A Reading on Writers Radio

An exciting announcement -- I am going to be reading from my novel, The Age of Grandchildren, on Writers Radio. The program will air every hour on the hour from October 18 to 31. 

Hosts Carole Harmon and Ingrid Rose, and technical producer Gary Sills, are the creative minds behind Writers Radio. They host interviews and readings by all manner of writers, produce the programs, and air the them on their online radio, writersradio.ca. The writers' pieces are interspersed with selections of Gary's music.

My reading has been paired with a reading by friend and fellow writer, Gail Madjzoub. Although our novels are quite different in many ways, Gail and I both explore the experiences of young women coming of age in rigid societies, what it means to be seen as an outsider, and the personal costs of following an ethical path. Host Carole Harmon has titled our program Liberty's Children. 

Gail will read first, and here is how Carole introduces her book:

Gail Madjzoub

CRIMSON INK : A Novel of Modern Iran

1955-2011 

Based on historical facts, Crimson Ink traces the multi-generational interweaving of three Iranian families through decades of great social change and upheaval. The novel is grounded in Gail's knowledge and experience of living within an extended Iranian Baha'i family over the course of her twenty year marriage.

The setting of Gail's reading is in the city of Shiraz, Iran. It’s early Autumn of 1955. The country is gradually emerging from the throes of its most recent clergy-led pogrom against its largest religious minority, the Baha’is.

Six year old Fareshteh and her mother Farah set the stage for the turbulent events to come.

My reading rounds out the program. I read three brief excerpts from my speculative fiction novel, The Age of Grandchildren. This is how Carole describes my book: 

Judith Lapadat

THE AGE OF GRANDCHILDREN

Judith Lapadat's coming of age novel takes place in the imagined near future, in a world ravaged by climate change. Best friends Becca and Honor have grown up in an all-female collective sheltering beneath the ruins of a bombed university. 

Honor is a runner who carries trade packages to the wall surrounding their shelter, Becca is her watcher. Mother Stella is their group leader in this closed society. Judith's readings take place over a two day period which will awaken the girls to aspects of their world they have never suspected.

***

To tune in, go to writersradio.ca and click on the play button anytime between October 18 and October 31. If you don't have a chance to listen during this time frame, our program will be archived afterwards on the Writers Radio website as a podcast. If you would like to receive announcements of upcoming programs, you can also subscribe to Writers Radio. It's a great way to support this wonderful initiative.

 

 

Author Interview: Gail Madjzoub

Author Gail Madjzoub

Today, I am delighted to bring you an interview with the author, Gail Madjzoub. Gail is currently based on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, but she has spent her life living all over the world.  

Gail is a member of my writers' group. I had the opportunity to serve as a preliminary reader for her recently published novel, and was very pleased when Gail agreed to do an interview with me for Dr Sock Writes Here.

 

Jude: 

 

Your novel, Crimson Ink, spans a period of more than five decades in modern Iran. Tell us, briefly, what the novel is about.

 

Gail:

             

After the Islamic Revolution, Fereshteh, a woman doctor and a Baha'i, experiences along with her family and religious brethren far greater than usual persecution for their beliefs; they struggle to survive. Compassion for the countless others who also run afoul of the regime prompt her and her physician husband to treat those emerging from the torment of prison in the ‘80s and again following the chaotic aftermath of the 2009 election. 

 

Meanwhile, Fereshteh joins forces with others to help women enduring not only the regime’s oppression but also domestic abuse. Her work and her religion become the pretext for her imprisonment and worse. This has unintended consequences for other family members, yet there is resilience and there is hope.

 

Jude: 

 

The story is told from several points of view. As a writer, what strategies did you use to provide narrative structure and coherence, given the various points of view and long timeline?

 

Gail:

 

To help readers make sense of the large cast of characters from three different Iranian families (all with names unfamiliar to a Western reader), I created family trees, bolding the names of those who are important, especially whose point of view drive the story. At the end I added Glossaries and References.

 

To manage the long timeline I grouped chapters into “Books” that reflected eras: Pre-Revolution (1955-1978), Revolution (1979-1980), Post-Revolution (1989-1993), “2008”, and Reform (2009-2011). Within these I selected only significant years, months and seasons, showing each family separately but simultaneously up until 2008. Only during the final three years of the narrative do all three become inextricably intertwined; their interaction then drives the plot to its climax and resolution.

 

Jude: 

 

One of the themes in the novel that I found very interesting is the complexity of family. Could you talk about that?

 

Gail:

 

The main characters come from a large extended family split down their religious lines: a Muslim brother and a Baha'i sister. While the sister’s family embraces everyone, it’s only because of the brother’s love and loyalty to his sister, despite what he considers her religious ‘defection’, that he and his family tolerate hers. Sinister undercurrents, and secrets and betrayals born of fear carry grim consequences for many, some of which emerge only over decades.

 

In the second family, the one fair-minded son finds he can’t escape his family’s legacy. This and the Revolution tether him to a path that causes him to forget who he is.

 

The third family produces a son out of squalor, desperation and neglect. His eventual reconnection with his powerful cleric father gives him free reign for his yet undiscovered aberrant proclivities. His dealings with and marriage into the first family, and his professional relationship with the son from the second family complicate all relationships in unforeseen ways. 

Jude: 

 

Although your story is fictional, it speaks about real political and social events. What challenges did you face in meshing fact and fiction?

 

Gail:

 

Historical events created a solid framework for the story and details of these helped fill it in. It was actually easy for me to fit my fictional characters and their personal stories into this. They’re a mix: composites of real people whose stories I knew or read about, and purely fictional ones based on probable personality types likely to be found within such a narrative.

 

The real challenge was balancing my portrayals of characters and events. I didn’t want to get into the quagmire of politics and known personalities, nor did I want to reduce characters, politics, social justice and religion to simple black and white depiction. All are complex and I saw my task as providing nuance and opposing perspectives without becoming dogmatic. This took a great deal of time. Discussions with early readers helped me in this.

