In Residence

Exciting news: For a month this Fall, I’ll be the Writer-in-Residence at the AC Hunter Library. Between Tuesday, October 22 and Wednesday, November 20th, I’ll be running four workshops, hosting group writing sessions, and reading/ offering feedback on your prose during twice-weekly office hours. Everything on the program is free, in-person, and open to writers of all levels.

Better still, I’m only one of four writers who will be in residence at different libraries in the province. This special initiative is part of NL’s Year Of The Arts. Who knows if we will ever get this opportunity again so if you’re a local writer or writing-curious, take advantage!

Write Together Sessions

These low-key, zero-pressure writing sessions will be held on Tuesday evenings and Wednesday mornings, October 22 - November 20th, on the third floor of the AC Hunter Library (125 Allandale Road, St. John’s). They are open to aspiring and practicing writers of all levels. Bring yourself and your implements (paper, pencil, computer, whatever you prefer) and I’ll provide optional prompts and a timer to keep us on track. Tandem writing is a wonderful way to break writer’s block and get you in the zone. It also helps build the muscles of focus and attention. If you’ve been struggling to firm up a writing practice or have a story you desperately want to commit to paper, these sessions are for you. No advance registration is necessary.

Office Hours & Feedback

If you’re a writer with a short piece of fiction or non-fiction, I am offering feedback (on up to 2,000 words) through one-on-one meetings during my twice-weekly office hours. Due to time constraints, there are only 25 spots so email achunterwir@gmail.com to submit your writing and book your 30 minute time slot.

Workshops

I’ll be running four in-person workshops. Three will be geared toward adults and one is specifically for teens. These are free events but space is limited. More details for each workshop are on my Events Page. To register phone the library at (709)737-3950.

Here’s the schedule for my time at the AC Hunter:

Tuesday, Oct 22
5pm-6:30pm: write together session
6:30-8pm: office hours

Wednesday, October 23
9:30 - 11am: write together session
11am - 12:30pm: office hours

Tuesday, October 29
5pm-6:30pm: write together session
6:30-8pm: office hours

Wednesday, October 30
9:30 - 11am: write together session
11am - 12:30pm: office hours

Saturday, November 2nd
Story Dissection Workshop: 10:30am-noon

Tuesday, November 5
5pm-6:30pm: write together session
6:30-8pm: office hours

Wednesday, November 6th
NO WRITE TOGETHER OR OFFICE HOURS
Great Openers Workshop: 6:30-8pm

Thursday, November 7th
Creative Writing Workshop for Teens: 3:30-5pm

Tuesday, November 12th
5pm-6:30pm: write together session
6:30-8pm: office hours

Wednesday, November 13th
9:30 - 11am: write together session
11am - 12:30pm: office hours

Saturday, November 16th
Revision Workshop: 10:30am-noon

Tuesday, November 19th
5pm-6:30pm: write together session
6:30-8pm: office hours

Wednesday, November 20th
9:30 - 11am: write together session
11am - 11:30am: office hours (NOTE: shorter office hours on this day)

Blurbs

Recently, on CBC’s Commotion podcast. there was a dishy chat about blurbs. It’s worth a listen if you’re an aspiring author or have a first book deal or are curious about what it means to get a more established author or Barack Obama to say one nice word* that can be printed on your cover.

Most of us need blurbs but the relationship is fraught. It’s amazing to receive any sort of advance praise, especially when you’re deep in your feelings in that final stretch right before a new book comes out. But blurbs require hours of free labour. And the galling part is it’s impossible to do the (unpaid) job without toppling into cliche hell. To wit…

“A confident and lyrical debut penned by an author of uncommon talent.” (for Heather Nolan’s This is Agatha Falling)

“A vivacious debut from an author to watch” (for Jamaluddin Aram’s Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on a Wednesday)

“Clever and insightful, this book is a sheer delight.” (for Kerry Clare’s Waiting for a Star to Fall)

“A masterful collection, written with so much veracity, you’ll swear every word is true.” (for Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How to Pronounce Knife)

I once wrote “laugh-out-loud funny” in a blurb and was asked to please find a synonym because all the book’s endorsements included the same banality. In our collective defense: Shashi Bhat’s The Most Precious Substance On Earth is very funny and did make me guffaw.

