How writing brought me out of darkness

Some stories are easy to write. They keep us dreaming throughout the day. They fill us with endless hours of inspiration. They complete us. My first novel was one of those stories. Though fictional, I drew inspiration for that story from the people around me, their interactions with others, and their ability to persevere in even the most challenging circumstances. I enjoyed every moment that I spent working on the first draft, and had no intention of ever sharing it with anyone else. All I wanted was to write an entire book from beginning to end. Completing it was all the satisfaction I needed before, I tucked the manuscript away without giving it a second thought. Some stories are difficult to write. They keep us awake all night. They remind us of the darkness in our lives. Often, they tear us apart. I have always found true stories difficult to write, preferring fictional worlds over reality. But one night, after I was beaten, robbed, and left lying at the side of the road, I couldn’t think of writing about anything else. I was no longer inspired by anything or anyone, and the artistic lifestyle that once brought me joy had disappeared. My mind was clouded by the memory of that night, of my attacker’s voice and the violation I felt at having no control over what happened to me. The terrifying event played over and over in my mind, and no matter how much I wanted to change the story, it always ended the same way, with me scared, alone and bleeding on the pavement. Despite this cloudiness, I wanted to write about the attack. I thought that telling the story would help me to make sense of everything that happened and finally move on with my life. But I could only get four or five words down on paper before I had to stop. The night that changed my life forever was impossible to forget, and yet I could not force one bit of creative energy on to something that caused me such misery. And so I tried my best to forget about it. The more I tried to push myself to ignore the trauma, the harder it became to focus on anything else. Then, while attempting to distract myself from the loneliness of an empty house one evening, I came across the manuscript I had written before the attack. The words on those forgotten pages meant more to me than I could have ever imagined. I decided to devote some time to editing the story, and as I did, I began to recall how safe and confident I had been when I first wrote it. I found a distraction from my empty house and from the worst memory of my life. As I worked, I realized that after spending so much time trying to force focus on a negative story, I had completely closed myself off to the rest of the creative world that I cherished so much. Although it was unintentional, through the editing process I managed to find my way back to writing the “easy” stories. By doing so, I distanced myself emotionally from the one story that caused me so much grief. I also learned to accept that all stories, in their own time, become easier to share. Now, I keep myself open to all aspects of writing, because even the truest and darkest tales can end in light. Diana Douglas Diana’s debut novel Somewhere Picking Dandelions was published in November 2016 by Latitude 46 Publishing.

