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.

 

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?

How I got my longest writing gig, why I kept it and what I learned

As of­ten hap­pens, I found the an­swer to my prob­lem in a book. I’d re­cently moved and couldn’t find a job. The heroine in the nov­el I was read­ing faced sim­il­ar cir­cum­stances and solved her di­lemma by tak­ing in laundry.

Domestic chores rank near the one mil­lion mark on my list of fun things to do. But, in the pre-com­puter days of 1989, there was a sur­pris­ing need – and luc­rat­ive pay­off – for people who knew their way around a key­board. So I de­cided to take in typing.

The first step in my self-em­ploy­ment plan was to call the Comox Valley Record to place an ad. But in­stead of reach­ing clas­si­fieds, my call was dir­ec­ted to the ed­it­or. I’d freel­anced for Bruce Winfield when he was ed­it­or at the North Island Gazette in Port Hardy. We struck up a con­ver­sa­tion and he in­vited me to cov­er arts and en­ter­tain­ment for the paper.

I had no idea the freel­ance gig would last more than a quarter cen­tury and in­volve writ­ing more than 720,000 words in ap­prox­im­ately 1,200 arti­cles — the equi­val­ent of 10 books.

It wasn’t al­ways easy. The first obstacle was to over­come my some­times pain­ful shy­ness. But I can now ask any­one any­thing and am al­ways sur­prised at what they’re will­ing to tell me. If I had $1 for every time I heard, “Don’t put this in the pa­per…,” I’d be a wealthy woman.

Older in­ter­viewees were sur­prised I was so young and young in­ter­viewees were sur­prised I was so old. I spoke to people who were sick, dy­ing or rid­ing high on their first glim­mer of suc­cess. I learned to ask ques­tions and really listen, how to take notes in a dark theatre and to al­ways have three pens in my purse just in case.

I learned how to sniff paint­ings when it’s dif­fi­cult to de­term­ine if they’re oil or ac­ryl­ic, was fed Gut-Buster Cookies and dis­covered that a sur­pris­ingly high per­cent­age of comedi­ans are cranky offstage.

There were some dodgy mo­ments. Most in­ter­views took place in the person’s home or stu­dio and more than once I doubted the wis­dom of be­ing alone with them. For a month I was stalked by a men­tally un­stable artist and twice a man fol­lowed me out of the com­munity theatre mut­ter­ing ob­scen­it­ies and hint­ing  at what we could do if alone.

But most of the time cov­er­ing arts for the Record was so much fun I couldn’t be­lieve I was get­ting paid to do it. My ap­pre­ci­ation for the cre­at­ive pro­cess and the people who prac­tise it in­creased im­mensely and I con­tin­ue to be amazed at the artist­ic di­versity and rich­ness of the Comox Valley.

One of the most im­port­ant things I learned was how to write a cer­tain amount of words by a cer­tain time. I can’t count the even­ings I went straight to my desk after a late night show to write a re­view. It didn’t mat­ter if it was mid­night and I was tired. Newspaper dead­lines wait for no man, wo­man or child. Word count and dead­lines are the holy grail of pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing wheth­er it’s for a news­pa­per, magazine or book.

Writing for news­pa­pers has launched many a writ­ing ca­reer. It’s a sure-fire way to learn how to write on de­mand, not just when the muse pays a vis­it. It can be crazy, chal­len­ging and very re­ward­ing. But after 25 years, I’ve de­veloped a fond­ness for in-depth re­search and the ex­plor­a­tion longer stor­ies al­low. So I’ve said good­bye to the Record to make more time for writ­ing books.

An ad­apt­a­tion of my farewell art­icle for the Record. 

 

 

Catch a cougar by the tail

Dogs chase cats and dogs that chase cou­gars seem to be par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­ast­ic.  

One of the most fam­ous cou­gar hunters, former US pres­id­ent, Theodore Roosevelt, wrote about “dogs that climbed trees.” He said a blood­hound named Turk scrambled al­most nine metres (30 feet) up a pinyon tree be­fore plum­met­ing to the ground. And a half-breed bull­dog reg­u­larly went as high as six metres (20 feet) or more after cou­gars. Apparently, the branches broke the dogs’ falls as, no mat­ter how far they fell, they con­tin­ued to “climb trees.”  

Winston Vickers, as­so­ci­ate veter­in­ari­an at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, told me about a cou­gar that jumped out of a tree, landed in the middle of a pack of re­search track­ing hounds, grabbed a dog by the head and took off. Of course, all the oth­er hounds gave chase. One got close enough to grab the cou­gar by the tail. That was enough to make it drop the dog it was car­ry­ing. The dog sur­vived but wasn’t keen on track­ing cou­gars after that.  

But un­til re­cently, I’d nev­er heard of a dog catch­ing a cou­gar by the tail and go­ing up a tree. The foot­age on this short video clip is in­cred­ible. And yes, both the dog and cou­gar survived. 

Cougar running in snow.
Isn’t that tail just beg­ging to be pulled?
Photo cour­tesy California Fish and Game.