And I don’t care if Valentine’s Day was just three days ago.

The Writer magazine — the oldest magazine for writers currently being published, and one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States — named my website one of “The Writer List: 16 of Our Favorite Writing Blogs and Websites.”

Four veteran contributors were asked to recommend their faves in a cover feature for the magazine’s 125th anniversary issue (March 2012). The article is titled “Websites & Blogs Worth a Writer’s Time.” The Writer contributing editor Stephanie Dickison — a Toronto freelance journalist — wrote:

“Allyson Latta was the first guest on my radio show about writing. She teaches memoir writing and edits award-winning books. Her website, Memoir Writing & More, and blog are rich with resources and inspiration for writers of every age and level. And her extensive one-on-one interviews with authors are not only original and stimulating, but should be compiled into a book. If you want to learn more about writing, I can’t think of a better place.”

I’m crazy-honoured to be sharing space in the list with 15 other dedicated writer- and editor-bloggers. For the rest of the listees, check out the March issue of The Writer, now available by digital subscription.

Thank you, Stephanie Dickison and The Writer.

Now, back to my happy dance!

I decided to research some of my remembered authors online and see what they had to say about writing, and the writing life. Over the next few months I’ll share their thoughts with you in the hope these inspire your writing — and also rekindle memories of your own favourite childhood reads (search Category “Children’s Authors on Writing” on my homepage).

First, Enid Blyton …

Enid Blyton with her daughters Gillian and Imogen

Enid Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968)

“The Famous Five” are the Enid Blyton characters I remember best from my childhood reading. The Five were four adventurous children — siblings Julian, Dick and Anne, and their cousin Georgina (“George”) — along with George’s dog Timothy, who was depicted on book covers, I believe, as a Golden Retriever. A British television series based on the books was broadcast in 1978 and 1979.

Blyton was a much-admired British children’s writer who also wrote as Mary Pollock. She penned a series of books for younger readers featuring one of her best-known characters, Noddy, as well as several series of children’s adventure books, including the Famous Five (21 novels, 1942-1963), the Five Find-Outers and Dog (15 novels, 1943–1961), and the Secret Seven (15 novels, 1949–1963).

According to Nicolette Jones of The Telegraph (30 June 2007), Blyton “wrote nearly 800 books over a 40-year career, many of them quite slim, as well as close to 5,000 short stories. She sold 200 million books in her lifetime, with few translations until the 1960s and 1970s, and has sold some 400 million altogether. About half of her titles are still in print, and they still sell 11 million copies a year. . . .”

Blyton published an autobiography in 1952 titled The Story of My Life, but her fiction too was informed by her life experiences, which she said

“… sank down into my ‘under-mind’ and simmered there, waiting for the time to come when they would be needed again for a book — changed, transmuted, made perfect, finely-wrought — quite different from when they were packed away.

“And yet the essence of them was exactly the same. Something had been at work, adapting, altering, deleting here and there, polishing brightly — but still the heart, the essence of the original thing was there, and I could almost always recognize it.”

In a letter to psychologist Peter McKellar dated 26 February 1953, she elaborated:

“These things [seen and experienced] come up time and again in my stories, changed, sometimes almost unrecognisable — and then I see a detail that makes me say — yes — that’s one of the Cheddar Caves, surely! Characters also remind me of people I have met — I think my imagination contains all the things I have ever seen or heard, things my conscious mind has long forgotten — and they have all been jumbled about till a light penetrates into the mass, and a happening here or an object there is taken out, transmuted, or formed into something that takes a natural and rightful place in the story — or I may recognise it — or I may not — I don’t think that I use anything I have not seen or experienced — I don’t think I could. I don’t think one can take out of one’s mind more than one puts in. . . . Our books are facets of ourselves.”

Source: “Enid the Writer,” compiled by Anita Bensoussane, The Enid Blyton Society: http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/enid-the-writer.php

Carol and Mary Jane McPhee, creators of LifeTimes

Sisters Carol and Mary Jane McPhee had no idea a year and a half ago that something big would develop out of a technique they stumbled on to communicate with — and bring some light to the days of — their aging mother.

“It’s all about storytelling and conversations,” Carol says of the game the entrepreneurial siblings from Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood created and now market as LifeTimes: The Game of Reminiscence.

The seed for LifeTimes was planted in the summer of 2010, when Carol and Mary Jane found themselves struggling to find a way to relate to their mother. Shirley McPhee, 86, was living alone in an assisted-living facility and facing short-term memory loss. She was often frustrated, anxious and grumpy, making family visits stressful.

Yet when a family member planned to visit North Bay, where Shirley grew up, she was able to recall exact directions to her childhood home — someplace she hadn’t been in seventy years.

“Cross the railway tracks,” she said. “Go for two blocks. Turn left up the laneway. Look for the little red brick house tucked in among the lilac bushes.”

The sisters were amazed at the accuracy of their mother’s recall when the right question was asked. This “unlocked the door to Mom’s sweet, early memories in that house,” they wrote in a blog post. They saw their mother “relax, light up, become animated . . .”

“We saw a transformation in her,” says Carol. That day the sisters also found out things about each other they hadn’t known, and “my mother was killing herself laughing.”

Later, calling from home, Mary Jane said to Carol, “We cracked something wide open.”

This experience in turn changed the way they communicated with their mom. They began using vintage photographs and music from “her era,” the 1950s, to encourage her memory and storytelling. And through their mother’s stories, they were able to collect a rich and detailed family history.

For some, this sharing within the family would have been enough. But not for Carol and Mary Jane. Both in their fifties, they retired from teaching the following spring and were looking for something creative to do with their skills and time.

They’d always been “people with ideas, and three years later we’d see someone else had done them,” says Mary Jane. “We were raising kids and had no time or energy to follow through.”

At first their research aimed to gather 1950s fact- and current-events-related prompts a la Trivial Pursuit, but over many rewrites a very different game emerged.

