Author: Paula

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Focus like a Cougar to Finish Your Book

Writing a book is an in­tense, chal­len­ging and re­ward­ing pro­cess. But if you’re work­ing on a big pro­ject and the dead­line is loom­ing, the in­tense and chal­len­ging as­pect can be overwhelming.

That’s how I felt last fall as I struggled to fin­ish The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous. I had so much fas­cin­at­ing in­form­a­tion! How could I pos­sibly con­dense it into suit­able ma­nu­script length by March 31?

Then I read an art­icle about ac­com­plish­ing goals in the Mayo Clinic news­let­ter. The three main points were:

1. Clarity of fo­cus. The best nev­er lose sight of the goal. The event is circled on the cal­en­dar. As the count­down be­gins, all activ­it­ies are dir­ec­ted to­ward that date.

2. Tunnel vis­ion. This means hav­ing the cour­age not to ac­cept an en­gage­ment or even re­spond to an email that doesn’t ad­vance the goal.

3. Intense com­mit­ment. Distractions must be elim­in­ated. That in­cludes cut­ting back on non­es­sen­tial ob­lig­a­tions. It also means hav­ing the dis­cip­line to walk away from people who are neg­at­ive and un­sup­port­ive.

I prin­ted those guidelines out and put them on my desk where I would see them every day. In or­der to ac­com­plish what I needed to do with­in the time avail­able, I cre­ated monthly, weekly and daily goals. It might sound scary, but it kept me on track!

Taking my com­mit­ment one step fur­ther, I set up my laptop in an up­stairs bed­room. That way I wasn’t dis­trac­ted by Rick, the dog or the ringing of the phone. And I didn’t have ac­cess to the in­ter­net and email un­less I used my PC down­stairs. It’s amaz­ing how much time that saved!

Some de­cisions were dif­fi­cult. I lim­ited get to­geth­ers with friends and, even though Bailey got a walk every day, there weren’t as many of the long, off leash romps on the beach that we both en­joy. Of course, none of this would have been pos­sible without an un­der­stand­ing and sup­port­ive partner.

A cougar focuses on its prey with intense concentration, never shifting its gaze even when circling around or changing position.
A cou­gar fo­cuses on its prey with in­tense con­cen­tra­tion, nev­er shift­ing its gaze even when circ­ling around or chan­ging position.

Cougars are known for their in­tense fo­cus so every day I told my­self to “fo­cus like a cou­gar.” I of­ten asked my­self, “Does this have any­thing to do with cou­gars?” If the an­swer was no, I made a note to deal with it after I sent the ma­nu­script in.

And yes! I made my dead­line, right on March 31. The Cougar will be in stores near the end of Sept.

Will I use the Mayo Clinic guidelines again? You bet! They’re ex­cel­lent strategies for fin­ish­ing a book, art­icle or thes­is. Or whatever else your goal is, be it train­ing for a mara­thon, los­ing ten pounds in two months or be­com­ing a millionaire.

 

 

 

 

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Cougars are Curious

Photo by Verena Vomastic
Photo by Verena Vomastic

Like all cats, cou­gars are curi­ous. They’re at­trac­ted to move­ments, noises and ob­jects they haven’t seen be­fore. But a curi­ous cou­gar can quickly be­come a dan­ger­ous one if some­thing trig­gers its chase and kill instinct.

The most com­mon trig­gers are quick, er­rat­ic ac­tions such as jog­ging or chil­dren play­ing, high-pitched, prey-like sounds or an an­im­al or per­son ap­pear­ing vul­ner­able be­cause they are alone, seem in­jured or are small, which in­cludes crouch­ing or squatting.

The young adult cou­gar shown here was pho­to­graphed star­ing in a Manitou Springs, Colorado home. At one point the cat stood up and put its paws on the win­dow and the own­ers wor­ried the glass would break.

Luckily, the cou­gar de­cided it had seen enough and sauntered away. And tracks in the snow re­vealed that it wasn’t trav­el­ling alone. The size of the paw prints in­dic­ated it was ac­com­pan­ied by its moth­er and a sibling.

 

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111 West Coast Literary Portraits

If a picture’s worth a thou­sand words, 111 West Coast Literary Portraits is in­valu­able. Fifteen years in the mak­ing, it con­tains more than 100 pho­to­graphs of B.C. au­thors, as well as ex­tracts from their work or per­son­al notes writ­ten spe­cific­ally for the book.

The book is an im­port­ant doc­u­ment­ary of B.C. lit­er­at­ure. It in­cludes emer­ging, fam­ous, as well as in­fam­ous au­thors and speaks to the di­versity of lit­er­at­ure, cul­ture and the unique voice of Canada’s most west­ern province. A work of art in its own right, the 8 x 10 heavy stock, glossy pa­per gives a depth and lu­min­os­ity to each por­trait. And the use of black and white film provides a clas­sic, time­less qual­ity to the images.

When Barry began pho­to­graph­ing writers he didn’t real­ize he was start­ing a book pro­ject. He and his wife at the time, Blaise Enright, were new to the West Coast and wanted a pro­ject they could work on to­geth­er while ex­plor­ing their new en­vir­on­ment. By a quirk of fate, au­thors be­came the fo­cal point. But it wasn’t al­ways easy.

R.W. Gray wanted to be pho­to­graphed par­tially sub­merged in wa­ter. Rick and I wanted to in­clude our dog but Bailey thought pos­ing meant run­ning around in circles. Stephen Reid wanted to wear a cop cos­tume and have a gun and some money on the table in front of him. Little did Barry and Blaise know that Reid’s props would later be used in a real life drama.

