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.

Non fiction writer or sociopathic voyeur? Depends!

My participation in The Writer's Studio is progressing along nicely  (which is why the Blog is so lacking) and now we are undergoing the exhilarating and nerve-wracking experience of standing up and reading our work in public. First, in front of the class, but also at local cafes. I'm thankful that I'm not a poet. Poetry just seems so over the top baring your soul intimate and courageous to me.  I've written poetry and it just seems too close to the flesh to share, out loud, with others regardless of its focus.

So far, I have given three readings. One in front of the Writer's Studio co-hort and mentors. One at the Montmartre on Main Street and the third at Rhizome Cafe on E. Broadway.

Standing up and reading in front of people, especially when you are in the non fiction group, can be a little bit tricky. You may be writing about things that have happened in your life, which, typically also include other people. Your story can be their story. Sure, you can change their names and make up locations  but is that enough? You have to decide as a non fiction writer, especially if you tread into memoir writing, just how far you are willing to go in revealing the truth. Some people won't like that your truth happens to include them.They might not like the way you describe them or the kind of insights you have about yourself or them, in the writing.  Wisely, the SFU Writer's Studio program includes sessions with lawyers as workshop guests who speak about libel, slander and defamation.

I've always felt pretty strongly that what I write is my story. If you don't like what I write, you're more than welcome to write your own story, from your own perspective.  If you happen to be in  my story, as in my life, then depending on what went down, it's either "lucky you", or "oops". I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what other people will think about what I've written because for me it's more about how to tell the story, although I do admit that when you tread into memoir, it is easy to wonder if you're becoming become a sociopathic voyeur who's crazy enough to take a closer look at aspects of your life you wished you'd never seen up close and personal the first time.

An artist once said to me that when she goes to life drawing classes, she doesn't notice the whole naked body up there as attached to a person, she is focused on the shapes and the forms and how to interpret and get those down on paper. At first I didn't believe her. You have a naked guy right there in front of you and you're telling me you don't notice whether he has a nice round butt or a kind of oblong, weirdly shaped one? I didn't believe her. Now I do. Or, at least her perspective is more plausible to me.

To date, I've read two pretty innocuous pieces. One was what it was like to join a beginner band on Salt Spring and it had a lot of humour in it, the other was about a chef there, and the third, not so innocuous, was about the last time I visited Mac, the week before he committed suicide a long time ago now.

What I discovered is that when you go back and write about something that happened a long time ago and it took an emotional toll on you, you are able to objectify the experience in a way that almost makes it seem like you're telling a scene from a movie that has nothing to do with you. That's a bit of an exaggeration but it's so much easier to write about things once time has passed.  You don't forget that you were there, but it's much easier to feel like you are just sitting on a train, watching the events unfold and are able to tell them in a way that can draw a reader/listener into the experience. That's what happened, it would seem from the feedback, when I read that piece about my last visit.

I could feel the silence even as I read and when you can feel the silence, not just hear it, you know that your writing is doing something to capture the audience.

It is such an incredible privilege to stand up in front of a room even if just for 5 or 10 minutes with your creative work being the center of attention and you being the conduit. Most people will never be able to have that experience and it is transformative in ways that I can feel brewing. I can feel it and it has something to do with confidence in what I'm doing, a sense that it's exactly what I have always been meant to be doing and that, even though it makes me no money, it matters more than anything else I could be doing.

Reading your work to others suddenly makes your creativity a communal experience, instills value and has the ability to impact others' thoughts and feelings,  not just something you do alone in front of your computer having to deal with everyone wondering what the hell you're doing anyway.

I like it! Smile. Smile.

Where Art Thou Teacher?

"They say that when one is ready for the teacher, the teacher appears." 

First,  let's backtrack a little. School's in.

A long time ago I belonged to this ad hoc group of women writers. We originally met at some Saturday afternoon course offered through SFU Continuing Studies at the downtown campus in Vancouver. It was called "Spark your Creativity". What a cheesey title that is. But, it was a fun course and indeed it delivered.

It was taught by the writer Nancy Lee.  I don't even recall the year.  But at the end of the afternoon, a bunch of us exchanged contact info. And, that single afternoon launched a coming together of 4 or 5 women whose personalities just meshed. It was the start of  our writing group.

