Nikki Leigh, who runs a book promotion site, has generously agreed to host "Fraterfamilias" on some of her blogs. These interviews are all focused on characters from the book:

Share Your Hero

My Best Friend's Story

It's All in the Setting

Bad Guys & Villains


Paula Stiles (other half of Peter Ferrer)

Fraterfamilias

Fraterfamilias was reviewed at GUD on the 24th.


The book is also now up on Fictionwise.


Paula Stiles (other half of Peter Ferrer)
http://www.geocities.com/rpcv.geo/other.html

Judith Doloughan, author of this blog, my friend and cowriter of our book, "Fraterfamilias", died on June 5 after a long illness. She was 63. She left behind a number of projects which I will finish/revise/develop for her.

Our publisher, Virtual Tales, has included an obituary and tribute on their blog. This includes a discount on our book until June 28, if anyone is interested. Proceeds from the sale will go to charity:

http://virtualtales.blogspot.com/2007/06/author-judith-doloughan-dies-finishes.html

I will keep this blog up and maintain by answering any replies people make to posts and posting announcements when more of Judith's work comes out. Please keep her in your prayers.

Paula

To save you all the chore of wondering what that means, I'll just lay it out. At last, our book, Fraterfamilias, was declared "finished" by the editor and it is now available as a complete novel instead of in chunks. This means that anyone interested in buying it can have it complete by going to the site here:

http://www.virtualtales.com/StoryProducts~g~7~tn~Fraterfamilias.html

It has been given to a reviewer who will take the next two weeks to read it, after which you'll be able to read the review. I'll include a link when it comes out. Don't forget that you can include your own review at other sites that sell the book, such as Mobipocket and Diesel eBooks:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/BookDetails.asp?BookID=53953

http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/item/parent-9780978255077/Fraterfamilias-eBook.html

After all, having your own opinion is always so much fun. There is also a message board at Virtual Tales, which is available for anyone to post:

http://virtualtales.yuku.com/forums/59/t/FraterFamilias.html

Thanks to everyone who's already purchased the novel or has expressed pleasure in its reading.

Judith

I’m bored. Anyone who has lived in a bed for a year is going to be bored. Oh,I’ve written a book,it’s true. A year is plenty of time to write a book. Now I have to send it out to a publisher which is a numbing task. I’d forgotten about how numbing. If you’ve ever thought about it yourself, you can look forward to possibly four or five years. You read correctly. Four or five years.

If you have a name, it changes things. Your book sits in a slush pile waiting for someone to get around to reading it.That’s about four months. If they don’t like it, they will send it back. You send it out again and wait again. This process can be repeated several times. Perhaps you will make changes but quite often, their comment is simply that it isn’t what they’re looking for. Endings are frequently a problem. If you are embroiled in this process, try reworking your ending and resubmit.

That’s for novels, of course. Short stories are another matter. The market for short stories is very poor unless you are writing genre stories — science fiction, mystery, romance — since there are magazines dedicated to those styles. In that case, the turn-around time isn’t significantly different from that of the novel, although it is somewhat shorter and it is cheaper to send out. When you get it back, just send it out again and again and again. if the editor has suggestions, pay attention to them and be prompt about it. Usually, this means they will buy it if you make the suggested changes.

I still have some ideas about being a science fiction short story writer. That was my original idea ever since I first got hooked on science fiction. It was my first love since the age of thirteen. That year, I read Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles Now it’s outdated but it still has a magical quality. There are books that change your life and this was one such. I suppose there are movies that do the same thing, though it hasn’t happened to me.

Follow your Bliss. That is Joseph Campbell’s advice, Follow what turns your crank, what does it for you, what keeps you up at night and makes your day one of waiting to get back to whatever it is that drives you. If you’re lucky, what fills your days is what fills your heart.How do you decide what your bliss is? I have no idea. I know my bliss is writing and I’ve known it for years. Many people believe that writing is their bliss but it might not be so. If you thnk it is, try writing a blog page. When I first began to think about what became Solitude, it was something called Archive. I envisioned a culture in which it is believed that everyone should write his own life history, which life history was kept in an archive. I think that writing one’s life history is important but one should not expect to have that autobiography published. It becomes a personal record that quickly becomes a treasured record of a revered ancestor.

That’s the urge to write. Don’t expect to get published. That’s something different. Bliss is something else. It’s what makes you happy.

The other day, I was thinking about things I did as a child. When I was ten, we lived on a new street that had only four houses on it. Now it’s a tract of houses put up for workers at Ford auto plant. So I’m told. We had two acres of land each; the rest of it was farm land still. Field tomatoes. I remember going over to speak to the lady who was picking them by hand and ended up helping her. She gave me a five quart basket of tomatoes which I gave to my mother who ignored it unttil they were going bad and then tossed them in the garbage. It was typical of my mother. I spent a lot of time in therapy thanks to her.

I used to escape from her by going to the end of our property and down into the gravel pit you could get to from there. There were fruit trees in the gravel pit, it had been abandoned for so long. Lots of plums and peaches and apples. I used to fill up on them and not bother to take any home. From the end of the lot, you could turn left and walk a long way through the fields which were inhabited by rabbits and groundhogs. The groundhog holes were the bane of the farmer’s existence and my uncle used to hunt them. I went with him on his hunts and when we got back home, I would skin them for my uncle who could shoot animals but nott skin tthem. I couldn’t shoot them but once they were dead, i had no trouble with skinning them.

