It’s so rare to see book-related things translated into visual format (yes, I know one can see a book, but that isn’t quite what I mean) and I love videos of words-and-books-related things. Let me know if you come across any good ones!

Click on any of these for a larger image.

1) This was a response to a play we’d read in my OAC Writer’s Craft course (a course I passed by the skin of my teeth – it remains my nemesis to this day). I think the first line sounds that way because our teacher asked us to identify what specific style of reaction we’d had, or something, but please look at what I’ve highlighted in the red box:

A well-defined social milieu?! I don’t think I rightly know what that means even now, and I’m nearly 30 years old! Maybe this one phrase is the reason I nearly failed the class. It’s all so clear to me now.

2) The next two were from my CanLit course, the course that pretty much defined me as a writer and showed me how amazing Canadian writing was. Below are notes about Fifth Business, and I don’t know if they’re notes from a lecture or if I invented the wording myself. Either way, it’s amazing to me how deeply we have to delve into books as students. I understand the value in it – and in this case it made me appreciate Fifth Business much more – but I also remember being skeptical that all of these elements were valuable/existed.

3) Now, keeping in mind how much I loved Robertson Davies at this time – how cruel is it to make your class write his obituary? And why did I get such a low mark on it? Probably because I wrote it through tears or something.

4) This one’s my favourite. It’s from that Writer’s Craft course. This document may also be the reason I nearly failed. Look at my answer to the last question! The cheek of it!

5) This last one sums up my high school mentality pretty well.

• Are Your Clients Really Getting Your Best? from Men With Pens.
• Teri Vlassopoulos blogs about choosing the name of her new short story collection.
• Lija at The Writer’s Pet writes about Fifth Business, a favourite novel we have in common!
• An article about the writing advice industry at the Globe & Mail.

Ms Hegeman, whose father is the renowned German literary director and theatre professor Carl Hegemann, has already written a play and the script to her own film. But her novel about a 16-year-old girl who suffers the death of her mother and subsequently plumbs the depths of wild sex and heavy drug taking on Berlin’s techno music scene has been her first runaway success.

Read the full article here.

My dear friend Suzen and I, among the many things we have in common, share the unique preoccupation with Home that only being away from it can bring. Admittedly, her Home, Newfoundland, is a bit more picturesque and immediately evocative than mine. However, Ontario works its way into almost everything I write. There’s even a literary style named for my home region, though I don’t think my fiction fits into it – much as I’d love it to.

So, it made my wee expat heart soar to read:

This summer, Ontario’s literary history will become a permanent part of the province’s physical landscape with a new project called Ontario: Read It Here.

A series of eight plaques will be installed across the province in the exact geographic location where Ontario-based literary scenes takes place.

The full article can be read here. Having lived here in Alberta for nearly a decade, I’ve taken my fair share of lumps about being an Ontarian. Say what you will about Ontario – I’m excited about this and wish I could see it!

I decided to continue once I realized my mistake. I was disheartened at the beginning because it started out so confusingly, Lessing listing her grandparents and talking about them in a way that was hard to follow. I almost gave up, especially since the book was volume one of two and not at all short. But, happily, it got loads better. There wasn’t really a structure to the autobiography. I mean, yes, she does tell her story chronologically, but she digresses into stories and memories that might not have to do with the “plot,” at least not obviously. And she does this in such a compelling way; her stories are so interesting and her tone is so engaging. She was born in Iran and grew up in Zimbabwe, the daughter of British parents who were farming in “the colonies,” and was also a Communist. Though she seemed to like living there (even if her childhood wasn’t perfect), she has a pretty realistic view of this time in history; she leans towards the side of “this was a kind of ridiculous time and I tried to change it in my own way.” Also, I love when people branch off into side stories, especially elderly people who often have a lot of great stories.

Anyway, I read the book eagerly and am now reading the second volume, starting after she leaves Zimbabwe for England with her young son. She writes about her writing process and I thought it’d be useful to share. She writes:

Impossible to describe a writer’s life, for the real part of it cannot be written down. How did my day go in those early days in London, in Church Street? I woke at five, when the child did. He came into my bed, and I told or read him stories or rhymes. We got dressed, he ate, and then I took him to the school up the street . . . I shopped a little, and then my real day began. The feverish need to get this or that done . . . had to be subdued to the flat, dull state one needs to write in . . .

And now, on the little table that has been cleared of breakfast things, replaced by scattered sheets of paper, is the typewriter, waiting for me. Work begins. I do not sit down but wander around the room. I think on my feet . . . I find myself in the chair by the machine. I write a sentence . . . will it stand? But never mind, look at it later, just get on with it, get the flow started. And so it goes on. I walk and I prowl, my hands busy with this and that . . . I walk, I write. If the telephone rings I try to answer it without breaking the concentration. And so it goes on, all day, until it is time to fetch the child from school or until he arrives at the door . . .

So that’s the outline of a day. But nowhere in it is there the truth of the process of writing. I fall back on that useful word ‘wool-gathering.’ And this goes on when you are shopping, cooking, anything. You are reading but find the book has lowered itself: you are wool-gathering. The creative dark. Incommunicable.

She then goes on to recount how different publishing was back then, in the ’50s, how there used to be a close relationship between writer and publisher/editor, and books were sometimes published even though they wouldn’t make any money – just because they were good. Thoroughly depressing. This is why I like small/independent publishing. For the love! Or any other, less cheesy, phrase you’d like to substitute.

Anyway, this was long but I hope it was interesting. Personally, I can’t get enough of reading about the writing/creative process!

This bookstore is – was – McNally Robinson, Canada’s largest independent chain of bookstores, and I loved the Calgary location until it shut down, citing high costs of real estate and labour. I was even more sad when the company declared bankruptcy. I thought, for sure, Chapters had won.

But today, I read an article on the CBC website that said McNally Robinson has emerged from bankruptcy protection. Hooray! Good news! Hope!

I’m still mourning the loss of the Calgary location, however. There’s a SportChek in there now. Sigh.

A few weeks ago, I turned on the TV randomly to find PBS was airing a special on Mavis Gallant. I watched happily, because I love her. I discovered her quite late, via a Writers & Company podcast a few years ago. To be honest, I haven’t even read too much of her work, but I love her all the same. I like that she’s kind of scrappy and refuses to answer any questions she feels breaches her privacy. I like that she hasn’t lived in Canada for decades and isn’t a particular paragon of the CanLit “scene,” yet we haven’t turned our backs on her.

I like her more now that I’ve finally stopped confusing her, for some reason, with Doris Lessing, who have little in common besides their relative age and scrappiness (I’m sensing a theme here). I had my notebook ready to write down things Gallant said during her interviews, but I was so focused on listening and wrote nothing down. These photos I took will have to do!

Here are some things that I’ve been excited about this week:

• My dear friend Teri is publishing her first short story collection. I’ve known Teri for a long time and have been fortunate enough to read several of her stories – she’s always been one of my favourite writers. I’m so excited for her and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving writer!
• Margaret Atwood’s Three Reasons to Keep Paper Books. (Also, I love the URL of her blog. “marg09″? Love her!)

Anyway, I hope you’re having a good week so far!