Preparing to Launch Part 2 — guest blog by Harold Macy

Whatever the occa­sion, go­ing to town re­quires thought as to dress, or could re­quire thought if one was giv­en to care. A quick run to the feed store or Central Builders is pretty straight­for­ward. But for such an event as a book launch, espe­cially if it is one’s own book launch, may call for a bit addi­tional consideration.

If it is a high-brow lit­er­ary event, would I wear the tried and true tweed jack­et with suede el­bow patches, pos­sibly over a sweat­er vest? — how time­less is that combo? Or is it so dated to be pathet­ic. Or per­haps I could try the po-mo look — lots of black, maybe even a fake pier­cing and a temp ‘tat.’

My cri­teria are not driv­en by the whims and caprice of the Style Section of the Globe and Mailwhich we buy each Saturday, but rather by neces­sity. Something that doesn’t show dog hair is high on the list. There is enough black hair in the seat crevices and cranny’s of my truck to knit a new hound. Something that relates to the weath­er, usu­ally water­proof, rein­forces the gum­boot archetype.

Harold Macy is the au­thor of The Four Storey Forest, As Grow the Trees, So too the Heart

But really, I don’t care. I take les­sons from my Grandpa. His long legs were per­petu­ally clad in blue den­im over­alls. Annually, upon Grandma’s ur­ging, he bought a new pair, stiff as boards, which he ini­tially saved for church. After a few months, they be­came his town and house pair. Eventually they were worn in the shop, on the tract­ors and in the calv­ing barn do­ing the chores he loved. After a year or so on this duty, they were fit only for wipe rags. Grandma made quilt squares from any sec­tion that was not thread­bare, grease stained or soiled by the wet but messy mir­acles of anim­als, but there were only few.

But it is not your clothes that are no­ticed at a book launch. It’s your fingernails.

I gave a talk re­cently and was set­ting up to sell and sign books to the good folks in line, money in hand. I glanced down at my hands and saw the half-moon of cargo delin­eat­ing each and every nail. Not only that but there was a stub­born smear of chain­saw oil giv­ing the edge of my hand a del­ic­ate blush of purple, not un­like a fresh bruise. Various scratches. Enough grit in my fin­ger­tips to make cop prints and a dust­ing of Merville Silt, appar­ently a par­tic­u­lar nox­ious ele­ment accord­ing to the Sears Carpet Cleaning Technician who does our rugs once a year.

So, as the first pink-fingered, smooth-handed lady passed me my book to sign, I al­most felt the urge to make some glot­tal grunt to match what really mattered, my hands there on the page. Now her page. Soiled. She glanced down at the vir­ginal page, at my stub­born grime and made a small si­lent “Oh” with her mouth. I felt her gaze, looked up, and gave a wan smile.

Don’t worry about the clothes, check your fin­ger­nails first.

Paula’s note: Harold ori­gin­ally sent the above in as a com­ment to Preparing to Launch, a guest blog by Susan Ketchen. It’s so well writ­ten — and funny — that I de­cided to run it as Preparing to Lauch Part 2

The sub­ject of clothes, fin­ger­nails and po­ten­tially em­bar­rass­ing mo­ments that hap­pen to au­thors at book sign­ings seems to have struck a chord for many writers. Check back in a couple of weeks for Preparing to Launch Part 3 & 4

 

 

Campie in Three Easy Parts — guest blog by Barbara Stewart

What it was like:

The card­board box sat on the floor be­side the kit­chen table for four years. I walked around it, passed food over it and oc­ca­sion­ally shoved it around with the Dirt Devil.

Inside the box, the guts and soul of a book: a length of house­hold string; a pack­age of matches; a 2003 Telus cal­en­dar; a BC Interior road map; the Fall 2002 is­sue of GUSHER; hand­writ­ten pages torn from a Mead note­book; the first typed chapter of Campie. I’d star­ted writ­ing with­in days of leav­ing the oil­rig camp in January 2003, open­ing with the de­clar­at­ive: “The job star­ted with a fraud and ended with a lie.” (I loved that sentence.)

Oh, and one more thing was in the box: from the Saturday Post, April 19, 2003, an es­say by Don Gillmore titled, “On Saturday Nights, I Dreamt of Saturday Nights.” Gillmore had writ­ten about his ex­per­i­ence as a rough­neck on an oil­rig. I tucked it into the box to pun­ish my­self for not fin­ish­ing the book.

What happened:

When I turned 50, I made a de­cision to stop feel­ing bad about my past. This meant re­tir­ing an aging in­ner blues trio called The Ambitions, Hopes and Dreams. “Sorry gals,” I said, “You gotta go. Momma needs a new tune … some­thing like ‘Goodbye Alibi.’”

Six years later, I gradu­ated from the University of Victoria with a BA and a book con­tract with Heritage House Publishers for Campie. The prot­ag­on­ist had be­come a Barbara per­sona dis­tanced by a nar­rat­ive arc in chapters.

I wasn’t me. Campie didn’t be­come a real book and my private story wasn’t pub­lic un­til I pressed SEND to the pub­lish­er. Not many nights later, I woke up in a sweat to a comeback chor­al per­form­ance of that sen­ti­ment­al oldie “Who’s Sorry Now?”

What it’s like now: 

I came to real­ize that it wasn’t pub­lic ex­pos­ure I feared at all. My motive for writ­ing Campie was to tell a story about fail­ure and hope. The un­der­belly served a pur­pose. Although it took a few deep breaths to own the in­tro­duc­tion, “a sober cel­ib­ate bank­rupt ve­get­ari­an …”

No, it was the re­ac­tion of fam­ily and friends — those per­son­ally im­pacted by what I had written­ — whose love mattered the most. Unconditional ac­cept­ance by and for strangers was an easy grace.

When my sis­ter said the book was so won­der­ful she couldn’t put it down, when my moth­er said she loved it and we talked about where it made her cry, when my daugh­ter or­gan­ized my first read­ing and in­vited her closest friends, when my son sup­por­ted me for three months while I wrote and thanked me for all that I’d gone through, that’s when I knew I had pro­jec­ted judg­ments only with­in myself.

These Bessie Smith lyr­ics said it so well:

Now all the crazy things I had to try, Well I tried them all and then some, But if you’re lucky one day you find out, Where it is you’re really com­ing from.”

Campie gave that luck to me.

Paula’s note: Barbara Stewart’s Campie, a new re­lease by Heritage House Publishing, is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s funny, scary and brave. The writ­ing is fresh and ori­gin­al; there’s no ar­ti­fice or fancy man­euv­er­ing, just a great story told straight from the heart.

 

Tips for writers

People of­ten ask me for writ­ing tips. They want to know how I can make my­self sit in front of a com­puter day after day, key­ing in words, de­let­ing them and start­ing all over again un­til I have a fin­ished art­icle or book.

The an­swer is that I like writ­ing. And for­tu­nately, I seem to be ge­net­ic­ally dis­posed to be be­ing dis­cip­lined and fo­cused. And it doesn’t hurt that I’ve learned to take re­jec­tion as a sign – not of fail­ure – but that I can im­prove my work to strengthen its appeal. 

The best piece of ad­vice I can give any­one is: sit down and write. Talking and think­ing about writ­ing are fine up to a point but, soon­er or later, you have to put words to pa­per or on a com­puter screen. 

But every writer – in­clud­ing me — struggles from time to time. It might be dif­fi­cult to ac­cess that ne­ces­sary bit of re­search, the words might not flow in a co­hes­ive and en­ga­ging man­ner and dis­trac­tions are of­ten only a glance or mouse click away.

Here are a few things I’ve found be­ne­fi­cial to the writ­ing process.

-Read a lot, write a lot and then read some more.
‑Know your theme and stick to it (mostly).
‑Use act­ive voice.
‑Pound out the first draft wtih little re­gard for pun­cuation and spelling. 
‑Write as if you’re telling a story to your best friend.
‑Create and keep a reg­u­lar writ­ing routine.
‑Have a quiet place to work where you will not be disturbed.
‑Learn to edit your writing. 
‑Listen to your in­tu­ition to de­term­ine what works and what doesn’t.
‑Enjoy the pro­cess – even the struggles.

Finding a quiet place to write is essential.

The above might mo­tiv­ate you to put your fin­gers to the key­board or you might have some oth­er ideas or tricks of the trade. If so, I’d love to hear about them.