But per­haps the most dif­fi­cult photo shoot was of poet Al Purdy. The ini­tial im­ages didn’t turn out well. Soon after Purdy re­ceived the proofs Barry answered the phone to find someone scream­ing at him. Purdy, a char­ac­ter with an oc­ca­sion­al crusty edge, de­man­ded the pho­tos be re­taken the next day or he’d black list the pho­to­graph­ers with every writer in B.C.

It was a scramble for Barry and Blaise to get to Victoria from Vancouver on time but they made it. Along the way, Blaise bought an as­sort­ment of squeaky toys hop­ing to light­en up the situ­ation. After the shoot, Purdy said he hadn’t known wheth­er to smile or be of­fen­ded. The photo on page 158 tells it all.

As the col­lec­tion of pho­to­graphs grew, it was titled Lit Happens and ex­hib­ited in a vari­ety of ven­ues to pro­mote lit­er­acy in B.C. A couple of years ago, Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Publishing ap­proached Barry about turn­ing the pho­to­graphs and ac­com­pa­ny­ing text by au­thors into a book.

This fall, Barry has ex­hib­ited prints from the book, at­ten­ded sign­ings and par­ti­cip­ated on pan­els of pho­to­graph­ers through­out the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands. 

Barry’s al­ways been pas­sion­ate about black and white film. “It helps the view­er fo­cus on the sub­ject,” he ex­plains. “There’s no con­fus­ing palette of col­ours and it seems to really high­light the sub­ject. Also, film pho­to­graphs have a depth to them that di­git­al can’t du­plic­ate.” As well as tak­ing the pho­to­graphs, Barry de­veloped all the film, mat­ted and framed the prints and even made the card­board boxes to trans­port them in.

Through 2009 and 2010, Barry and I col­lab­or­ated on a photo-journ­al­ism pro­ject called On the Edge, Putting a Face on Homelessness. Time and time again, I wit­nessed Barry’s easy-go­ing man­ner help nervous folks re­lax, watched him guide people into nat­ur­al-look­ing poses and ad­mired the me­tic­u­lous de­tail that went into the print­ing of film and fram­ing of photo and text.

He’s brought the same at­ten­tion to de­tail to 111 West Coast Literary Portraits. For more in­form­a­tion vis­it www​.barry​peterson​pho​to​graphy​.com or  www​.mother​tongue​pub​lish​ing​.com.

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On the Edge

A couple of years ago I worked on a photo-doc­u­ment­ary pro­ject with pho­to­graph­er Barry Peterson. We in­ter­viewed and pho­to­graphed people who were home­less, had been home­less or were in danger of be­com­ing homeless.

The stor­ies were mov­ing in a way I nev­er ex­pec­ted. I learned that no mat­ter where or how a per­son lived, they still had hopes and dreams, just like I do. They ex­per­i­enced joy, sad­ness, fear. They did whatever was ne­ces­sary to survive.

Every October I post one of the stor­ies and pho­tos from that pro­ject on my blog. I do this to hon­our the people I met, to re­cog­nize their strength in the face of ad­versity and their abil­ity to find hu­mour in the bleak­est of moments.

Below is Jessica’s story. I got an email from her last year. She’d had her op­er­a­tion, was do­ing some vo­lun­teer work and was dat­ing. There were still chal­lenges in her life but she was happy.

Jessica, age 45 

      Jessica had it all: a spouse, a car, a job and a house in Europe. But every time her life seemed per­fect, it fell apart. At 28, di­vorced and un­em­ployed, a friend stuck a needle in her arm to make her feel bet­ter. That was the be­gin­ning of a 12-year cycle of drug ad­dic­tion, re­hab, build­ing a life and then dis­ap­pear­ing into the streets and drugs again.

As a home­less per­son Jessica has been beaten un­con­scious and ur­in­ated on in Victoria, wit­nessed murders in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and got­ten food pois­on­ing from dump­ster diving. She’s been pro­nounced DOA three times and, while liv­ing in a Courtenay tent city, bull­dozers flattened her tent and be­long­ings. “When you’re home­less people look at you like you’re not worthy of breath­ing the same air,” she says. “But I’ve met lots of in­tel­li­gent, ar­tic­u­late people on the street. Heroin and co­caine don’t discriminate.”

Two years ago Jessica real­ized the only way to beat her drug ad­dic­tion was to deal with the fact that she was a fe­male stuck in a man’s body. She’d grown up in Ontario and Victoria and was a jock in high school. But when she was 17 her moth­er dis­covered her hid­den girl clothes. After that trau­mat­ic scene, Jessica did everything she could to hide her sexu­al­ity. But 25 years later she knew she had two choices: live her life as a wo­man or com­mit sui­cide. A street nurse helped her ob­tain hor­mone ther­apy and Jessica moved to Courtenay to make a clean start. She cur­rently lives in a small base­ment room, is drug-free and eagerly await­ing her va­gino­plasty. Once her trans­ition is com­plete she wants to be­come an esthetician.

Jessica’s grate­ful to be off the street but life’s a struggle. After rent, there’s less than $100 for gro­cer­ies and with “38D boobs and a voice like Joe Cocker,” she’s of­ten faced with cruel and even vi­ol­ent be­ha­viour when out in pub­lic. “It’s sad that people fear and ri­dicule trans­gendered people,” she says. “It’s some­thing that hap­pens at birth, not a mat­ter of choice. I’m happy now; I wish people could ac­cept that.”