 

Jude: 

 

There are many routes to publishing. What approach did you take, and why?

Gail:

 

I researched all possibilities and had conversations with other writers. Then sat on the fence for a long time. Finally, after forays into the world of query letters, agents and publishers, consideration of the issues with publishing contracts, intellectual property rights, the long timelines, and possible frustrations of being at the mercy of other peoples’ demands and delays, I felt that self-publishing was the only route for this book. It had taken me many years to research, write and edit, and I wanted it to be published on my own terms and timeline.

 

Jude: 

 

Are you working on a writing project now? Can you say a few words about it? 

 

Gail:

 

 Yes. It’s a sequel to Crimson Ink. I’d thought I was done with the story, but in early 2020 I realised this wasn’t so. In light of current events my characters were agitating and telling me they had more to say. Iran has become increasingly harsh in its treatment of many of its citizens, particularly women and minorities. Social justice questions continue to loom large. In my sequel, at least, I can bring some resolution to a couple of the issues I addressed in Crimson Ink.

 

Jude: 

 

What advice do you have for writers, either about writing or publishing?

 

Gail:

 

You can write at any age. I’m a late bloomer, having started when I was 50. You simply must have passion and the courage to set words onto a page. And now, many years later I also know that you can learn about and navigate the publishing game. There’s a wealth of information and tools out there. You can learn new technology: how to use writer-specialised software, software for formatting a manuscript, the ins and outs of self-publishing, and social media as a marketing tool. If you want your book published, you will learn how to do it. 😊

 

Bio: Originally from the American East Coast, I lived & worked for more than 30 years in Europe and Africa & have traveled extensively.  After settling again in North America I began writing.  My professional background includes education, health care, life coaching & facilitation.

 

To follow Gail’s writing updates click here:

Website: https://www.gailmadjzoub.com

Instagram: Gail Madjzoub  

Facebook:  Gail Madjzoub, Author

Email:  gail@gailmadjzoub.com

The book is available on all Amazon sites.

 

On Writing a Trilogy

Piper's Lagoon

I didn't set out to write a trilogy. In fact, the idea of writing one novel seemed pretty intimidating. How would I ever construct such a long document, and keep the whole thing coherent?

My first attempt at writing a novel was about 20 years ago or so. It was a story told from the perspectives of three women who lived on the same street but didn't know each other very well. Each was going through a difficult period in her life, and each was trying to keep her troubles secret. As things got worse for each of them and the polished surface of their lives cracked open, their secrets ceased to be secrets and the women became entangled in each others' lives. I wrote about 2/3 of the first draft, and then I got stuck. I didn't know how to draw all the threads together.

I went to a week-long writers' retreat to try to work through it and finish the novel, and instead started writing another novel.

With this next novel, I managed to finish a very long first draft, which I sent out to some preliminary readers who were kind and helpful. But I became overwhelmed by the massive revisions that needed to be done. Although the story had good bones, almost the whole thing was told from the inside of the main character's head, plodding and slow. The story is about returning from the city to one's childhood home because of the death of a parent. The main character grapples with challenging family dynamics. Then an accident keeps her there much longer than intended, and plunges her back into childhood memories and a ultimately yields a more mature perspective on the family and community that have shaped her. 

So, stuck on the revisions, what did I do? Yes, you guessed it; I started writing another entirely different novel.

Brickyard Bay

This one is speculative fiction, and it takes place in the near future. A group of girls and women have survived an apocalyptic event that has destroyed their society by sheltering underground for many years. It's written from the perspective of two best friends who are coming of age. Each separately faces the choice of whether to stay and try to save her community or find a way out and take her chances in the dangerous unknown lands on the outside. The novel explores themes of power dynamics, friendship, personal integrity, and motherhood.

I have recently completed a third draft of it. My revisions incorporate the feedback from six incredibly helpful preliminary readers, as well as lots of the suggestions given by members of my writers' group over the last 2 1/2 years. My next step with this novel is to take steps to get it published. I have written about this novel here and here.

Spelunking

But, meanwhile, as I wrote this novel, I kept thinking, "I wonder what happened to their world that forced them to have to shelter underground?" A little bit of that story is included in the novel in the form of flashbacks and storytelling events recounting their history. I kept writing background notes about the time before they went into the shelter. And then, all of a sudden, the entire plot line for a prequel novel popped into my head and I wrote it down.

So, last year while my first draft was out with the preliminary readers and I was waiting for their feedback, I started another novel, the story of how the world fell apart and how the women ended up in an underground shelter. I have written about 1/3 of the first draft. You can read a brief excerpt here.

The other thing that happened is that as I was coming to the end of the novel about the women in the shelter, I found that the novel was getting longer and longer but there were several really interesting plot threads that I could not bring to a satisfactory conclusion in the space of the novel. The solution to that problem was. . . yes! You guessed it -- to write yet another novel, a sequel.

So that is how I came to be writing a trilogy: a prequel novel, which I'm partway through writing, the middle novel in the trilogy which is ready to go out for publication, and a sequel novel.

Little Qualicum Falls

Although a few elements in the sequel were clear and I knew how I planned to resolve them, the overall story line was quite hazy to me until about a two weeks ago. Suddenly, the plot line for the third book revealed itself to me, along with the main characters and events, and I wrote it down. 

It seems miraculous how the story suddenly appears like that. But then again, perhaps it's not so surprising. I think about the story for the hours and hours I spend in front of my computer writing and revising day after day. During periods that I'm actively writing, I walk around with my head in the clouds thinking about my story all day long. My characters infiltrate my mind when I'm trying to get to sleep at night. My brain is chugging away much of the time trying to turn my made-up world, my characters, and the events I've already invented into a coherent narrative. So although it feels like the story just pops into my head, in fact, I've been ruminating on it for years.

