Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 198
August 25, 2015
Camilla Gibb leads the charge
I am writing an essay on how to get published, especially on self-publishing, for my students, and after reading a draft, Chris Cameron, one of my editors, urged me not to be so negative - not to focus on what kids now call "the big fail." I was writing about my own experiences, both with my first book which was published by a good American university press and got almost no publicity, and with my next two books which were midway between being published and self-published and received almost no publicity. A certain despair creeps in.
So in the rewrites, I have tried to be more positive about both self-publishing and the regular publishing world. But I have to say that it would not be fair to paint too rosy a picture. It's not rosy. For almost all of us, it's near-starvation.
My friend Piers Hemmingsen, who's producing a Beatles event at the Revue Cinema tomorrow night - it's the 50th anniversary of "Help," so he's got a remastered copy and will speak, and I will be there - suggested I get in touch with the owner of the wonderful Another Story bookstore nearby on Roncesvalles about carrying my Beatles book. I stopped by there a few weeks ago and left the postcards I've had made about both my books (marketing!) waited for her to get back from vacation, spoke to her today. Would she carry them, even on consignment? "Let me ask this: do you have a sense of who will come in to ask for them?" she said.
Yes, I do have a sense of that - no one. As I write in the essay, marketing is key - and marketing is what I am hopeless at. There has been almost none, no one knows my books exist, so the nice lady doesn't want them. Without marketing, you can write a magnificent book, and you're toast. And mine are nowhere near that. Double toast.
So in that vein, I hope Camilla Gibb is happy. As anyone in Canada cannot help but know, she recently brought out a memoir, "This is Happy," about the breakup of her marriage (as we also all know, to Heather Conway, a vice-president at CBC, who walked out on her when she was a few months pregnant - I love it, the revenge of the writer!), about pregnancy and birth and family. As far as I can tell, she has been reviewed in every paper known to Canadians. I shake my head in wonder and congratulate her. She's beautiful, she's a very talented writer, and she has hit it out of the park with this one. And good for her. It gives us all hope.
It's getting chilly - hard to believe August is nearly over. Where did it go?
So in the rewrites, I have tried to be more positive about both self-publishing and the regular publishing world. But I have to say that it would not be fair to paint too rosy a picture. It's not rosy. For almost all of us, it's near-starvation.
My friend Piers Hemmingsen, who's producing a Beatles event at the Revue Cinema tomorrow night - it's the 50th anniversary of "Help," so he's got a remastered copy and will speak, and I will be there - suggested I get in touch with the owner of the wonderful Another Story bookstore nearby on Roncesvalles about carrying my Beatles book. I stopped by there a few weeks ago and left the postcards I've had made about both my books (marketing!) waited for her to get back from vacation, spoke to her today. Would she carry them, even on consignment? "Let me ask this: do you have a sense of who will come in to ask for them?" she said.
Yes, I do have a sense of that - no one. As I write in the essay, marketing is key - and marketing is what I am hopeless at. There has been almost none, no one knows my books exist, so the nice lady doesn't want them. Without marketing, you can write a magnificent book, and you're toast. And mine are nowhere near that. Double toast.
So in that vein, I hope Camilla Gibb is happy. As anyone in Canada cannot help but know, she recently brought out a memoir, "This is Happy," about the breakup of her marriage (as we also all know, to Heather Conway, a vice-president at CBC, who walked out on her when she was a few months pregnant - I love it, the revenge of the writer!), about pregnancy and birth and family. As far as I can tell, she has been reviewed in every paper known to Canadians. I shake my head in wonder and congratulate her. She's beautiful, she's a very talented writer, and she has hit it out of the park with this one. And good for her. It gives us all hope.
It's getting chilly - hard to believe August is nearly over. Where did it go?
August 24, 2015
MACCA!
Well - yes and no. It's Monday morning 8 a.m. and the Paul McCartney tickets, for his concert here Oct. 17, go on sale in two hours. And I have to say, re the above, that there's no question Macca is an artist, a great one, but he does not seem to have the slightest inclination to hide, if his non-stop international tours to hundreds of thousands of people are any indication.I on the other hand, sitting silently in my garden with my aching back, my tapping fingers and my thoughts ... communicating and hiding. Blogging so much to you, yet hardly ever leaving my home.
Are you an artistic recluse? A show off? Something in between?
Two hours later: Elizabeth, you're going to Paul McCartney: Out There!
