Squeezing it in
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: book news and views Leave a comment »This is the method I’m currently using for getting stuff done. I’m editing a book for one writer, and mentoring another and still trying to finish my own first draft. So I am cramming in bits of writing where I can, and trying not to freak out. The good news is I just booked off most of a week in February for writing. The bad news is, that’s still three weeks away.
Sigh.
Stephanie Domet is fat, rude, sucks and is married to Kev Corbett
Posted: June 16, 2011 Filed under: book news and views 10 Comments »Figured I might as well address all the most recent web searches that have brought people to this website. Every couple of weeks, some very flattering search turns up like Stephanie Domet rude or Stephanie Domet is fat or, this week, Stephanie Domet sucks. And there is perennial curiousity, it seems, about my little husband.
So let’s take these one at a time. Fat. Well, duh. Moving on.
Rude. I suspect it depends: on the day, who you ask, what you said to me first, how many people before you also said it to me that day. If I have been rude to you, I do apologize. I get a little ragged and snappish sometimes. Who doesn’t? It’s just, most people are able to get ragged and snappish and be halfway anonymous. Me, not so much.
Sucks. Well now, surely that’s subjective. What a thing to google! I mean, if you think so, do you really need the internet to shore you up?
Is married to Kev Corbett. Who loves me despite all of the above. Imagine.
What kind of book
Posted: March 6, 2011 Filed under: book news and views, Readings and writings 2 Comments »This is a question I get all the time. What kind of book are you writing? I find this question almost impossible to answer, because really, the answer is, a good one, I hope. After that, what does it matter what other descriptors? And what does the interlocutor mean to do with the information anyhow? What will it really tell anyone about Fallsy Downsies?
The other day, as I made my way into the office, the woman who works the front desk during the day asked me the question. I was late for a meeting, as usual, and had only had one coffee, and so I looked at her with confusion. And she said, you know, sci fi, romance…? This is the other part of the question that stymies me. The genre question. I think this is the only way we have to talk about stories in a broader way, it seems. I mean writers, and constant readers of a certain kind have specific ways to talk about books and kinds of stories. But what I think of as casual readers, and those who maybe haven’t read a book since high school, because it’s just not how they choose to consume narrative, seem to only be able to relate to books and stories by assigning them a genre.
The only answer I have is “literary fiction.” Highly unsatisfactory response. I was once accused, in my bookseller days, of being pretentious. Because I referred to a Jack Whyte book as “not our kind of book”–by which I meant the shop up the street had more a speciality in that area, and would likely have stock, while we had sold through the three copies we’d ordered. The customer didn’t like the implication, and plainly told me so. I didn’t need her to tell me I was pretentious–I was a writer/bookseller in my mid-twenties OF COURSE I was pretentious. It was basically my full time job to be so. Anyhow, older and only a little wiser, answering Literary Fiction to the genre question makes me feel genuinely pretentious.
So, here’s the thing. Why is genre the only way the casual/non-reading public at large can relate to a story?
How else to describe something that is not a mystery, nor a romance, nor sci fi, nor a western, but may have elements of all of those, except maybe the sci fi part?
What’s the point of describing something that isn’t even done? Whose purposes does it serve, anyhow?
Does any of it matter to anyone but writers?
What do you think?
In the homestretch
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: book news and views Leave a comment »Well, here we are, just a few days of writing sabbatical left. Big sigh. At the farmers’ market yesterday, the clerk at Fox Hill said, that went fast. I said, yeah, if you think it went fast for you, imagine how fast it went for me. I can’t believe it’s almost over, but I’m so gratified to have had the time, and so pleased with what I accomplished, and with what I’ve discovered about the story and characters. I would love to have produced more pages, ultimately, what writer wouldn’t? But I feel like I have a solid jumping off point now to see it through to completion by September, second draft by the end of December.
Tour was great and exhausting and I learned a lot, and figured out some of my most important stuff on the road.