One of the fascinating things about writing a trilogy is going back and forth between the three stories. There is a character, Mother Beulah, in the completed novel who is important but not a main character. However, in the prequel novel, Beulah is a main character and many of the events are seen from her point of view. I learned more about Beulah as I worked on writing the prequel novel, and was able to go back and deepen Beulah's character in the middle novel while doing my revisions on it.

Writing a trilogy allows me to include more characters and points of view than I could in a single book. It allows me to follow characters in different periods of their lives and different circumstances -- e.g., the younger Beulah and the middle-aged Beulah.

Where I Write

But it's also challenging because it's harder to remember and hold together the details of the story world and the characters across three books. As well, I am writing the three books so that each of them can be read on its own in any order without having to depend on the information that was in a preceding book. Although each is or will be an intact, complete story, there are certain themes, events, and characters that run across the trilogy.

I have learned a lot from each novel I've written or attempted to write. Writing and revising are very time-consuming processes but I think doing them is the only way to really learn how to write.  

Maybe some day I'll be able to go back and finish those first two novels. Or maybe I'll have gone on to writing something else by then.

It's hard to illustrate a blog post on writing, because all the visuals of the novels are in my head or in words on the page. I've included a photo of my desk where I write. Although I spend a lot of time writing, I do other things too. So I've included a few photos of the amazing landscapes of Vancouver Island from recent excursions.

A Month of Writing

Down by the Oyster Farm in November

About November

November is National Novel Writing Month. This year, even though I haven't yet completed the revisions on my novel, The Age of Grandchildren, I decided to commit to signing up for NaNoWriMo this November.

The objective of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Of course, no novel of mine is ever likely to be as short as 50,000 words. The Age of Grandchildren, in its current state of revision, is 116,000 words. But, nevertheless, 50,000 words is a good start on a novel.

Hitting the goal of 50,000 words meant writing, on average, 1,667 words every single day of November. 

A Few Words About My Writing Process

One thing to keep in mind is that writing is time-consuming. And I am a very slow writer. Although some writers like to pour the words out onto the page to generate a first draft without worrying much about vocabulary, sentence structure, sequence, and so on and then go back and revise later, I like to compose carefully and revise and edit as I go along. Therefore, in order to get 1,667 words down on the page, I needed to spend five or six hours at my computer each day in November.

I didn't achieve the goal of writing 50,000 words in one month. But I did write 43,700 words, and I am very pleased with that. Since the end of November, I have continued to write (despite the distractions of Christmas in all its glory), and my novel is now 46,583 words long. That is eleven and a half chapters, and 172 manuscript pages.

Before sitting down to write on November 1st, I had written some notes, including a plot overview, some character sketches, and some notes on subplots. I had also written a couple of pages setting the opening scene. But that was all. Those 172 pages came out of my head during November.

Five to six hours hunching over the keyboard every day has left me with a sore back and tennis elbow (from the mouse). I didn't keep up my usual level of exercise. It reminds me of my pre-retirement life!

My New Novel

The working title of this novel is The Time Before Time Zero. It is a prequel to The Age of Grandchildren, and there will eventually be a third novel in the sequence. It is set in the greater Vancouver area in the near future. It tells the story of how twenty women ended up hiding underground in a shelter beneath a university. It is told from the perspective of four different characters. Time Zero is the moment in time when everything changes for the characters.

Excerpt From the Novel

 

The Woman on the Platform

“Breeder! Breeder!”

Beulah was hurrying along the sidewalk, her eyes on her feet and her mind turning over a problem they’d discussed at the meeting, but now she looked up and saw a knot of protestors clustered around the transit entrance. There were twenty-five or thirty of them, several waving placards.

“Shame, shame, you’re to blame!” They started up a chant, waving signs to punctuate their message.

“End-of-Timers,” Beulah muttered to herself and began elbowing her way through the crowd toward the gate. A fat man with a shaved head blocked her way forward with his hand-written sign scrawled on corrugated cardboard: The End is Nie! Reppent Before You Die!

Beulah pushed past the misspelled sign. At the front of the group, two teens wearing rainbow clothes, their faces painted with teardrops and down-turned clown mouths, held a banner printed with you have destroyed our future. Around the border of their banner, they’d drawn pictures of an oil refinery, a ship, a transport truck, and an airplane, all spewing clouds of black smoke. Their eyes rimmed with black eyeliner were as tragic as their mouths.

 As Beulah placed her forearm under the scanner at the gate, she looked into the entrance lobby to see who the protestors’ target was. Ah, there she was, a pregnant woman just stepping onto the escalator. It was getting so it was no longer safe to travel the streets anymore. Every day there was another riot, mugging, or car bombing by one faction or another -- the Climate Warriors, Heteros for God, Queer Love, or the End-of-Timers.

Beulah ran up the escalator and arrived on the platform at the same time as the woman. Now that she was beside her, Beulah could see she was probably in her early thirties, with a slim athletic build, coffee and cream skin, and close-cropped tight curls.

“You okay?” Beulah asked.

“Yes. Thanks.” The woman lowered her eyes.

Then she looked up, right at Beulah, and burst out, “It’s my own damn fault! I should have worn a loose jacket or something to cover it.” She waved her hand at her stomach, the bulge visible under a clingy top.

“Not at all,” said Beulah. “There’s nothing wrong with bearing a child. Don’t let those idiots get to you.”

On the street below, they could still hear the chanting. “Shame, shame, you’re to blame!”

“How far along are you?” Beulah asked. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so nosy.”

“It’s okay. Just three months. But unluckily for me, I’ve shown almost since day one.”

“I’m Beulah, by the way,” Beulah said, sticking out her hand.

“Olivia.” They clasped hands briefly. There was an awkward silence, as if they’d both suddenly recognized how odd it was to be shaking hands with a stranger on the jelly platform.

“Pardon me, I have to go.”

