Author: Paula

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E‑book or paper book, which do you prefer?

In my “book,” any­thing that makes read­ing easi­er and ac­cess­ible to more people is a good thing. E‑books and e‑readers are bring­ing a whole new di­men­sion to the read­ing ex­per­i­ence and who can ar­gue with that?

An amaz­ing fea­ture is be­ing able to read an e‑book in the dark. You can also ad­just the size of the text, high­light pas­sages and look up the mean­ing of words. Best of all, you have ac­cess to tons of books in­stantly and can carry them all on one port­able device.

Yep, e‑books are def­in­itely made for trav­el­ling. The next time I take a trip to a for­eign coun­try, I’ll con­sider car­ry­ing my read­ing ma­ter­i­al on an e‑reader. Just think how much more room I’ll have to pack clothes and shoes if I do away with my usu­al six pack of pock­et books!

But in my heart of hearts I’ll al­ways love pa­per books. To be­gin with, I grew up with them, so they’re fa­mil­i­ar and com­fort­able. I love hold­ing a book in my hands and turn­ing the page to find out what hap­pens next.

If you read pa­per books you get to use cool book marks like the one my broth­er bought me in Morocco. 

Besides, pa­per books are in­cred­ibly ver­sat­ile. As dec­or­at­ing ac­cessor­ies they add col­our and in­tel­lec­tu­al cachet to your shelves. They can also serve as door props, as well as do double-duty as stor­age areas for post­cards from exot­ic lands and in­ter­est­ing leaves found on walks. 

If you’re an au­thor you can dis­cretely place books you’ve writ­ten around the house for vis­it­ors to “dis­cov­er.” And signed cop­ies make great last minute gifts. 

Paper books are for­giv­ing too. They’re usu­ally still read­able even after be­ing splashed with red wine or smeared with chocol­ate. Even a dunk in the bathtub doesn’t have to spell the end.

But most of all, I like read­ing what oth­er people have writ­ten on a book’s flyleaf. A hard cov­er book I picked up at a gar­age sale was in­scribed: “To Edna, with love on our first Christmas to­geth­er. From your Jack. December 1932.”

So e‑books get my vote when it comes to con­veni­ence. But if you’re look­ing for char­ac­ter, pa­per books are the way to go. If you have any doubts, check out Lane Smith’s one minute video, It’s A Book.

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Writing the first sentence of a book

Eighteen months ago I shif­ted my fo­cus to cou­gars, the sub­ject of my next book. After a peri­od of in­tense re­search, I began or­gan­iz­ing all the in­form­a­tion I’d gathered.

It was an im­mense job that in­volved sort­ing through a Bankers Box full of files and an equally massive amount of in­form­a­tion saved on my hard drive. And then one day it was done.

“What now?” I wondered. Then it hit me: it was time to start writ­ing the book.

But how? I knew what I wanted to say but what about that all im­port­ant first sen­tence? I searched my mind. All I found was an im­age of the Sahara desert, a totally empty land­scape stretch­ing into in­fin­ity. Just like the blank screen on my computer.

A knot of pan­ic formed in my chest. Breaking the house­hold rule of not in­ter­rupt­ing each oth­er when we’re writ­ing, I rushed into Rick’s of­fice. “It’s time to start writ­ing my book and I don’t know what to do,” I announced. 

“It hap­pens to me every time I write an art­icle,” he replied then con­tin­ued tap­ping away on his keyboard.

I trudged back up­stairs and shuffled some pa­pers around on my desk. I called my mom. I made a cup of tea. I changed the wa­ter in the dog’s bowl. And then I laughed. I was em­ploy­ing the old­est writ­ing trick in the world – procrastination.

My brain is sharpest in the morn­ing and by then it was late af­ter­noon so I let my­self off the hook for the day. The next was filled with er­rands down­town but the day after that…I had to start the book.

I wondered how I’d ever found the elu­sive first sen­tences of my oth­er books. To be per­fectly hon­est, at that mo­ment, I had no idea. The whole concept of writ­ing the first sen­tence of a book seemed daunt­ing, per­haps impossible.