I was older then, though. Back when I was ten, I could disappear for the whole day with no difficulties. I used to walk through the groundhog fields (hay was harvested) to where the woods began. There was a little stream that went through the woods and i spend endless hours watching the critters in the stream, the water striders and things that swam. If I’d known them what I knew later, I would have brought some samples of water home and looked at them under a microscope. Later, when i took biology in university, I did know about the underwater critters, one-celled wonders, vorticella that spin, for example.

I found two trees that were bifurcated and laid downed branches one to the other, covered them with leaves and made a lean-to out of them, with leaves to sit on. Later, I brought books to read in my fort. Needing to get away from my mother fuelled many trips to the woods.

Up at the top of the road was a reservoir. The house there was occupied by an English couple. Mr. Brown was hired to watch over the reservoir. It was a lovely house covered in ivy. They had a boy my age. I have forgotten his name at long last, after being able to remember it for the best part of fifty years now. We hung out together. About this time and earlier, we had friends named John and Jean Naylor. They had a son as well. Joe Naylor, although he told me that John was his step-father and his real name was Joe Brandwein. He went to Queens University later in life and I think he taught physics, although I may be wrong.

I had a crush on Joe from the time I was eight. I still had a crush when I was eighteen. It was a sad story. I got a phone call from him one day saying he was going to be in Londodn and could he look me up. I, of course, was thrilled. As the appointed time came, I was ready in my best dress, make-up on, the whole nine yards. He never came and I never heard from him again. It hurt for a very long time. Never do that, ever, you who read this. Go at the appointed time or call. Never just not show up.

Those were the good years. When I got older, I couldn’t just no show up. From the age of twelve when I had to show up after school to let the babysitter go home and cook the dinner, life get steadily worse.

I was wondering whether to write this or not but why not? It’s a fact. I got a family tree this week, the family tree of my grandmother’s family, the Fergusons. It shows them from the year 1830 when my great, great grandfather was born. It says he was a woodworker. My other great great grandfather was a toolmaker but there was no birth year. My grandmother was the eldest daughter of the ten children of Josh Ferguson and my family has five children, me, Robert, Leslie, Hilary and Alison in order of age. I am in regular contact with William Lindsay who is my grandmother’s nephew, whatever that makes me.

I have always loved Christmas, no matter the circumstances. I remember Christmases when I was little very fondly. We had a real, if small tree and it had little candle holders made of tin that clipped onto the branches and held little candles which we actually lit, for heaven’s sake! We’d be terrified of doing that now, even with artificial trees. How the times have changed. But we’d survived the war; we could survive lighting candles on the Christmas tree. i loved the ornaments which also survived from year to year. i remember a bird ornament with a long tail. There were other decorations that i remember, particularly a picture on stiff card of a sleigh with people in Victorian dress on it and the whole was sprinkled with sparkles. I loved it.

We had our presents put on the foot of the bed so that we two children could open them without disturbing the adults. i had asked Father Christmas for a cradle for my dolly and there it was! The doll always had knitted doll clothes. i have the doll still but the eyes need replacing. We always had handknitted sweaters (jumpers) and socks. Everyone knitted in those days and I have knitted loads of sweaters and a pile of socks for various people. It’s a very worthwhile skill. We children didn’t appreciate the fairisle sweaters and cardigans.

We were allowed a sip of sherry at Christmas dinner. We also had a whole roast chicken, this at a time when you could hardly have found one in a butcher’s shop. Ours, I think, came from Auntie Dolly’s little flock from the bottom of the garden in Sevenoaks. I loved the stuffing, as who does not? Mashed potatoes and lots of gravy. It’s not possible to have Christmas without gaining a couple of pounds. The Christmas that i was pregnant, i ate like a horse and then starved myself so that the net loss of one pound was duly noted by the doctor. He proclaimed me his prize patient that year and she was born in March. He said that his mothers never gained more than twenty pounds. He wasn’t kidding.

As an aside, i have finished my SF novel ‘Solitude’. I’m proofreading it now before I send it to a publisher. I have one in mind at the moment. But it’s long, which is a problem for publishers. Our other novel, Fraterfamilias, is in serial form, although we didn’t write it that way. The editing is being done at a snail’s pace and it’s annoying us. i’ve complained to the boss about it and he’s promising to try to speed things up. Not our fault. We finished it a couple of years ago.

I’m sure you’ll all like Solitude. A spaceship is forced to land on a planet that they name Solitude. It’s a desert planet and is inhabited by a gentle folk who are telepaths. They need food and water and first contact is the only option they have of getting what they need. The spaceship is from a planet called Omana and is a planet of humans who went there during the Great Migrations twenty thousand years earlier. Omana is under the yoke of a Patriarch who is the head of Gennacorp, the ruling Company. They are fighting a guerilla group for control of the Outer Planets. Anyway, it’s a good yarn. I hope the publisher likes it.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual back in the hospice. Take care and a very merry Christmas to you all.

Judith

I wrote this a few years ago now. I'd been watching the Olympic hockey game in 2002 in a bar. Peter Gzowski had died and his memory was right there in fromt of us. He would have liked that we won gold.

And I no longer live in Dartmouth, NS. I escaped and now live in Vancouver again. This place i love.

***********

Like so many others, I was not born in Canada. I was born in the picturesque, thousand-year-old town of Salisbury, in the southern English county of Wiltshire. It has a magnificent Gothic cathedral whose spire is -- was – falling down. Perhaps they have fixed it now. And is not far from Stonehenge. It used to be called New Sarum, so I’m told, and was built next to Old Sarum, which had been inhabited since the days of the builders of Stonehenge. It is old, if anything is.