Olivia turned away and tapped her forearm against the control panel of a MePod. The door slid open silently and Olivia got in. There was a sucking sound as the pod moved into the valve chamber, and a swoosh as the pod entered the plastic vacuum tube and sped away.

***

Art Show Update and Novel Newsflash

Since returning from our European trip (here, here, here, and here), I have had the chance to relax at home, socialize with friends, and spend some great moments with the grandkids.

Relaxing on the Couch, with Coffee

Sleep over at Grandma's

 

And, we had some great visits with friends and our northern family members throughout August, September, and October too, including a visit from blogging buddy Liesbet and her husband  Mark. I just haven't had time to write about everything that has been happening!

But, that is not what this post is about.

Art Update

This Saturday and Sunday, I will participating in another Studio Tour. As with last time, I will open my art studio and gallery, Notch Hill Art, to the public. I hope to see lots of new and previous visitors! I have blogged about it here. 

Art Show This Weekend!

 So, I have been busy preparing my studio. I have hung several paintings that I have not shown at previous Nanoose Bay Studio Tour events before. It should be a fun weekend!

Long Shadows

 Novel Update

Newsflash! I have just completed a first draft of my novel.  

It clocks in at 30 chapters and more than 100,000 words. I can’t tell you exactly how many words it is because I have written it using an older version of WORD that stops counting at 100,000. It is a somewhat lighthearted post-apocalyptic tale (if you can imagine that) crossed with a coming of age story.

I am excited about having completed the first draft! I have been working on this novel for about three years, although I actually had the original idea for it nearly 30 years ago when my second child was a baby.

My next step with the novel is to read the whole thing through, making small revisions to do with flow and consistency. Then I am going to give it to my beta readers. I am so happy that four people have offered to read it and give me feedback. They are all people who will present perspectives that I know will be very helpful.

During this past year, my writers’ group has been such a great support and source of feedback. I think that knowing that we will be meeting each month helps to motivate me to keep on working on the manuscript. Every month, I want to have something new to read at our meeting.

The other great thing about our writers’ group (besides the fact that they are wonderful people and good writers) is that we have started to go out to writing related events together, like readings and storytelling evenings. I love being connected with a bunch of likeminded writers.

Next month, I will be reading through the manuscript of one of my writer friends, and I am looking forward to that very much (AFTER the art show).

So, in summary, although I have been actively involved in a lot of things this past year, I have still managed to find some time for writing and art. Writing and making art were two priorities that I set for myself when I retired, and it makes me happy that I have persisted toward these goals.

World Building

It is less than three weeks until the art show that I will be participating in. The show opens on Friday evening, April 27, with a special event, and it is open to the public all day on Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29. Rob, dear person that he is, has been busy in his workshop building me a modular framework ("hoardings," he calls them) to set up in the 10'x10' booth so that I have somewhere to hang my paintings.

Building the Hoarding

 I have lots to do to get ready. As I mentioned before, over several weeks I have spent hours photographing my works, editing the photos, organizing them, and preparing them for my art website that is under development. I unpacked a couple more moving boxes to find some more of my paintings. (I still haven't found all of them.) But there is soooo much left to do to get ready, and I have not been ticking many items off the to-do list.

So what have I been doing if not getting ready for the art show? Well, skiing. The spring skiing has been fabulous. We have been going skiing a couple of times a week with friends, and last weekend I had a chance to ski with my son and daughter.

Sunny Day at the Ski Hill

 We also did some house stuff. Our new living room furniture finally was delivered. We replaced and upgraded two toilets. We replaced an item damaged in the move. All of this required much moving of furniture, reorganizing, and cleaning. There have been the usual things like car maintenance, doctor's appointment, tax prep, and grocery shopping. As well, I progressed on some academic writing projects, completing two of them recently.

My service group sponsored an Easter Egg Hunt, which I helped with. I hosted and cooked a family dinner for Easter. As well, I have participated in dog walks, attended a community talk, and spent time with my grandsons.

And there's more! Here is some exciting news. A friend and I are part of a new local writing group that has just formed. I recently attended a "meet and greet" organized by the Federation of BC Writers, and the people present at that event decided to organize ourselves into a writers' group. We have had our first official meeting.

I am so excited about writing again that I have resumed working on my novel. I have finished chapter 26 and am starting on chapter 27. I am getting near the end! Of course, once the first draft is done, the revisions begin, and I cannot say that I am looking forward to revisions. 

The other night, I wrote until late at night, finishing chapter 26. As I drifted off to sleep, my head was swirling with ideas and fragments of paragraphs to write in chapter 27. But then I woke up with a problem. (I guess my brain had been working on the novel while I slept.) I realized that my timelines did not line up properly for the plot to unfold the way that I had planned.

You would think that in a novel that takes place decades into the future, timelines would be pretty flexible. However, throughout the book, I have been building a world. And in the logic of this world, I have created the necessity for certain events to unfold a certain way.

There were two main time sequencing issues. Two characters are having babies, a couple of months apart from each other. Somehow, I had miscounted the due date for the first birth by several weeks. I couldn't just change the date easily, because I had already written about the birth and tied it closely to a certain season of the year. I had also miscounted the due date of the second birth, in this case only by about two weeks, but this also was problematic because I am intending for the mother to be doing something during the plot climax that is very physically grueling, and she would not have planned to do it if she had just given birth. Just as in real life, these fictional babies are being born at inconvenient times!

So the next day, instead of steaming along writing chapter 27, I spent hours recalculating the math for the dates of the births and other events. I corrected my timeline notes. Then, I went back and read through several chapters, and made corrections so the timelines would work out.

With this novel, I have kept a number of files of notes, supplementary to the novel. I have a list of characters with details like their age, appearance, relationship with other characters and so on. I have made a timeline of major social and political events in my imaginary world, both preceding and following the period in which my story takes place. I have written notes about the backstory. I have a list of chapter names along with the page of the manuscript on which each chapter starts.

