Writing

I am a writer. Always have been, always will be. I've always carried the feeling that life is the script for a book, perhaps because I've kept a journal on and off since I was thirteen, writing my own story. Not that much that I've written has ever been published -- to date, I've seen in print only a half dozen newspaper reflections, two magazine articles, and a goofy piece about my daughter's halloween costume debacle on the Facts and Arguments page at the end of Toronto's Globe and Mail.

Of course, publication isn't the measure of success for most writers. I suspect that there are more of us who have never been published than there are who have been. And that's okay! Fine, in fact, because we write, most of us, in the full knowledge that what we write may never go beyond file 13 (or whatever number you use to designate your waste basket). Writers put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard for the sheer joy of expressing ourselves. It's a creative act that nets very few of us anything but creative pleasure.

I blame my love of writing on two people. Violet Hansen was my grade two teacher. Due to a broken arm, she learned to write equally well with both hands back in the days when good penmanship was something that was encouraged (I know, I'm dating myself). It was Mrs. Hansen who helped me to publish my first and only book, which I still possess. She even sewed the construction paper cover onto the newsprint. The book is called, "All About Me" and is filled with drawings and accounts of life according to a seven-year-old. The Table of Contents lists such riveting chapters as: Me, My Birthday, When I am Big (I was planning to be a nurse), and Something Funny I Remember. The back pages are filled with purple-print glued-in poems that Mrs. Hansen copied with a Gestetner, the predecessor to the photocopier (I saw a photocopier for the first time when I was in grade three, on a field trip to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix with Miss Carson, but that's another dating-myself-story). Mrs. Hansen showed me how easy it was to write a book when I was young and impressionable, and it's partly her fault that I have actually written one as an adult.

The other person who is to blame has already been mentioned in an earlier moodling. When I moved away from small town Saskatchewan at age nine, Cathy decided to be my penpal, and corresponding with her through the angsty teen years led me into poetry and journalling. When the internet got up and running, we jumped into email. She was more of a writer than I was back then, taking creative writing class and forming a writing club with her brother and a cousin. Eventually, the two of us formed a club of our own, and when that began, it set off 22 short stories (thus far) and a novel that took me five years to complete.

With Cathy's support and encouragement, I sent my novel to a publisher this spring, and received my first rejection letter in August. "Only 99 more rejection letters to go," another friend quipped. Honestly, I wasn't surprised, but it did take the wind out of my sails somewhat. I dropped the creative writing after I mailed off the manuscript in April, and haven't done any since.

Then Cathy suggested a blog, and suddenly I'm back to creative writing with a vengeance. For the joy of it. It costs nothing, and it feels good. It's a bit strange to think that anyone can read this stuff, but no one really will. That's cool. I know who I'm writing for!