Author: Paula

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The house that Jack built

It’d be stretch­ing it to say a plate of scrambled eggs launched my writ­ing ca­reer. But there is one break­fast I’ll al­ways remember.

It was 1986, my year to take risks. I quit my job and told my­self it was now or nev­er if I was go­ing to be a writer. But I had no idea how to make that happen. 

Then I saw an ad for a writer’s fest­iv­al at Strathcona Park Lodge. I signed up hop­ing that be­ing around real writers would some­how nudge me in the right direction.

At Strathcona I met all sorts of people in­volved in the BC book in­dustry.  Anne Cameron, Hilary Stewart, George Bowering, Christie Harris, Bill Valgardson and Susan Musgrave were some of the au­thors present. Publishers Howard and Mary White of Harbour Publishing were there as well. I was more than a bit awe-struck.

Strathcona Park Lodge is known for its ample and de­li­cious cuisine, all served buf­fet style with folks sit­ting to­geth­er at long tables. On the first morn­ing of the event I sat down with my break­fast and a few mo­ments later one of the “big names” of the fest­iv­al took the chair across from me.

It was Jack Hodgins, au­thor of The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, The Invention of the World and Spit Delaney’s Island.

I re­mem­ber his head of curly brown hair, the spark­ling eyes and a friendly-look­ing smile. I even re­mem­ber the clothes he was wear­ing – a white sa­fari-style jack­et and pants.

But I mostly re­mem­ber be­ing over­whelmed by an acute at­tack of shy­ness. What could I pos­sibly say to this award-win­ning writer?

And then, as I bash­fully fumbled with my fork, Jack broke the ice. “Where’d you get that?” he asked in­dic­at­ing my plate of food. And so began a cas­u­al con­ver­sa­tion that im­me­di­ately put me at ease.

In his nov­els Jack Hodgins por­trays a unique and af­fec­tion­ate vis­ion of the Vancouver Island land­scape and the char­ac­ters that in­hab­it it.

 

I didn’t see Jack of­ten but we kept in touch over the years. We dis­covered that Strathcona was a turn­ing point for both of us. I achieved my dream of be­com­ing a pub­lished au­thor; Jack real­ized he could teach writ­ing out­side a classroom.

This July Jack, who grew up in nearby Merville, vis­ited Courtenay where he was in­duc­ted into the Comox Valley Walk of Achievement. This award is presen­ted to former res­id­ents who have ex­celled in their field of en­deav­our and who in­spire Comox Valley youth to be­lieve in them­selves and pur­sue their dreams.

Over his writ­ing ca­reer, Jack has re­ceived many pres­ti­gi­ous awards in­clud­ing the Order of Canada. But I think the re­cog­ni­tion by his ho­met­own com­munity meant some­thing spe­cial to him. 

I know it meant a lot to those in the audi­ence. The tra­ject­ory of Jack’s kind­ness and ment­or­ing seems to stretch into infinity.

Although I’ve nev­er taken a work­shop with him, Jack has in­flu­enced my writ­ing in many ways. His work, of course, is a stel­lar ex­ample of qual­ity crafts­man­ship. But even more im­port­ant has been his con­sist­ent en­cour­age­ment and interest. 

Sitting next to me in the Sid Williams Theatre was Susan Ketchen, au­thor of Born That Way and Made That Way. She stud­ied cre­at­ive writ­ing with Jack when she was in grade 12. “I still have some of the stor­ies he marked,” she said. “They really weren’t very good but he al­ways found some­thing pos­it­ive to say.”

Harold Macy, au­thor of The Four Storey Forest, told me he’s ex­ceed­ingly grate­ful for Jack’s sup­port and guid­ance while put­ting the fi­nal touches on his book.

A plaque hon­our­ing Jack’s acheive­ments was placed in front of the Laughing Oyster Bookstore in down­town Courtenay.

During the ce­re­mony Harold read some com­ments by Matt Rader, au­thor of A Doctor Pedalled Her Bike Over the River Arno and oth­er works. “Jack Hodgins and Jack’s lit­er­ary world are for a young writer from the Comox Valley some­thing like what Faulkner and his world are for writers of the American south…He has a pres­ence in this val­ley that guides our ima­gin­a­tions. And that is a lot like love.” 