Supplementary Notes

Some of my notes are very messy and scribbled. For example, I have drawn a rough map of the geographical area where my characters live. About two chapters into the writing, I realized that I needed to keep a timeline of the major events in the story, which takes place over the period of a year. I labelled the day on which the story starts as "Day 1." Quite a bit further along in my writing, I realized that seasons were going to be important in this imaginary world, so I went back and re-labelled Day 1, Day 2, etc., with dates, arbitrarily starting the story on November 16. Although I had a rough plot outline when I started this novel, I mostly have invented the story and the details of my story world as I went along.

For those of you who write fiction, how do you keep track of events and their sequence in a piece of writing as long and complicated as a novel? I would be curious to know about your method. I imagine that dates would be especially tricky to manage in historical fiction, and also when writing a memoir or biography. I look forward to your comments. 

And, yes, I am avoiding doing my art by writing instead. Perverse, I know, but at least the creative juices are flowing.

Why I Enjoy Writing Fiction

Image used courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. This year, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are toiling at their computers trying to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. That works out to writing an average of 1,667 words a day every day for thirty days.

I am one of them. Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo as well. I started a new novel, a post-apocalyptic tale about a group of women who have survived in an underground shelter for eighteen years after the global collapse of society. I continued working on it throughout last December and January. Then I set it aside, and did some other things, like renovations, selling a house, buying a house, retiring, and moving. This November, I decided to pick up on writing the novel from where I left off, 50,000 words and 13 chapters into it.

I have been spending hours on it every day. (That is why I have been neglecting my blog.) I am a slow writer. I do not write the way the NaNo website suggests — just flinging words onto the page without worrying about sentence structure, cohesion, or flow. I write carefully, rereading and editing as I go. I build the story brick by brick. That way, when it comes time to go back and revise the first draft, I will have something solid to work with, rather than a mess that seems overwhelming.

I am really enjoying writing this novel. I spend my days in a fog, preoccupied by thinking about my characters and their trials and tribulations. Then when I sit down at the computer, the story just spools out of me.

Why do I love writing fiction so much? It is a good question in this era of the self-narrative, when autobiographical writing, or memoir, or autoethnography is so popular. After all, in memoir, the plot has already happened; you don’t have to make anything up. You have a ready-made story. “This is what happened to me.”

Well, autobiographical writing has a couple of big challenges. Although autobiographical writing, such as memoir, is about the self, every person is embedded in a social context. Therefore, when you write about yourself, you are also writing about people close to you. It is easy to offend, or to disrespect others' privacy. That can be hard, especially when you are in an ongoing relationship with those others that you would like to maintain, or when the things you are saying are negative.

If you write innocuous things about other people, perhaps this issue of privacy is less of a problem, but bland accounts of past experiences do not tend to make very interesting reading. People like to read about conflicts, where there is a villain and a hero, and challenges are faced and overcome. There can be a real temptation to spice up the truth a bit, to add a bit of drama. But in memoir, as Mary Karr says, writing the truth is the fundamental rule that you must not break.

So this is one of the reasons that I love to write fiction. I can make my fictional characters as nasty or as foolish as can be, without the risk of alienating someone in my real life. In fiction, I don’t have to leave out the embarrassing bits to spare someone’s feelings. Really, those juicy details are what make the story.

Another thing about fiction is that you can make the plot do whatever you want. You are not constrained by the history of events as they actually happened, and therein is the true joy of fiction. You get to use your imagination to invent whatever strange world your creative self can envision. You can work out the complexities of your protagonist’s personality, and toss one crazy challenge after another at them, just to see how they behave.

When you write fiction, you pose the question “What if?” What if a group of women lived in a shelter in tunnels and basement rooms under the ruins of a shattered university while lawless gangs roamed through the destroyed city scavenging for material goods? How would this character behave if she was spurned by her lover? What ethical choices would that character face when torn between following the rules of the collective or helping an outsider?

Ultimately, that is the great value of fiction. You can put yourself into someone's circumstances and try to understand how they might think, feel, and act in that situation. Through fiction, you can acquire a deeper empathy for someone unlike yourself. Through fiction, you might just get a little closer to uncovering a truth of human experience. And, most of all, writing fiction is fun!

Where I Write

By the way, if you are a NaNoWriMo participant and you would like to find me, I write under the pen name AnnaHarvey, and my current novel is called The Age of Grandchildren.

Being Lost

A blogger that I follow, Karen Hume, recently wrote an interesting post on the behaviours of people who are lost. She explains that Lost Person Behaviour is the science of predicting how different kinds of people behave within the context of the activity they are engaged in, in order to develop effective strategies to find them when they are lost. This post and many other interesting topics can be found on her blog, Profound Journey.

The topic got me thinking about times in my life when I have been lost, as well as times that I have lost others.

Kids Lost on a Mountain

I had a somewhat unusual childhood. I grew up in a village in a remote northern area of Canada, and my parents gave us a great deal of freedom to roam. When we were very young, we had specific boundaries within the neighbourhood. For example, when I was five, I was allowed to go as far up the street as Billy's house, and as far down the street as Dorothy's house, and into the bush behind our house as far as the first field. I could cross the street in front of our house only if I came and asked first and had a suitable destination.

But by the time we were in our middle childhood, we ranged far and wide, and often did long excursions on our bicycles. It is hard to believe now, given the way children's movements today are restricted and always supervised, that my two younger brothers were allowed to go down to the river together to fish, without adult supervision, when they were nine and six respectively, and that they often brought fish home for supper.

The summer just before I turned fourteen, my parents bought a small, primitive ski cabin at a ski hill on a mountain. We spent many happy weekends that summer working together as a family fixing up the cabin. We insulated it and put in walls and flooring. I remember going up a ladder propped against the A-Frame to nail shingles on the roof. Our cabin was located on the farthest edge of the ski hill development, beside a steep gully. We had great fun climbing down into the gully to explore it. Usually each weekend, we four kids also would go for a hike.