We fit so well that we ended up keeping that writing group going without much effort for at least a year.  We'd come together on the Tslaiwatouth Indian band in North Vancouver to meet at Mahara's. Sometimes we'd meet at Jean's place. It was a couple of meetings before I realized Jean actually lived with the animation guy Mike who taught at UBC Continuing Studies Multimedia Studies Program where I worked at the time.

We'd chat and eat muffins because Jean was a Ukrainian Mench. She liked to bake.  She belongs on Salt Spring actually. I can picture her in an organic garden with chickens pecking around and clothes blowing off an old fashioned clothes line. She was a real earth mother into the domestic arts and always writing about living like that. I wonder what she's doing and if she's still writing? 

Often we'd do these timed writing exercises. Sometimes we'd choose from a bunch of random photos cut out of magazines. What we'd come up with always seemed amazing. Like where did THAT come from? It was great; the sharing of each other's brilliance.  But, as these things go, it eventually ran its course and as spontaneously as it had begun, it was gone.

"They say that when one is ready for the teacher, the teacher appears." 

Fast forward about 15 years or more (don't blink) to this afternoon. I couldn't wait to finally meet up with a woman I've known superficially for a while and whom I've always thought was really cool.  She paints. She writes. She wants to write more. She's been to India five times and her first trip was in 1978. She's very "awake" as she likes to say, not about herself , but about spiritually conscious sentient beings like her Indian Master and Eckhart Tolle (my silly words, not hers).

So, we've decided that we're going to be a group of two, her and I. We're going to be our own creative sparks on a weekly basis. We'll talk about writing. We'll write. We'll do timed exercises. We'll ask questions. We'll refrain from judging through praise. We'll give ourselves homework. It's exciting. There's just never enough time in the mind numbing version of dishes need to be done life for talk about stuff that really matters.

I'm slowly building the personal spiritual mentoring program. Sexy ninja healer. Check. Solid spiritual yogi. Check. Tai chi master. Present. Bit by bit I will force myself to enlightenment dammit! (oops, I take that back.)

Today, I brought home something the "solid spiritual yogi" wrote a while ago about what lead up to her first trip to India and it was one line that made me think. What I thought was, maybe this is about writing for her but, for me, I think it's about something else. I thought that as soon as I read that one line in her piece:

"They say that when one is ready for the teacher, the teacher appears."

Self employment and the Illusion of Leisure

Sometimes I get annoyed when people look at me, enviously, and say... "Ya but, you only work 4.5 hours a day, four days a week". That assessment makes it sound as if I'm independently wealthy and the rest of the time I'm just sittin' back with my feet up.  It also makes it sound like there's no such thing as choice. I made a choice. You can too!

My choice has meant living at the poverty line but it also means incredible natural beauty, peace, solitude, and in some moments, sheer happiness and gratitude at being in this environment. At 49, I'm trying to do, one more time, what I should have been doing my entire life but never got right because I have never approached it in a systematic, professional manner or believed, truly, that I could do it.

Busy

I work 4.5 hours a day at a part-time job because I need a minimum income to maintain my financial comfort level (or unease level) as the case may be.  I don't have the benefit of a second income as a safety net. I don't have the distractions that another person in the form of a partner would bring or any of the positives as well. At what cost I have always asked. Maybe that's truly because I've never met the "right" person but it's more likely that my choice is my choice and I prefer it that way.  The "right" person is afterall, to some degree, a choice.

Friday I was up at 6:22 am. I was on the computer almost immediately while making coffee. Initially, I was looking at my photos trying to decide which ones to order in 8x10 sizing. Did I need that at this point? The Market isn't busy enough at this point. It's a fine line between having a healthy stock and having too much stock.

I was reviewing my Excel spreadsheet looking at who I was going to cold call that morning. I was reviewing my writing resume, tweaking it, and adjusting the pitch I was going to use in the e-mail and on the phone. I was Googling companies and trying to narrow down the name of the right person to call and then around 9:00 am I started picking up the phone. I was doing that, non stop until about 3:00 pm. At that point, I took a bit of a break. I didn't leave the cottage until then. I brushed my teeth finally. Ugh.  I went over to say Hi to Marjorie, my neighbour and sat a bit with her.

After that, around 3:45, I came back and started thinking about story ideas that I could pitch to a specific magazine that I have in mind. I had a response to one of my queries from a magazine that I'd sent a while ago and they told me to follow up. They were asking for images. They wanted to see the images that would accompany the story. I had to e-mail the photographer who the story is about and get him to get me images.

