­im­al for few metres, then gave up.

In the dis­tance we saw the zebra limp­ing and wondered if the deep, bloody gashes would be­come in­fec­ted or at­tract oth­er predators.

Cougars, like all cats, focus intently on their prey.
Cougars, like all cats, fo­cus in­tently on their prey.

Although a sim­il­ar col­our, African lions are much big­ger than cou­gars and live in large prides un­like the more sol­it­ary cou­gar. (We saw as many as 35 lions loun­ging to­geth­er!) But the two spe­cies of big cats are equally op­por­tun­ist­ic when it comes to prey. And the lion’s total fo­cus and man­ner of ap­proach­ing her prey was ex­actly how a cou­gar would re­spond to an un­aware deer com­ing its way.

But the story wasn’t over yet. As the li­on­ess sauntered back to her com­pan­ions our guide said, “She’s com­ing back for a hug.” When the lion reached one of the oth­ers, she placed her head on its shoulder and the su­pine lion reached up to wrap her fore­leg and paw around the other’s neck.

Mountain lions of­ten hunt alone but on oc­ca­sion a fe­male with cubs or two young adults will tackle prey to­geth­er. I won­der if cou­gars also provide con­sol­ing hugs if their pro­spect­ive meal escapes?

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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

This is one of those pick it up and can’t put it down books. Station Eleven is en­ga­ging, com­pel­ling and eer­ily plausible.

The nov­el, re­leased in Sept. 2014, is writ­ten by Emily St. John Mandel who was born and raised on the west coast of Canada and now resides in New York City. For part of her youth, she was homeschooled on Denman Island which is cur­rently home to about 1,000.

But don’t just take my word about the book. Station Eleven has re­ceived rave re­views, ap­peared on the New York Times Bestseller list, been writ­ten about in The New Yorker and was short­l­is­ted for the 2014 National Book Awards.

Published by Harper Avenue ISBN 978-1-44343-486-7
Published by Harper Avenue
ISBN 978−1−44343−486−7

The book is in its six­teenth print­ing and Mandel has tour dates booked in the USA, United Kingdom, France and be­yond into the spring of 2016.

The story takes place some­time in the fu­ture after a cata­stroph­ic pan­dem­ic wipes out huge seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion and des­troys life as we know it. That means no in­ter­net, tele­vi­sion, air­planes, auto­mo­biles or even gro­cery stores. Who sur­vives and what must they do in or­der to do so?

In Station Eleven, Mandel de­vel­ops a cast of char­ac­ters, most not­ably a Shakespearian/​music troupe, who travel through­out the Great Lakes re­gion. They search empty homes for canned goods, camp out in Walmart’s and air­port ter­min­als and do their best to avoid re­li­gious fan­at­ics and fam­il­ies who have gone feral.

The writ­ing is a seam­less ex­plor­a­tion of per­son­al­it­ies and re­la­tion­ships, al­li­ances and con­front­a­tions. Mandel takes the read­er on an epic jour­ney from past to present to por­tray a vis­ion of en­dur­ance, friend­ship and compassion.

In my former po­s­i­tion as arts writer for the Comox Valley Record, I in­ter­viewed Mandel and re­viewed her first two nov­els, Last Night in Montréal and The Singer’s Gun. Those books were good but Station Eleven is ex­cel­lent.

And al­though I usu­ally shy away from books that even hint at dysto­pi­an sci­ence fic­tion, Mandel’s mas­ter­ful and genre de­fy­ing writ­ing found me eagerly pick­ing up Station Eleven each even­ing and sorry to reach the end.

A few words from Emily:

I wanted to write some­thing quite dif­fer­ent from my pre­vi­ous three nov­els, which were gen­er­ally cat­egor­ized as lit­er­ary noir. I was happy with the way they turned out, but thought it would be in­ter­est­ing to go in a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion. I love film and theatre, and am in­ter­ested in the idea of what it means to de­vote your life to your art, so de­cided to write about the life of an actor.

At the same time, I was in­ter­ested in writ­ing about the mod­ern world, this ex­traordin­ary place in which we find ourselves: where wa­ter comes out of faucets, air­planes cross the sky, light­ing a room is as simple as flick­ing a switch on the wall, and an­ti­bi­ot­ics are available. 

One way of writ­ing about some­thing is to con­sider its ab­sence, so I thought it would be in­ter­est­ing to set the book in a post-apo­ca­lyptic land­scape, as a way of con­sid­er­ing the mod­ern world. I think of the book as a love let­ter to the mod­ern world, writ­ten in the form of a requiem.

I wrote Station Eleven over the course of two and a half years and spent an­oth­er three months edit­ing it once I sold it to my pub­lish­er.  I’m cur­rently work­ing on a new nov­el but the top­ic’s a secret!  

To find out more vis­it www​.emily​man​del​.com.

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