People new to the craft of writ­ing of­ten ask me for ad­vice. So I asked my­self what I’d tell them about start­ing a book. At least that was a ques­tion I could an­swer. “Just jump in and do it,” I’d say. “Don’t worry about it too much, you can al­ways change it later. Something will come to you eventually.”

And the next morn­ing, while I was walk­ing the dog, it did.

Heavily fall­ing snow covered our boot prints al­most as soon as we made them. The fat white flakes, the forest around us and the ar­rival of twi­light meant vis­ib­il­ity was fad­ing fast. And right in front of us, filling with snow as we stared, were the large foot­prints of a cougar….

It might not be per­fect and would prob­ably change over time. But, at last, I had a way in. I could start the book.

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Tax tips for writers by Caroline Woodward

I have the fond­est memory of my Dad hol­ing up in the base­ment, from which a cloud of blue smoke and col­our­ful pro­fan­it­ies waf­ted up for sev­er­al days. It was in­come tax time and Dad went head to head with the Prime Minister of the day, de­term­ined not to pay “that bloody .…..” or “that smarmy .…” a cent more than ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary to keep the Canadian safety net shipshape.

Do you keep your re­ceipts in a shoe box? Caroline has a bet­ter idea.

Since 1981, I’ve filed my in­come taxes as a writer, thanks to hop­ping off the ca­reer lad­der and lug­ging home 1,500 rice pa­per fables that I made in Kathmandu, Nepal. Writers are al­lowed three to five years to pro­duce a nov­el and to earn zero in­come while rack­ing up re­search and travel expenses.

I am proud to say I man­aged to earn more than zero from selling my writ­ing every single year since 1981 but some years, es­pe­cially those fif­teen years when we ran a book­store and when I worked as a pub­lish­ers’ rep, it was a minor mir­acle for me to write a gro­cery list let alone a haiku or to sell a single bon mot.

But if we writers don’t take our work ser­i­ously, then we will be hob­by­ists forever more and the fact is, a great many of us donate hun­dreds of hours and dol­lars to our com­munit­ies and the causes of the world annually.

You can be very sure that the Prime Minister’s min­ions will seek you out and pick your pock­ets when your next book is a best­seller and that they don’t much care if you took an eight­een year ap­pren­tice­ship at very low ‘wages’ to be­come an overnight success.

I’ve used the same one-page format to re­port my writ­ing ex­penses and in­come since 1981. I ig­nore the reams of forms provided for pro­fes­sion­al and small busi­ness people and so far, the Prime Minister has merely sighed and ac­cep­ted my puny efforts.

Here it is:
2010 Writing Income & Expenses
Caroline Hendrika Woodward
Social Insurance Number

Expenses

Advertising/Promotion…………………….$x
(web­site, au­thor pho­tos, schmooz­ing costs at ½ the meal or pub bill. Sadly, not for new shoes to wear when launch­ing your latest book)

Automobile Expenses………………………$y
(get­ting your­self to read­ing tours, work­shops, etc. Fuel, re­pairs, in­sur­ance, park­ing. Keep a mileage log & yes, claim every trip to and from the Post Office)

Office Expenses-ph/­fax/in­ter­net………… $z
(straight­for­ward)

Other Office Expenses & Materials……  $x
(magazine sub­scrip­tions, sta­tion­ery, books, a de­cent chair, book­shelves, computer)

Light/​Heat/​Water…………………………… $y
(if you live in a 5 room house with a one room of­fice, claim 1⁄5 your an­nu­al costs)

Travel, ex­clud­ing auto………………………$z
(bus, plane, hotel & meals for writ­ing gigs not covered by pub­lish­er or hosts)

Office Rent…………………………………… $x
(if you rent a sep­ar­ate of­fice, oth­er­wise, claim 1⁄5 (or whatever) of your house­hold rent or mort­gage payments)

Capital Cost Allowance………………………$y
(see guide, I used this once in the 80’s to de­pre­ci­ate the cost of a new com­puter but am no longer a re­li­able guide to this category)

TOTAL…$xyz

2010 Writing Income……………………………$not nearly enough
Net Loss………………………………………… (-$ sigh, net loss again-bo­nus, it can be ap­plied to re­duce your re­spect­able in­come as a brick­lay­er, light­keep­er, ranch hand or writ­ing teacher)

ALL RECEIPTS HELD.