“It took a while to break free and write prompts that were evocative and to do with personal life,” says Mary Jane, adding that some, like “Have you ever stolen anything?” really get people talking.

The McPhees collaborated with graphic designer Gord Adams to come up with a prototype game using photographs — many from their own family — and a soft colour palette. LifeTimes comprises 125 conversation cards containing 500 memory prompts, and categories include Love & Romance, Food & Recipes, Fashion, Leisure Time and Family Life. Four types of questions on each card generate a variety of responses.

Their learning curve was steep, says Mary Jane. Only three months after they first seriously discussed the game concept, they were scrambling to finish the prototype and get a website up in time to exhibit at the Ontario Gerontology Association Annual Conference. There, they were encouraged by attendees’ responses, which indicated a need among families, caregivers and health care providers for a game like theirs.

Six months later, 80 percent of their sales are in health care, and the game is used in many seniors facilities in Ontario as well as by the Alzheimer Society. “It’s great for brain fitness,” says Carol.

An interest among writing instructors is one the sisters hadn’t anticipated, and they’re delighted the game has broader applications.

Children’s author Marthe Jocelyn, who runs writing workshops in schools and sometimes uses LifeTimes, says, “I realized that the format of the game cards — a single factual idea leading to a memory prompt leading to a whole chunk of reminiscence — is very much the way a writer develops a story…. The simplest prompt can lead to the richest recollections, allowing the writer to rely … on his/her own experience to fuel stories.”

She finds prompts about “firsts,” such as first cigarette smoked, first kiss, first time away from home, to be particularly evocative. Her workshop participants have also had fun with the LifeTimes card that asks a player to recall the “bad boy” in high school.

Sales before Christmas weren’t quite what Carol and Mary Jane had hoped, but seem to have picked up in the new year. And in a promising development, the sisters recently received a substantial grant from the Canadian Media Fund to produce an app version of the game.

LifeTimes now shares an office with Miso, a workspace for Web and game developers located in the Trinity-Bellwoods area.

“When we play LifeTimes at home,” Carol confesses, ”we often don’t get beyond one card” — showing just how much conversation four simple questions can generate. “Every family has its stories, its mythologies. The game provokes a deeper discussion.”

Click LifeTimes to learn more, or to order the game.

Kory Shillam

Kory Shillam has always been a writer. Daughter of William Albert Tutte, the front page editor of the Vancouver Sun during the Second World War, she came by her love of the written word honestly. As one of her six daughters, I have many memories of my mum taking courses and sitting at her desk writing stories.

In addition to crafting wonderful tales for children, and poetry and articles for magazines, she wrote two books on our family history based on twenty years of research. People Like Us Are We, a history of my father’s family, goes all the way back to the 1600s. I remember searching for her one day while she was at work on one of these histories, calling to her and hearing  from the depths of the basement,  “I’m down here with the dead!” — followed by laughter.  Our family has been blessed with the legacy of these two books. I hug myself every time I pick one of them up to read a date, a name or an event about which I wouldn’t otherwise have known.

With urging from writing course instructors and family, Kory wrote Under the Lilacs, an autobiographical novel, and self-published it in 2007.  Many of  her readers commented that they wanted to find out what happened to the characters beyond the end of that book. So, with not very much coaxing, Kory wrote the sequel, Milly and Freddie, which was published in December 2011. Also based on memoir, it takes the characters in Under the Lilacs to the next stage in their lives. Milly finds love against the backdrop of Vancouver during the Second World War.

Truly, all Kory’s writing takes on the voice of love.  You really do get to know her characters and care for them dearly. Though I read Milly and Freddie many times during the editing/publishing process and could probably recite it verbatim, I cry at the ending every time. Her novels appeal to readers of all ages, from your twelve-year-old children or grandchildren to your Great-Aunt Susie.

Birthing Milly and Freddie has been a family affair, with Kory doing the writing, and my sister Lorill, a legal secretary for forty years, taking care of word processing and formatting. She and I spent many hours immersed in the novel. I am the editor and marketer of Milly and Freddie. Sisters Marnie, Diane and Elizabeth each took a turn reading it, to help with the editing, before we sent the manuscript to print.

I decided on the printer, found a store to sell the books, delivered them, contacted the local newspaper and arranged a book signing.  There will be a picture of Kory and signed copies of the book at the book signing, but I will man the table. At 94 and being hard of hearing, she would find attending such an event difficult. Yet even now, her days are spent in her office writing stories of days gone by with her family.

Kory Shillam lives with her husband Bob on the shores of Swan Lake in British Columbia.  The lake and mountain views foster lots of ideas for stories, as do the creatures that live around her beloved Wyldewood Cottage.

To order a copy of Milly and Freddie, please email  utlbooks@shaw.ca. Cheques are payable to Kory Shillam: $23 ($20 book + $3 shipping).

Click here to read my 2007 interview with Kory.

“I kept thinking of the movie The King’s Speech and worried I might develop a stutter. . . .”

I was thrilled when I received the first e-mail from Karen Levine, editor of CBC Radio One’s The Sunday Edition, on November 21st, telling me that there was a lot she liked about the short memoir I had sent her five days earlier.

It wasn’t quite ready to be broadcast yet, though. Acceptance was contingent on my making certain revisions. She wanted the piece to be more than a straight story, a mere recounting of memory. She needed to know why the experience mattered to me and how it had changed my understanding of the world. Was there a lesson here for me? A new perspective?

She indicated two paragraphs in particular that she felt needed work and told me that if I was willing to incorporate her suggestions, she’d be happy to take another look. Of course I agreed.

I had written the first draft of “Sweet Adeline,” for Allyson Latta’s writing course at Koffler Centre of the Arts last year. The story about my beloved Aunt Adeline was originally about 500 words. I made some revisions based on reactions from Allyson and others in the class and later expanded it to over 1,000 words, then cut and rewrote it two or three times more. It was this third (or perhaps fourth) version that I had submitted to The Sunday Edition.