Okay, so here’s a secret: I’m 95% more likely to consider a blurb request if it comes from a third party - agent, editor, publisher, publicist etc - instead of the author. I say no a lot more often than I say yes and the whole proposition is less fraught if it goes through a middleman.

But here’s the other thing: there’s more than one way to champion a book. I talk about books, write about books, recommend books to friends and family and clients and students. Whenever I lead a workshop, I pull passages from at least three or four authors. Just because I say no to a blurb, doesn’t mean I won’t find another way to be a cheerleader for the book.

*My favourite blurb always and forever is the one Obama gave Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad: “terrific!”

Eulogy

The story was titled Wankus Interruptus, and when I first read those words, centred at the top of the page, I paused. (Do you know this feeling? A fleeting fuzz of nostalgia. A whiff of emotion. In this case, the top note was humour.) The phrase was familiar. Why? And in the next second I recalled.

The page with the enigmatic title, sat on top of a sheaf that was being used for tinder. It came from deep in a box of cast offs - flyers, print outs, egg cartons, effigies of our enemies - that we keep for this purpose. We’ve had issues with our chimney and even bigger issues getting someone to come and repair the damn thing, and for a couple of years now, the wood stove has sat unused. But this week, in an attempt to conserve heating oil (itself a tedious chapter in the long and boring story called Homeownership) we’ve had fires blazing every day.

Wankus Interruptus isn’t a story. It’s the title of a chapter. Was the title of a chapter. Is the title of a chapter? What tense should one use about a manuscript that lies cold in the necropolis of murdered darlings?

Anyway, this chapter was from the first person point of view of a fourteen- year-old boy. It was set in the 90s in St. John’s and I spent ages researching what the city looked and felt and sounded like in those years. And then I had to do a bunch of work to conjure up a teenage boy and find his voice. First person is exacting!

I wrote and revised a whole draft of this novel. A couple of drafts. I scored a Canada Council grant, an ArtsNL grant, and a municipal grant for this novel. Somehow my agent sold this novel. Yaddha. Yaddha. RIP to that novel (2018-2020). After a long spell in the recycling bin, it’s finally being cremated. Later, the ashes will be scattered under the deck where my silly dog will no doubt roll in them.

Diversity road to no where

Originally published June 15, 2020

Last week #publishingpaidme blew up on Twitter, highlighting the ugly truth Black authors have long known, that they are offered a fraction of the advances white authors get, even when the Black authors in question are well established award-winners with an international fan base and a history of successful books, and the white authors in question have untested debut manuscripts or less, perhaps just a single essay that went viral. How can this be, this appalling and unfair disparity? IT’S WHITE SUPREMACY. WAKE THE FUCK UP.

White supremacy isn’t just pillowcase-hooded lunatics and tax-payer funded terrorists who call themselves cops. Supremacy is an entire industry - publishing houses, literary journals, literary agencies, books’ columnists, Bookstagram influencers, the faculty at MFA programs - overwhelmingly staffed by a homogeneous group of people. Is it any wonder they unconsciously undervalue the voices and work and stories of authors who don’t look like them? Is it any wonder they publish books stuffed to the gills with moronic tropes? Is it any wonder the books about Black characters that net the big money advances are written by white authors and feature said tropes? Some publishers have vowed to do better, Penguin Random House included. And I’m sincerely rooting for them, not least because they have been a good home to The Boat People. But I’m not getting my hopes up prematurely. We shall wait. We shall see.

Fact is, I’ve already been down this diversity road to nowhere. Last year I was asked to join an advisory board for a literary journal. They wanted to diversify their content and created a new volunteer board. Except they didn’t have a plan for how this board would accomplish the job. There were no meetings. In hindsight: a red flag. And in requesting my unpaid labour, they weren’t giving me any decision making power (apart from the ability to curate 25 pages in a special issue). I had my reservations, a bad feeling in my gut that these were, well-meaning perhaps, but ultimately, empty words about diversity, perhaps only a check box on a grant application. But years of reading literary magazines have proven how few Asian and Black and Indigenous authors get fiction published. My own experience is the stories I’ve written featuring white protagonists are more readily accepted. So I said yes to the volunteer work I did not have time for, because holding the door open is important. As anyone who isn’t a naive fool might have guessed, my good intentions backfired. A year later it became obvious that despite being on something that purported to be an advisory board, my advice was not wanted, thank you very much, and they would publish a known and unrepentant plagiarizer, despite the fact that I’d made it abundantly clear on Day Zero that this was the one non-negotiable about my involvement. Surprise! They didn’t want my counsel so much as my on-trend brown skin and the false veneer of diversity it conferred on the masthead. (Related: Isn’t it curious how mediocre white guys keep getting second and third and infinite chances?)