But I have never really been there. I was not raised by my mother but was taken in at the ripe old age of ten days by foster parents, living in Sevenoaks in Kent. It was wartime and such things were not uncommon. Sevenoaks is in what was known as ‘bomb alley’, the route of the rocket bombs launched in Holland, with the anti-aircraft guns pounding away at all hours to try to knock them out of the skies before they fell on London. Apparently, it was all right if they fell on us.

Needless to say, I was a nervous child. I chewed the ends of my pigtails and sucked my handkerchief when no one was looking. Until I left England, at the age of eight, we lived on rationing. They say it was severe and I suppose that an allotment of one ounce of sugar per person per week counts as ‘severe’. It was the only system I had ever known and if I was deprived of the necessities of life, I was blissfully unaware of it, having, it seemed to me, everything I needed, a family, a brother, a dad who carried me on his shoulders and wonderful Christmases. How is that deprivation? No-one thought to explain to me either what a ration was or the need of it; it was a way of life and the only one I had ever known. I did at least know that everyone was required to have them; there were no special cases that I knew of. If I was deprived, so was everyone else and it was not noticeable. The grown-ups never spoke of such things within earshot of children and I am inclined now to think that there is merit in such a system.

Some time after the war, perhaps in 1948, we moved to Wythenshawe, a suburb of the great Industrial Revolution city of Manchester, with its ship canal that had been the aorta of Britain for the export of woollen goods from the ‘dark, Satanic mills’. What did I know of all that? To me, Manchester meant Manchester United football team, having a red and white muffler, filling in the football pools for Pop, since we two children had as much chance of being right as anyone, being within driving distance of the Blackpool Illuminations, walks along country lanes every Sunday after church, being forbidden to play in the rhododendron bushes because of the black, oily streaks that resulted from touching the dark leaves, Father Christmas at Lewis’s Department Store – and at several other big stores as well, of course, which was how I determined that, lovable as he was, Father Christmas was a fake -- and a field for playing Cowboys and Indians behind the ‘semi-detached’ house.

We lived with the sight of bombed buildings. I thought nothing of them; they were simply there, the way of things, as ‘normal’ as sharing one can of Spam between five people and thinking ourselves well off for a lump of coal for the fireplace instead of the usual peat. There were trips to the zoo, with its wonderful elephants. There were rides for the children in a wooden seat high on the elephant’s back. One of the best-cherished childhood delights was feeding Bassett’s Licorice Allsorts, one at a time, to the huge beasts, holding the treat carefully between childish fingers while the two-ton giant took it with exceeding delicacy by the prehensile ‘lips’ of the end of its trunk, its touch warm, soft and gentle. I have loved the great behemoths to this day. I actually remember nothing else about the zoo, but it is enough.

Discovering Peter Gzowski

I look out the window of my tenth-floor apartment in beautiful downtown Dartmouth and I hate the place.

It is not the first time in my life that the place I was living in has engendered that uncertain, vaguely distressing sense of not-belonging, but that is another story. I am a Vancouverite, although it took me nearly fifty years to know that about myself. And I have been just about everywhere on the northern half of the continent of North America, not to mention across it by air, train and car, and around it by water. Which makes me a little odd.

I have not seen it all, not by a long shot, but I have seen more of it than most, ‘been there done that’ more often than many and lived to tell about it. Peter Gzowski died last month and it struck me that I was one of a tiny minority of Canadians who never listened to “Morningside”, his long-running CBC morning radio show. That oversight is possibly due to the simple fact that I have not owned a radio in over twenty years, although I am not sure why that should be. Years ago, I put it on my mental list of things to buy before the next Ice Age and it is still there. For some reason, I know his voice for all that; he has seeped into my marrow anyway. I have tried to make amends to Peter’s memory by reading his books and finding out what that phenomenon was — is — all about. As far as I can see, and from what I heard on the programs on CBC television after his death, he was like a bootlace that kept us all together, tied the sides of this sixty-eight hundred-kilometre-wide boot — or hockey skate, or mukluk – together. I never knew him and I miss him anyway. We humans are funny like that.

I watched the memorial special that celebrated his achievements and they were all there. Peter Mansbridge kicked it off, the Bare Naked Ladies sang for us, Vicky Gabereau read some letters, Susan Aglukark sang “O, Canada” and Graham Greene was a face in the audience. I think I saw Dame Judy Dench; I hope I did. I like Dame Judy; I should like to think that she likes us.

”Us”. I have not always been able to say that. I have always lacked a sense of family but I realized something that night. My family was right there, in an auditorium at the University of Toronto, talking about one of our own. “Our own.” My, that sounds nice.

I was not born here. I was born in England and came here as a child, brought here with no say in the matter, brought into a strange place with strange sounds and strange children. I was lonely, lost and miserable and I hated it. It has taken fifty years for this land to work its brutal magic, wooing me not with promises but with challenges, not with comfortable softness but with harsh, forbidding and gorgeous reality. I resisted for half a century. The siren song of this country is patient and inexorable. It needs to be; it is tough love.

And now the circle is complete. Yesterday, February 24, 2002, when the Canadian men’s hockey team won the gold after a fifty-year odyssey of its own, when I counted out the last seconds of the third period along with everyone else in a Halifax bar, whooping and hollering like a five-star maniac, madly waving the little maple leaf flag I got at Canada Day celebrations last year, I could no longer pretend that I was not a Canadian. I conceded defeat. I was home.