I’m feeling a bit nervous about my return to work. It’s a funny feeling. I know I’ll remember how to do it… though it make take me a few days to get back in the groove. I hope they still like me! I’ve been leading such a solitary life for the last couple of months, mostly talking to myself. I imagine I’ll feel somewhat flayed the first couple of days, imagining all those pairs of ears. Go easy on me, people. At least for the first week. After that, you can let fly.
Life imitating art
Posted: February 15, 2011 Filed under: book news and views, Getting to know you, Out and about, Tunes you can use, Working holiday Leave a comment »Or the other way around, or maybe both. I am on the road right now, as Kev takes living rooms and basements around Ontario by storm. He earned a Home Routes tour and so we’ve spent the last couple weeks together in the car, touring around, playing a concert in a different house each night. It’s been intense and awesome, and I’ve even managed to get some writing done.
More importantly, I’ve had that magic time in the car to let my mind wander and pick through the elements of my story that still stymie me. And I’ve had some important breakthroughs–some insights into what actually motivates Lansing Meadows, and what eventually leads to the rift between him and Evan Cornfield. And even Dacey Brown is moving into sharper focus.
I will be sorry to leave this full time artist life behind in two weeks. Though I hear from afar there are a number of juicy stories unfolding in Nova Scotia, and I feel the pull of daily radio. It’s a tough balance, the two lives, and I will be spending some of my remaining time figuring out how to balance them better. I’ll be back on the air on February 28th. The novel’s first draft won’t be finished–but at least I’ll know how to proceed. And that feels like a huge triumph. A more reasonable, achievable goal is a completed first draft by September, a completed second draft by the end of December. And if it goes my way, maybe publication by fall 2012.
In other news, it looks like Lady Hammond has received first draft funding for Homing, with Tricia Fish screenwriting. This is great news for that team, and I’ll be interested to see what happens next.
So, lots of forward momentum. And, for a taste of what I’ve been up to on the road, here’s a little video from our stop in Kanata, Ontario. Don’t say I never gave you anything.
You think you know someone…
Posted: January 20, 2011 Filed under: book news and views Leave a comment »So, lately, I’ve been struggling with Dacey Brown. I thought I knew her, and then I sit down to write her, and she comes out all robotic and weird, making snap decisions about things and refusing to smile pretty for the camera. I got super frustrated with it all today and had a very short day of writing. I said one sentence about it to Kev and he said, maybe she’s mentally ill. And I’m like, no, uh-uh, no way, she is not, I don’t know anything about that, I’m not writing it. Then I went to Ryan’s to play Boggle for a couple hours (oh Boggle, how I love you), and we had further conversations, during which his partner Erica brightly suggested, maybe she’s bi-polar. And again, I’m all in denial nope no way no how.
Then I get home and I have a couple hours to kill before my next thing and so I go spend a little time with my pen and paper and Dacey Brown and whaddya know… she’s a little on the bi-polar side. Like, on the spectrum. You know? Not diagnosed, not medicated, not dangerous to herself just–a little up and down. She’s making some crazy decisions right now, and we’re just going with it. The writing I did once I accepted Dacey as she is… best writing of the day.
This is one wild ride, that’s for sure.
Perchance to dream
Posted: January 17, 2011 Filed under: book news and views Leave a comment »I could do this, I could. I love my job, I do love it, but I could do this forever. I get up when it seems right to, and I make coffee. Maybe I read the paper or maybe, if I woke up with a sentence in mind, I write first. In any event, at some point in the morning, I put my hand on a pen and the pen on a page and I make sentences, and the part of my brain that occasionally says things like, hey, that sentence sucks! gets told to shut the hell up. Your time is not now, you’ll have your time later. And I write till it feels like it’s time to stop, and if it’s Monday, I go to the gym for yoga and a run. Or else I have lunch. Then I write a little more, and think about what to defrost for supper.
I love my job, but man, I love this more.
The handwriting is on the wall
Posted: January 14, 2011 Filed under: book news and views, Readings and writings Leave a comment »So, it’s going. Not at the pace at which I’d hoped it would, but it is going. We went to Moncton and Amherst last weekend for a belated Christmas visit, and Kev’s step-grandmother died while we were there, and so the visit was extended and expanded and hugely emotional. I’m glad we were there, but it was tough, and I tried not to think too much about the days of writing I was missing.
