Phew
Saturday, July 24, 2004 , 8:00 PM
This has been a long two weeks. Er, I mean fortnight. I don’t know what I mean.
For my first week here, I was alternately chatting with my editor, just enjoying her company in person, or working through intense editing sessions with her, trying to establish and nail down between us some very subtlestylistic guidelines for writing Strategic Coacharticles. I don’t mean Strunk and White style, clauses and apostrophes and such, but shadings of tone and voice that make our work compelling and palatable for entrepreneurs.
This week was easier in theory, just sitting in the company’s workshops. In practice, though, I had to apply a high level of attention to every moment Dan Sullivan (he president and co-creator of the company) was coaching, and to every bit of feedback and insight the clients offered up. When I write for the company, I need to write in Dan’s voice. Our clients and people like them who are our prospects, have a certain set of concerns and ambitions that he taps into in an electric way, creating solutions for all their issues that they consider so valuable that many have returned to our workshops each quarter for over ten years. My writing will be more effective the more I can emulate Dan’s voice and understand our clients’ worries and frustrations, hopes and advantages.
So it was a lot of heavy listening.
My head, though, is now full of great raw material to use in my writing for the time ahead. Instead of writing in cold business-speak, saying things like “Maximise your productivity to leverage your potential”, I can reach into the experiences our clients shared to see how they can use their businesses to create lives they love, full of activities that light them up, generating the kind of income that lets them buy incredible experiences and surround themselves with talented individuals who can free them up to spend more time in their most important personal relationships.
This is good. It’s not only my job, it’s the next plateau of ability that I want to achieve in my writing ability. Description is my favourite aspect of writing, so doing this — writing about real people’s lives instead of business theory — is a lot more fun.
And I need a break.
While doing all this editing and input work, I’ve also been visiting with dear friends here in Toronto. One day this week, I had a breakfast meeting, work, a lunch meeting, more work, then a supper engagement. There are so many people I love that I couldn’t neglect to see, and there was barely enough time going full-tilt like this to even meet with the inner circle of friends.
It should be getting easier: the company has made me the offer that if I fly here once a year they’ll fly me here once, too. That’ll be a big help, keeping me constantly charged with inspiration and material for doing the work. I also got a pay-rise, which is motivating, too! Best of all, though, are the relationships I have with the people at work. From Dan and Babs, the owners, whom I admire as creators, innovators, and friends, through to the team members who talk to each other with the wit and intelligence of “West Wing” characters, having positive, effective meetings in the halls like automatic machine gun fire. They’re also eerily good-looking, too.
I’m sitting in Starbucks on Church Street, where years ago I wrote chunks of my first and second novels. I just had a delicious supper with my lovely, cute, wonderful ex and my kinda ex-in-laws, and am now waiting until my friends get out of a movie so I can meet up with them for a drink. I’m completely knackered, and still in work-clothes (including trousers I bought here for work which are a bit-too-tight!) but conscious that it’s my last night here. I imagine I’m going to collapse for a day or so at Mom and Dad’s. My visit to them couldn’t have been planned for a better time.
People at work kept asking me “So when are you coming back?” I’ll probably come back at Christmas, but right now I don’t want to think about it, because I feel like my Edinburgh life — so barely established compared to what I’ve got here — is atrophying with every moment I’m away. And Edinburgh, I know in my heart, is home.
My camera is full of pictures, though unfortunately I neglected to take snaps of some of the people I visited with. I’ll post those when I get back to Edinburgh. In the meantime, I’m going off to Prince Edward Island, home of low, rolling leafy fields of potatoes bursting from rows of rusty red soil that stretch off to the deep blue ocean, home of white beaches that tumble from grassy dunes to the choppy white waves. It’s memories of those fearful days in the high school halls, the nights spend in my basement bedroom dreaming of the future person I hoped to be (and suppose I am now), and the summer theatre gigs I landed. Most importantly, it’s family. I can’t wait to see them, to happily let go and fall into their arms for a week.
I probably won’t be able to send this until I get to my parents’ place tomorrow. I’ve not had much luck finding chances or ways to connect to the ‘net here. Normally that would be irksome, like trying to operate without thumbs for two weeks, but I’ve been too busy for it to matter much.
My eyelids feel like they’re lined with model glue. Soon I’ll rest. Soon…
Saturday, July 10, 2004 , 3:13 PM
I’m in Toronto! I’m typing away at my buddy Cosgrove’s iBook, ’cause even though they have a wireless connection, for some reason I can’t do anything e-mail-y on it. I just wanted to write a post to say I’ve arrived safe and sound.
Last night we went to see a movie, then went to Woody’s, one of our old haunts. We stood in one spot and held court as people we knew came and left throughout the evening. I saw one guy I’d dated briefly. He seems to be doing quite well for himself, which makes me happy. Sounds like there’s still a bit of drama (like a lot of people, he seems to function best with some strife always going on in the background), but he seemed happy. He’s just left a relationship and started a new one. Hearing that made that little voice in my head say “Damn”, ’cause he’s still a stunner. We used to always cross paths exactly when we were both both feeling single and amorous. There’s a terrible tendency when travelling to do what I call “black booking”: looking up all those old flings and flames.
What’s funny is that a number of people last night commented on my accent. In Scotland, they all think I sound Canadian, and I do — until I’m in Canada, where “Toronto” becomes “Trawna”, “twenty” is “twenny”, “Stewart” is “Stooward”, and the R in “green” isn’t a hard-hit with the tongue, but a wider, more Muppet-y sound. I’d also had a few drinks, which makes my voice slide in that direction. (I suppose it’d be easy to get people to buy into the theory that the Scots accent developed out of drunkenness.)
It’s a beautiful, hot day here. High of 26 — perfect, really. Any more, and I’d not know what to do with myself. I’m not used to the heat anymore.
Time to go out and play!
If you (whoever’s reading) need to reach me while I’m here, you can get me on 416-829-4820. That number will be active until about the 23rd of July.
Take care!
Monday, July 05, 2004 , 7:31 PM
Patrick just left. We just had our weekly have-supper-and-plan-out-our-lives session at mine, then went for a walk around a park near my house that I didn’t know existed (which is home to a tiny lake with ducks, geese, moor hens, and a single shopping trolley).
Just before we left the house, I picked up my e-mail. Amongst the letters from friends was a response from an editor to a submission I’d sent him for Idea in Stone. This editor had been quite excited about my second book, and seriously considered publishing it. This one, though, he didn’t like at all. But when he told me what he thought it was trying to be (“a pseudo-documentary like A Mighty Wind“), the only thing I could think was “Did you even read past the first chapter?” It’s not what the book is about in any way, shape, or form. It would be fine to misunderstand a story from the first chapter (or three, as included in the partial manuscript I sent), except that a submission package also includes a synopsis, which tells you the rest of the story.
There’s nothing to be gained by replying to him, much as I want to clear up his utter misunderstanding of the story. He didn’t like what he read, and that’s that. I’m okay with him not liking the book — taste is individual. I’m not okay with him sending a critical response without having fully read what I sent.
Fair enough. Time to move on. There’s another press that did like the partial manuscript and asked to see the rest. And if it’s not them, it’s someone else who’ll publish it.
Thing is, I’ve grown enough since the last time I did submissions that I see it all as business now, business that’s directed either by market research or purely individual, subjective taste. This is the reality I have to work with. I also feel strangely like an equal with everyone else who happens to be working in the field.
Sunday, July 04, 2004 , 7:59 PM
HAZZAH!
From The Scotsman: “Ministers to ban smoking in pubs”.
We trust people not to murder each other, but just in case someone doesn’t quite get the idea, we’ve created laws about it. Same thing here.
Saturday, July 03, 2004 , 4:25 PM
I have something akin to strep throat. My uvula is like a fattened earthworm hanging down my throat.
On Thursday, I had supper with three poets — Wendy, Gail, and Elspeth. Wendy made us a lovely supper (tagliatelle with a salmon-mushroom sauce), and we sat in candlelight, drinking wine, then eating strawberries and eating pineapple that Wendy and I braised in port, adding brown sugar to make a kind of caramelised port jus. With some heavy cream added — mmm! From time to time, one of us would get up and bang out some words on the giant old black typewriter. By the end of the evening, we had created something together on a sheet of paper.
I had a night with the muses.
This week, I fly to Canada. Edinburgh is rainy and bleak lately (it isn’t usually, really!), and there’s a siren call issuing from Toronto — all those friends, all those old memories to walk through, all the favourite places where I love to eat. I can’t wait to go. But Edinburgh (and Europe in general) — this place makes my soul sing. There’s no question where home is. I belong here, even if I don’t yet.
I went to JK Rowling‘s website today, amongst my other sick-day Saturday activities. It’s a beautiful piece of design work, and I have to admit that I am well and truly jealous. I want to be published. I want to have that kind of creative license and freedom.
CosBlog
Thursday, July 01, 2004 , 3:12 PM
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p>My buddy Cosgrove has written the most brilliant wedding speeches for the marriage of two male friends of his that’s taking place today:
http://www.markcosgrove.com/Blog/.
