A Novel Approach (To Me)

I’m embarrassed to say that my blog has fallen to the wayside with work and the Faber course at U of T.  Life is chaotic right now and I don’t see it getting better for at least 6 months.  That being said, I’m going to force myself to start blogging again.

The course has been fantastic but the commitment (over and above my already busy schedule) has been intense.  So intense that we’ve already lost two students. Both were talented and we’ll miss them.

It’s interesting–none of the students who are travelling a distance to Toronto (like myself, a student from Montreal and a student from Winnipeg) have dropped out.  Perhaps because we’d expected the travel to be difficult and had made our peace with it before the course started.

I have no regrets, the course is well worth every moment I’ve invested in it so far.

I’m having a quiet Sunday. Jeff’s cooking a turkey, the girl’s are watching Season 1 of GLEE on DVD and I’m drinking herbal tea and writing. Jeff just came into the room to ask me if I’m getting excited about Wednesday (Faber Academy) yet. Ummm, yes!!

I thought I’d do a quick test post from my iPod. This one has a camera which is going to make posting when I’m traveling a lot easier!
The picture I’ve attached is of my 12 year old daughter. It was taken in low light so the picture is pretty bad. However, it takes not a pretty good picture in good lighting. The camera on the iPod isn’t really meant to replace a point and shoot, but it will do in a pinch.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled on an article in the Globe and Mail from last February that indicated that Faber Academy had decided to come to Toronto. The details seemed extraordinary to me…it was almost too good to be true.  They would offer two different six month courses, one for writers interested in long fiction (novels) and one for those who write poetry.  I immediately jumped over to their website to look at the course on writing novels.  The course director and primary teacher is Miriam Toews (pronounced Tâves), author of numerous highly successful novels–many of which sit on my own bookshelf.  Her most recent being THE FLYING TROUTMANS.  I read further, and to my delight, one of the guest speakers will be none other than:

Yes! Margaret Atwood would teach one of the classes.  I couldn’t be more excited. There were many other established and award winning authors who would be doing guest sessions over the six months but I was sold based on these two writers, whom I admire.  However, I then noticed that the application process closed in two days and required that I submit both a letter of application along with a sample of my writing.  I also looked at the price.  Wow!  Far more expensive then any writing course I’d taken to date. I stewed about this for about 24 hours and then submitted my application. I’d come to the conclusion that one never knows what could happen unless one tries.

I told them outright that I had not been published, the length of manuscripts I had written to date and the reason why I wished to be considered.  I then, knowing there wasn’t any hope that an unknown writer without having any publishing credits to her name would ever be accepted, promptly tried to forget it.

Then I got an email from the Academy telling me that they were pleased to offer me a place in the course and that they were impressed with my application.  My reaction? Shock and disbelief.  How in the world did my writing pass their scrutiny.  Yes, I’d worked hard on it and was pretty pleased with that scene, but I’m a total amateur.  I began to think it was a hoax.  A scam to take money from poor unsuspecting fools like me who want to be published but never will be. Aaaack!  So, being me, I began to do my research.  The article was in The Globe and Mail, the CBC news website, and in the Arts section of the National Post.  All trusted sources of information. So far so good. Then I sent a tweet to Margaret Atwood.  If it was a scam, surely she’d be horrified to see her name used for promotion like this.  Indeed, she confirmed she would be teaching one of the classes in January. At this point, I started to really get excited.  It was time to break the news to my husband that I wanted to take the course and let him know the cost.  I will give the man credit, he only flinched slightly when I told him the cost.  Then he immediately encouraged me to do it.  He’s a good man, my husband.

The course will be held at Massey College in Toronto.  I looked it up too.

I don’t know about you, but the dining hall has a flavour of Hogwarts, does it not?  It’s a beautiful campus from the pictures I’ve seen.  The course runs for two hours on Wednesday nights along with about six Saturday workshops.  I’m both thrilled and frightened. A part of me is terrified that they’ll realize they’ve made a horrible mistake, that they intended to make the offer to someone else and that I’m off the list. I’m going to focus myself on positive thoughts and wait for the course details to arrive.

There are very few things as tragic as the attack that happened on 9/11 that let our American friends know they were at war.  Like most people, I know exactly where I was when it happened.  It was a day off and my husband and I were working on our house. I happened to flip on the TV and news reports were flowing in.  The first tower had been hit and I was seeing replays.  It was only later that the second tower fell.  In that moment, the lives of so many people were changed irreparably.  Nothing would ever be the same.

Hate is not the answer.  Hate is never the answer…

Well, after an extended vacation, I’m back!

We took the kids camping over the holidays, but I don’t have any pictures up yet.  The weather was great and we had a blast.  I came back for one week at work and then jumped on a plane and headed to Calgary for the weekend to pick up my daughter who was visiting my mom.

We had a great time!  I had hoped to see the “River of Light” event while I was in Calgary but, unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out. I popped over to Heather’s blog and, luckily, she did a great job of capturing the event!

I did get to Banff and visited the Fairmont Hotel.  Now that’s an amazing spot.  I think next time I’ll bring my bathing suit and hit the hot springs!!

Afterwards we did some shopping in Banff and then headed out to do some sight seeing in the area.  We took a drive to Lake Minnewanka (my niece calls it Lake Willy Wonka). Now that’s a beautiful spot!