We got back to Halifax on Tuesday afternoon, and I’ve had a good day and a bad day since then. Yesterday was just vile. I was all at sea with Dacey Brown. What is her purpose? What drives her? If you know, please drop me a note, because I couldn’t find any of it yesterday. I wrote a miserable and plodding six pages and then hung it up for the day. This morning, I woke up thinking about a scene I want to write, a scene about which I know all the important stuff and have only to embroider the fun parts. I put on a pot of coffee while Kev stayed in bed, and instantly pounded out six pages without thinking or pausing. I am imagining the rest of the day proceeding apace. And I’ll write Saturday and probably Sunday as well, just to make up for missed days earlier this week and late last.
I’ve been writing across the street at the neighbours’ house, and that’s been great. Whatever conversations might happen over there have nothing to do with me, the cats are not my concern… I am able to just sit and write. The view is boring–it is of my parking space. So I look out over my own car, most times. It’s perfect. Great to be able to cross the street and go to work. Yesterday I made a cup of hot chocolate and put it in my travel mug, filled a big mason jar with water, took my duvet slippers and tucked in. It would have been perfect, had the writing gone better. I will leave that part of the book for now and just move on. Come back to it later. Just a first draft. Doesn’t have to be perfect.
Someone asked about the writing by hand. A variety of reasons. Among them, the unreliability of computers, which can crash and take with your entire manuscript. And yeah, you should back up your stuff, but I don’t know anyone who does. Also, we have only one computer and Kev works from home as well, so it’d be a battle royale every day. And most important, I’m a better writer when I write longhand. I am a very fast typist thanks to my years as a journalist. So I can type almost everything I’m thinking. Thing is, it’s not all gold. Most of it is not. By hand, I can really only get the best parts, the distillation of my ideas. At least, I think it’s the best parts! Hope so! Anyhow, it seems to be the right process for this particular book.
Where is Stephanie Domet?
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: book news and views, Getting to know you, Working holiday Leave a comment »Nope, not a TV show for kids, nor a book featuring me in a striped shirt and a dopey stocking cap, lost among the madding crowd. It is, however, a popular google search right now. Perhaps it’s what you used to find your way here. If so, welcome! Here I am!
I am taking two months away from my regular gig to tend to my irregular (but much more longterm) gig: fiction writer. It’s how I’ve described myself since I learned how to print, sometime in the early Seventies. This whole radio host thing–it’s a sideline. An excellent, fun and rewarding sideline, but a sideline nonetheless.
Thanks to the province of Nova Scotia, and the willingness of my folk singing husband to eat rice and beans twice a week for the next couple of months, not to mention the awesomeness of my employer for giving me a couple months leave without pay, I’m embarking on a writing sabbatical till February 28th. If you’re here because you miss me on the radio, thanks for your kindness! I miss talking to you, too, but if I don’t get this book done I’ll start feeling mean, and neither of us will benefit from that. I’ll be back before you know it. And if you’re here because you DON’T miss me on the radio, and you’re hoping I’m never coming back, well, sorry about that. But enjoy the next two months!
Feel free to drop me a note in the comments if you have questions for me. Meantime, I’ll just be here, scratching out my sentences and soaking black beans.
Day One
Posted: January 4, 2011 Filed under: book news and views 1 Comment »Well, I don’t think I wrote anything that’s gonna change the world today, but I did squeak out my allotment of twenty handwritten pages. Amounts to somewhere between two and three thousand words. My hand is aching, and I’m FREEZING (I am a heat miser and keep it cold in this house during the day, which was easy enough when I was going to the office every day, but wow, I might need to turn up the furnace and commend my long suffering work from home husband for somehow putting up with the slum conditions around here), but I am feeling pretty good about meeting my goal. It was not exactly easy, but it wasn’t exactly not easy either, if you know what I mean. Although, that was a little garbled, how could you know? I think I’m a bit delirious right now.
Anyhow, suffice to say: writing sabbatical off to a good, if shivery and delirious, start.