What Growing Up In Sulphur City Taught Me About Beauty

I was born in a crater. My Northern Ontario birthplace was formed 1,849 billion years ago when a 10-kilometre-wide meteorite—actually, now they’re saying it was a comet—travelling at 8 times the speed of sound crashed to the earth. The massive impact formed what is now known as the Sudbury Basin—the earth’s second-largest crater at 62 km long and 30 km wide. That sucker punch from outer space filled the earth’s sunken face with molten rock containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold, and other metals. It took centuries for the pulverized rock to cool, and until the late 1800s for settlers in the Sudbury Basin to figure out they were sitting on, literally, a gold mine. By the time I was born in 1974, the city’s mines—Inco and Falconbridge—were two of the world’s leading producers of nickel. I grew up playing under giant plumes of sulphurous smoke belched by Inco’s massive smokestack at the refinery. My friends and I scrambled over the lunar landscape of rocks turned black by the copper smelting process. Some nights, Mom would drive my sister and me to see the slag being dumped by the mines. We’d sip milkshakes and watch the hot, lava-like substance spill down the side of a hill, mesmerized by its beauty. That’s right. I said beauty. For that’s what Sudbury was to us, then: the pockmarked backdrop upon which our imaginations could roam freely. With a little creativity, rocky outcrops became British boarding schools. Grassy backyards became stages for elaborate dance recitals. Graveyards became sites of espionage and intrigue as my sister and I hid behind tombstones, pretending our pointed fingers were guns. OK, we were strange children. But as Ray Bradbury puts it, “Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about.” (That’s from the introduction to Dandelion Wine). Indeed, I did grow self-conscious about Sudbury in my teens, especially after I moved away. “I’m from Sudbury,” I’d say apologetically to other Canadians, who’d laugh and say, “Ah, yes, the armpit of Ontario” (it turns out other cities like Hamilton share this dubious moniker as well). But now, after a visit back home this summer, I realize Sudbury is actually the heart of Ontario. For me, anyway. The city’s greening efforts—they’re now growing trees in the mines—have, over the decades, transformed Sudbury into quite a leafy, picturesque city in many places. Art is springing up all over town, too, thanks to Up Here, an emerging art and music festival. And, of course, Sudbury is home to friends and family—including my father, my wonderful step-family, and my indefatigable grandmother, still going strong at 100. However, the giant smokestack, now owned by a Brazilian company called Vale, still remains. The weather-beaten roads are potholed and plastered together with asphalt and tar. There are defunct breweries, shambling shacks, and, yes, graffiti-covered boxcars. At its core, Sudbury remains Sudbury—a hardscrabble frontier town built in a crater that was created when the cosmos decided to give the earth a walloping clout on the chin. Sudbury is gritty, tough, and has gold at its core—both the chemical element and the people. And that’s a beautiful thing. As a child, my imagination sprouted in the somewhat desolate and barren Sudbury of the 1970s and ’80s—just like the seedlings that now grow in Vale’s mine greenhouses, 4,800 feet below the earth. It has taken me several decades to really start mining my creativity and publishing essays and poems, but if I keep going, perhaps I’ll hit gold one day. Or perhaps not. But if my hometown has taught me anything, it’s the power of resilience and perseverance. In any case, I’m enjoying digging deep into my past and present for material. Sometimes, I stumble over subject matter that, at first glance, seems quite bleak—chronic illness, death, mortality, and madness, for starters. Fortunately, Sudbury has trained my eye to see the beauty shimmering beneath the soot. Who wants to spend their days sitting at a desk, poking around such bleak emotional terrain, you might well ask? I do. The landscape is incredible. Christine Schrum Christine Schrum lives on Vancouver Island. She has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Writer, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, Sulphur, and other publications. Her Twitter handle is @Schrumza

Atwood’s Challenge

Can I capture your attention in a single line? A poor graduate student as I was in 2014, I had the good fortune to be given tickets to a fundraiser in the city where I was studying, Windsor, Ontario. This was no mere fundraiser; it featured Windsor-born author Wayne Grady and hosted by Margaret Atwood (name drop). In my foam green dress and concealing a pen and copy of Cat’s Eye in my purse, I waited at the student’s table for Atwood. She circled around the room, exchanging greetings. I sat glued to my chair for the chance to speak with her and have her autograph the book. Margaret was magnificent with her white dusted, wild and curly hair. When she arrived at my table, she offered few but precise words of advice to me and the other aspiring writers. While I stared at her so-Atwood hair, she stated, “Make the first line good”. At that time, I was completing the first year of my Master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. I was researching and outlining my thesis which was to be a fiction novella set in my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. After graduate school in 2015, I took that summer to revise my thesis manuscript and later submit it to Latitude 46 Publishing (but I’m getting ahead of the story). I took Atwood’s advice as a challenge. When writing my thesis, I had to make the opening line of my novella, good. I couldn’t disappoint Atwood, could I? So I wrote and in the spring of 2015, I defended my thesis. Afterwards in refining the manuscript for submission to Latitude 46, I knew I didn’t meet Atwood’s challenge. My thesis’ opening line went like so: “The day began with thunder, then, heavy rain punctuated by lightning strikes so near the house, they rattled the windows”. The line had strong images, of rain and thunder. For that reason, I didn’t omit the line but it wasn’t opening-line quality (the line does appear in Rule of Seconds, published by Latitude 46, but as the book’s second line). It was powerful, but lacking. What though? I couldn’t explain it better than the line lacked something, a “punch”. What was a writer to do for guidance and inspiration? I looked to some Canadian heavyweights: My father came across the field carrying the body of the boy who had been drowned. (p. 121, Alice Munro, “Miles City, Montana”, Alice Munro’s Best: Selected Stories, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2006) They’re all dead now. (p. 1, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees, Vintage Canada, Toronto, 1997) The river flowed both ways. (p. 3, Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2007) People, years later, blamed everything on the bees; (p. 1, Robert Kroetsch, What the Crow Said, The University of Alberta Press, Edmonton, 1998) And of course, Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. (p. 1, Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1988) I asked myself, “What can I learn from these lines? What do they have in common? As a reader, why did they draw me in, make me proceed to the next line and onwards?” I examined each line from the perspective of a writer and reader. A writer is always writing for someone, some reader, even if it’s only for him or herself. I determined that those first lines were all to the point, shaved down, any fluff removed. Each created a single image or idea: a man carrying a limp body across a flat grassy field; of death, black-and-white photographs coming to mind; water flowing up and down stream; buzzing of thousands of bees; of time, endless black space. Reaching some answers, I then asked another question, “What image or idea did I want my reader to imagine from the book’s first line?” I didn’t know what the line would say, but I knew how I wanted it to be: sharp, concise, no fluff. One clear image. In the last round of edits before publication, I finally decided on the book’s opening line. When a reader first opens the book to read it or decide whether to buy it, they see this line: “It begins, always, with the eyes”. The eyes, defined image, recognizable, easily imagined. Those opening words, reflecting the reader’s own eyes on the inked page. As writers, do we accept Atwood’s challenge, to “Make the first line good”? By the way, later that night at the fundraiser, Atwood did autograph my copy of Cat’s Eye. Ever since, it has been proudly displayed on my bookcase, top shelf, with the spine uncracked. – Shawna Diane Partridge