On the national news, Ben Chin couldn’t keep a straight face, Ian Hanomansing showed us the revellers on Robson Street in Vancouver and, from Kandahar, Afghanistan, we saw Canadian soldiers leaping about for sheer joy. In Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, the jubilant crowds were splashed with red and white. And I was proud. Fifty years ago, in 1952, the Edmonton Mercurys won the last gold medal and a scrawny waif with big, blue, Irish eyes, pigtails and a lost look got off an immigrant ship. Today, the gold medal and I are both home. Yesterday, I saw the look on Wayne Gretzky’s face, the clear message that, wherever he is, he is ‘one of us’. I am ‘one of us’ and it is a good feeling.

Think I’m gonna to buy me a Roots hat.

Judith

I first wrote this with no audience in mind. Hurricane Juan struck Dartmouth/Halifax, Nova Scotia on September 27/28, 2003. It had been a beautiful summer and we weren't ready for it to end but it did, with a bang.

You'll have to keeep that in mind. I'm not going to go through and change the times or references. I don't live there any more, having come home the following March 1, right after White Juan, which is what people named the wworst blizzard in a century the following February. No more, no more.


****************************************

Friday ... [surfacing and spitting out debris]

Wow. Got smacked upside the head for that little piece of cheek!

Hurricane Juan made landfall two miles from my cosy little tower sometime after 11pm Sunday evening. I was on the phone to Paula at the time because I'd already lost internet connection. I got as far as holding the phone up to the window for her to hear the screaming of the wind so she could say, Yup, that's a hurricane... And that's about when I lost the connection. And the lights.

I think it's the noise, ya know? We are situated about two hundred FEET from the harbour. I was officially in the mandatory evacuation zone but the building was exempted. The storm surge pushed boulders over the boardwalk, chewed the boardwalk to ratshit, smashed right through my favourite coffee shop, washed out the rail bed, overturned some rail cars… all sorts of fun stuff. I took a stroll around there a couple of days later and found the edge of the surge —a thick line of seaweed and styrofoam and broken wood, and God knows what all along the railway track—and past it in some spots—about a hundred feet from our front door.

The most noticeable damage is the thousands of trees that got pushed over or just plain snapped off—all facing pretty much the same direction—hauled out by the roots. Everywhere you look, there are huge trees down, their root balls sometimes more than a head high (gives new meaning to the term 'balls up'!). There are too many of them down to get them all cleared away by the time winter sets in, even with the army in here helping, so they'll probably be there reminding us of the mess all winter. The buildings weren't too badly damaged; the buildings have to be fairly solidly constructed to withstand the winter storms off the North Atlantic, but there is an awful lot of aluminum siding and styrofoam insulation and roofing material in with the branches and tons of shredded leaves all over everywhere. Someone described it as looking as though someone shook oregano all over the place. Mostly there are snapped-off telephone poles here and there and the lines were down everywhere. The lovely park next door to us lost half its trees, big sixty-foot pines. I took a few piccies. The beautiful Public Gardens in downtown Halifax were devastated. {As it turned out, some seventy thousand trees came down all told

The big thing was getting the power back up. My little piece of the power grid is the same one that has the harbour control and hurricane centre on it, ergo we got priority and were up in almost exactly 24 hours. Until then, it meant I was trapped on the tenth floor because, without the elevators, even though my knees might have withstood climbing down ten flights of stairs in pitch dark, they would never have got me back up. And there was nothing open, of course. They wanted everybody to stay in because of all the live power lines down all over the place. Many people are still without power.

You have to admire the stoic attitudes of the locals, though. They interviewed some fishermen who watched their livelihoods disappear in the space of minutes and the usual reply was something like, Ayuh, muh boat sunk. Oh, and for those of you who don't think that getting out to vote is worth the bother, this is one for the books: The province of Prince Edward Island (PEI — think 'Anne of Green Gables') which was nearly as badly hit as we were, went ahead with its provincial election, with the polls opening six hours after the storm passed. The chief returning officer had to hack his way out of his driveway with a chain saw and they voted and counted by candlelight and kerosene lamp—and the turnout was 78%. Of course, we still mark one piece of paper with an X and stuff it in a box, which helps.

As for me, there wasn't a lot to see. I looked out the window but the air was too full of flying water, I suppose, and there were no lights, of course. A lot of lightning and noise. Something in the ventilation shaft of the building was banging like crazy. I think the only uncomfy moment was when I could feel the whole building sway. The winds were clocked at 93 mph with gusts up to 128 mph. That'll do it! Other than that, I saw no point in just sitting there in the dark. After the eye passed&mdash:a very eery experience— just curled up and slept like a baby. I had a bowl of cooked rice in the fridge and some cooked meat. That and some salmon and canned peas kept me quite happy. And enough cat food, of course. That would have been a disaster. Late Monday night, I heard laughing down the hall and went to join three other ladies who were getting pretty bored, as I was. They'd been experimenting with making toast with a butane lighter! (Didn't work but was good for amusement after the beer was all gone.)

It's been a very boring week but I got a lot of writing done. I ran up a horrible phone bill calling Paula every night for a good giggle and to read her the latest chunk. Thank God the net is back up!

The only downside for me is that the art show I was going to have some drawings in got -- um -- 'cancelled': the gallery was in the same building as my coffee shop and the storm surge threw boulders through the windows and washed the place out. They're still squeegeeing out the salt mud and debris. They had a little bobcat out to move the rocks back to the breakwater where they came from.