It’s a glacier fed lake (or so I am told) and I believe it.  That water was COLD! There scuba divers preparing for a dive and they were in full dry suits with layers of clothes underneath.

Yah, so the scuba divers were layering up and what does my daughter say? “Hey, I’m going to go for a swim.”.  What did I say? Something to the effect of “Have you lost your mind?”

Do you see the teeny tiny head in this picture.  That is my daughter swimming and shouting something to the effect of “my arms are getting numb”.  The scuba girl asked me if we were from Ontario.  I said, “yes, how did you know”.  She said “because only someone from Ontario would swim in that lake”.  I’m not sure what she meant by that, exactly. LOL!

Oh, by the way…remember the bikini trauma?  That’s my 15 year old daughter. Feel my pain people…

Just as we were loading back into our minivan–a.k.a. “the tour bus” (and while I was covering my child with as much clothing as I could muster up), we encountered…mountain goats!

The next day we went shopping and we went to the Calgary Tower.  Have I mentioned my fear of heights?  There is a section that is a glass (well, more likely plexi-glass) floor.  Here is the view if you stand on it.

Yep, that’s a loooooooooonnnnnggggg way down!  Did you know that children can smell fear? I know because my daughter smelled mine and made me get on the glass to take a picture.  Did I mention that I’m so afraid of heights that I won’t even get on a ferris wheel?

So, is the smile convincing?  Do I look like I’m having fun? Nope, I didn’t think so.  I was white knuckling it. Still, it is a fun picture.  Good times.

Today is a holiday.  No post today.  Just a heartfelt Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends!

I’ve just gotten off a discussion board about writing.  One published author told us that she writes her first draft by hand in bed (even though she has a Room of Her Own) and then transfers her writing at the end of every day onto her computer for editing purposes. She avoids the computer as part of the actual writing process and keeps her research and notes in a file folder. One folder for each novel.  She just started folder #9.

Her day looks something like this.  She gets up, has a shower and a coffee.  Plays with her puppies.  Maybe takes them for a walk.  Makes her bed (so she has a place to write). Does the crossword puzzle.  Plays with the dogs a bit more. Then she gets down to writing and, with the exception of a few possible “play” breaks, she writes through until it’s time to make supper.

Here is what my average day looks like.  Out of bed early to shower before the phone calls start.  Grab a quick coffee on my way through the kitchen to my home office. Put my head down and work like crazy. Try to remember to eat something occassionally.  Try to remember to drink water.  At 7pm shut the computer and have dinner with my family and talk about their day.  Go back and work for another hour after dinner if it was a bad day. Go to the soccer field to watch my daughter’s game if it was a good day.  Get home, make some notes in my journal about my writing and what I need to work on when I get to the weekend and have a few sweet hours to write. Once finished, spend some one on one time with my husband. Repeat 5X.  Occassionally mix in a few days of travel with 3 to 13 hours of “windshield time” (time spent driving to the destination) depending on where in Ontario I need to be. Occassionally they send me on the company jet instead.  Then I come to the weekend.  I work a half day on Saturday and am generally off on Sundays (unless disaster strikes).

Guess when I write? Sundays…usually in the afternoon and into the evening.

Let me tell you, I’m feeling very jealous right now. I want to write full-time and have her schedule!

Oops, I’d better stop blogging and start writing, it is Sunday after all.

I’ve been travelling for work again.  I took this picture from my car on the way North to Huntsville, ON.  The picture doesn’t do it justice, but the sunset was gorgeous. I drove the 5 1/2 hours there on Thursday night and then back on Friday…home just in time to throw some clothes in a bag to head out camping.  Lots of rain today but we’re having fun.

I had lots of time to think while I was driving.  I got some feedback on the first chapter of my novel that I haven’t posted to this blog.  The Instructor thought the writing was excellent, but said that he didn’t feel as interested in two of the characters (Janet and Dana) as he was with Moira.  He just sort of wanted more of Moira.  I totally obsessed over this.  Do I revise and remove Dana and Janet (but I love them)…or do I re-write them to make them more interesting?  Do I need them? Are they critical to the story, plot and theme?  Am I over thinking the theme? WHY doesn’t he like the other two characters? Would all readers only like her? Obsess, obsess, obsess.  That’s what I did for three days.

And then I went onto the writing workshop to view the critiques of my work.  One of the other writer’s wrote a very good critique and ended it with “I just LOVE Janet, she’s so quirky and she gets all the best lines”.  I laughed out loud…more than a little bit relieved.

No more obsessing.  What I really need to do is just write a great story.  All the rest will fall into place if I just spend my energy on creating a great story.

By the way, I’m just about finished Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden and will have a book review up shortly.  I’ve hardly been able to put this book down…

Like I mentioned in my last post, things have been a bit crazy at home this week and I really have let my blog slip.  Everything is ok and life is working towards normal again (thank goodness).

I’m also travelling for work this week and testing out a WP blogging app for my iPod touch. How cool is that?

I’ve been keeping up with the reading for my course. The one advantage to travelling with work is the quiet time in the hotel to get caught up.

I’m working on my assignment but will really need to focus some time on it this weekend if I want to complete on time.

My last two assignments did well and I even received the comment “excellent work” from the instructor. Yes I did a little dance across the room after reading that one (haha)

The nice weather is giving me Spring Fever and I’m starting to think about camping. It’s such a great escape and I can’t wait!