I’ll Talk, You’ll Fill that Notebook
A Writer’s Best Friend?
“If you want to write essays, cultural criticism, or any kind of satire, you kind of have to live in the world to write about it. You have to have some sort of job just to get annoyed, just to bounce
off of something. I think if you’re writing fiction, isolation might be a little bit more key… When you have to manufacture an entire world, I would imagine that you need to be alone with your own strange little thoughts for a little bit longer than having a regular job allows you to do.”
—Sloane Crosley
Whatever your authorial creed, writing can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t stop there: the reception of one’s work can be just as—if not more—unpleasant. Rejection is just a part of the process. Ask anyone who has seen a rejection slip before: it stings much more than a paper cut. But brutal or gentle rebuffs aside, rejection forces the writer to stop, reflect, and revise. Workshops, which can be similar to advice from a scrupulous editor, clarify the main goal of a writer, which is to write something that people want to read.
Now hold on a second! Do I mean compromising, or even worse—selling out!—to write a romance novel? No. The three panel members of “Becoming a Writer”—Daniel Allen Cox, Kathleen Winter, and Doug Harris—would disagree; it is about telling a story that readers can both relate to and understand. Phrased differently: the goal of any writer is to convince the reader.
The discussion during “Becoming a Writer” (at the Blue Metropolis Festival) touched on the different struggles of each speaker, their level of formal training, and their failings. Questions from the audience ranged from “What about self-publishing?” to “How can I find a literary agent?”
And some questions failed to surface. What about the writing community here in Montreal? (Existent? Supportive?) What about resources and grants available to writers? (After the election results, who knows?) What about young writers? What about storytelling? Romance novel? (Maybe not? Okay.)
It was Kathleen Winter, come to think of it, who hovered around a couple of the aforementioned questions.
She recounted: “I attended literary festivals, and at every single event, I took notice of the speakers. I wanted to know how I could help other writers. How could I do that?”
Winter had struggled with rejection for years, despite her efforts at revising and re-evaluating the structure of her short stories. She finally sent her manuscript to John Metcalf, the fiction editor at Biblioasis Press. Soon after, her collection of short stories boYs won the Metcalf-Rooke Award, which recognizes the potential of emerging writers.
Recently, her novel Annabel was short listed for the Giller Prize.
In essence, prizes like these, and fellow writers like Metcalf, or Robert Weaver (“the best friend Canadian writers ever had”) who solicit and encourage writers, are important. Young, old, despondent, or not—up-and-coming writers need the support. Whether it is funding a novelist who will subsequently abandon reality and employment for an inner world, or encouraging a gifted but struggling author to refine their skills.
Because our culture rests on these critics, essayists, poets, playwrights, columnists, storytellers, and wordsmiths, we need to endorse them; we are essentially endorsing ourselves. (Lest we forget that many marginalized voices still remain unheard.)
And this—contrary to “widespread opinion” (only what? 23% of eligible voters?)—is hardly a “niche issue.”
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