Creating a new Website a bit like Home Renos

It's hard to create your own website. I guess it's a lot like writing your own bio, doing your own resume, writing your own will and obituary. It's hard to be objective, to get to the truth, to represent what really matters and to tell your own story. I suppose it has a lot in common with home reno's that way.

My new site under my own name was done by Brenda Johima who lives in the Comox Valley. She went above and beyond when it came to removing my url off GoDaddy servers, communicating with the new host, HostPapa, doing the SEO and all that stuff in the back end that I really didn't want to spend the time to learn, hence my decision to hire her.

It feels good to finally have a WordPress site although at this point I'm not even sure what the focus of the blog on the new site will be.  Now, I know this is going to sound strange coming from someone who writes, but I don't really like writing about writing. What new information could I possibly provide? It's probably some sort of creative writing blasphemy to say this but I actually dislike writing about writing almost as much as I usually dislike attending readings. 


If you've been to  a lot of readings in your youth, that's usually good. Done. Enough. I heard Margaret Atwood read at UBC in the mid 1980s. She was wearing a long black cape on a winter evening. I was surprised at her monotone voice. Gail Anderson Dargatz is a very amusing reader. I saw her at the Sechelt Writer's Festival a long time ago. Maeve Binchy was fantastic at the Vancouver International Writer's Festival as well, ages ago,where she was on stage with her husband. The most memorable reading I've heard to date was by Tomson Highway, reading from his book Kiss of the Fur Queen. He was so funny. Funny matters to me. Not exclusively, but it matters. I liked to be entertained by readings. Call me crazy.

For me, everything about writing is in the act, not in the talking about the act. And, when I put it like that, writing and sex have that in common.

If you'd like to follow the other blog, that might be good.  No promises.

Pull Up a Chair and Really Listen

Outside a restaurant in Steveston, BC

How many times have you left a conversation wondering, what exactly did she mean by that? Is what I think he meant, really what he meant or am I completely misinterpreting that? Am I projecting? It's so easy to be so passive, to never think critically and like a sponge move through your days, as if you're watching TV, without really knowing if what you thought you understood is what someone else was actually trying to communicate or if it went right over your head (maybe like this blog post is doing right now for you?) 

And, that brings me to the small-group workshops that are a part of the SFU Writer's Studio. In my group - every second Tuesday, 10 of us gather around a table in a very small room downtown. When it's our turn for one of our pieces to be work-shopped, we receive the luxury of receiving both verbal feedback and then, in writing, from 9 other people to take home and keep. A first draft of creativity, handed back with our fellow classmates' impressions, opinions, feedback, corrections and philosophical musings. It's quite a luxury.  

And, then you take those home and put them in a drawer and pull them out a few weeks later after you've mulled over how you want to change what you've written or you want to completely revise. You could even choose to go back to the person and ask them for a more thorough explanation of their comments if you want really want to.

Your assumptions get reflected back to you. You get to see if you're being gender biased or if because of your age you're making statements that nobody under 30 would understand.  You get to see how people are reacting to your writing. You get to see how a character or a story that you feel you've explained completely is confusing your readers or leaving them wanting a lot more. Too many colloquialisms? You actually end up learning quite a bit about yourself. You get glimpses into where you might be stuck, your natural tendencies in approaching how you tell your stories and how you might consider challenging or experimenting with those. You get to see where your fellow writers unanimously agree or disagree and you have to go inside, use your intuition, for where the comments are at direct odds. You learn what's weak and what's strong and whether you're leaving them confused or making them think or getting across your message in exactly the way you intended to.

When we go around the table and the person giving feedback has their 5 minutes to speak, it's as if they hold the talking stick. Nobody else gets to interrupt or speak. We're all listening. 

Where else in our world do you get to be in a group of  people, listen, and have all the information that's streaming out of each one of them, as they take their turns, be directed towards a creation that you've pulled out of your imagination or your personal history? 

Better than group therapy!