Literary Lessons…Historical Fiction Intensive at Banff Centre with Lawrence Hill & a chat with Alice Major in Edmonton!

I’m in Edmonton now, visiting family and friends. It feels good to reconnect with a few more friends before heading home to Northern Ontario tomorrow morning. I’ve spent the day wandering on the grounds of the Alberta legislature (beautiful!) and then browsing in Audrey’s Books, which has fast rocketed to the top of my list of favourite bookstores in the world. Then I had a two hour lunch with Alice Major, Edmonton’s first Poet Laureate, and someone whom I admire a great deal. Yesterday, I spent time with my friend, Alexis Kienlen, at the Art Gallery of Alberta, seeing the Group of Seven exhibition there, as well as a stunning exhibition of First Nations Canadian art. Last night, I was thrilled to see Alexis dance in a Bedouin Beats belly dancing recital. (All of my previous understanding of belly dancing has been blown out of the water…and I wonder if I should give it a try!)

I wanted, though, before I return to my day-to-day life in Sudbury, to make a list of the things I’ve learned from my Banff writer friends this past week. I took notes (yes, I’m a nerd!) during our discussions. Anything in quotation marks is a paraphrase of something Larry said…and that we then riffed on and conversed about as a group. (I had wine….so it’s a true paraphrase because I couldn’t feel my ankles…. 😉

1) Some people outline meticulously when they write novels. I am only writing my first novel, so I have a lot to learn. (I don’t have an MFA in Creative Writing, so maybe I’m lacking in that respect….) I started by writing down a synopsis of what I thought my novel was about. Then I kind of plotted out some major plot points, as well as created a sort-of-family-tree so that I wouldn’t lose track of characters or their motivations. (It’s hardly perfect, but I’m sure as I finish this novel, and go on to write others, that I’ll get better at the process work.) 🙂 My friend Emily has an amazing sense of organization, colour coding things to track creative process and progress. In one of our discussions, Larry did say that, while outlining is important, there is something powerful about how writers also “create energetically.” I sort of fall into that category. I use my novel notations as a guide to where I’m headed, but I’m not wedded to certain events. I can see a variety of possibilities for plots and sub-plots. (Sometimes, I think, I ‘see’ too many possibilities, and I’m indecisive and can’t pick one path, so I just need to write through it. It can also be a pain in the ass to go out for dinner with me because I can never make decisions about what I’m in the mood for….long, sad story!)

2) When you write historical fiction, you need an “anchor moment” that you must stay true to; you can’t fiddle with history. There are facts to consider. You have to stay true to that historical moment and atmosphere in your writing. (This sounds easy, but I don’t think it is….I struggle with it, especially in trying to integrate Finland’s brief Winter War into my own novel.) You can research too much and then end up avoiding the writing of the actual story. Sometimes, writers are the best procrastinators, and research can end up taking you away from the actual telling of the story. I learned a lot about the pitfalls of research from the other writers in my group. (Who knew you could spend quite a while looking up which chickens tend to live in certain states in America, or which person wrote a traditional Irish ballad, and in which year?! 🙂

3) Endings….I’ve been avoiding mine for about a month or so. I know now that it needs to be written, and that will be my first plan of attack when I’m home this week. It’s funny, you know, how you can get so attached to fictional characters. Some of them seem more real than actual humans I know. I don’t know what that says about me, or my psychological make up. I’ll leave it to those who know me best to suss that one out. (I’m not going there!) Anyway, Larry suggested that writers need to sometimes “provoke the ending by writing around it.” You almost circle it, somehow. I’m walking a lot these days, as if trying to physically move it through my body, up into my mind, and out through my hands (whether by pen or by laptop). The restlessness of it is bothersome. Feels like a labouring of some sort. Even though I can’t say I’ve ever gone through a real child birth thing, it feels as creatively intense to me on many levels.

4) “Story Management:” This is an idea I quite liked. It reminds me of something I’d read in David Ball’s book, Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays. That purchase was courtesy of a conversation I had with Lisa O’Connell from Pat the Dog Theatre Creation last August. So. Here it is….you have scenes and bridges in a story. Your scenes are happening in the here and now. You imagine your characters as actors on a stage. You need to slide into the mindset of your characters, imagining how a character would perceive things. Your bridges, on the other hand, link things together, moving the reader from scene to scene. They move you through time and space. In effect, a scene is about “showing where you should show” and a bridge is about “telling where you should tell.” (Every time you leave a scene, though, and the immediacy and intensity of it, you risk potentially annoying, and then maybe losing, your reader in the process.)

5) Dialogue: “It is not human speech; it’s a representation of human speech.” Yeah, um, I have some work to do in this area. I know that. First, I need to write the ending of the novel, and then I’ll go back and fix the little bits of wacky dialogue. (Sometimes my characters speak too poetically…occupational hazard, said the poet who shifts shiftily into novel and play writing work. 🙂

6) Point of View/Narration: Basically, you can’t flip around with narration, unless you’re trying to be an innovative novelist who is breaking narrative boundaries in an experimental way. (I’m so not advanced enough for this, so I’m steering clear of it!) I know I shouldn’t pop from POV to POV, but I still struggle with it as it’s the first time I’ve tried to write a novel. I know my novel is mostly told from the point of view of Lizzie Donoghue, but her husband, Michael Power, comes in there, as well. I’ve got to keep a rein on them and streamline my narration so that it’s more carefully sculpted. (Think bonsai tree pruning, Kim!)

7) The value of art in the world….”The world loves art, but artists are frequently despised…for taking the time needed to create art.” This makes me sad, but I know it’s true. I wish we lived in a world where artists were more accurately compensated for their work. It’s important stuff, this creating art, even if most people may not realize it. Spend an afternoon in a major art gallery and be astounded by the beauty and social commentary. Then wonder how an artist makes a living….(Also, it amazes me that people will want their kids to be creative, but then dissuade them from pursuing education in the field of the arts. Brutal sadness in my heart for this one, as a writer and as an educator.)

There’s a lot of poetry in my head this afternoon, especially after my lunch conversation with the brilliant Alice Major. I’m thinking about how poetry and science intertwine, after listening to Alice speak about her deep love for that grafting, and about how poetry is really about story telling and communication. I’m also thinking about how some poets seem to be so brilliant, able to craft unique projects, but their ground breaking and innovative work can, at the same time, make me feel daft when I read it. I worry about how accessible poetry is for people who don’t regularly read or write poetry. If we alienate them with poetry that is so experimental, what have we done? Have we just proven that we’re brilliant and clever, and maybe even precious and pretentious? I don’t know…I can’t do it, though. I have to speak plainly, but use vivid imagery and metaphor to paint pictures in people’s minds. That’s how it all works for me.

To be honest, I’d rather write poems that someone like my dad might have read and understood. (He wasn’t university educated, but he was the first person to recite Shakespeare to me in a super dramatic way. He loved words and stories, too. I’d never want him to feel ‘less than’ when reading my work, and I think I did a good job of letting him read my earlier work, while he was still around, to see what he thought.) It’s funny to me, sitting here in a hotel room in Edmonton, looking out over a busy downtown street edged with lovely trees, and watching a particularly watchful magpie, that I’m thinking of him yet again. He doesn’t leave me very often…a heart touchstone, I guess. I’m blessed to carry him with me…

So…this is what I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks. These days and nights have opened me up creatively and emotionally.  I’ve shared a lovely evening with my cousin, Liam, his wife, Michaela, and their little girl, Wren, and felt more connected to family than I have in a while. Seeing my cousins Frank and Darlene just before going to Banff, too, made me feel connected again, even though we’re far apart geographically. Love them all to bits.

I’ve spent time with my writer friends at Banff (Cheryl Foggo, Monica Kidd, Beverly Boutilier, Josiah Neufeld, Sandra McIntyre, Emily Ursuliak, Patti-Kay Hamilton, and Larry Hill). I’ve spent a day and evening with my old friend from Sage Hill, Alexis Kienlen, talking about poetry and prose, and sharing time, laughs, and kindred friendship. Then, today, a few hours stolen from Alice Major. How blessed am I? How blessed am I? 🙂

Keep writing and creating, if you write, friends. The world needs more art to press up against the darkness….to bring in more glorious light.

peace,
k.