Using a hurricane as a reason for not returning somebody's email or not paying a bill seems so much like a shaggy dog story, too. Everybody is saying it's almost embarrassing, right up there with the old tiger that jumped out of the bushes and ate your homework... but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.


Judith

I have always liked chickens. They take me back to my earliest years. The place I lived when I was the tiniest baby until I was about four was Sevenoaks in Kent south of London. I have no illusions that the place has changed beyond recognition in the sixty years since then. I’d rather not know how much.

We lived at number 20 Hillingdon Avenue in a row house. There were swings close by, going by how often I was photographed sitting on them and scowling. They houses were cinder block consctruction and there was a garden at the back. That was where the chickens were kept. I don’t know for certain but I’m guessing, its being wartime, that people were encouraged to raise as much of their own food as possible.

I don’t remember what was grown in the garden, just that we had chickens and i loved eggs. The eggs were a wonderful, creamy yellow goodness in a great package and if the chickens laid one and I found it, it was mine. I remember once being so excited that I was running up the garden path, tripped and fell and, inevitably, the egg broke. I was very upset, mostly because I thought I would be in trouble for breaking the egg than going without my breakfast.

A lot of people lived in that house. I realized that much later, of course. There was Grandad, a grand old man in his eighties who had earned his living as a hurdle maker. I have no idea what that was or the need for them and if anyone can tell me I’d be grateful. There are several photos of me and Grandad. I do remember that I loved him. He died shortly after the end of the war and we always went to put flowers on his grave. He was much loved.

Then there was Auntie Dolly and her husband Russell Knight and Auntie Dolly’s two teenaged daughters, Gillian and Aileen. Then there was my godmother, who was Dolly’s sister, her daughter, Joan. Just as the war ended, we also had Joan’s son, Michael (my foster brother) and Pop, Michael’s father who was demobbed in 1945. And then there was me. For a grand total of ten people. It was wartime and there was no building going on. People were living with relatives if they’d survived being bombed out.

Me. My mother was not married to my father, which happens a lot in wartime. My mother and my uncle, Laurie, turned up on the doorstep if 20 Hillingdon Avenue with me, wrapped in a blanket. I was ten days old. Nan took me in and became my godmother.

There were two train stations, Tub’s Hill and Bat and Ball. One of them, I think it’s Bat and Ball, still exists. Sevenoaks is — and has been for hundreds of years — the seat of Knoll House. It’s one of the great houses of England and is so old that the first renovations were done by the Tudors.

We often walked to the gate of Knoll House, either to go in and have a picnic on the grounds or to visit someone whose name I have forgotten. They lived in a coach house right beside the gate. I was intrigued because the doorway was down. You had to step down to get inside. I can see in my mind’s eye even now, the horses and the coaches, hear the sounds of the horses’ feet clop-clopping on the cobblestones. I don’t suppose it’s still cobbled but sixty years ago, they were still there. They hurt my small feet to walk on them.

There are red deer in the park, descended from the original herd which provided the gentry with hunting sport. They aren’t hunted now, of course. Back then, no doubt, there were plenty of rabbits running about the town. The blackberry vines were enough to guarantee that. At our house, the blackberries began just the other side of the chicken coop. The land fell right off back there and nobody was arguing with the blackberries about who owned it.
Waking up to the call of the rooster was good for me, I’m convinced. I still love the sound of the rooster.


Judith

Something a little different today. This is an introduction to a book I've written on How to Write Fiction. I've tried to sell it but the answers were always that I didn't have a name they could market.

#####################


I am approaching the heart of this book with two theses, both simple. The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

– Stephen King; On Writing

To Write or Not to Write?

Why does one write? I can imagine a host of answers but the one that fits me, and I am the only one I can answer for, is that I must. It's what I am; it's what I was created to do. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me up at night. Many people have written on the art of writing, both good writers and bad. The consensus is that it is a need, a drive, an urge that must be obeyed or we are unhappy. If you are uncertain whether you are a writer, think how you would feel if you were to give up the notion forever. That should do it.

And if you are a writer, you probably know what it is you want to write. Or think you do. You have probably tried your hand at something or other by now, perhaps a poem or a diary, or perhaps you enjoy writing letters, a noble and dying art. However the Muse stings your hide, be assured that it is the real thing, for anything which whispers in your ear in the middle of the night, disturbs your dreams or otherwise coaxes your thoughts ever back to itself has undeniable reality. And if you ignore it, it will not go away, for it is your inner self rapping for attention and it will not be denied; if you would be happy in your life, obey it.

Trust your inner consciousness to know what it wants and to be right in that; you're just along for the ride. The still, small voice is that call to be yourself, to be what you were created to be and not to be afraid of that, though there be dragons lying in wait. We have been taught to be timid, to mistrust our instincts and ignore the inner voice as false and fantastical. Everyone has something to say and writing is the instrument both of self discovery and of the expression of that awakened self. All art is the expression of that elusive internal self; all creation is an act of bravery. Those who create are the life blood of the race. If you are a writer, count yourself among the blessed and get on with it.