Fast forward to the present. In the overdue cultural reckoning that has resulted from George Floyd’s brutal murder, many an empty word has been uttered. Companies large and small are preening for back pats while simultaneously doing nothing. Or worse. An indie clothing store in St John’s posted their commitment to anti-racism on Instagram along with their grand plan to start a book club, of all things (this store that doesn’t sell books save the kind of amusing trifle you might find in a downstairs loo). Punchline: They want a black/ indigenous/ person of colour to lead said book club. It is what my mother would call a “goo contract.” Naturally, there is no mention of payment. Hey guys! We’re looking for slave labour. Spread the word. #blacklivesmatter.

“The right acknowledgment of black justice, humanity, freedom and happiness won’t be found in your book clubs, protest signs, chalk talks or organizational statements. It will be found in your earnest willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way.”

— Tre Johnson, Washington Post

Tre Johnson, in a searing and thoughtful Washington Post essay on book clubs, writes (emphasis mine): “The right acknowledgment of black justice, humanity, freedom and happiness won’t be found in your book clubs, protest signs, chalk talks or organizational statements. It will be found in your earnest willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way — be they at your job, in your social network, your neighborhood associations, your family or your home. It’s not just about amplifying our voices, it’s about investing in them and in our businesses, education, political representation, power, housing and art.”

Dismantle the systems. This is the work. The revolutionary work. Organizations could scrutinize their staff, their leadership teams, their payroll, their tenured faculty, their editors and gatekeepers, the merchandise they choose to not just sell but heavily promote. Companies, yes, even an entire industry, could diversify all of this if they wanted. If they were earnestly willing to tear down the systems that artificially prop up one group’s supremacy at the expense of everyone else. If.

RECEIPTS

Because there’s always some fragile bro piping up ”but…but…” here are:

Pie charts, bar graphs, and hard numbers illustrating demographics from the 2018 Canadian Book Publishing Diversity Baseline Survey and America’s Lee & Low 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey Results.

Here’s a first person video account from someone who works inside the industry. Here’s another.

Finally, you don’t have to be on Twitter to pay attention to @BIPOCPub.

No

Years ago, in the waning minutes of what would be my last day at a certain mediocre job, the HR rep hustled into my windowless office, pushed a piece of paper under my nose and declared: “You have to sign this.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Belinda*,” I said, before tossing a lit match on a trail of already-poured gasoline and burning the damn place down.

via GIPHY

Metaphorically, of course.

Everyone who has toiled in 9-5 servitude knows all the myriad and cliched ways a workplace can suck so there’s no need to itemize my grievances against this particular job or why I peaced outta there. The incident is only noteworthy because it was the turning point after which my whole professional life changed. Though of course I didn’t realize it at the time.

In the novel I’m struggling to write, the turning point is proving elusive. Which is a serious issue that’s been stressing me out. Maybe you’ve noticed the obsession? But the other night, as I was going to bed, that day from a decade ago, the unexpected pivot in my own life, returned to me. Along with the words that proceeded it.

I don’t have to do anything.

It’s a good bit of direct dialogue, isn’t it? Concise. Pointed. A struck match. I wrote it in my notebook and then took that sentence on a meditative walk.

There’s very little we actually have to do. And yet we all do a hundred, thousand, million strictly unnecessary things, things we don’t want to do, because of some vague sense of hafta. So what makes a character who has spent 200-odd pages of a novel sloughing through these self-imposed obligations, finally say enough? I don’t know. I’m still working it out. For me a lot of writing involves pondering esoteric questions and waiting for insight.

---

Meantime, I’ve been reading Richard Wagamese’s profoundly beautiful last (unfinished) novel, Starlight, and Genki Ferguson’s delightful debut Satellite Love (it has illustrations! a book for adults with pictures!). Lots of e-newsletters have popped up during the pandemic and this piece about furniture catalogues and longing at Grief Bacon is very good. Tom and I have re-started our two-person book club and are tearing through Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

We’ve also been watching the last season of Dark, which is an excellent study in plot and an example of a story that takes a circular shape. Trashy Britcom Toast of London is our palate cleanser.