Three days after our initial e-mail exchange, I sent Karen a revised version of the story. Soon after that, she sent me a second edit. I was moving in the right direction, she said, but she questioned one premise in the story and pointed out that there was too much dialogue, which would make it a difficult piece to read on the radio. She suggested I call her to discuss it, which I did that afternoon.

We had a very productive chat, discovering along the way that we were both born and reared in Ottawa (although in different eras) and knew some of the same people. Karen was professional and confident but also encouraging. She knew radio, and what she wanted out of the story, and it was clear she would work with me in order to get it. I’ve never shied away from rewriting, and I was sure that I could make the changes she needed in order to accept my story. Following our conversation I completed and sent her a third version.

In mid-December, I received yet another edit. Karen knew exactly what she wanted me to convey in this story, and she was very constructive in helping me to achieve it, insisting that I write about what this experience meant to me. She felt that although the story was ostensibly about my Aunt Adeline, it was actually about me and my feelings about my aunt and what had happened to her.

This was exactly what Allyson had expressed repeatedly in her memoir classes, something that I had been made aware of many times during her edits of my stories. It has always been difficult for me — as it is for many memoirists — to write about my personal feelings. I tend to write as if I were a fly on the wall watching events unfold rather than explore my own emotional responses to them. It is so difficult to dig deep enough to uncover why an experience is remembered and has meaning for me, and to express it so that meaning is felt by the reader.

But I persevered, making the requisite corrections to the manuscript, and finally, on January 9th, I received an e-mail from Karen telling me that with one or two further minor adjustments, it was a go. She asked me to come to the CBC Studios on Front Street the next day at 11 a.m. to tape it.

I had known all along that I would be expected to read my story on air, but until then I had been completely focused on getting it accepted. I was now preoccupied with preparations for an imminent two-week vacation, and since I had only twenty-four hours before the taping, I had no time to be nervous about anything other than whether I’d be able to find the CBC building and a parking place. This was probably a good thing. I’d never read anything on the radio, but I reassured myself that it was being taped and any bloopers I made could be corrected. Besides, I had had considerable experience giving art workshops and slide lectures, and I had read my stories before an audience on several previous occasions.

I practised reading ”Sweet Adeline” out loud just a couple of times the night before the taping.

The next morning I gave my name at the security desk in the cavernous CBC lobby and was soon joined by Karen, a charming woman with a mop of grey hair who introduced herself and led me up to her office, a tiny cluttered room filled with papers and family photographs. We chatted a bit, then she led me down the hall and through a large room filled with cubicles and desks to the studio, where she introduced me to the sound engineer, Dean Ples.

I’d never been in a radio studio before. I was ushered into a small dark room and seated at a desk in front of a microphone and facing a glass partition. The sound engineer adjusted the height of the microphone on the desk, and fitted me with headphones through which I could hear Karen’s instructions. I kept thinking of the movie The King’s Speech and worried I might develop a stutter. Karen brought me a glass of water, warning me that every reader’s throat runs dry, and then went into the room on the other side of the glass to sit beside the engineer. I spit out the throat lozenge I was sucking, took a sip of water and cleared my throat.

She asked me to read a sentence or two to get a sound check of my voice. I was instructed to pause at the end of each page before I turned to the next, so that she could do any editing necessary without picking up a rustling noise. Then she told me to start reading.

I only got as far as the first paragraph before she stopped me. “This is radio,” she reminded me. “You have to exaggerate your reading. Pretend that you’re reading the story to a small child, with lots of expression.” I tried it again, remembering my vocal expression when I read to my three-year-old grandson. Again she stopped me. “There’s a lot of dialogue here,” she said. “You must differentiate between your voice as narrator, your voice as a character in the story and the voice of your aunt.”

I had a bit of trouble getting the right tone of impatience into my character’s voice, but we changed the stress on one word, and there it was. Finding the right plaintive tone in my aunt’s voice was a delicate balance — it couldn’t be a caricature. It took a couple of tries, but I got it. We added a phrase at one point to make it clear who was speaking and deleted an extraneous word in another instance that seemed awkward when read aloud. I wrote all the edits into the manuscript before me, and began again.

Karen continued to stop me periodically, asking for more expression here, or a change in emphasis or tone there. We stopped and started several times during a third reading of the story. She told me not to worry, she would pull it all together during editing, and I was confident that she would.

The whole process took just over an hour, and when we were finished, Karen and Dean both told me it sounded good.

I was relieved and delighted that it had gone well. But what was more important, I discovered that by revealing my aunt’s story, and the memories it evoked in me, I was finally able to come to terms with the feelings of guilt and regret about her life and our relationship that had plagued me for so many years.

At one point during the taping as I’d read about my feelings toward my aunt, my voice broke, and I offered to re-read the paragraph. We left it in.

*  *  *

TILYA GALLAY HELFIELD was born and raised in Ottawa, lived for many years in Montreal and now resides in Toronto. For several years she wrote a weekly humorous column for The Sunday Express and The Suburban, in Montreal. Her short stories and essays have appeared in TV Guide, The Fiddlehead, Viewpoints, Monday Morning, Winners’ Circle Seven 2000, and Living Legacies III, as well as online (www.theoccupiedgarden.com 2008). Her memoir “Stars,” published online (www.carte-blanche.org November 2009), was reprinted by Nelson Education Ltd. in Canadian Content, 7e and Maple Collection 2011. Her memoir “Blink” won in the Best Non-fiction category and was published in OASIS Journal 2010. Her memoir “Judgment” was published in OASIS Journal 2011. She is now seeking a publisher for her collection of short memoirs, Metaphors for Love.