I think of the more than 15 nov­els Jack has writ­ten as a vast house with many levels and rooms. Each time a per­son opens one of Jack’s books, they enter one of those rooms. They’re dec­or­ated and fur­nished in a sim­il­ar style but each pos­sesses a unique view of the Vancouver Island land­scape and is in­hab­ited by the quirky char­ac­ters that call this area home.

How lucky we are that Jack keeps adding onto his house, re­in­vent­ing the stor­ies he heard as a child into some­thing that we can all treas­ure. And how lucky are those who have be­nefited from his gentle encouragement.

 

 

 

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Another way to publish your book — guest blog by Harold Macy

So here I was — proud as a new par­ent — with a fin­ished ma­nu­script in a tidy stack on my desk. Virginal white pa­per, ap­pro­pri­ate font, neat mar­gins, prop­erly pa­gin­ated and oh so vulnerable. 

But now I faced that big jump from per­son­al writ­ing to po­ten­tial ex­pos­ure to the whole wide world. And, like many a new par­ent, I wondered how this baby of mine would ever walk on its own.

To take that first step the old school meth­od says to look for pub­lish­ers who spe­cial­ize in your par­tic­u­lar genre — fic­tion, po­etry, mem­oir or es­say — and  write a let­ter of in­quiry hop­ing that one of them will be in­ter­ested and re­quest a sample chapter or two which may then lead to a con­tract.  Ah, hope, the writers fa­vour­ite drug.

When I was through the second draft of The Four Storey Forest I did just that — found pub­lish­ers who pro­moted West Coast and Vancouver Island writers. I sent out let­ters of in­quiry and anxiously walked to the mail­box every day in an­ti­cip­a­tion. Out of the ten let­ters I wrote, I got not one response.

Refusing to be dis­cour­aged, I car­ried on re-writ­ing, search­ing for a pub­lish­er and fol­low­ing sug­ges­tions from pub­lished authors.

Simultaneously, I began ex­plor­ing the world of self-pub­lish­ing. I was leery of this due to the stigma as­so­ci­ated with the term “van­ity press” and the pure driv­el it of­ten spawns.  I thought if my writ­ing made it through the scru­tiny of a pub­lish­er, it would surely be bet­ter. I learned there are ed­it­or­i­al con­tri­bu­tions and there is pub­lish­ing and while I thought the two were in­ex­tric­able, they are not! 

Nearing what I thought was a com­pleted book, I sought out freel­ance ed­it­ors. You get what you pay for so I’d ad­vise any­one tak­ing this route to shop around and check ref­er­ences thor­oughly. My first “ed­it­or” seemed a little too in­ter­ested in sign­ing me up for pro­duc­tion ser­vices as he heaped un­earned praise on my raw and truly un-pub­lish­able work. 

At the same time, I looked into self-pub­lish­ing. Two sources of good in­form­a­tion were the Vancouver Desktop Publishing Centre and Printorium Bookworks. The first is con­nec­ted with the won­der­ful magazine Geist, which is a great read in it­self. The second is a print shop that has an ex­cel­lent how-to guide for self-pub­lish­ing. However, I was not yet convinced.

In self-pub­lish­ing, the au­thor re­tains full re­spons­ib­il­ity for and con­trol of con­tent, cov­er design, and distribution/​promotion. This ob­vi­ously means a lot more work. It is an odd para­dox; writ­ing is a sol­it­ary anti-so­cial act, yet mer­chand­ising the fin­ished self-pub­lished work re­quires one to stand up and be­come a shame­less hust­ler.  Some can do this, oth­ers cannot.

Another factor is that many lit­er­ary con­tests do not ac­cept self-pub­lished books simply be­cause of my ori­gin­al fear — so much dross on pa­per. Nor are self-pub­lished works eli­gible for the most of the few grants available. 