I listen to podcasts almost non-stop. A recent stand out was Code Switch’s episode A Shot in the Dark about the Covid vaccine and the Tuskegee Experiment; I promise they don’t tell the story you think they’re going to tell. And I’ve been catching up on the back catalogue of NPR’s Throughline (a history podcast). This episode about astrology was fun.

There isn’t a whole lot to do in these lockdown days but I gave online yoga a go and am a reluctant regular. And recently, I got a set of grips which are coming in handy on icy trails.

*not her real name

Welcome

New year means a new website and some new projects. First up: this semester I am the (virtual) Writer-in-Residence at Memorial University. In this role, I’ll be teaching four stand-alone craft workshops. They are free, online, and open to anyone, anywhere and you can register for them now. I’ll also be popping up here and there on line and on the radio so keep an eye on the events page.

To kick off the residency, I dropped into the State of the Arts video series for an interview with Lisa Moore. Elsewhere on the internet, I had the great pleasure of interviewing authors Xaiver Campbell and Alexander MacLeod for the Sparks Literary Festival. You can watch both videos below. (We taped these in person sessions when Covid cases in the province were near zero, there was no community spread, and life was much more free and easy in St. John’s. Sigh).

In print, I wrote a column for Maclean’s on the new Netflix series Bridgerton. It’s in the February issue and available online.

This website is very much DIY and still a work in progress. If you’re wondering what’s happened to all the old blog posts… some are here and some will be showing up in the next few months. If there’s a specific post you want, leave a comment and I’ll dig it up if I can. Three of the most popular posts are now housed in the new resources section.

Join Lisa Moore for an interview with Sharon Bala, the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at Memorial University's English Department. And don't forget to check out Sh...

Poetry police

Originally posted: January 25, 2021

During the Inauguration, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stole the show with her poem “The Hill We Climb”. I watched the ceremony the same way I read my reviews - breath held, jaw clenched, and squinting - because remember the confetti canon and the armed terrorists who stormed the capitol? Luckily, it was fine. No one got assassinated and I had the privilege of witnessing Gorman’s performance in real time. It was a tour de force and 99% of the millions who saw her agreed. But you know…there’s always the one per cent.

The next day, a fellow author posed a question on Facebook (I know, I know): I'm not a poet, they said, and asked the experts to weigh in. Was Amanda Gorman's "poem" any good?

This is a writer whose work I have long admired. Their latest book is currently sitting on my coffee table. I wasn’t expecting the professional hit to come from inside the house, you know? Critique is one thing but imagine someone solicited opinions on your book by derisively calling it a “novel”? I waded into the comments to find out what the poets were saying.

Those Himalayas of the Mind

“people need heroines… it just gets trying to see sentimentality elevated to art”
“Well, the problem is, people will now think, oh that's what good poetry is. When it isn't.”
“it is what a lot of people would LIKE poetry to be. Feel-goodish stuff.”
“can we expect anything different from officially sanctioned and mandated poetry?”
“It is a speech, not a poem.”
“will soon be forgotten”
“the whole thing was a lie… and stank of currying favour…Makes sense that she has presidential aspirations.”
“If she sticks with it, maybe, MAYBE, depending on more factors than I can name, she will write a poem….I want to be generous to her, so I can sincerely say, you had a lot of feeling there, Amanda, if you like, if it gives you something you can't get anywhere else, just keep going.”

Oh, you thought that one was comically bad? I saved this gem for last (formatting: mine):

“I did not like the poem.
She was using words that should not be in poems.
It's more a rockstar performance than art.”

The House of Poetry

At last check there were 300+ comments and most of them were not of this ilk. Savvier poets pointed out that what Gorman wrote and performed was indeed a poem, of a type classified as occasional poetry, that it comes from traditions of spoken word, slam, and hip-hop, all of which are meant to be experienced live and in the moment, not read off the page like narrative and lyric poetry. My favourite was the commenter who prosaically declared: “The house of poetry has many rooms.”

The poets who move between rooms are a generous lot. They were offering up a hell of a lot of free educational labour and I’d like to believe some of the grumps took note and learned something. But, as one persistent commenter made clear, over and over: hope is for dupes and liars. So more likely they stayed stubbornly put in the draughty old wing, sucking on their sour grapes.