Tilya is also a multimedia artist who has participated in 14 solo and more than 75 juried group exhibitions in Canada, the U.S., Spain, Brazil, Japan and Korea, and has won several awards. Her work can be found in 27 public collections, and in private collections in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Samples of her artwork can be seen on her website, www.tilyahelfield.com.

“Sweet Adeline” will air on The Sunday Edition, CBC Radio One, 99.1 FM Toronto (www.CBC.ca). Date and time TBA.

Award-winning Canadian novelist William Deverell was a featured speaker at my Namaste Gardens Writing & Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica last month. Against a backdrop of lush foliage, cascading flowers and startling blue pool, and with the occasional curious tropical bird or butterfly pausing to watch, he shared with retreat participants and visiting writers from the capital city of San Jose his thoughts on “A Writer’s Life.” Here are 10 tips gleaned from his presentation.

1. Write what you dream of writing — not what others want you to write.

Though he aspired to be a writer even as a teen — he read us a few angst-ridden journal entries to prove it — and worked for many years as a journalist and later a lawyer, he was thirty-nine years old before he finally took a sabbatical plunge into novel writing. He describes the writer’s block he suffered, even during the early days of his sabbatical, as “pathological.”

He eventually recognized that he’d been hampered by his father’s high literary standards, fearing he’d disappoint if he didn’t write a “serious novel.” His father was a journalist and a reader of classics who suffered from unfulfilled literary aspirations. Bill says his own fear of failure began in his teens, prevented him from writing for decades, and even “drove him” to the law. (“I never wanted to be a lawyer,” he says.)

Though saddened by his father’s death, he also felt suddenly “unchained” in his writing and free to leave behind his earlier efforts — to begin writing what he wanted to write.

2. Write what you know.

Bill says it took him many years to realize that as a criminal lawyer he had the fodder for stories — characters, plots, human drama and emotion — swirling around him. He just had to pay attention. His first novel was a thriller that used his knowledge of both the criminal underbelly of Vancouver and “the pompous theatre of the courtroom.” At the heart of the plot of his first novel, Needles, was a murder case he had prosecuted. And his second novel, High Crimes, which followed a gang of Newfoundland drug smugglers, was “frankly fact-based.” His novel The Laughing Falcon is set in Costa Rica, a country that he has come to know well.

3. Push boundaries. Experiment.

As Bill talks about his career it’s clear he enjoys trying new things, challenging himself. Over time, for example, he became more confident about including humour in his short stories and novels. And on several occasions he’s stretched himself by tackling writing from a woman’s point of view. His sixteenth and most recent novel, I’ll See You in My Dreams, is experimental in structure, including as it does narrative that moves between the present and the 1960s, and excerpts from a fictional memoir and a fictional biography.

4. Defy stereotypes.

Bill maintains that the only real thriller he ever wrote was his first novel. Publishers and bookstore owners, he says, want to slot an author into a genre because it makes books easier to sell. [Editor's note: He seems to be ignoring the small matter of all those crime-writing awards!] Still, in some of his novels he has moved away from crime writing. In Trial of Passion (2002), for example, there is no murder — nor even any blood.

5. Know your characters.

It’s important for writers to outline their characters, he says, to know them inside and out. Consistency and continuity are particularly important in Bill’s writing because barrister Arthur Beauchamp and several other characters appear in more than one of his novels.

Characters don’t always come from life, he says, but they are often made of “scraps of reality” and then take on a life of their own. And it works both ways: sometimes while writing, he temporarily takes on the persona of a character he’s created — he freely admits this doesn’t necessarily make him popular with family and friends — a Buddhist guru, for example, or a depressed eco-neurotic jungle guide.

But will your “characters” know themselves? Bill once based one of his on someone with whom he’d worked: a real-life conniving prosecutor and master of locker room humour. He wrote his “bête noire” into a story as a sort of revenge. Sometime after the novel came out, he was in the Vancouver courthouse and ran into the fellow (by then a judge), fearing the worst. The judge proclaimed the novel Bill’s best yet, and said the characters “rang true” — apparently unaware that one was modelled on him.

6. Don’t waste words on meaningless dialogue.

All dialogue in a story should have a purpose, says Bill. Listen to the way people talk, but remember that they don’t speak on the page like they do in real life. Strive to “capture the way people can express themselves in entertaining ways.” Be sure to differentiate each character’s voice and personality. And for the most part, avoid dialogue tags other than he said or she said. “Don’t try to fancy it up.”

7. Commit to a writing routine.

Bill writes almost every day, whether he’s at home in Canada or wintering in Costa Rica. In Canada, he works from a cabin away from home, without phone or Internet. While in Costa Rica, despite its many allures – not to mention the temptations of online bridge and chess (because there he does have Internet) – he writes for at least two hours each day.

8. Roam your “wooded hills” (wherever they may be).

Writing is solitary and sedentary, but that doesn’t mean a writer always has to be. In Costa Rica, Bill gets up at six every morning and takes a walk down the hill from his home to the beach and back before settling down to write. He likes to quote the German physicist Helmholtz, who said that great ideas come not at the worktable or when the mind is fatigued, but “come particularly readily during the slow ascent of wooded hills on a sunny day.”

9. Appreciate those who share and/or support your passion.

Bill and his delightful wife, Tekla, who came along for his talk at the retreat, have been married for 53 years. He told the audience that she’s still his biggest fan. And in fact I saw her in action. Following his talk and before lunch, she took a short walk down the quiet road on which Namaste Gardens is located — and returned shortly with a curious fellow Canadian in tow, a renter down the way with whom she had gotten to chatting about Bill and his books . . .

10. Love what you’re writing now.

In passing, Bill described his most recent novel, I’ll See You in My Dreams, as his favourite so far. When I asked why, he laughed. “My most recent book is always my favourite.”