So Ya Wanna Be A Writer, Huh? : Part 2

Many writers outline their stories and keep notes on characters, and that’s certainly the recommended method especially if you’re looking to complete long-form fiction such as novels.

Me, I never use ‘em. That’s probably a bad thing, but let me explain.

If you’re reading this right now, the chances are it’s because you’re interested in writing, or at the very least you’re a fan of good stories. For me, a good story is one where I can’t work out the ending. I don’t care if it’s a book or a film or a television show, I’m always trying to work out how it all ends up. If I can figure out the end, I call it out and quickly lose interest. My wife hates that, especially when I’m right.

What can I say, I can’t help myself.

That’s also how I feel about story outlines. If I know how my story will end, chances are other avid readers will be able to figure it out too. The knowledge that other folks read my work and enjoy it is a huge honour for me. The last thing I wanna do is insult their intelligence by giving them a predictable outcome. Sometimes it’s different, though. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a story ending, and then I have to work out how to get there. Simply put, I don’t like having all the answers. What I do is start writing with a general idea, and hope for my mental autopilot to kick in.

Writers know what I’m talking about when I say autopilot. It’s a point you reach when creating fiction where you forget the conscious act of writing. The words are coming and the events in your story are unfolding, but it’s almost like you’re not in control anymore. It’s like the tale is revealing itself to you, like you’re a conduit.

It might sound like bullshit, and it doesn’t always happen when I sit down to write, but that’s what I aim for and it’s the best way I can describe it.

For those of you who are considering writing, my advice is to just do it. What are you waiting for? Hopefully you’ll discover your own autopilot or zone or whatever you want to call it, because that’s when you’ll be doing your best work.

Trust me.

– Robert Dominelli

So Ya Wanna Be A Writer, Huh? : Part 1

For years I was ashamed of being a writer. I certainly never identified myself as one. In jail, all I did was read and write and when an inmate would ask me “Hey Bobbo, why you always writing in that notebook?” I’d answer them with sarcasm and a little humiliation. “Cause I can’t sing and I can’t fuckin’ dance, that’s why. Do your own time, will ya?”

These days I embrace being called a writer, after all I’ve been called worse. I’ve been recognized by my peers as an author and I’ve had my work published. Let me tell you folks, that’s a great feeling.

Now I’m going to tell you a bit about how I do it.

I don’t know how many of you were fans of comic books growing up, but one of my favorite titles was What If? By Marvel comics. Every month the issue would have stories postulating what would happen if a key event in comics history had been changed or never happened. Stories like What if Spider Mans Uncle Ben never died? For those of you who aren’t comic book geeks like me, Peter Parker’s beloved Uncle was shot and killed by a mugger, a tragedy that convinced the young man to use his newly-developed super-powers to help people and fight crime.

Those books inspired me to start writing and taught me the first important lesson about creating stories, which is write what you know. The fiction comes when you ask what if?

It works no matter who you are or what you do. For example, if you’re a gas station attendant, you know what your normal shift consists of. A car rolls up to the pumps, you jog out to the driver’s window and find out how much petro they want. Would they like their fluids checked? That kinda thing.