Just so we’re clear: Amanda Gorman is a Harvard graduate. Her unpublished poetry collection is a bestseller. None of this derision matters a whit to her success. But some of these writers, I imagine, are teaching and mentoring less fortunate emerging poets. Is this the level of arrogance and ignorance they bring to those encounters? Easy to see why so many young writers, especially writers of colour, feel disillusioned with traditional creative writing programs. Because often this kind of critique - which has more to do with who you are than the quality of your work - is a hell of a lot more subtle and insidious. The burn is baked into the subtext and you can’t quite articulate why you feel the criticism is destructive rather than constructive.

So it’s instructive to consider what the critics found triggering. Gorman’s ambition, for one. How dare she? (Once at a party, while I was out of town, a cranky old poet snarked about my ambition to my husband, and then asked him not to tell me what she’d said. lol)

The laziest critique in the world is to ridicule what you don’t understand. Gorman’s spoken word influences are foreign to her detractors so they dismiss her art as a speech. A stump speech. She’s just gunning for the Oval Office, after all.

Powerful people have elevated her to Capitol Hill and put a microphone into her hand. It must be because she’s young and they can bend her to their will, use her as a mouthpiece of the state. The trigger here is agency. Who gave her that? Let’s pretend we can take it away.

The hope in Gorman’s poem is belittled by people who, conveniently, have no idea what it’s like to be a Black woman in America facing down a climate catastrophe that’s going to plague her long after the rest of us are dust. Gorman’s hope is an act of resistance, not a folly of youth. It’s also the burden of resilience that’s foisted on Black people, and women, in particular. The poetry police are shockingly unimaginative.

And then of course there are art’s perennial twin questions: is this any good and who gets to decide? For too long a homogeneous cabal have been the arbiters of taste. But now the times, they are a changing. The house of poetry has built new wings. And some of the old guard are….well old and scared, it seems like.

The Myth of Zero Sum

Gorman is a triple threat - young, Black, and a woman. I’m sure every bitter poet on that Facebook thread would balk at the insinuation that their dislike stems from racism. Fine, that’s their truth. Here’s the incontrovertible truth: Black women are rare in poetry workshops. They’re almost never students or teachers or included in the canon. Because the whole damn institution is racist. And when you are part of the institution, some of that stink sticks to you. You must be vigilant about hosing it down (yes, me too. All of us). But if you don’t pay attention, you won’t even notice. It’s 2021. I can’t believe I’m still having to spell this out.

It’s hard out there for a poet. There’s no fame, no fortune, entirely too little respect. When you are part of a marginalized group and the podium and shelf space is limited and the publisher says: “we love this book but we’ve already got an immigrant novel coming out this year” (lol. true story) it can be complicated to witness someone else’s success. It’s easy to mistake the game for zero sum. It’s easy to denigrate the perceived competition, especially when you think the competition should be more marginal than you. It’s the same ugly psychology that drives the anti-immigration sentiment in immigrant communities. I paid my dues; why should this new guy have it easy?

Here’s what many writers of colour have figured out: we’re better off working together than against each other. Constructive critique is necessary. Envy is not. So we indulge our sour grapes in private. Then we get the fuck over ourselves and cheer for the home team.

The sanity thief

Originally posted: February 18, 2020

2019 got off to a rocky start. For reasons I still can’t fully articulate, I fell into an anxiety spiral in the first half of the year. It felt like one of those Escher paintings where you’re climbing stairs to nowhere that never end.

It began during a quiet period, when I was home and not travelling, not even really doing much book promotion, supposedly stress-free. That’s when the anxiety crept up. All stealthy like. Like a bank robber. To steal my sanity. And for a long time I didn’t realize it was even anxiety. Or rather, I knew I was anxious but also, I thought I was dying. Because these are the wholly rational thoughts anxiety produces. You. Are. Dying. Now.

Helpfully, my best friend pointed out that mortality is the human condition. We’re all dying, Shar, she said, then grinned at her own cleverness because she’s perverse like that. We were having cocktails at Sassafraz after one of my events and I told her I was putting those words into my next book as revenge.