And while everyone has something to say, and perhaps everyone does have a book in him or her, it does not mean to say that everyone is capable of writing that book. If you approach your writing from the outset with the idea that your goal is to become rich and famous à la Stephen King, you are extremely likely to be disappointed. On the other hand, if you have decided that you shouldn't write a word because you have no hope of becoming rich and famous, you are cheating yourself of one of the finer things that you can do with your life, which is to leave behind you a personal record, an archive, however well or poorly written. Never discount the value of leaving behind something real of yourself. Just think how valuable anything written by your great-grandmother is, even though it talked only of how she spent her afternoons. The danger is in thinking only in the short term, one of the many illnesses of Western civilization. No matter how long you inhabit the planet, your writing will live after you and be valued for as long as it exists, even if only by your descendants. You will become a revered ancestor.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it… A writer without a sense of justice and of injustice would be better off editing the year book of a school for exceptional children than writing novels.

– Ernest Hemingway

Never write for the market; write for yourself. If you believe in your story, that is what keeps you going. It is an act of faith to sit down at that computer without a map of where the story is going and that's when the creativity flows. It is common to pick up a book on writing which begins with tips on getting published, managing rejection and getting that salable idea, which is to put the cart before the horse. If your emphasis is on what is salable, what is marketable and what is not, then you are not a writer. A writer must write. Anything well-written is, in theory, salable. Concentrate first on learning to write well; the rest will follow.

The more I write to please myself, the more likelihood there is that I'll please other people in the process… The business of writing a novel becomes less of a source of anxiety and more a source of pleasure if we learn to concern ourselves with the writing process and less with the presumptive end product...

– Lawrence Block, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit


First you must decide that this is who you are, not just something you do for a lark. Do not dabble. Ever. If you expect a reader to take you seriously, you have to have respect for yourself and what you are trying to do. Once you have come to believe it— no mean feat — the rest will come. You will make time, you will find that special place into which the Muse will venture boldly and not like a frightened deer that must be coaxed, minute by tedious minute. And you will learn how to be alone, for that is the state of the writer. Learn to love it. Which is not to say that you should not be a weekend writer, only that, whatever you write, take yourself seriously. If you don't believe in what you're doing, no-one else will believe in it either because that disrespect for yourself will communicate itself to the reader. It is not possible to fake it.

And write every single day. Stephen King told an interviewer that he took Christmas Day off but then admitted that he fibbed about it; he didn't want to look pathetic! If you only produce fifty usable words, it still keeps the story in your mind, the characters and their voices in your head and this is very important. If you must leave it for a while, you will find that you must re-read everything to reclaim the feel of it. Leave it long enough and you will lose that feel for good. At the very least, all your plans for your character may well have been forgotten.

Talent is an issue, but it is not everything; the urge to tell the story is. The form of the story does not matter to begin with. It will let you know how it wants to be written. Discipline is a central issue. If you can't get yourself seated in that chair, for all your brave thoughts and New Year's resolutions to Do It, it will not happen. Someone said that genius was largely the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Believe it. Hemingway once wrote that getting caught up in the swamp of everyday life was merely a form of quitting.

Talent is very difficult to define in any art form. We know it exists; we know some people have it and others are devoid of it. Almost everyone has some talent for something. I may be a fine carpenter while understanding nothing of growing flowers. This is the easily recognized diversity of the human mind. When we speak of someone's being 'talented', it is often without thinking about what that means. It is not enough to be prolific to be talented, or voluble or charismatic with fans. Popularity is no gauge of real talent beyond the modest amount required to accomplish the task in acceptable fashion. Talent may be the ability to see things in ways no-one has ever seen them before; talent has a lot to do with understanding what works and what does not. Sculptors understand this best of all artists since it is essential to know exactly how much stone needs to be chiselled away — and no more. It is an indefinable quantity that shows only in the end product — or not.

Someone has said that great artists are all born with talent but that not one of them was born knowing how to do it. Good writing, like good painting or musical expression must be taught and is perfected only through practice. In her excellent book on learning to draw, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards emphasizes her fundamental belief that everyone can be taught to draw, and draw well, that it is a matter of learning the techniques. The idea is sound; the techniques of good writing can also be taught. Even if you never become a literary sensation, you can learn the techniques well enough that whatever you write will be acceptable to all who read it. Beyond that, it is up to you and how faithfully you pay heed to the still, small voice. Talent may be what makes you great; technique is what will get you published.

The other thing you must do is educate yourself. Learn everything you have time to learn. All those chintzy little courses you took in college because you needed three extra credits or that soul-destroying job you took to pay the rent could turn out to be a goldmine. The more you know, the more you will understand of the human condition and that is the only subject in town. That's the game, the whole ball of wax. There is nothing else to write about simply because nothing else exists.

A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not… They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from.

– Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

What is the best early training for a writer? An unhappy childhood.

– Ernest Hemingway

This above all else: Do not expect to get it right the first time. Or the second, or the sixth. It is done when it is done and not before. If you can get this etched into the grey matter, you will almost never suffer from writer's block or from the tyranny of the blank page. And when you are stuck for what happens next or what to say next and feel like chucking it because you are never, ever going to get it right, remember that writing is hard. Take a bath, go to a movie, make love, fill your face, whatever it takes to make you happy and trust that your subconscious is working on it because that's what it does. Writing is not something that only happens when you are sitting in front of the computer or staring at a sheet of foolscap, clicking your teeth with a pencil and wondering what to have for dinner. If a writer is what you truly are, it is happening all the time and you must keep a notebook handy because the best ideas tend to burst into the conscious mind when you are in the bath or sitting on the pot or standing in the check-out line, any time your mind is relaxed and distracted.

As a beginning writer, you are inevitably going to make errors. We all make them. In fact, we all make much the same ones. They're fixable. Once you see the problem — and after you've finished slapping yourself on the forehead for it — you won't do it again. Eventually, you won't be a beginning writer any more and you can snicker yourself silly when you recognize the same blunders in others. It's perversely satisfying.