I have been reading Writers Digest lately and I really like it. It's a good magazine with lots of practical tips. One of the tips is, know the magazines and then come up with story ideas. It's much easier  than trying to pull story ideas out of the air and then figure out who might buy them. Do it the other way around. I've ordered Canadian Writers Market and Writer's Market 2010 on a great deal from Amazon. No shipping charges.

My friend Lisa who is the networker/cold caller extraordinaire pointed out that in order to get work doing contract writing or freelance writing articles, querying at least 25 people a week via e-mail and having a systematic system for following up in a cold call is important. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that while I'm working 20 hours a week at the job that's really just an annoying distraction, but that's my goal. 

I'm starting to really think about how I'm using my time. This Blog is really a waste of time except, it's a bit like therapy or something. I can't not do it at this point it seems.

My friend Karin who just moved back to Vancouver was very good at this. She works way more than 40 hours a week doing all that's related to her art. When you walk into her house she has a bulletin board and on it are competitions and grant deadlines hanging with dates in black pen on the top. She's very good at setting boundaries with people making it clear that she's working because when you're an artist, people think you're just playing around or something, not working. When I first came to Salt Spring, I remember thinking, so much for the laid back artist stereotype after learning about how much she works.

Back in my own realm, by 6:00 pm I went out for about 3 hours. Then, I came back and I started getting my photographs in order for the market. I was making more photo cards until 10:45 pm and doing some matting as well.

I went to bed around 11:00 to get up at 6:30 am to go to the market. So you see, when someone says to me, you only work 4.5 hours a day like I"m a lazy slob, they be wrong!

Are you self employed? What are some of your biggest challenges? I'd really like to hear about them.

Two Weddings, a job and a funeral

I've come up with a new idea in what is my never ending quest to cover all the bases in terms of trying to expand the on-island writing work. The Write Occasion, "Two weddings, a job and a funeral" is my new service where I'm going to offer  my writing abilities to anyone who might need some assistance in writing their wedding vows or writing an obituary (for people and/or pets) with resume writing thrown in to add to all the other types of writing I'm doing anyway.

I have no idea whether there will be a market for such a thing but there seems to be a lot of weddings held here, and funerals, but that goes without saying. Death and taxes, baby!

I was telling Karin this the other day, showing her my new postcards that I created off Zazzle and she found it hysterical thinking about me meeting with a young couple trying to craft their wedding vows. Having just written that, it cracks me up just thinking about it as well but I CAN DO IT! I can!  Nobody ever gets that I'm a romantic at heart. Besides, there's no better place for black humour than at weddings or funerals if you ask me!  Why two weddings? she asked (so naively). Because, I say, (like duh!) that's the most likely number of weddings that someone will have in their lifetime.

It got me thinking about practising on myself. They say it's a good idea to think of your life backwards, and to write your own obituary to really clue into what matters to you and what you'd still really like to do.

Anyway, I am putting an ad in The Driftwood newspaper and more importantly, I'm sending out a letter with the post card targetting all the other businesses on island that might connect with people who would need to use the service: Church  ministers, wedding officiants, flower arrangers, wedding planners, caterers.

Anybody need their obit written in advance? If they have living wills, why not living obits? I mean, have you thought about who would write about your life when you die? Are you going to leave that important task to some family member who depends on spellcheck to check spelling and the only thing they normally write are cheques?  Eeeeks!

Home is where the Heart is

The sun is streaming in the door this morning warming my back as I write this post.

I'm eating blackberries that I picked from out the front looking forward to today because I get to do two interviews for two features for an upcoming edition of Aqua magazine.

I'm going to interview a woman who has a huge Teddy Bear collection. That should be good for a hug or two (from the bears) :-) and then even more interesting to me, I get to meet a woman who started what was called the Vancouver Literary Storefront in the late 70s which could be likened to the precursor of the BC Federation of Writers.

She has run (with her husband) a small press called Mother Tongue Publishing that used to make beautiful, hand made chapbooks and now they are moving into trade publishing focusing on BC Art, BC Art History and Literature.

It should be really interesting to talk to her.

If you look closely at this photo, in the tree on the right hand side, it seems as if there is a little pink heart at the top of the tree caused by the reflection of the light. The heart looks like it has been placed there in the tree. I like that.

Saltspring has always captured my heart.