*  *  *

WILLIAM DEVERELL is the author of sixteen novels and one true-crime book, and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. Before publishing his first novel in 1979,  he was a journalist for seven years with the Canadian Press in Montreal and the Vancouver Sun, worked his way through law school as night editor of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, and practised criminal law. William has also written short stories, radio plays, TV scripts and screenplays, including Shellgame, which served as the pilot for CBC’s widely syndicated series Street Legal. His novels have been translated into fourteen languages. He divides his time between Pender Island, British Columbia, in Canada, and Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. Read more about William Deverell here. Visit his website at http://deverell.com

You may also enjoy reading “Writing from the Heart,” an excerpt from Sandra Shaw Homer’s presentation at the retreat.

View photos of Namaste Gardens Writing & Yoga Retreat.

Guest Post by Sandra Shaw Homer

Sandra was a guest speaker at my Namaste Gardens Writing & Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica

I’ve known I wanted to be a writer ever since I wrote a two-page autobiography at the age of nine. This received lavish praise, of course, but what was interesting about it was that it didn’t start with “I was born, etc.,” but instead with a true story about how my father narrowly escaped death off Omaha Beach during the Allied invasion. I was very impressed by the fact that, had he died, I wouldn’t be alive. It made me feel important that my little self was connected to something as large as a World War. Because, of course, I was totally ignorant of any of those writerly devices that we read books or go to writers’ workshops to learn about. The Opening Line. How to Engage the Reader. Show, Don’t Tell. And a host of others. But it’s not the craft I want to write about here, it’s what informs the craft — the Heart of writing, if you will.

I had a big problem with truth for a lot of years. I would go back over something I’d written and find it just didn’t jibe with something real inside me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe we all face this in the beginning, the desire to reinvent ourselves through language or stories, and we find that they just don’t quite ring true — I mean true to the human experience, not true to the facts. Some of us – the slow learners like me — need a lot of human experience before we can find this truth, and it can take great courage to face it, and then, ultimately, to tell it. After all, what do we have to lose? Realizing this, I finally found that truth exists only in the place where acceptance lies.

The truths of the human condition haven’t changed much — like the 100 great plots, they’re familiar to us all. But each of us can bring a unique perspective to the human story. I saw a quote recently that many of you have surely seen, by Anonymous, to the effect that writers write not because they want to say something, but because they have something to say. And just what could that something be?

About twenty-five years ago, I fell in love with Joseph Conrad. I couldn’t get enough of him, read every single book and story, one right after another. I got excited. He gave me hope. Not that I could write as compellingly as he, but that I could have a point of view, a perspective worth sharing. Note that at the time I didn’t have a clue what this might be, but I certainly could identify with his. I loved his capacity for close observation and at times thrilling description, but most of all I loved his humanity, his understanding of the inner workings of people, their secret selves and what makes them choose the evil or the good. And I especially enjoyed his delicately ironic sense of humor, since I shared something similar myself. In spite of having spent hundreds of hours in literature classes, this was the first time I “got it” that writers must write from a personal world view, and it gave me courage.

Sandra Shaw Homer in Costa Rica (photo: Marten Jager)

I was forty-something and, fortified by Conrad, I decided to start writing on purpose, and this was part of my motivation in moving away from a high-stress job to another country — Costa Rica — where I imagined I could get a better handle on just that. There were plenty of false starts, and life got in the way a lot (moving to another country is not an unstressful thing to do), but over time I honed my skills and learned plenty of important lessons.

Nearing sixty, and with a better handle on truth, as well as my own world view, I said to myself, “Now or never.” I had already written one book that I had cannibalized into columns for The Tico Times, attempted countless short stories, even begun a novel. But what to write about now? Here’s where the sense of place enters the story. Living in a foreign culture eventually strips you clean of all the cultural encrustations you’ve accumulated up to that point and leaves you naked and vulnerable. For some, this is a terrifying experience of helplessness. For others, it’s an adventure of discovery — not just of the other language and culture, but of yourself, of what really matters to you. Living in Costa Rica, I found that my values firmed up about things I really hadn’t given a lot of thought to before.

But how to write in such a way that your readers can “see” it the way you see it? You have to describe things — accurately, lyrically, whatever way you want — but in order to do any of these you have to observe closely — physically and emotionally — whatever it is you want to describe. It was this exercise of close observation that resulted in Evelio’s Garden: The Short History of an Organic Garden in Costa Rica. The most important lesson this book taught me, from a writer’s point of view, was to close my eyes and go there, wherever that was, into the quiet place where the words — amazingly — just came.

Personally, I’m happiest when I’m writing; trying to sell is agony, so I am easily discouraged. Much more fun to take on another writing project! Which I did, in email installments sent home to family and friends while I was floating around the South Pacific on a freighter. Letters from the Pacific: 49 Days on a Cargo Ship was the result, and in writing it I had another surprise. I had clearly needed a getaway, but my intention in writing was purely to entertain. Within the first few days, though, the inner voice broke through and the book turned out to be as much a personal journey as a travelogue. Close observation and a clear point of view combined with truth for the first time, and I realized I was finally writing from the heart.

All writing is really best if it teaches us something. What does what I have experienced or lived have to offer you? How can the way I put something down on paper help you to experience it more deeply, or in a fresh way; make you reflect, or stop for just a moment to say to yourself, “Ah, that’s the way it is.”

Writing makes me feel more alive because it forces me into each moment I describe in a way that can make connections with others. Feeling the thing observed, the moment, and then describing it so that someone else experiences that same moment through one’s words — these are moments of truth shared. It is in this heightened awareness, in this search for connections, that we really exist as writers.

When I was in the hospital recently, this connections idea came home to me in a way it never quite had before. Because of complications during and after surgery, I was tied down to a respirator in intensive care for ten days, with no control over any bodily function. I was just a limp lump of flesh attached to a zillion tubes. The drugs helped a lot, but as I began to emerge from the pharmaceutical ooze, I started to write letters in my head as a way of connecting to others and the world beyond my little cage. I wrote hundreds of letters (surely immortal prose now lost to all time) and about what? The sounds, the nurses, the timelessness, the machines, the changing shapes of space and light, the hallucinations, moments funny, ironic or frightening, supreme acts of human charity. Lying there seemingly helpless, I realized my life was FULL of things to write about and that there would always be people to write to. (And, of course, I’m writing about it.)