The Prairie

On one such occasion, we took a picnic lunch and did a more lengthy hike than usual. (The four of us included myself as the oldest at thirteen, and my three younger siblings, the youngest of whom was eight.) We decided to hike up to Crater Lake, which was probably six or seven kilometers round trip. It was not tricky to find the way there. We walked over to the ski runs, hiked up them to the top into alpine meadows, and then set off across the so-called "Prairie." Although there was no clear trail, we just hiked toward a peak where the lake was clearly visible at its base.

Once at the lake, we ate our picnic, played at the edge of the water, and hiked around on the huge boulders. On the way back, instead of staying high in the alpine until we reached the top of the ski hill, we dropped too low and found ourselves in scrubby growth at the edge of a gully. One of my brothers said that it was the gully that went beside our cabin, and that we could take a shortcut by going down into the gully and up the other side. He said that he had explored this very section of the gully previously and he recognized where we were.

Crater Lake

It seemed like a good idea. It would be a long way to go all the way over to the ski hill, hike down the runs, then double back to our cabin. It was late in the afternoon and we all were getting tired. So I agreed, and we went down into the gully and began to follow it down, looking for a way up the other side.

The walls of the gully were becoming steep cliffs. We did not recognize any of the landmarks of "our" gully, and moreover it seemed to be twisting away in the wrong direction, away from the ski hill area. I realized that we must be in a different gully.

After an argument, my younger siblings agreed to turn around with me. We all doubled back, followed the creek back uphill, and climbed back out of the gully where we had first entered it. We climbed back up into the alpine meadows and went the long way, via the ski hill runs. When we finally returned to the cabin, it was twilight, and my parents were very anxious and also relieved that their lost children had found their way back!

Lost on Another Mountain

Many years later, when I was in my forties, I was visiting friends who lived in a northern town. Their house was on the side of a mountain, which is not really a mountain at all, but more of a large, rocky, forested hill. This mountain is criss-crossed with trails, and it is a popular hiking and mountain-biking area for the locals. I had hiked there from time to time when I had visited my friends in the past.

My friends were busy with prior obligations one afternoon, so I took their dog and headed up the mountain trail beside their house. The dog and I had a lovely ramble along the trails, but eventually I decided that it was time to turn around and head back. About halfway back, beside a road, there was a place where multiple trails crossed, and went off in different directions. None of them were signposted. Somehow, I made the wrong choice and went quite a long way down a trail before I realized that it definitely was not the one that would take me back to my friends' house. At about this time, the dog took off, and would not come back, though I called and called.

So, I turned around and doubled back to the place where the road was visible. I still could not recognize which of the many trails was the correct one. So I went out to the road and started walking along it. I had a rough mental map of the area and I believed that the road would take me down the mountain to the base of it, and from there I could eventually pick my way back on connecting roads. However, it would be a walk of many kilometers, halfway around the mountain. A further problem was that I was recovering from a knee injury, and my knee was telling me that I had already walked far enough that day.

So, in the end, I went to a house along the road and used their phone to call my friends. (I had no cell phone then.) One of them came in his truck and picked me up. He said he had been worried when the dog had arrived home without me. I was thoroughly embarrassed that I got lost. I should have just followed the dog!

Lost Toddler

Even more scary than getting lost myself was losing a child. I lost my daughter “K” many years ago when she was a toddler, TWICE! The first time, we were in the women’s clothing section of a department store, and she was about two. She was right beside me, holding the handle of the stroller while I looked at clothes on a big circular rack. One second she was there, and then she wasn’t. Without stepping away from the stroller, I called her name and looked frantically in every direction. The many clothing racks were big and close together, blocking my lines of sight. Then I heard a little giggle. K had crawled inside the circular rack in front of me. She had gone along the floor below the clothes into the middle of the rack and was hiding on me. Even though the whole episode probably lasted less than a minute, the sense of panic just about stopped my heart.

The second time I lost her was about a year later, and it was even scarier. K and I, and her newborn baby sister were at a food court in a mall. We had finished our snack and I was putting the baby back into the stroller and loading the diaper bag. I was distracted for about a minute. Then I looked up and K was nowhere in sight. I called her name. There were not many people around and no-one had seen her leave. After concluding that she was not in the food court, I began running down the hallway of the mall pushing the baby in the stroller and shouting name. I was running in the direction of the mall administration office so that I could report her as missing. Around a corner and way down the hallway, I found her. K was grinning and hugging the giant furry mascot of the mall (which was really a human in a costume). It turned out that K had noticed big green footprints in the mall hallway and had followed them to the mascot; she loved big fuzzy creatures. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but K was not frightened at all. Quite the opposite -- she was delighted to have tracked down the mall mascot.

Lost Friends

Some years, I am actually organized enough to send out Christmas cards. (I'm kind of old fashioned about Christmas cards.) Many years, I am so busy that I never quite finish sending out all the cards, even though I have managed to make a start on it. So I alternate, starting with the beginning of the alphabet one year and the end of it the next, just in case I don't get finished. The addresses are written into a little black address book that I have had for more than thirty years, although these days I also keep electronic contact lists.

Every year, addressing the Christmas cards makes me sad. It's because I look at all the names in my address book of friends that I have lost touch with, and former neighbours and colleagues in towns where I used to live. Who knows where they are now? Why did I do such a bad job of keeping in touch? It is the one thing that I really love about social media: through Facebook I have managed to find or have been found by people who had previously been lost to me.

Novel in Progress

 In my last post, I mentioned that I was busy writing a novel. I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November. The objective of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.

Sadly, I must report that I was not successful at completing 50,000 words of my novel. However, I did mange to write 35,493 words. That adds up to 134 pages, double-spaced, or ten and a half chapters. I have started on Part Two of the three-part novel. I think that the first draft was about one third complete by the end of November.