Sometime in the spring, I realized I wasn’t actually dying. Or at least, not right this second and not any faster than any other mostly healthy person my age who occasionally eats kale and zones out in spin class. There was nothing much wrong with my body except a screw had come loose in my head. So then I cast about for the cause. Objectively and subjectively, life was grand. What can be wrong when all your professional pipe dreams have come true? What can be wrong when you have a nice life with people you love in a safe country with free healthcare? What is there to be anxious about?

I’m having a mid-life crisis, I group texted my friends. It’s fucking tedious. Six months and I’m getting it out of my system.

Turns out, I’m the person who gives her midlife crisis a deadline. I’m also the person who does her homework. I took up meditation (Calm is a really excellent app by the way). I began each morning by thinking of three nice things from the day before. I read a bunch of research articles about anxiety and had a long, long chat with a friend who is a cognitive psychologist. I went to one deeply unhelpful and condescending therapy session. I took all my bad feelings and channelled it into my work. I wasn’t totally sure any of these things were getting me closer to a solution. I still felt like an anxious thrumming ball of awful.

And then, one day in September, when I was coming to grips with things and feeling genuinely better, I was listening to Rebecca Traister talking about her book “Good and Mad,” how its unexpected success had lengthened her book tour and how stressful that was and how the fall out was intense, irrational, anxiety. Hello. What’s that? Anxiety caused by book publication? DING DING DING. And yes, let me just acknowledge this is peak first world/ fortunate author problems.

Tom, my doctor, some other people probably, had suggested that perhaps it was publication and publicity and the whole whirlwind of the previous year that was to blame but until I heard another author mirror back my experiences, it was impossible to believe a good thing could cause bad feelings. As Daniel Lavery likes to say, life is a rich tapestry.

This week I was listening to John Green, whose fourth novel, The Fault in Our Stars, went super nova in 2012, talk about his own success and its resulting fall out. His issues, like his success, are so much more intense than mine ever were, but much of what he said, about the bad that comes married to the good, was familiar.

All this to say, if you are an author on year two of an even mildly successful book, feeling crappy for no good reason, it’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s not a catastrophic illness. It’s success. This is what it feels like.

And also! Importantly! It will pass.

There be dragons

Originally posted: July 8, 2019

One Saturday a few months after The Boat People came out, I was at my local nursery, pleasantly hung-over, and feeling optimistic about the fact that this time I would for sure keep the new basil alive (spoiler: I did not). It was one of those sunny, hopeful mornings. And then, while in line, I made the mistake of checking email.

There was a message from a reader. The subject was in all caps, angry and accusing. The message itself was a dissertation, in length, if not quite in cogency. How do I hate your novel? Let me count the ways.

It wasn’t the first or last time a molotov cocktail has landed in my in box. But this one got to me. Something about the timing and the all caps subject line calling me a lazy writer was shocking. It felt so personal and mean, an attack on not just my writing but my whole weekend. I began to shake, right there in the nursery, surrounded by ferns and succulents and other people buying ficus plants. Instinctively, I put the phone away. I blamed myself for being the dumb ass who checks email in line. Good writers don’t distract themselves from the moment. They pay attention. Watch. Store the real world up for later. I vowed to stay off email until Monday. I thought about my new plants, how I was going to spend the day outside, potting and writing. I stopped shaking. I paid, made chit-chat with the cashier, carried my purchases to the car, congratulated myself on being so well adjusted. And then a woman came running out of the nursery waving my wallet.

Now, a year later, I can laugh about it but in the moment that reader’s anger was de-stabalizing to my work, to my ability to focus. I remembered this email the other day while reading Scaachi Koul’s excellent piece about a YA author who stalked a Goodreads reviewer. Yes, you read that right. This author got a bad review, lost all common sense, hunted down the reviewer, and showed up at her door. Let this be a lesson to all of us published authors: Goodreads is not for us.

Before my book came out, I used to be a regular lurker on Goodreads. Whenever I finished  reading a book I really liked, I would go online to see what other readers were saying. My first Goodreads review was a one-star. It popped up while I was still working on the manuscript. Disturbance in the matrix? Break in the time-space continuum? Either way, my days on the site were over. 

Goodreads is for readers. It’s for honest critique and dialogue and yes, sometimes, vitriol, about books. It’s for people who hate the synopsis and rate it one star. It’s for readers who want recommendations. For readers who want to keep and share to be read lists. It’s a democratizing force that bypasses the traditional gatekeepers and allows a wider range of books to gain traction. It’s for book lovers and bloggers. It’s for marketing departments. It’s for trolls (because the whole internet is for trolls). It’s a lot of things for a lot of people. BUT GOODREADS IS NOT FOR WRITERS. It’s a free internet so go on there if you like but I’m telling you right now it’s a mistake.

Because what are we on this earth to do? Write. And there is a limit to how many beatings one’s own ego can take before it begins to impact your work. And trust me, there are enough beatings to go around. There are hideous reviews that can’t be ignored. There are readers who itemize your failures via email or at a book club or event. There are rejections. Prizes you lose, lists that snub you, shops that don’t carry your book, loved ones who won’t read it. Trust me. Enough beatings. You need not go looking for more. And while I’m on the subject, for the love of god, stop googling your name. Get rid of that google alert. Leave it to your mom/ lover/ agent/ editor. GO BACK TO WORK.

Gripes

Originally posted: December 7, 2018

Rebecca wrote this dark comedy of a blog post recently and I was all “SING IT, SISTER.” It’s about the indignities she has endured in her years as a writer. Rebecca has been writing and publishing longer than I have so she’s had to grin and bear more, but I share indignity #4 on her list.

Anyway, like Rebecca, I had mostly wonderful experiences in my debut year as an author and I know I’m incredibly lucky to even be a writer and have work published but there are also moments that make me want to shake my fist. Please enjoy some dark humour…

In March I adjudicated a short story competition. Reading stories and choosing the winner was a pleasure but then the organization tried to scam me out of my payment with the old “the cheque is in the mail” routine. It was not in the mail. Not even after I sent several emails. And then there was radio silence and I started to get seriously concerned. Fortunately, the organization was the PEI Writers’ Guild and I have an acquaintance from PEI. She intervened and then the cheque really was in the mail.

In April I took part in the book club at my local museum (The Rooms in St. John’s). People paid $15 each to attend. The evening was a delight. We had a really big and wonderful audience and the interviewer was fantastic. But the payment took months and several emails on my part. If I don’t pay the plumber within 30 days he charges interest. But some organizations seem to think writers don’t deserve to get paid on time. Anyway, good thing our province has a toothless Status of the Artist legislation, huh?

An organization asked me to give a key note speech at their event. Key note speeches take time, effort, and stress. I wrote back a very polite email (which I put a lot of thought into) where I laid out why I couldn’t work for free, how to get in touch with my agent and negotiate a rate, and then listed a couple of other much cheaper options for how I could help them out. Think I got the courtesy of a reply? Nope.

A group of writers asked me to teach them a private workshop for free. LOL.

FOR REAL THOUGH…WHY THE HELL DO PEOPLE THINK I WANT TO WORK FOR FREE? FOR THE RECORD: I DO NOT.

Once I was on a panel where all the authors were asked to prepare a 10 minute reading. One of the authors yammered on for about 25 minutes while the other author and I stared dolefully at each other. Finally the moderator cut him off (he hadn’t even gotten to his reading yet!). Then we did a Q&A and he kept trying to hog all the air time. Who am I kidding? Of course this happened more than once. And to paraphrase Rebecca, it’s not all male authors of a certain age but it is ALWAYS male authors of a certain age.

Writers are forever being picked up at airports and driven places by strangers. Sometimes it’s innocuous and you make pleasant small talk. Just as often it’s a bloody nightmare. Once, I got into a fight with a driver about “Hilary’s emails.” I hope he wasn’t expecting a tip. In New York, a driver with a Spanish accent complained about “Muslim foreigners.” He didn’t get a tip either. Once, soon after the miscarriage of justice that was the Coulton Bushie trial, a driver talked about why “Indian boys” deserve to get shot.

Hello older man I’ve just met. Please remove your hand from my upper back. Please stop taking every opportunity to randomly touch me as we stand at this registration table making awkward small talk while we wait for our name tags. I’m going to stand waaaaaay over here now and go out of my way to avoid you for the rest of this literary festival.

At a big event, in a room of 500 people where everyone had a copy of my book but most of them hadn’t read it yet, a woman stood to ask a question and shamelessly gave away the ending while the rest of the audience shouted her down. (Not the first time it’s happened either.)

Nasty emails from readers. Yes, really.

I agreed to take part in an event with another author. After the arrangements were made and plane tickets were bought, I found out it was an unmoderated conversation. For an hour. With an author I had previously met once for five minutes in an elevator. I happen to like this author very much and I think the feeling is mutual but it’s really unfair to make authors act as their own moderators. Promoting your own work and moderating a conversation are two very different skills and it’s impossible to move back and forth seamlessly. Fortunately, there were only 7 people in the audience.

Once after I’d given a 45 minute speech that I’d spent a very long time researching and preparing, a man in the audience said: “I haven’t read your book but let me tell you why everything you’ve just said is problematic.” LOL. When it was my turn to reply, I very politely eviscerated him to audience applause. Come at me, bro. But you best not miss.

The spreadsheet

Originally posted: July 26, 2016

It's rejection season! Seven rejections so far this month. My friend Sonam asked me how I handle it - so many "no"s. I've written about rejection before but not about my spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is key to the whole "brush it off" process. (It's also key to staying sane and organized.)

The format doesn't matter too much. Submitted. Rejected. Accepted. That's all you need. Create the spreadsheet as soon as you start sending your work out. That way, when the replies come in, you'll have a place to tally them up and something concrete to do.

The act of filling in the boxes can be analgesic. You read the rejection. You fill in the spreadsheet. Decide if you need to revise the story. If not, because you can see at a glance which publications haven't seen the story yet, you can re-submit right away. The goal is to have as few stories in the rejected section as possible.

Recently, I began jotting down alternative publications beside each submitted story. I highly recommend this approach. It makes re-submitting even more automatic and leaves zero time for brooding.

Writers, if I can give you one piece of advice: stop feeling sorry for yourself. That is precious time when you could be writing, editing, submitting, reading or binge watching Orange is the New Black.

Eventually something will stick. A story will be accepted and then you can move it to the "published" section of the spreadsheet (keep it visible, close to the rejected list). This is important because you can see over time how stories graduate from rejected to accepted. And keeping track of which publications rejected the stories will also help you see the truth: that taste is subjective. Just because a story is rejected doesn't mean it's worthless. Sometimes, yes, the story needs work. And if a rejection comes with feedback, consider it a gift. But often a rejection from one publication is only that: a rejection from one publication.

The spreadsheet speaks the truth. Look at all those acceptances! Look at all those rejections! Being a writer means being rejected. So go send your work out, go court rejection.

This post was written in 2016 but this spreadsheet is from 2020.

On rejection

Originally posted: December 22, 2015

In the late summer of 2011, I did something that, in retrospect, was a gamble. I left a full time job to write. Yes, there would be freelance work (read: paid gigs) but it was a conscious decision to check out of one career and make a running leap at another.

And almost immediately, I began sending my work into the world. I had taken a class with Jessica Grant a few months earlier and had a few stories stock piled away. I sent them to contests and journals. Anyone who has been through this maze knows it is a tedious, time consuming, soul destroying process that usually ends with a self addressed stamped envelope bearing a form letter rejection. If you’re lucky, someone will have scrawled the name of your story in pencil so you’ll know which one got the thumbs down.

Fast forward three and a half years. 2014 came and went and yes, I’d had a bit of success. A couple of short stories won awards. One made a long list. I’d done a couple of public readings and won a grant. But mostly what I had was a whole lot of rejection. Rejection and lost competitions.

Everyone has their own way of dealing with the words "no, thanks." My strategy has been to keep my work in circulation (five stories go out in a batch, rejections roll in more or less together, I re-shuffle the deck and send them all out again). The rule is: don’t wallow; write.

The thing about publications and prizes is that they don’t tell the whole story. The whole story, at the end of 2014, was that I had a disciplined (more or less, let’s be honest...no one is perfect!) writing practice. I was in the habit of submitting my work. I had the first draft of a novel and a collection of short stories I was proud to send out. Hundreds of thousands of beautiful words. It ain’t nothing!

Writing is a leap of faith. Submission is a gamble. And rejection is a knife in the heart. But what is to be gained by indulging the knife? Pull it out, throw it away. Get. Back. To. Work.

Cheryl Strayed tackled rejection and professional jealousy in an old Dear Sugar column. And her words, as always, ring with truth and wisdom. She’s speaking here about jealousy but it could just as easily be applied to rejection:

“You do not let yourself think about it. There isn’t a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.”