So the choice is: sell your soul to a pub­lish­ing house and in re­turn for the pit­tance earned, gain pro­fes­sion­al ed­it­or­i­al sup­port and wider pub­li­city, sales and dis­tri­bu­tion but re­lin­quish a cer­tain amount of in­come and con­trol; or buy what proofread­ing and cri­tiquing you need and opt for self-pub­lish­ing, ac­cept­ing the joys and sor­rows it may bring. 

 

There are many op­tions for pub­lish­ing a book these days.

For The Four Storey Forest I was for­tu­nate enough to dis­cov­er a third way. Through a net­work of oth­er writers I found a Comox Valley “mom and pop” pub­lish­ing com­pany who had put out a few books of schol­arly note and who were in­ter­ested in branch­ing out to niche mar­kets with new writers. 

So Poplar Publishing did the lay­out, fi­nal proof­ing, some edit­ing and worked with the print­er. The real nuts and bolts stuff. Collectively we cre­ated the cov­er design. Promotion and pub­li­city are my re­spons­ib­il­ity as is ship­ping. My pub­lish­er has a web page with a PayPal ser­vice which means my book has an e‑life. My book baby has taken its first steps out into the world.

I re­cently star­ted work­ing on a nov­el, breath­ing life into the second draft of a ma­nu­script that has been col­lect­ing dust for longer than I care to ad­mit.  However, it is still a good story and, when fin­ished, I’ll go back to Poplar Publishing and hope they’ll take it on. There’s that word again. Hope.

 

 

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An editor is your ally, not your enemy

Nobody writes per­fect prose the first time around. Oh there might be a killer sen­tence or two but the work will still need edit­ing. That’s what writing’s all about – get­ting that first draft down and then go­ing back to re­write and revise…again…and again…and again.

An ed­it­or is your ally, not your en­emy. They’ll catch the ty­pos, spelling mis­takes and awk­ward sen­tences and let you know when a pas­sage isn’t clear. They’ll point out re­peated words, where you’ve used pass­ive voice and the ex­traneous bits that need to be cut.

And they’ll nudge you in the right dir­ec­tion when it comes to fo­cus, the concept of “less is more” and open­ing your piece with some­thing that grabs the reader’s attention.

Rick's red ink
After I ed­ited this page and gave it back to Rick he said, “Did you have time to really look at this? There is­n’t much red ink!”

The first ed­it­or is you. It can be dif­fi­cult to see the flaws in your work but the more you do it the bet­ter you’ll get. A good way to learn is by read­ing sim­il­ar ma­ter­i­al with a crit­ic­al eye. What works? What doesn’t? What makes you want to keep read­ing? What makes you yawn?

For me the edit­ing pro­cess is largely in­tu­it­ive. I know when something’s not work­ing – not ne­ces­sar­ily why – just that it’s not right. Maybe the words don’t flow, the way I’m ex­plain­ing some­thing is bor­ing or the first para­graph needs to be moved to page three.

Be open to ex­press­ing your com­ments in a dif­fer­ent way. Read your work out loud and look at it both on your com­puter screen and in print. Change, re­move, re­arrange – it’s all part of the pro­cess. Be ruth­less, if you have a won­der­ful sen­tence, para­graph or chapter but it doesn’t be­long in this book, save it for an­oth­er story.

Eventually someone else needs to edit your writ­ing. I’m lucky. Rick, my part­ner, is also a writer and we go over each other’s work on a reg­u­lar basis. Sometimes when he re­turns a piece it seems like he’s marked it with miles of red ink. But I’m grate­ful for the feedback.

Although fam­ily and friends can be good ed­it­ors, they’re prob­ably not pro­fes­sion­al writers or ed­it­ors. Sooner or later your work needs the skills of someone who un­der­stands the writ­ing industry.

If you sign a book con­tract, most pub­lish­ers will as­sign an ed­it­or. If you’re self-pub­lish­ing or want to pol­ish your work be­fore sub­mit­ting it, you’ll need to hire someone yourself.

Remember, your ed­it­or wants the same thing you do: for your book to be the best it can. Chances are, their sug­ges­tions will get rid of any glitches and strengthen the plot and narrative.