In intensive care, because my mouth and throat were full of plumbing, I couldn’t speak. Fortunately, I had a notebook with me, and I could write — albeit uncomfortably — brief requests or comments to the staff and the doctors. It interested me how intently everyone followed the act of my writing. I would signal in the air that I wanted to scribble, they would rush to find my notebook, pen and glasses (never in the same place twice), and then they would peer over my shoulder to see what I was going to “say.” It occurred to me then that they attached so much importance to what I wrote because I was writing it to them. Being the intended recipients of the written word made them feel important. Connections being made.

In this light, we can almost see writing as an act of love, can’t we?

*  *  *

Sandy and Allyson in Costa Rica

SANDRA SHAW HOMER has lived in Costa Rica for over 20 years, where she has taught languages and worked as an interpreter/translator and environmental activist. Between 1997 and 2000 she wrote a regular column, “Local Color,” for the English-language weekly The Tico Times. She became a Costa Rican citizen in 2002. In a previous life she headed her own public relations firm in Philadelphia and wrote occasional articles for the local business press. Her writing has appeared on a couple of blogs, notably Living Abroad in Costa Rica.

This guest post is an excerpt from her beautiful presentation at Namaste Gardens Writing & Yoga Retreat, Playa Herradura, Costa Rica, in January 2012. Sandra may be contacted at sandrashawhomer [at] gmail [dot] com

Dave Bidini performing on guitar

“It’s part of the artist’s job: to see and sense things that other people are just too busy to notice.”

"On a Cold Road" is a finalist in the Canada Reads: True Stories 2012 competition.

Author, columnist and songwriter/musician Dave Bidini‘s memoir On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock (read an excerpt here) was recently chosen as one of five finalists for CBC’s Canada Reads: True Stories 2012 competition. The other contenders are Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat, The Game by Ken Dryden, The Tiger by John Vaillant, and Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre. Debates begin February 2012.

In Spring 2011, Dave was guest author for my course Memories into Story: Introduction to Life Writing, offered online through University of Toronto SCS in partnership with the New York Times Knowledge Network. Following is an edited version of my students’ interview with him, part of a collaborative assignment. Thank you to my Spring 2011 group for these intriguing questions.

What was your first published story? How did it make you feel?

DB: Oh, it felt great. It was the best thing, seeing my words in print. It was just a dumb concert review, but it was really important in terms of seeing what was possible. You know: you should send out ANYTHING to EVERYONE. We all get rejected, but you never know who will like what.

Your writing comes across as honest, sensitive and also entertaining. Do you think this is a result of natural talent or has there been a lot of hard work along the way?

DB: Well, I’m obviously very talented … Kidding. Before, I had enthusiasm, but only a little talent. You work, and it develops, def. But having the will to do it all the time is a good good start.

Did you aspire to be a writer early on or did the profession find you?

DB: At first I didn’t aspire. I just did. And then, around maybe 16/17, I aspired.

When you began writing, was it for yourself or for publication?

DB: Myself, ya. Just scribbling junk.

Do you trust your own instincts, or have other people you trust give you opinions on your writing?

DB: Both, I think.

How did you develop confidence in your writing?

DB: Encouragement from parents, editors, friends, subjects, all o’ that. And a kind of silly blind belief that what I’m doing isn’t useless.

How did you go about finding places/people to accept your first works? Were you rejected before you found success?

DB: My parents sent stuff out to high school papers and stuff for me. Rejection is always part of success, right to the bitter end, right down the line. You have to get used to both, acceptance and rejection, and one serves the other.

What do you do when you find yourself at a loss for words/inspiration (assuming this happens)?

DB: I force myself to crack the rocks. To FIND a way.

You have a so many things going on in your life. How do you manage to keep everything organized, particularly your writing?

DB: I kinda write all of the time unless I am utterly sick of it. Then I have a small break, and ultimately, am compelled to write again.

Do you write “for fun” as well as professionally?

DB: Well, it is often hard. But I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun.

In “Travels in Narnia,” a moving memoir on loss and hope, you say that “the doors of perception” were opened to you as you travelled across Canada with the band. Did you have insight at the time, or was it a gradual process?

DB: After a while, in Calgary, I could sense that something was evolving. I wrote it in four hours in my friend’s apartment there. It had taken me three years to find the jam to sit down and do it, but when I wrote, it all spilled out pretty much how it sits on the page. I think, as an artist, you sort of have to know when those opportunities are upon you, and you force yourself to move forward through them, good or bad, or whatever. The artist has his head in the clouds with his feet planted into the earth.

You must have had to do a certain amount of research for Home and Away, about homelessness in Toronto, for example. Do you research as you go along, filling in holes in the narrative as you notice them, or write the first draft while the idea is fresh, and research later?

DB: Good question. It varies from project to project. Sometimes, the story sits awhile, and you have to chase it. Other times, it’s right there and you’re compelled to write it immediately. I wrote H&A fast because I knew that Melbourne would only happen once and the players would only experience what they were experiencing once. So my late nights and early mornings were filled with A LOT of writing each day.

Your writing seems so effortless. Do you do a lot of rewriting before you feel satisfied with the piece?

DB: Ya, I rewrite a lot. Thank you.

As a visual artist, I notice many similarities between art and writing; art is art, no matter the medium. How did music — being in a band — help or hinder your writing?

DB: It was great. The time I spent writing was time away from the madness of rock and roll. It was a healthy solitary time for me. And it made the travel less difficult. I used to bring a portable typewriter on the road. I loved using it, writing at clubs, backstage, and on the bus.

Is it harder to get published now than when you first started?

DB: Way fucking harder, but easier too. Harder because big publishers are in a time of transition; easier because there are more good small presses.

I’ve felt for a long time that everything in the world is connected, somehow. I get the sense from your writing that you feel the same. Am I correct?

DB: Ya, it’s important to find those lines and colour them in. It’s part of the artist’s job: to see and sense things that other people are just too busy to notice.

Do you believe writing can be taught? Or is it something innate, a creative gift that not everyone has?

DB: If you love it, you can learn it. I know this is true with music — and I am NOT naturally gifted — so it must be true with other art.

What’s the worst rejection letter you ever received?

DB: A guy in NY told me to stop writing. I was 16 and had sent him a record review.

What’s the nicest rejection letter you ever received?

DB: I got lots of cool letters from sportswriters in the 1970s, encouraging me and stuff.

Which is your first love – music, sports or writing?

DB: Sports. Writing. Music. And sportswriting.

If you could have only three books on your bedside table for the rest of your life, what would they be?

DB:

Be True to Your School by Bob Greene
Jack in the Box by William Kotzwinkle
War on Ice by Scott Young

Everyone you talk to seems to think they have a book in them and yet most don’t get round to writing it. Do you have any thoughts on this? Advice?

DB: GET AROUND TO IT. I mean, you either HAVE to do it or you DON’T. Wanting to do it isn’t enough.

* * *

DAVE BIDINI is the author of nine books. His play The Five Hole Stories was performed by One Yellow Rabbit and toured Canada in winter, 2009, and his two hockumentaries, The Hockey Nomad and The Hockey Nomad Goes to Russia, were Gemini-nominated films (the former won for Best Documentary). He is the recipient of numerous National Magazine Awards as well as a weekly columnist in The National Post. In 1994, his then band, Rheostatics, won a Genie Award for “Claire” (from the film Whale Music) and two of their albums were included in the Top 20 Canadian Albums of All Time. His first hockey book, Tropic of Hockey, was named one of the Top 100 Canadian Books of All Time by McClelland & Stewart, and his baseball odyssey, Baseballissimo, is currently being made into a feature film. Dave teaches songwriting for U of T School of Continuing Studies.

Susan Siddeley finds a tranquil writing place following my memoir workshops for her Los Parronales Writers' Retreat.

I love writing: fashioning sentences, crafting a tale, getting feedback. A nightmare for me is to be stranded in a queue with no pen or paper, where nothing is moving, yet life suddenly makes sense.

Backing sixpenny notebooks with brown paper and scribbling about blackbirds, bluebells, and earwigs when I was eight was the start of a lifelong urge to write. The need to explain and collect — partly lest I forget — became a driving force. Later, this meant striving for the English teacher’s approval, turning the loss of three gloves and two boyfriends in as many days into comedy and noting how dads only became animated talking about big ends and gaskets.

I started collecting pieces in the mid-90’s, even put a few together and ran off copies for a bazaar. My first print run, ten! Getting a word processor and then a computer around the same time changed things as radically as washing machines and Hoovers sorted Mum’s housekeeping. Electronic cut and paste — a modern writing miracle!

Meeting like-minded people, writing from cues, subscribing to writing magazines, going on a residential course — which, amazingly, led to hosting residential workshops on our parcela in Chile — entering competitions and being short-listed. All these were milestones in the run-up to completing my manuscript, Home First: A Memoir in Voices. I realized the book had to be a memoir when attempts to change the names of my main characters altered their voices and blocked literary flow. The writing felt flat, wrong.

I belong to various writing groups. Seeing members waltz into meetings with big manuscripts and little experience used to be heart-warming. Now it’s hard to know what to say when people look glum if they don’t get a round of applause. But those who come regularly and do what it takes to get their tales right are the ones who succeed.

In my local group, I’m not the only one who’s been working on a manuscript for years. The memoirists all seem to have started out penning a modest justification of their lives for friends and family, then, with growing confidence, decided to aim for a wider audience.

My memoir project has been an anchor during a “travelling” life that took me from England to Canada, Jamaica, Bolivia and Chile. After my mother died, pulling up notes of our scribbled conversations was a great way of dealing with her passing. Writing in her voice, in Part One of Home First, I was able to see her point of view far better than when she had glared, laughed or moaned at me across the breakfast table.

The memoir template kept changing. What began as a series of stories for my children, then my grandchildren, was upgraded by cutting the telling and summarizing, and developing a narrative arc,  techniques learnt by attending workshops, including two series with Allyson Latta, at North York Central Library in Toronto and later at Los Parronales Writers’ Retreat in Santiago, Chile.

Eventually I decided to publish the book myself. It’s a family memoir, and sadly, during the years it took to write it, five cousins died. With no second book then in the pipeline (though, I have now started to write a sequel), I knew it would be hard to sell it to a traditional publishing company and didn’t want to lose more time.

Since finishing the first draft a couple of years ago, the editing — including an edit by a professional editor — proofreading and cover development have proved as taxing as the writing ever was. I’ve been fortunate to have great help and support from workshop leaders and fellow writers. This self-publishing route might not be for everyone, but I’m hoping it will work for me in these fast-changing times.

Everyone has a story to tell, an unpredictable and potentially vivid one. Deciding how to write it and get into print — that is the challenge.

*  *  *

To order a copy of Home First: A Memoir in Voices, please email: motocad@rogers.com. Cheques payable to Susan Siddeley: $18.00 ($15.00 + $3.00 postage). FREE delivery in downtown Toronto, The Beach and Scarborough.

SUSAN SIDDELEY was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire and spent many years in Andean South America before moving to Canada. Her need to record the irony and drama of life on three continents has led to the publication of four volumes of poetry: When in Chile, Still in Chile, On Line and Off Line. She has also contributed to two anthologies published by Santiago Writers, is a two-time winner of Grain magazine’s Short Grain contest, and first-prize winner of the 2010 Malton Literary Festival writing competition. Susan now divides her time between Toronto, Canada, and Santiago, Chile, where, with her husband Gordon, she coordinates Los Parronales Writers’ Retreat.

Twenty-one years ago, my brother and his wife had twin sons with cerebral palsy. The son who was more severely affected died at 17 years, of complications from his disability. The remaining twin is wheelchair bound, unable to look after his physical needs. Though he can talk slowly and even share humour, that humour is more typical of a 10-year-old who laughs at fart jokes than a 21-year-old.

From the sidelines over the years I’ve observed and empathized with the stresses these exhausted parents faced while caring for seriously disabled children, including the emotional search for a care home in which to place them. So Ian Brown’s award-winning memoir, The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, resonated with me, and I was anxious last month to attend Writers’ Community of Durham Region (WCDR) breakfast meeting where he was guest speaker.

Brown and his wife Johanna have a 15-year-old son named Walker. His rare disability is CFC (cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome), a genetic mutation only recently identified by the scientific community. Walker is globally delayed, non-speaking, sickly, and has a tendency to hit himself. He can walk, but cannot express toileting needs or pay attention to much more than repetitive tactile sensations. There are only an estimated 150 to 300 cases worldwide and, as Brown laments, resources for parents of these children are limited. His memoir chronicles his efforts to understand Walker, and indeed the plight of all families living with CFC—efforts that were disappointing and painful, but that ultimately resulted in discovery and acceptance.

What most impressed me about Brown—both in his book and in his presentation—was his honesty. He didn’t sugar-coat the exhausting effect on his family of round-the-clock caregiving. For years I’d watched Brown introduce documentaries on TVO. The man looked tired. Now I understand why. Sleeplessness is a common condition in the world of CFC families. Brown and his wife alternated nights to placate Walker so they each could get some uninterrupted sleep. (They felt fortunate if they slept for even four hours.) A dependable daytime nanny/caregiver named Olga was an invaluable resource that they, and Walker, revered. But with a young daughter as well as a disabled son, with busy careers, deadlines and travel, the lines of responsibilities blurred. Resentments took their toll on the author’s marriage. Sadly, a high percentage of parents with disabled children don’t make it together. The fact that Brown and his wife are still united is a testament to their strength and determination, and their love for each other and both their children.

A journalist who is naturally curious and investigative, Brown was nagged by questions from the time of Walker’s earliest diagnosis. “What is the value of a life like this—a life lived in the twilight, and often in pain?” he writes. “What is the cost of his life to those around him? Sometimes watching Walker is like looking at the moon; you see the face of the man in the moon, yet you know there’s actually no man there. All I really want to know is what goes on inside his off-shaped head, in his jumped-up heart.” His longtime editor and friend Cathrin Bradbury convinced him to write about Walker, and Globe and Mail editor at the time, Carl Wilson, reviewed early sections for a series in the newspaper, which Brown later developed into a book.

The author’s passion to share what he has learned is palpable in the room at the WCDR presentation. With humour and sadness he introduces us to CFC: its range of symptoms, and how early diagnosis, research funding and humanizing care are elusive, time-consuming and expensive to pursue. Brown’s efforts to help his son and understand his condition led him to reach out to other CFC parents, to doctors and scientists and to administrators of cutting-edge treatment facilities. He’s unashamed of his feelings of guilt, wondering if he should have done more, earlier. He’s unashamed of the intimacy he feels between himself and his son. He’s unashamed of the distractions he faced in worrying about his son—distractions that often impeded his ability to focus on his wife, his daughter, his work, his social life and his friendships. Walker was all-consuming.

Yet, when briefly Walker is able to relax against him, Brown sees these rare moments as gifts of love. And in many ways this memoir is a love letter to his son.

Brown’s search for balanced alternatives for his boy’s care was tireless, but eventually the couple was forced to acknowledge that Olga was aging, that their daughter should not be responsible for her brother, that they themselves were worn out. The Boy in the Moon, now 15 years old, has for five years lived in a specialized facility, spending 3 days of every 14 living with his family at home. Their decision to relinquish Walker’s full-time care was a bittersweet one that involved a difficult transition for Brown and his wife and daughter to accept.

What also impressed me about Ian Brown was his ability to acknowledge what he gained from knowing Walker, the lessons he learned about himself as a father and as a human being. Walker, he says, made him better in both roles. His boy taught him patience, acceptance, boundless love, and how to feel joy in small miracles. Walker’s journey of living with a severe disability became one with Brown’s journey to advance his awareness and understanding, and to share what he learned. As a result, The Boy in the Moon gives voice to the plight of all disabled individuals, their parents, their doctors, researchers and caregivers.

The audience gave Brown a standing ovation following his presentation, a fitting tribute to a father and author whose story is provocative, educational and hopeful. The best memoirs are written to inspire and even transform us as readers, and there’s no doubt that Ian Brown’s does both.

*  *  *

Ian Brown has won impressive awards for The Boy in the Moon: the 2010 British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-fiction ($40,000) and the 2010 Canadian Nonfiction Charles Taylor Prize ($25,000). He is also recognized for a string of journalistic accomplishments: host of The Human Edge and The View From Here on TVOntario; host at CBC Radio One, including for Later the Same Day, Talking Books and Sunday Morning; business writer at Maclean’s and the Financial Post, feature reporter for The Globe and Mail and a freelance journalist for magazines including Saturday Night; editor of What I Meant to Say: The Private Lives of Men, a 2006 collection of 29 essays by prominent Canadian writers; contributor to the U.S. public radio program This American Life; and author of two other published books, Freewheeling and Man Overboard.

Watch Allan Gregg in conversation with Ian Brown here.

Canada Reads: True Stories

Based on reader votes, The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son has made the Canada Reads: True Stories “Top 40″ list. To vote for up to 5 of your favourite nonfiction books and help Canada Reads select its ”Top 10,” click here.