Monday 30 July 2012

The Return of Love's Bouquet

The glory of e-publishing, as I am learning, is that you can resurrect all your old writing, and send it out into the world to find its readership. That's what I'm in the midst of trying to do with my first crack at a novel.

The genesis of Love's Bouquet was the back of a napkin in 1999. My friend Meghan and I had backpacked around Australia's East Coast, reading tons of old Harlequins we'd bought at a used bookstore. By the time we got to Cairns, we were convinced we could write one ourselves. We came up with the plot on the return bus trip from swimming in a tropical waterfall.

I went off and wrote it up -- typical Harlequin -- Wendy Blake, a plucky florist, falls in love with her womanising customer, James Crofton, hijinks ensue, love conquers all. The novel's first iteration was terrible -- long discourses on Kingston sights and sounds, wooden dialogue, absence of plot. I kept at it however, and slowly I learned how to write. I got rid of all that exposition, I spiffed up the dialogue, I started to think of Wendy and James as real people, not just Harlequin archetypes, and I tried to beef up the plot. Over time, I developed a respect for romance novelists, it's hard to make the same story - boy and girl meet, they overcome obstacles and smooch in the end -- fresh funny and interesting.

Eventually I thought it was good enough and I sent it to Harlequin. By then I'd done some serious research in to the romance field, was a member of the Romance Writer's of American and thought I had a shot of getting published. In the end, Love's Bouquet came close, with an editor asking for a few  re-writes before ultimately passing because the line it was aimed at -- one for humorous romances called Duets -- was discontinued.

Wendy Blake and James Crofton aren't dead yet, though. With the arrival of e-publishing, I'm going to see if those two crazy kids can find their audience. Watch this space -- Love's Bouquet is going to be released as an e-book.


PS I recognize that the title is TERRIBLE, but after more than a decade (!) of thinking about it as Love's Bouquet, I can't come up with anything else... if anyone's got any better ideas, please, lemme know!

Saturday 21 July 2012

Cleaning the Car

Things found whilst vacuuming the car for the first time since 2009


1. Topical antibiotic cream used to treat horrifying Virginia Creeper rash; believed lost in 2010
2. A full container of yogurt, dated three months earlier
3. $15.29 in change
4. An entire box worth of Cheerios
5. A packet of soy sauce, so old it had changed from black to a lustrous, golden amber
6. A 5 euro cent piece
7. Beloved children's classic, Baby Koala Climbs!
8. The resolution to never let it get this bad again

Wednesday 18 July 2012

The things that weigh me down



Up until this point in my writing life, I haven't taken myself too seriously. Since I was a little kid I knew I wanted to write, but I am too conservative, too cautious and yes, too afraid, to attempt to make a career of it.

There is the lack of money, of course. Very very few authors, even so-called successful ones, make a living writing fiction. This is especially true in Canada, where our reading market is tiny. The five living Canadian fiction authors you can name of the top of your head? Maybe four of them make enough money from the sale of their work to live entirely on the profits. Everyone else is hustling, marketing, teaching, applying for grants, writing think pieces...

It's not only the grim financial reality that is a deterrent. Not to get too dramatic, but the writer's life is a solitary one. To do the job, by definition, you need to spend a lot of time by yourself, in your own head... Struggling to find the right word or express the right idea. I do well in a crowd, and parking myself at a desk for 8 hours a day can be killer. At times I'm completely unmotivated and then I feel like a failure.

That's the other thing. When I finished my Masters in English, I felt enormous relief. I'd spent two years with a constant, nagging feeling that there was more I should be doing. There was always another article I should be reading, another book to be analysed, an essay that could be improved. I eventually figured out that the entire point of grad school is to overwhelm the student and force them to make choices about time management. You can't do everything, so you have to prioritise. Even that knowledge didn't alleviate the incessant, nagging guilt I felt at failing to do all of the work assigned to me.

When I finished school and started my first 9 to 5 job, it was like I had been freed. I put in my 8 hours a day, walked out of the office, and it was over. The rest of the time, was mine. I could veg in front of the TV, burn out my retinas in front of a Tetris Marathon or go for drinks without the incessant back of my mind voice telling me I SHOULD be doing something else...

Deciding to pursue writing again has changed that. It's reintroduced that feeling of "should" into my life. I'm not complaining (though I know it sounds like I am). I get a ton of satisfaction from figuring out how to express an idea or capture a feeling in words, but it has meant that on top of parenting the small person (which, also, I am not complaining about) and being a somewhat decent employee and somewhat thoughtful wife/friend, I've got to accept something else to feel guilty about.

Days when the words flow, or they sound trite and lame, I don’t think it’s worth it. Then I hit my stride and luck is with me and I write something I feel really good about, and then I realise that it’s worth all the guilt.



Wednesday 4 July 2012

Playing the odds

We are a lottery-buying household.

Yes, yes, gambling is the devil's work.

Your odds of winning the big jackpot are less than the likelihood of being struck by lightening whilst fending off a shark attack.

It's a tax on stupidity.

Buying a lottery ticket is the gateway drug to a crippling gambling addiction that sees you sell your house to the Hells Angels, pawn your baby off to the white slavers and gut your husband for his valuable kidneys.

And yet...

If you don't buy a ticket, you will never win.

Every week, when we plonk down our $3, one part of me wrestles with the whole thing. My husband and I have three decades worth of education between us... Is this our ignorant, uninformed dark side coming through?

And yet...

If you don't buy a ticket you will never win.

There are pleasures to be gained just from buying a ticket. At first, I spent a lot of enjoyable time fantasizing about what I'd do if we won. We don't want a lot. Quite honestly, we'd be happy with 300K. We'd pay off the mortgage and our other debts and have a bit of breathing room. I don't need to dramatically quit my job or anything. I just want to remove the low level money stress that plagues me. So, initially, I'd fantasize about what I'd do with all that money. Maybe a condo in London, England? Write fat checks to all my siblings? Donate giant chunks to the hospital where I was born? I don't aspire to wear fancy clothes, and any one who has seen either my man or I drive can vouch that it wouldn't be a good idea for us to get behind the wheel of anything more powerful than a Toyota. Travel, charity and an absence of debt... Fairly modest fantasies, I think.

Lately my lottery ticket fantasies haven't been about  what we'd do with the coin. Instead, I'm mulling over what EXACTLY I'd do if my local Mac's Milk guy said that I'd won... How would I react to his news? How precisely would I tell my husband? How would we pick up the check? Would we hire a money manager or just wing it? How would we tell our family? Would we tell people at work? etc.

Thinking through the practicalies is almost as fun as spending the imaginary money... Almost.

For now it's all moot, but when the day comes, I'll be ready.