In your story though, maybe you notice the man behind the wheel looks sweaty and nervous. Maybe he doesn’t look at you as he tells you to fill the tank, instead he stares straight ahead and seems impatient. His hands are locked on the steering wheel, and is that blood you see on his fingers? You think it might be.

Should you ask him if he’s okay? The thought crosses your mind but judging by the driver’s quick speech and demeanor, you decide to just give him his gas and let him go on his way. He probably just got in a fist-fight, it’s no big deal and none of your business anyway.

You walk to the rear of the vehicle, pop open the little fuel door and unscrew the lid to the fuel receptacle. Just as you grab the hose and activate the pump you hear a knocking coming from the trunk. The driver heard it too, because the car door opens and he steps out….

See?

Of course there’s a million ways to do this, and just as many ways to tell the story. The example above is told in the first-person point of view, but I find it’s more fun to create a character to substitute for yourself. Instead of You, the gas bar attendant, a writer can create a whole new person with his or her own look, manner of speaking, weaknesses and strengths, nervous ticks and so on. This fictional person has all the knowledge and experience working as a petro-pump jockey as you do, except they might react differently to things. That’s part of the fun of creating your own make-believe people.

– Robert Dominelli

Grieving and Writing

Pondering some of the creative non-fiction I have written and subsequently published, I realize that the themes or subject matter definitely relate to times of loss and grieving. Without exception, the writing of these stories helped me through the dark passage of grief toward the light at the end of the tunnel—the light of acceptance and validation, and peace.

Giving yourself the permission to vent your sorrow and express your feelings on the non-judgmental page, by stroke of pen or computer keys, you inevitably spark the flame of creativity. Allowing yourself a means of being creative, you are going inward to the depths of your soul: the place that sustains your spirit. And during times of loss, grief, and suffering, you need to be in touch with yourself, and connect with all things that bring purpose to your life and elevate your spirit.

There is a purpose in spilling your emotions on the page. For Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, “writing is a psychological as well as a physical activity.” (p. 28, The Right to Write, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998. “Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.” “Writing about the change, we can help it along, lean into it, cooperate. Writing allows us to rewrite our lives.” (p. 31, ibid.)

In my story “Daddy’s Girl,” I reflect on the deteriorating health of my father, who has Parkinson’s Disease and has been hospitalized after a heart attack in 2000. Writing this story after spending hours and days with Dad in the hospital, observing the comings and goings of staff, noting Dad’s actions and reactions, I come to terms with his limitations, and I accept my own in the face of his decline.

Sorrowfully, I think about the colour being leached from his life, fading like a photograph exposed to too much sunlight.

Memories return like snapshots: my father comforting me after a bad dream; helping me with Grade 5 math; buying me a huge blackboard for my 11th birthday; puttering in his garden; raising rabbits and chickens; laughing at the antics of my baby daughter; holding my newborn son; learning he has Parkinson’s disease; becoming stiffer as his illness progresses; crying when I rub his aching back with liniment; doing ‘Tai Chi for Parkinson’s’ video exercises; squeezing my hand in the emergency room . . .

Tearfully, I pray that my father is blessed with sweet dreams. In brilliant colour. (pp. 270-271, Mamma Mia! Good Italian Girls Talk Back, ECW Press, Toronto, 2004)

In another story, “Angel of God,” I revisit the details of my sister Pina’s death at seventeen, the result of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. I was fifteen at the time, but it was not until another loss in my life seventeen years later, the ending of my first marriage, that I truly felt the ache of her absence. What I would have given for my sister’s comforting arms, her support. I eventually wrote the story one night after a weekend away with some friends, and the dam that had built since Pina’s death burst as my words appeared on the computer screen. I felt the immensity of the loss. The trauma. Within the story is a letter I wrote to Pina, sharing my sadness and loneliness. My tears flowed steadily, and when the story came to an end, I felt the heavy yoke of repressed grief dissolve.

When I completed the letter, I was spent emotionally, but at peace. I had finally mourned my sister. And from that moment, I felt her angel wings embracing me, giving me the strength I needed to carry on. (p. 62, Canadian Woman Studies, Women Writing 3: Journeys, Inanna Publications and Education, Inc., 2007)

For more information, I strongly recommend Louise DeSalvo’s book: Writing As A Way Of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, Beacon Press, Boston, 1999.

– Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli