A Writer’s Life

With the move, all the sounds and color leached out of my life. My beloved grandmother remained in the North End, as did the televisions: my father opened his own repair shop in the old neighbourhood. There was a big picture window in the L-shaped living-dining room of our new 1960s ranch house. It looked out on the quiet, empty, curve of the new suburban crescent. Where were the trees? Where were the friendly shouting neighbours on the narrow sidewalks, the busyness of the corner grocery store? I had my books, and the old piano came with us, but that was all that felt right. I had a lost feeling that I later recognized as homesickness. And with all that emptiness around me I was somehow suffocating.

It’s such a cliché to say that books saved me, from the move and also from what was to follow, and yet…there you have it. I read voraciously, and found solace and understanding in fictional lives that I couldn’t seem to find in my own world. With adolescence came the need to record my life in great detail, right down to what I dreamt each night. I didn’t know why I had this desire, but later it made sense. Catherine Drinker Bowen says, “Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice, once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.” Without any real comprehension of what I was doing, while writing the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects of what was happening in my life, I was figuring it out. I learned that even when living through the darkest times, it was like I was watching from afar all that was happening – with me a part of it – taking mental notes and pictures so I could pull them out and study them when I felt more in control. Unlike my parents’ generation and mindset, believing in what they saw as the wisdom of “less said, sooner forgotten”, we now realize things just don’t become “forgotten” if they’re traumatic or distressing. They need to be dealt with. And that’s what the writer’s mind does: it deals with important issues through the writing, even if it becomes fictionalized. For many writers, that issue becomes their theme.

At thirteen, my fifteen-year old brother Greg died of cancer, and all was cloaked in silence and mystery and sorrow. I even remember a floating sense of disgrace. It was a well-meaning desire of my parents that their other children be protected from the unpleasantness of it. We did not speak of unpleasant things. But all that the silence produced in me was confusion and unspoken outrage, and, as I’ve said, something close to shame. The small bits and pieces I put together about my brother’s illness and subsequent death I learned by watching very, very carefully, waiting for the fleeting expression that conveyed a deep thought, and listening to the weighted silences between simple sentences. It was a hard-won lesson: the rewards of being an observer, of being quiet enough that you’re forgotten.

Through adolescence I looked for the answer to every question I had about life by writing about it, and by reading what others had written. I put myself into those other lives, imagining I was the character, and wrote new endings for those stories. Suddenly it was my story. It felt right. And so the writer emerged.

Of course reality intrudes into dreams. The decades slipped by, and there I was, with three little kids – the last a newborn – and I hadn’t started writing. I’d had a full and satisfying time of it until then: to make a living I’d done everything from being an A&W carhop to picking apples in Switzerland to milking cows on a moshav in Israel to making pizza at Pizza-To-Go-Go – white boots and all – to actually giving blood weekly during a prolonged stint in Greece (how horrifying that sounds now)! to filing endlessly in a dusty, dreary and windowless closet to being a receptionist at a shady money-lending establishment to teaching in classrooms and with Special Needs kids. I’d lived in Athens and on Crete and in Amsterdam and Switzerland and Israel and in an isolated northern First Nations community, traveled a lot and seen many parts of the world. I’d had my share of joy and heartache, of disappointment and of surprising good news. But to be a writer…! It remained my secret dream. My desire. My fantasy. I recognized my conflicting fears: I might live out my life without attempting to be a published writer, but at the same time I was more afraid I might try and fail. But it was time. Up with the baby in those early morning hours, and then after all three children were asleep at night, I started to write. It’s easy to write without telling anyone; it’s not like taking tuba lessons.

While I have an undergraduate degree in Psychology, an undergraduate degree in Special Education and a master’s degree in Educational Psychology, the only writing courses I ever took were a one-day and a weekend workshop. My life had grown chaotic; there was no time for the luxury of writing courses. Instead, I learned the elements of writing by studying the craft on my own, and by the continued act – I’d never stopped keeping journals – of writing itself.

I was never directed in my reading, apart from my formal education, which involved psychology and education, not literature. For my whole life I had simply read what I could get my hands on, from the library and remainder tables in bookstores, what someone else had liked and passed on to me. Those randomly chosen books were my teachers. I studied how they made me feel, the rhythm of the sentences, and why an image, perfectly described, can remain with one forever.

There was a pleasurable loneliness to it all in the beginning, the secret writing, carried out in stolen, late night or early morning hours. I have a vivid imagination, a deep curiosity about human nature, and a vague notion of the flow and timing of telling a good tale. I had to keep the faith that what I understood about people – the on-going result of my early-learned habit of watching and listening – could be translated into interesting human stories.

Now, I travel as often as I can, to as many places as possible. I look forward to the tilting, slightly off-balance sense of unfamiliarity that comes with finding oneself in new surroundings. It’s hard work to travel – I’m talking about being a traveler, not a tourist, which can mean eating the kueh chap – main ingredient: pork “parts” – for four days straight in the steamy jungles of Borneo when dreaming of a crisp apple; sleeping in a frigid ger in Outer Mongolia and not in a climate-controlled hotel room (although hey, I’m not knocking that), or riding a rocking old train with minimal creature comforts – although always vodka – across Siberia for so long that days and nights blend into each other. Real travel requires patience and energy and perseverance and the ability to accept whatever unexpected events occur and, at times, to let go of any hope of control. To not be concerned about going without a shower for days, of eating questionable foods, of discovering that being sleep-deprived won’t kill you, and understanding the wisdom of your own instincts and the ability to openly put all your faith in complete strangers. In being brave. Believe me, the romance is all in remembering it once you’re home; as Paul Theroux says, Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. He’s right, but nevertheless, the sound of a distant train whistle never fails to start my imagination. I actually like airports, and no matter how many times I experience the rush of the plane lifting off, I still feel a surge of excitement: it’s happening. I’m going somewhere I’ve never been, and I have no idea what I’ll find. I’m never more alive than when facing the challenge of a new experience. Henry David Thoreau, in his journal of 1851, states: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” I like that; a lot of writers don’t find their stride until they’ve got a lot of life under their belts. And for me, part of writing – especially my historic fiction – is the travel where I’m forced to stand up to live which gives me insight into the country I’m writing about.

Travel is also a bit like starting a new book. There is the déjà vu of willing your luggage to appear on the airport carousel or hoping for a glimpse of an evasive plot weave. There is the knowledge that what lies ahead will require endless energy, sleepless nights, nagging anxiety that can slip into terror if you give in to it, and definitely the unexpected highs that fill you with wonder. There will be a lot of waiting around, sometimes boredom with your choices, and retracing steps when you realize you haven’t read the map properly. Whether travelling for an extended period of time or working alone for the years it takes to produce a novel, you choose to give up things you love. There’s a lot of thinking how wonderful it would be to watch a good movie and eat popcorn with your family instead of sitting alone in the grey wash of light from the computer screen, or floating in a warm pool instead of shivering in cold, salty spray on a stomach-churning ferry taking you to a questionable island with no one awaiting you. There’s wondering how it is you once again find yourself in a bit of a mess that allows no time for easy pleasures.

I question any writer who says he or she enjoys writing day in and out. I’m not saying there isn’t pleasure in unexpectedly seeing a good sentence emerge on the screen in front of you, or the quiet satisfaction of finding the imagery you feel works the best. But on the whole, writing creatively is a long, hard slog, and the self-doubt and insecurity that plague the artist can make the writing life – like adventure travel – not recommended for the faint-of-heart.

I live in Toronto, Ontario, as well as wherever the wind blows me for weeks or months when I’m researching or just exploring a new place. While I’m most creative and productive at my own desk in my own quiet space, all I really need is a view of the sky, a few good books, my passport, my laptop, a blank journal and a fine-nibbed pen (I still love the physical act of writing), my camera, and the latest photos of my loved ones on my iPhone.

A lot has changed. But a lot remains the same. I still love books – to read and to collect. I’m more curious than ever about the human condition. And I still dream of what lies beyond the borders of my life…

That’s it. Thanks for reading.