_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​                     _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
Caroline H. Woodward                           Date

During this hum­bling pro­cess, I of­fer up thanks to the de­term­ined writers who lob­bied for the Public Lending Right so that lib­rary us­age of our books is com­pensated for, ditto for the Canadian Access Copyright group who pay us for our work be­ing used in schools and uni­ver­sit­ies and elsewhere.

In memory of Dad, I curse Stephen Harper with gusto and with good reas­on. And every year, I look long and hard at the de­scrip­tion of the Vow of Perpetual Poverty. There but for the wimple, go I.

Two things: keep every re­ceipt in tidy en­vel­opes for sev­en years and be scru­pu­lously hon­est (the karma thing). Also, try fil­ing on­line. I just got my 2010 re­turn de­pos­ited in my Credit Union in sev­en busi­ness days flat. Hurrah for new­fangled thingeybobs!

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One way to achieve your writing goals

Writing is primar­ily a sol­it­ary pur­suit. Writers need chunks of un­in­ter­rup­ted time to think about their story and get it down.

But it’s all too easy to do too much think­ing and not enough writ­ing. To prom­ise your­self you’re go­ing to fin­ish chapter five this month…and then find that all you’ve done is move a few words around on your com­puter screen.

That’s when hav­ing a writ­ing buddy can make a dif­fer­ence. This is someone you can share your dreams and doubts with, as well as your struggles and successes.

A paint­ing from Bev’s Forest series.

One of my best writ­ing bud­dies isn’t even a writer. Bev Byerley’s a West Coast paint­er with a pas­sion for land­scape. Just like me, she needs time to think and work. And she grapples with the shapes of clouds and trees the way I wrestle with the sound of phrases and paragraphs.

I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that the cre­at­ive pro­cess is sim­il­ar no mat­ter what the me­di­um. And I en­joy the ca­marader­ie of get­ting to­geth­er with an­oth­er artist.

My oth­er writ­ing buddy is a writer. Caroline Woodward is the au­thor of sev­er­al books and count­less poems. She used to live in the same town as me. We’d meet for lunch every couple of months to yak about our latest pro­jects, the re­jec­tions or ac­cept­ances we re­ceived from pub­lish­ers and oth­er as­pects of the writ­ing life.

Then her hus­band got a job on a light­house and she fol­lowed. But

Last fall Caroline toured BC with her new adult nov­el, Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny, as well as her new chil­dren’s book, Singing Away the Dark. 

be­fore she left, we vowed to email each oth­er on the first day of every month. These emails in­clude our writ­ing goals for the com­ing month and a pro­gress re­port on what we ac­com­plished the pre­vi­ous one.

We’ve been do­ing this for a couple of years now and are both sur­prised at how this one email a month helps keep our writ­ing on track. Without plan­ning it, we’ve ar­ranged a sys­tem that in­cor­por­ates sev­er­al im­port­ant tips re­com­men­ded by goal set­ting experts.

The first one is to make a com­mit­ment by telling someone what you plan to do. The second is to form a con­crete plan by writ­ing it down. And the third is to be ac­count­able by telling someone what you achieved…or didn’t.

So, if you have a lot of ideas but have trouble ac­com­plish­ing them, I re­com­mend find­ing a cre­at­ive buddy. This should be someone you like, feel com­fort­able with and admire.

Ideally, each of you will have slightly dif­fer­ent areas or levels of ex­pert­ise so you can learn from each oth­er. But most of all, you should both be pre­pared to listen and of­fer con­struct­ive feed­back. Laughing a lot is good too.