If you don’t agree with one of their com­ments, feel free to dis­cuss the pros and cons of mak­ing a cer­tain change. Editing is a col­lab­or­at­ive pro­cess. And one that’s vi­tal if you want your work to shine.

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Writing on the wild side

Escape. Whether it’s to a sandy beach in Cuba or a steep moun­tain peak in the Himalayas, every­one longs to get away from their day-to-day routine once in a while.

But as well as leav­ing some­thing be­hind, what about mov­ing towards

Me and Shannon after kayak­ing and hik­ing to the Grassy Knoll.

a goal you’ve held close to your heart for as long as you can re­mem­ber? Something you really want to do but some­how there’s nev­er enough time, in­spir­a­tion or even just plain know-how.

That’s ex­actly what happened the last week in May when a small group of people brought their ideas and par­tially com­pleted ma­nu­scripts to a Wilderness Writing Retreat at Seawatch Cabins in Nuchatlitz Provincial Park.

Surrounded by pristine wil­der­ness, we dis­cussed fo­cus, point of view and act­ive voice. We de­bated ways to carve time out of the day to write and the best way to find a pub­lish­er. And we all cre­ated timelines for fin­ish­ing our projects.

Nuchatlitz is a wil­der­ness area and wild­life is plen­ti­ful. The fawn with this doe es­caped be­fore I could take a photo. 

While do­ing so, we watched a sea ot­ter do­ing the back­stroke in the bay and a mar­tin scam­per­ing across the deck each morn­ing. We also saw five bear (from a safe dis­tance) and wolf sign on some of our walks.

I couldn’t have asked for more con­geni­al stu­dents. Everyone was totally com­mit­ted to tak­ing their ma­nu­script to the next stage…and did. I’m sure some found the red ink on their work daunt­ing but when I saw the re­vi­sions they made, I was astoun­ded at the improvement.

Shannon and Yvonne col­lab­or­ate on some revisions.

“A bal­ance of private time and group in­struc­tion ad­dressed in­di­vidu­al pro­jects and skill levels,” notes Yvonne Maximchuk. “Paula gave me ex­cel­lent and per­tin­ent in­struc­tion in how to write to my best abil­it­ies and helped bring my mem­oir to a whole new level. I was thrilled!”

Yvonne leads the way on a kayak expedition.

“As a new au­thor I had no idea how to edit my work,” adds Dodie Eyer who is work­ing on a children’s chapter book. “It was a real turn­ing point for me. And Shannon made us all feel very much at home. The food was de­li­cious, fresh, healthy and at­tract­ive. I loved learn­ing how to kayak!”

Yes, neither man nor wo­man lives by work alone. When not writ­ing, we feasted on sump­tu­ous homemande meals. Shannon Bailey, host for the re­treat, wowed us with her flair for put­ting to­geeth­er de­light­ful blends of col­our, taste and nu­tri­tious cuisine.

Dodie ad­mires wild flowers at the Grassy Knoll. 

In ad­di­tion to cook­ing and work­ing on a young adult nov­el, Shannon also doubled as wil­der­ness guide and in­struct­or. We kayaked sheltered la­goons, poin­ted our bows to­wards the white-cres­ted waves of the open Pacific Ocean and hiked gravel beaches and wood­land trails. At night, the si­lence was enorm­ous, the stars a cas­cade of light in the sky. 

Some ran­dom highlights:
• yoga on a sunny deck
• the “Aha!” look on participant’s faces
• Shannon’s stun­ning back garden
• lively dis­cus­sions on writ­ing and life in general
• sea­food bisque made with oysters picked off the beach
• the pro­fu­sion of wild flowers at Grassy Knoll
• chocol­ate brownies topped with rhu­barb-straw­berry sauce
• see­ing ma­nu­scripts move from good to very good 

 

As well as work­ing on writ­ing, friend­ships were formed, ideas shared and pos­sib­il­it­ies ex­plored. What a great es­cape! I can­’t wait to do it all over again later this year.

The back garden at Seawatch Cabins. All pho­tos by Dodie and Paula.