I had great fun starting a new novel, and am continuing to chip away at it now that November is over. The novel is titled "The Age of Grandchildren" (working title). At the request of readers, I am posting a brief synopsis, as well as an excerpt from one of the early chapters.

***

Synopsis

Becca and Honor live with a collective of women in an underground shelter in the wreckage of a former university. They were born in the shelter and know no other life. Their mothers and grandmothers formed the collective as a survival strategy when North American society disintegrated in the early 21st century. Becca and Honor are just reaching womanhood, and their collective is facing a crisis as the group has nearly used up the supplies stored two decades ago. Systems in the shelter are beginning to fail, and memories of life on the outside are being lost as the older members of the group become elderly and die. The lives of the women are about to change, and both Becca and Honor have important roles to play in trying to ensure the survival of the members of their little community.

***

Excerpt from novel:

Watch Station One

Becca stood at Watch Station 1 looking west over a jumble of tangled bushes and concrete rubble. She felt a puff of wind touch the hair on her forehead and the sensation lifted her heart. Then guiltily, she pulled her hood further down, low over her eyebrows, as in her mind she heard Mother Mary intone, “When outside, you must guard vigilantly against contamination.”

The intense red of the sunset had faded and the sky was darkening into night. Her anxiety growing, Becca peered out into the distance toward Outpost 1.4. Where was Honor? It was becoming too dark, and Pattern 1.4 through the ruins of the shattered buildings was one of the most difficult to run. Was that her? Yes, Honor was coming, bobbing and weaving as she ran the pattern through the rubble. Becca tracked her approach. Hop, hop, hop, zigzag to the left, right, two feet, hop, hop, leap, and she’s safe on the platform!

“We welcome you in,” Becca nodded as she gave the formal greeting. “We worried this time. Look how dark it is!”

“Yes, we felt the fear too.” Honor caught her breath. The whites of her eyes showed bright against her brown eyes and skin in the last of the light. “This runner turned an ankle and almost misstepped a third of the way through the pattern. But this one is here now. We must go inside quickly.”

Honor shrugged her knapsack off. The two young women turned to descend into the shelter, but not before Becca noticed her friend cast a surreptitious last look out over the desolation.

Once inside, Becca sealed the door electronically and set the mechanical deadbolt. Honor pushed the package she carried through a slot for the Mothers. The two women stripped off their contaminated sweat suits, put them into a covered bucket, and stepped into the anteroom shower.

“Ready?”

For one glorious minute the lukewarm water fell, and Becca concentrated on rinsing those parts that had been exposed – her hands, her face, and today, the front of her hair. When the trickle of water stopped, they completed their bathing the usual way, with soap, a cloth, and a basin of water. Becca mused about her good fortune in having been chosen as a watcher two months ago. She had discovered that she loved the experience of being on the outside at twilight each duty day, despite the risks. Although her first shower had been the best, she continued to look forward to that minute as a highlight of each duty day.

“Hey, Honor!” Honor was staring fixedly at her towel, and she startled when Becca spoke. “Honor, tell us, what do you feel out there without us, solitary?

“We concentrate on running the pattern, and running it perfectly.”

“Yes, understood, but how does it feel?”

“We don’t understand your meaning.” Honor gave Becca a dismissive look and frowned in the direction of the Mothers’ slot. “Come, let us go and report.”

They walked naked through the inner door, sealed it, and donned robes. Becca trailed behind Honor barefoot on the cold polished tiles, fastening the ties of her robe. What was wrong with asking Honor how she felt out there? That seemed like an important question for a novice watcher to ask a runner. Becca had been trained that all members of the collective must be attuned to emotional states, and to be transparent in sharing the inner consciousness.

Becca reflected that although Honor had been generous in guiding Becca on the correct performance of the watching duty, her friend often seemed reticent about expressing internal states, especially at group sharings. Many would consider that a mark against her, but Honor had proven herself extremely capable at learning the patterns. She was able to run all eight of the main patterns consistently and flawlessly, and she was studying the difficult second level patterns now. Honor had been awarded her position as a runner very young; in fact, she was only two years older than Becca but already had been running for more than a year.

Ah, the Mothers were ready to see them now. It was Mother Beulah and, oh no, Mother Mary. Becca groaned inwardly.

“Honor, Becca.” The Mothers came forward and embraced them.

Mother Beulah was thin as a wisp with a cap of steel grey hair, white at the temples. She wore a silver and emerald nose stud, and multiple earrings on each ear. Mother Mary, in contrast, was a large, square-jawed woman, who pushed back the sleeves of her robe impatiently and strode forward, glowering. Her hug felt like a wrestling hold.

“You are late tonight,” said Mother Beulah. Her tone was mild, but as she gazed into Becca’s eyes before turning to Honor, Becca felt Mother Beulah’s bright blue eyes send a shock down her spine. She imagined that Honor must feel something similar, although Honor’s facial expression remained unchanged.

“Yes, the transfer was not prompt,” Honor explained.

“You know the rule. Never wait by the fence on the outside rim. If the transfer is not ready . . . ?” Mother Beulah said, raising her eyebrows at Honor.

“. . . Turn back and run the return pattern,” Honor finished off the rule. “But the transfer was not made the two previous days either, so we thought . . .”

Mother Mary moved forward making chopping motions with her hands. “Thinking out there could get you into trouble young woman.”

Her high-pitched nasal voice grated on Becca’s ears.

“But the transfer was concluded successfully,” Honor mumbled, looking at Mother Mary’s feet.

“Yes,” Mother Beulah smiled, and her gold tooth glinted.

“Listen, Honor. You nearly had to run that pattern in the dark,” Mother Mary pointed out. She sniffed, and Becca watched as the nostrils of her broad nose distended forming perfect black circles, and then pinched in again. “The life of every member of the collective is precious. The two most basic runner’s rules are?”