Try not to think of yourself as a writer, however; learn to think of yourself first and foremost as a storyteller and this applies to the writing of fiction and non-fiction alike. It keeps things in perspective. Story is what it's all about, story first, foremost and all there is. We tell each other stories all the time, whether it be a conversation, a letter or a chat with the hairdresser. Story is how we bond to each other, make friends and keep them, create our own identities as members of the human race. All forms of communication involving language are story.

In his fine book on screenwriting, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, Robert McKee says that, rather than being a form of escape from reality, story is what leads us down the road in our search for reality.

Kenneth Burke tells us, stories are equipment for living… Day after day we seek an answer to the ageless question Aristotle posed in Ethics: How should a human being lead his life?… Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience. In the words of playwright Jean Anouilh, "Fiction gives life its form"… To retreat behind the notion that the audience simply wants to dump its troubles at the door and escape reality is a cowardly abandonment of the artist's responsibility. Story isn't a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.

– Robert McKee


In a television interview, British author Terry Pratchett said that when we look into the unknown and are frightened by it, story tells us that we are not alone in our fear. Story talks about what it might be like out there and, in sharing that story with another human being, we are both comforted.

But the art of the story is in decline. If the content of the story is not thoughtful, careful and accurate, the wrong things are learned, inappropriate attitudes are fostered and the damage is often well nigh irreversible. So long as we see literature — and well-written non-fiction has a strong element of the literary — as having no more than entertainment value, there is no compelling reason for accuracy, either of fact or of thought, no reason to use it to call attention to social ills or avoid unrealistic, fantastical, even silly themes. If the trend continues unchallenged, it will be the death of literature, both printed and visual, and art will be seen as valueless other than as set decoration to existence, art meaning all creative endeavour.

Television and cinema are visual literature, since they begin with the written word, the script. That most of it is pulp and pap is the fault of those who see it as purely entertainment, a medium for marketplace exploitation aimed at the mythical youth demographic and the message of that medium has suffered severely for it. Aristotle must be rolling in his grave. Yet it is also the fault of those who indulge in it, gobble it up like so much junk food for the mind, uncritically, never demanding anything better. Our educational systems have let us down by not teaching us what consitutes good literature, by no longer teaching us the essentials of language and culture, by not implanting shit detectors in each and every one of us. Hardly anyone knows any more what good writing looks like.

The purpose of story is the shedding of light on truth.

For although an artist may, in his private life, lie to others, even to himself, when he creates he tells the truth; and in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
– Robert McKee

Nevertheless, as Mr. McKee says in his book, watching every movie ever made will not train you to write a script. Reading every novel ever written does not qualify you to write one, either. And watching television does not qualify you for anything other than the Golden Couch Potato Award. I have seen stories that were written exactly as if the writer had watched a great deal of television but never opened a book. There is next to no character development, no attention at all to point of view, the text consists almost entirely of cliché dialogue and the action is badly-written exposition that wouldn't excite a nervous pigeon. Before you can do it, you have to learn how it's done. If you are not willing to put yourself through that process — and then practise — pu down now. As Stephen King suggests, go and wash the car, make youself useful, because you will never be a writer.

On the other side of the coin, if you have never read a novel, you haven't a hope of producing one. And no, short stories are not short novels and are absolutely as difficult to write well. They just don't take as much time. And short story writers and novelists are two different animals; if you are truly drawn to the one medium rather than the other, stay with your choice. If, like almost all writers, you started writing by trying to write a short story, it doesn't mean that you should not try something longer as well. We walk before we can run. If you find your short stories wanting to grow, then let them. Never try to limit what is happening in your head; that way lies disaster, no matter what you're attempting.

All literature, including the spoken word, is story. All the rules apply, whether what you write is a poem, a play, a short story or a novel, fiction or non-fiction. Who is it for? Every personal record ever written – past, present and future – paints the human picture in fine detail, for we must have bards to sing our songs, to tell our story and say how we passed this way. And to say that we are just like you, you who read our story a thousand years from now.

Literary talent is not enough. If you cannot tell a story, all those beautiful images and subtleties of dialogue that you spent months and months perfecting are not worth the paper they're written on. What we create for the world, what it demands of us, is story. Now and forever.

– Robert McKee

The image of the Roman arena distills the artistic process into one, vivid metaphor. The artist, the performer, the writer, anyone who does anything which thrusts him into the public eye, is out there on the sand, sword in hand, fighting for his continued existence, for the right to go on being what he was created to be in full view of everyone. But the crowd is a fickle suitor; it adores its darlings of the moment, screaming their praises and showering them with gifts but it is ever watchful for every flaw, ever vigilant for that crack in the armour that serves as proof that the hero is not a god but a human being, just like everyone else. But the crowd does not forgive; it will consider itself deceived and turn its thumbs down. Never write for the crowd. If you are determined to write, write for youself, write because you must. Write because it is who you are.

Respect. Respect your readers, respect your characters, both real and fictional, and respect yourself.

It is all about respect.
It is all about telling the truth.
It is all about love.


What Do You Want to Write About?

