Video from Toronto Launch.
Monday, July 31, 2006 , 6:21 PM
I finally posted the video that Alvaro shot on his digicam at the Toronto launch of Idea in Stone.
To see it, click here, or visit the book’s page.
Glad she had another source of paper…
Sunday, July 30, 2006 , 10:00 PM
My first reader-submitted photo:
My friend Kirsten took The Willies along with her on a recent kayaking trip in Massasauga, Ontario.
Thank f*@#!
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 , 5:21 PM
…I’ve got a fan!
No, not for the book. Although I have been printing and binding books constantly for the past week. I just mean an oscillating floor-fan. It’s been so bloody hot here lately!
Scotland? This is Scotland, right?
I’ve been a bad friend and blogger, I know. I’ve not picked up my social life here since coming back because I’ve been making books and… other stuff. (Fun stuff, a someone, but I’ve told myself in the past I should not talk about those things here.)
So if you’ve ordered a book, it should be in the post to you now. I hope they don’t mangle it.
Home again.
Thursday, July 20, 2006 , 12:38 PM
Okay, I’ve been home for several days now, but it’s taken me this long to reach the “Update your blog!” part of the vast to-do list I came home with.
I’ve posted my pictures from Toronto, PEI, and Oban. Just click the image above to go to the gallery. The pics are very small — the next size up and they poked way out of the browser window. If you’d like bigger ones of any of them, just e-mail me.
And if you ordered a book from me while I was away, you’ll be happy to know that production has ramped up to full speed, and I’ve slightly modified the way I’m producing the books, so I’m happier than ever with the result.
Familiar to myself.
Sunday, July 09, 2006 , 7:12 PM
I just had lunch with my friend David Moses. We were both involved in theatre here on the Island years ago. Now he runs a local video production company and also writes for a CBC show called “Robson Arms“.
We had the best chat for a few hours, mainly about story structure. That was fun, talking with someone who’s passionate about it, too. Structure goes so far to explain why some stories work and others don’t.
I learnt a lot from him about the writing process in television, which is very collaborative. At first it sounded intimidating, this talk of “writers’ rooms” and discussions about hammering out “beat sheets”, outlines, and drafts. But as he described the process, it actually sounded kind of fun (assuming the personalities involved don’t clash).
I’m in a little café in town, where the wireless is free. A number of venues in downtown Charlottetown have that, whereas in Toronto it’s more the UK model of having to buy (ridiculously priced) time with one of the major mobile networks. Free is good. And I’m drinking a root beer, just ’cause I can. I may pop into Dairy Queen on the way home, just ’cause I can.
Diet and exercise. Coming soon.
Graham Putnam was in here when I arrived, and we chatted. I met him when he was just “Anne’s son” — Anne was a stage manager for several shows I was in here. But now Graham is one of the founding members of a comedy troupe called Sketch-22 that’s doing really well here.
Tomorrow I’m going to The Queen Street Commons, a collective office/work space created by my friend Cynthia Dunsford and several others. Cynthia is the radio personality I met last summer when I did the hellish emergency response acting gig at the RCMP. I’m looking forward to catching up with her, and sharing ideas.
Then in the evening I’m going with my folks to see thelatest show Anne is stage managing for The Charlottetown Festival. And after that, I’m hoping to meet my friend Julain, who’s an amazing singer performing in the Festival.
So even though I think I don’t know anyone on the Island anymore, it seems I do, and they’re all doing creative work and doing well at it.
The ground here, as in Toronto, is rich loam that just plucks at my feet, trying to pull out roots. “Stay, stay!” But no, it’s just a visit. And it’s getting on time to head home.
This afternoon, there was a service here to welcome the gay, lesbian, transgendered, two-spirited, etc etc community back to the church as part of PEI’s pride week. I had every intention of going, but got engrossed in my conversation. I suppose chatting with Dave about story structure has more to do with my life than a church service, no matter how well-intentioned, revisionist, apologist, or whatever it might have been.