“Concentrate on the pattern, and follow the rules. Understood, Mother Mary. This one begs pardon.” Honor’s face was as smooth as a plaster mask. She said nothing about turning her ankle while running the pattern.

Becca opened her mouth to report the misstep in the run. According to regulations such discrepancies must be recorded, and it was her responsibility as a watcher to report it to the Mothers. Mother Mary swiveled to face her, her little eyes invisible behind the glare of her eyeglasses, her jaw jutting up. The words died in Becca’s throat. She closed her mouth and swallowed.

“Peace -- peace for the collective,” she stammered.

The Mothers nodded, Beulah closing her heavy eyelids, and Mary with a jerk of the chin. Both Mothers stepped forward and embraced them again.

“Peace for the collective,” the two Mothers intoned.

“And peace for the Mothers and Grandmothers,” Becca and Honor said in unison as they took their leave.

***

Anyways, it is greatly enjoyable inventing a world and setting some characters loose in it. I have been amazed that as long as I can get myself seated in front of the keyboard, the story just spools out onto the screen. I guess that is the whole point of National Novel Writing Month -- to give ourselves an excuse to sit down and write.

Too Much Writing?

Is there such a thing as a writer doing too much writing? If such a thing is possible, that is the situation I am in at present.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was in the middle of a big work-related writing project. It is going quite slowly, because in order to write I find myself having to do a huge amount of research and background reading. Of course, as well, I am not putting in full work days on the project, but just half days four or five times a week. I had intended to be finished that project by the end of October. But I am still labouring away on it. (It's close to completion though!)

Then there is this blog. Unlike some bloggers, I have not set myself the expectation of generating two posts a week, or even one post a week. I just kind of write a post when something interesting comes to mind and I feel like sharing it. That said, it is two weeks since I have last posted here. I have just been way too busy writing, somewhere else.

It is November, National Novel Writing Month, and I am writing a novel! During NaNoWriMo, millions of people around the world commit to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. In order to accomplish this goal, one has to write an average of 1,667 words a day on the novel. I am already behind on the average, as I have only managed to to squeeze out an average of a little over 1,300 words a day.

I am having immense fun writing this novel. It is a speculative fiction novel about a dystopian future with a little bit of a coming of age story, some romance, and some social critique thrown in. Speculative fiction/science fiction is a new genre for me. In my previous two attempts at writing a novel, both were of the literary/mainstream fiction genre. One of those two novels, Memories of a White Girl, was written during previous NaNoWriMos over three consecutive Novembers, and it is now a mammoth 125,000 page first draft, still awaiting the revision process. The first draft of the other novel, still lacking a title, is about 3/4 finished, and I began that one years ago, before I had ever heard of NaNoWriMo.

This year during Nano, I have decided to turn a deaf ear to the advice commonly given to participants. Participants are encouraged to just write down whatever flows through their mind, not stopping to edit or rethink it. The idea is that by not giving in to the internal editor, who can be rather harsh and critical, the wells of creativity will flow. As well, people who struggle to find ideas and who procrastinate for that reason will overcome their inhibitions because they tell themselves that they just have to write something, anything, and it doesn't have to be good.

Well, I don't write that way. I am the kind of writer who never lacks for ideas, for one thing. When I write, I like to craft each sentence and paragraph perfectly. (Aha! The perfectionist rears its ugly head!) Each time I sit down to write, I read over the recent section that I have written and carefully revise and edit it, changing word choices, adding more vivid description, and refining the dialogue. Then I go onto the next part in a fairly linear way. With that approach to writing, when the first draft is done, it is a much more polished first draft that requires less revision than if I had just thrown any old words onto the page. I love to craft a story, and I am not at all fond of revising, especially if the manuscript is a big mess. I really think that my first NaNoWriMo novel would have gotten beyond a first draft if I have written it my way rather than following Nano advice.

I am nearing the end of the fourth chapter of the novel and have introduced the central characters and portrayed their society as it functions in some future time. Now I am beginning to introduce some big troubles for the main character and her significant other. If you are involved in NaNoWriMo, you can read a synopsis and brief excerpt of my novel in progress under my profile. My pen name is AnnaHarvey.

So, one thing that I have discovered while being on leave is that I am pretty busy. My secret dread about retirement is that I will find myself sitting around twiddling my thumbs and contemplating the awful nothingness of being. Or some such thing. Rob is fond of saying that he has never been as busy as he has been since retiring. I always heard that statement with a certain degree of skepticism (I mean, what could be busier than 14 hour work days?). But if my leave period is any indication of what retirement will be like, I'm discovering that Rob just might be right. Phew! Saved from contemplating my navel!

So as well as all of the writing that I have described, I have been fitting in daily exercise most days - yoga, a walk, or some cycling. Last weekend, we spent a lovely afternoon riding mountain bike trails in the river valley. On Sunday, we made an all-day excursion to some hoodoo formations, and hiked through them and viewed petroglyphs that are said to have been created in the late 1800's. I am working on a large landscape painting, and also on preparing two of my plein air paintings for an exhibition coming up in early December. I have arranged to rent a house on Vancouver Island for a month at Christmas time. Christmas with our kids and grandchildren - yay! I have been to a concert, lunching with a friend, and on the phone to far-away friends and family. And I baked cookies, which our waistlines have not needed, especially with all of the Halloween candy around that also needed to be eaten up.

I have to add one brief whine. The Blogger app for my iPad is broken, and there is no update in sight. My favourite way to write on my blog is on my iPad - it makes it so easy to access my photos, and it can be done while lying on the couch. The Blogger website, unfortunately, is a nightmare to use on the iPad. So, I am apologizing in advance for any typos in my posts. Now, my only way to write on Blogger and access adequate editing capabilities is to go and fire up the laptop. I wish Google and Apple would just get over their rivalry and produce some decent Blogger functionality for the iPad. So if anyone knows of a great Blogger app that works well on an iPad, please let me know.

The photos in this post are of the hoodoos that we visited. Life is good.