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

– Ernest Hemingway

What are you going to write? What you write and how you write it is determined to a large extent by your audience. Family, friends, a newspaper, a magazine, a book, the internet — it matters who is going to read it. You will write very differently on exactly the same subject for Aunt Martha from the way you would write for an anonymous member of the crowd and we have all experienced having to write for the teacher. Consider what you want to talk about and then give some thought to the form in which you wish to express the ideas, and consider them all. Perhaps Grandma's story is best done as a biography, if her whole life was unusual and of interest outside the family, or perhaps some particular story from her life is best told by itself. Should it be biographical narrative or could it be explored as a short story, a poem, or even something long? And consider that the story of any member of the family, including yourself, however it is written, will stand as a part of the family archive, something to be treasured by future generations. This is an immensely powerful reason for writing. It is completely valid to write for the sake of doing it without thought of finding a publisher. If you see it that way, then it is entirely possible that the freedom it gives you as you write, the peace of mind, will make your writing much truer, even much better and what better gift can you give your descendants than a record of a life?

The usual wisdom is to write what you know, which is to state the case with such simplicity as to border on the silly. That is usually interpreted to mean, What is your personal experience? Which is fine. The failure, for beginning writers, is to think that they have so little experience that there is nothing worth writing about. My friend and I both find this rather amusing: she was in Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer and I have lived and worked in the Canadian Arctic and we both find that to be ordinary, neither really believing that what was everyday life for us could possibly be of any interest to anyone else.

It serves to illustrate a point. We have all said that a good actor can have us laughing and crying just by reading the telephone directory. To repeat what so many others have said, it is not so much what you say as how you say it. What we all want – what we all crave – is a glimpse into the life of another human being, another journeyer on the lonely path, to reassure ourselves that we are not alone, that our experiences are not that different or weird or tragic, that others have survived the Hero's Journey and that belonging to the human race consists of more than being equipped with bipedal locomotion and opposable thumbs. We have all been there, done that, and it isn't so bad after all if we can have company on the road.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life – and one is as good as the other… Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it — don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist — but don't think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.

– Ernest Hemingway

What you write about is trivial compared to what your character, and ultimately your reader, can learn from it. Which is not to say that reading about doing the dishes or warming baby food isn't going to make your reader yawn. What your reader wants to know is how you felt about pacing the floor in the wee hours while your husband snored — or how you felt when he did it for you and even fetched you hot milk because you'd had a hard day. It's the common humanity that you bring to your writing which makes it readable, enjoyable, moving, instructive — which makes it literature. Make your writing part of the human experience and you cannot fail to have readers. This is done through characterization, through tone and sound, through subtext, through introspection, point of view — through writing on the back of your eyelids.

Much of it, language, spelling, vocabulary, sentence structure, logical progression of story line, happens in the left brain; you can learn to mobilize the right brain for the rest of it. Engage the senses, all six of them! What do you see, hear, smell? What is the texture of the night or the taste of the wind? What do you feel?

Where do you get your ideas?

Did you look at the sky this morning? Did you notice the people at the line-up in the bank? On the bus? Herding children through the mall? Did you listen to someone's tale of trying to find a parking space or the way to Pete's Frootique? Do you remember your honeymoon or having your first child? Do you listen to others? The point here is that everything is a story. The essence of the story is the wonder that life generates in all its aspects, light and dark, sacred and mundane. Learn to listen – to others, to yourself, to the rhythms of living — and you will never want for stories.

On a more practical level, the first source of story is your own life, your own experience. Fiction writers often use the 'what if?' approach, starting with a common occurrence and teasing it out to a conclusion. It works.

In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.

– Ernest Hemingway

I must admit to not knowing what the process is. Sometimes it seems to be a matter of spontaneous mental combustion, although I am quite certain that it is not. How do you prod the process into life? A good start is to read. A writer must read. Voluminously. Anybody and everybody. Don't be afraid of material which makes you squirm. Some things are meant to make us uncomfortable. Schindler's List makes me desperately uncomfortable, as does A Tale of Two Cities. Be brave. There will be times when your own writing makes you uncomfortable but you must never shy away from where the story needs to go. That it makes you uncomfortable is a mark of your own humanity.

You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is – but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit.

– Ernest Hemingway

Read whenever you have a free moment, on the bus, in the waiting room, in the park, everywhere. Turn off the television and reacquaint yourself with the printed page. Once you begin to write, you will read differently. You will read more critically, looking for content, technical mastery, turn of phrase and vocabulary, moving description and beauty of style. The subject matter becomes almost incidental.

My personal feeling is that story is character-generated and character-driven. Character first; story happens. Plot? What the heck is a plot? More of that later, as well. Michael Caine has said that he feels that, when he portrays a character, it is not so much copying behaviour as holding up a mirror for others to see themselves. This is what the great novelists do.

And before you complain that you wanted to write poetry, not a story, let me repeat, in case you missed it the first time around: All literature, including the spoken word, is story. You are a character in the story, especially the poem. No writer so divorces himself from his work that he is not in it himself. Even in fiction, the writer becomes the narrator, whether the story is written in the first person or not. In non-fiction, the writer is the central character. The whole purpose of most non-fiction is the expression of the personal experience and understanding of the author; it cannot be otherwise. The most successful non-fiction —which includes, of course, memoirs and autobiographies — is written very personally. The Diary of Anne Franck would be so very much less effective, even given the horrendous subject matter, if it had not been, centrally, a personal story. Reporting does not work. The highest non-fictional literature is the personal, inner journey, the soul journey, the Hero's Journey. It is at its best when approached as story.

What to put in or leave out? Everything, every word, every phrase, every paragraph, must advance the story in some way. If it does not fill out a character, add to the understanding of story or setting, to the ambience and mood, it does not belong there and must be left out.

And that's it.

Judith