How and Why.

In June 2008 I had a minor operation on my foot and had to keep it up for what turned out to be 6 weeks. At the same time I got a new laptop and my husband went away for two weeks leaving me alone. Now this does not happen often since we both work at home, so I usually love it when he goes on a trip without me.

I could hobble for a few minutes at a time, so I was okay on my own. The weather was lovely and I remember thinking, gleefully if slightly fearfully, that this was the time.

So I started my first novel. Plunged in, working hours each day, foot up on the coffee table, the chairs on the screened in back porch or further outside, almost unheeding of hummingbirds buzzing by me.

The premise? I didn’t really have one. I work a lot on visuals and that’s where I started. When I lived at Honeymoon Bay on Vancouver Island in the 1980’s there was a cabin on the lake around the corner from our house (which was not on the lake). Like my heroine, I couldn’t really see the cabin.

“Her foot hit the brake when she saw the cabin by the lake. All that was visible through the trees was a crumbling chimney and broken window, half-hidden by overgrown lilacs . . . A rope hung across the head of the lane that wound through tall fir trees toward the cabin. Nailed to one massive trunk was a faded No Trespassing sign. Squinting to read it, she decided it was so faint it could almost be considered and invitation …”

The cabin is still there, and I have still not seen it, which was probably for the best because for years I hung stories on that chimney. There were other things that sparked stories for me too and I just started rolling them all together. I was a dark room photographer at that point, in the ‘80’s, and so is my heroine. In some ways she is my alter ego, for instance she is on the brink of becoming a successful photographer – something that never happened to me, not in that way. In other ways, most other ways, we are totally different.

I was amazied how the story emerged from somewhere in the ether with what felt like no help of my own. Although the place, which I called Fortune Bay, was very like Honeymoon Bay, the people were not based on anyone I knew there. The characters emerged fully formed and were revealed to me as the story progressed. I would say to people, “And it turns out she was”, or “had been”, or “her mother was”, and they would say, “What do you mean ‘It turns out’!?” So much of it came as a surprise to me. I couldn’t concentrate on reading stories in real books, I just wanted to know what happened next to my characters. The next chapter was out there, I just had to sit down and type it.

Now this doesn’t mean the story came together quickly. I made every mistake in the book, in all the books and I did read them all. Am still reading about how to write. They say to write about what you know and writers out there have complied. If you, as a beginning writer, haven’t availed yourself of this fount of information, by all means do, either from the library or buy them. Most are very inexpensive. In another blog entry I will list a few books I have found particularly helpful.

So what would I say to someone who has been playing with an idea? Plunge in. If worst comes to worst, there is always the delete button.

And who knows, like me, you might get carried away.

A writer - coming out of the closet.

I am a writer. Since I spend the greater part of everyday writing, I think that qualifies me to call myself a writer. I have even had a few articles published, but now I’m working on the big one – a novel.

My dad, whose name was Gordon Meyers, was a writer, so I know it is possible to support yourself and your family by writing. Even so it took me to my mid-fifties to start writing fiction. I don’t regret the other things I did in the meantime, it’s all grist for the mill, but I do wish I’d started sooner. I encourage anyone reading this who is considering it to give it a shot – now.

But I wish my father was still alive so I could ask him if he had ever wanted to write a novel. Today I asked my mother, who simply said, "He could never afford to take the time. He had a family to support." So he wrote for the Sears catalogue to begin with, then for Howdy Doody, a Canadian children's show of the 1950s. Then he went, very successfully, into advertising to support his family. Later in life he wrote for Ideas, a CBC radio show, and countless other things, but never a novel. And all of this with a grade 8 education. But those were different days. It was the 1930's, to be exact, when he quit school to go into the family painting and paperhanging business. But I digress.

He could never afford to write a novel. Don't I know it. I am on my second book, a murder mystery, while my first, a contemporary romance, is out shopping for agents. I feel it is out shopping without me. I did spend a lot of time getting it ready before sending it out into the world, but once I pushed 'Send', it was on it's own.

It is two years since I started working on the novels, and if I wasn't a "kept" woman, ie. married to a very supportive man, I couldn't be concentrating on writing to this extent.

This is the start of my writer's blog. Why and I writing them? Maybe to start a dialogue with other writers. Like my son said, just write all the stuff you talk to us about. Stuff they don’t necessarily want to hear. Everyday. And maybe other writers do.

How and Why I started on my first book, well, that's for next time.

Love to hear from other writers out there. Or agents...