Yesterday, I spent the entire afternoon sitting out in the backyard on a chaise longue, reading cover to cover a book my father thought I’d like. The air was the perfect temperature and moved just enough to be cooling, just enough to flip the pages. The tree overhead kept me from getting sunburnt, but let through a dappled light to read by. And later in the afternoon, a faint smell of wood-smoke drifted on the air, making me think of going camping.
The book I read was A Stranger to Myself, the recently-discovered memoirs of Willy Peter Reese, a soldier in the Wehrmacht who served several tours of duty on the Russian front. It bordered on too poetic, but ultimately I found myself feeling great empathy with this person; if I were in those insane circumstances, I imagine I would have experienced them exactly that way. One moment he would witness an unthinkable atrocity, but the next moment would present him with a vision of natural beauty or a flash of joy about simply being alive.
In several key places, though, it reminded me of one of Natalie Goldberg’s writing principles: “For every cosmic statement you make, you must give ten concrete details.”
Time to move on. It’s just kinda nice to have a bit of private time in town to just do my own thing. The instinct to do this lets me know it’s time to get back home.
Launched me over the moon.
Saturday, July 01, 2006 , 6:53 PM
I’m just waiting for Lisa to swing around Mark and Eric’s to pick me up and take me to the airport, so I figured I’d take a few minutes to catch up.
Over the past few days I’ve met or bumped into a lot of the significant players in my Toronto story. (There are still a few I missed; my apologies.) I can’t do justice to how much these meetings meant to me, and a list of names doesn’t make for good reading, so I’ll just skip ahead.
~
Wednesday was one of those peak days. You know the ones? I hope you do.
It started with a meeting between me and my editor, Cath, at her house. I’ve been writing for The Strategic Coachfor some time now, and I’m truly grateful for the arrangement I’ve got going with them. I have a lot of freedom in my life, I’ve got engaging work to do, and they treat me well. But whenever I’ve projected forward, I couldn’t see anything that gave me great confidence. The only way to grow or advance seemed to involve moving outside of my talent — putting things into words — into the business of creating those things that need describing. But that’s not my thing: I’m not a wealthy, successful entrepreneur, nor do I have anything of my own to say to that group.
Cath dreamt up the idea of something big on the fly (this is one of her talents) something that we both got excited about. We sat there on her puffy couch with a perfect summer’s day outside (the humidity and sunlight, the colours of the trees and sky all balanced to raise the setting to the surreality of a remembered childhood summer), and she described a new role: Storyteller in Residence.
The Strategic Coach has all sorts of concepts and tools that thousands of entrepreneurs have used to drastically change their experience of owning a business. Instead of entrepreneurial life being crushingly hectic, isolating, and disspiriting (when money itself didn’t make up for all the personal costs nor provide any meaning) they learned to use it as a tool for becoming more free, having more rewarding relationships and richer experiences, and many of them have developed ways to make a contribution to society much bigger than themselves.
What we don’t really have is a way to capture their experiences, which are ultimately one of our most valuable resources. Sure, we’ve got all these great ideas, but they only mean something in the context of the changes they produce in real people’s lives. So this imaginary role Cath dreamt up would involve me adding that capability to the company. What I do at work and away from work may ultimately become indistinguishable from each other.
I like that.
From her place, Cath and I darted out to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, a darkened, climate-controlled cement cathedral, where my friend PJ showed us several amazing old books, starting with a gorgeous illuminated Book of Hours (with hand-illustrated figures who seemed to have stepped from a deck of playing cards standing amidst exacting calligraphy and raised gold details).
Then PJ showed us The Wicked Bible, which has a deliberate misprint — “Thou shalt commit adultery” — planted there through act of publishing sabotage. Finally, he took a first folio of Shakespeare from a large leather box, which slid open in two parts like a cigar tube, then from its marbled paper hard cover, and opened its pages for us. Because it’s vellum (not wood), we were even allowed to touch it.
The stories behind some of these texts — “Forgeries and Mystifications”, as the Library of Congress refers to them — were good enough for a slew of exciting novels. (Hmm…)
Time ran out, and we had to take a quick taxi-ride back to the Coach offices, where Dan Sullivan (founder of the company, along with his wife) was waiting in our studio to lay down the recording of a piece I’d written for one of our publications. On this trip, I’d been present for the original phone interview he conducted with several of our clients, wrote a piece based on the call, then got to hear him make this recording.
After work, I went with Margaux to It’s Not a Deli. At first, it seemed like there might only be a handful of us there for the launch, but as we got closer to the start time (well, the later one; I suspect that I communicated two different times), more and more people poured in until the room was packed and we’d absconded with most of the chairs from the restaurant section.
The crowd was made up of old friends from all different slices of my life, along with a few people I’d never met before. The vibe in the room was incredibly friendly.
Cosgrove asked me what I wanted for an introduction, and I gave him a thin brief that would have lasted about eight seconds. When we finally started, he launched into what amounted to a stand-up routine that he just pulled from the air. It was a charismatic blend of piss-take and tribute.
We started the show with Lisa and her two friends,Caitriona and Suzie, who fired the evening off like a shot with a high-energy set of bluegrass music. Their voices blended wonderfully and their instruments — guitars, ukelele, and fiddle — resonated against the whitewashed brick walls, strumming each of us in the audience like happy catgut.
Cosgrove then came back to introduce me. I did my first reading from Idea in Stone, a rather long section from the middle of the book, but everyone got every single moment (laughter’s always the indicator). I have to tell you, that’s just about the best thing in the world for an author.
Coz did his thing some more, pulling the funny from the aether, the girls whipped us up again with some more yee-haw, then slowed it down for an a capella number.
Then I came back on to do two shorter readings from deep in the story. While writing a book, I make an effort to create each chapter as its own story, contributing to the whole, but also providing its own payoffs so that it almost stands alone. I was pleased that these selections worked that way.
When I finished and stood up from the chair, the lights in my eyes made a whitish halftone of the faces of all those people who were clapping and cheering for what we’d just done. The applause wasn’t the reward; the reward was that these people had so willingly extended their imaginations to encompass my own dreaming-time captured on those pages. And they got it. The same things that came to me now lived for them.
We had a raffle for the one spare copy of the book I’d brought, and for two blank journals I’d brought just in case (thank you, Past-Me). Then Lisa and Mark went through the crowd, pimping the book, and I sold eight right there and then, with a few more coming through the website since.
Afterward, we all hung around and drank a few beers as people drifted away. I had a photo-session with Rannie, who took the headshot photo I’ve been using forever. (Which I realise I haven’t credited on the book — bad! I will amend that as soon as possible.) Hopefully something will come of those that I can use as a more current likeness.
Several people made connections, too, between their various talents and needs, which always gets me excited: I like seeing people team up and create things.
~
I’m finishing this entry in Prince Edward Island, at my parents’ kitchen table, looking out at the brilliant green of their backyard. It’s just breezy enough, just warm enough.
Air Canada delivered me to Montreal after my flight to Charlottetown was already supposed to have left, so I got to dash the two miles or whatever it is across the whole length of Dorval airport then shove myself into a heated beer-can of a plane to PEI.
Of course, to complete the Air Canada Client Experience(TM) (“We’re not happy until you’re not happy!”), they delivered my little piece of overflow luggage, but not my main bag. So I’m wearing my dad’s shorts.
More happened in Toronto — more work-stuff, more social-stuff. But the launch stands out as one of the best nights of my life.
<
p>The thing that amazes me most is how easy it was. I’m a bit sad that it’s not easy like that in Edinburgh. It could be, though. It will be before I’m through with it.
<
p>