Exhausting - I was ready at the computer the minute the tickets went on sale, as a member of his website getting first dibs - trying to get in, confused, it wasn't working, then I got in, then the seat vanished, then there was a seat but there was a Ticketmaster password, I couldn't remember mine had to get a new one - TREMBLING. But I got a seat. A very good seat. My 65th birthday present to myself, along with the guitar I bought last week that will be delivered soon from Quebec. It's time to stop buying myself birthday presents NOW. Nothing will top this.
August 23, 2015
about writing and the perils of this chair
It's the tenth anniversary of the fire in my basement, which happened mid-August 2005. As I gazed at the stinking, smouldering ruins, I thought my life was in ruins too. And then the insurance paid for them to rip out my kitchen and basement and build them again, all beautiful and new. That fire was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Go figure. Of course, all the appliances, which are 9 years old, are starting to break at once. First world problems. Happy anniversary, dear beloved house.
One thing they don't teach you in writing school is how to keep your bum and legs from going to sleep. I've been sitting here for so long today that my lower half has gone numb and my back aches. That's bad. I just can't fathom a walking desk. Too much going on at once for my old brain. No, sitting it is. Must move more tomorrow.
But I've had a wonderful solitary day again. Last night I worked till midnight and was awake at 6, up at 7. Had a tiny jogette, listening to Eleanor Wachtel while cooking, read the newspaper, and otherwise, just worked on the memoir. Oh, and picked some veggies.
Did I talk to anyone? A brief phone call or two. No, only one, and some texting. Oh, and I got milk and avocados at No Frills. Otherwise - 1979.
And this - this motionless silent day with sore back - is heaven for a writer. One of the things I did was to go through old stuff in my Documents file to see if there was anything I could use. Found lots of interesting bits, not useful necessarily but good to read again. I found a file I'd made in 2002 for a conference of UBC Creative Writing graduates that I flew out for, of diary entries I'd written when I was studying with them. I'd forgotten how very self-deprecating I was about writing - how frightened, how convinced I could never do it. Of course, I had a small child and an extremely busy husband, then moved across the country to Ottawa where I worked doing voiceover for documentaries and did my Master's long distance. But I still blamed myself for not writing in a disciplined way, I just can't do it, I wrote in my diary.
And then I wrote this. I was 33 - and though I didn't know it yet, I was probably just pregnant with my son, who was born October 13.
Jan. 17, 1984
It has just occurred to me and dawned on me and hit me like a beam of light and the blow of a hammer: I do want to be a good writer. I do I do.
There is something about this process – this sitting alone at a desk with paper and pen – that I love, that feels right, that should be. This I feel respect for, as a craft, a profession, a life’s work. Another futile page of words – a profession overcrowded and underpaid in a world increasingly less literary – but the beauty of writing, the decisions between brain and pen, gut and brain and pen – and then what there is, what is left behind, is something to READ.
So it is time to DO this. Do it hard and often and with concentration – and with only your own eyes to tell you if it’s working, and only your own need to get you in here and sit you down, and make you bend over this page and get on with it.
You must believe that not only are you meant to be doing this but that it means something to others that you do this – that someone will want to read you. And that what you write, when you eventually learn how to do it well, will move someone, or give someone pleasure, or a new thought.
I want to be a writer when I grow up.
And I did, though it took me a very long time. My first book wasn't published until 23 years later. But I got there eventually. And here I am. With numb bum.
One thing they don't teach you in writing school is how to keep your bum and legs from going to sleep. I've been sitting here for so long today that my lower half has gone numb and my back aches. That's bad. I just can't fathom a walking desk. Too much going on at once for my old brain. No, sitting it is. Must move more tomorrow.
But I've had a wonderful solitary day again. Last night I worked till midnight and was awake at 6, up at 7. Had a tiny jogette, listening to Eleanor Wachtel while cooking, read the newspaper, and otherwise, just worked on the memoir. Oh, and picked some veggies.
Did I talk to anyone? A brief phone call or two. No, only one, and some texting. Oh, and I got milk and avocados at No Frills. Otherwise - 1979.And this - this motionless silent day with sore back - is heaven for a writer. One of the things I did was to go through old stuff in my Documents file to see if there was anything I could use. Found lots of interesting bits, not useful necessarily but good to read again. I found a file I'd made in 2002 for a conference of UBC Creative Writing graduates that I flew out for, of diary entries I'd written when I was studying with them. I'd forgotten how very self-deprecating I was about writing - how frightened, how convinced I could never do it. Of course, I had a small child and an extremely busy husband, then moved across the country to Ottawa where I worked doing voiceover for documentaries and did my Master's long distance. But I still blamed myself for not writing in a disciplined way, I just can't do it, I wrote in my diary.
And then I wrote this. I was 33 - and though I didn't know it yet, I was probably just pregnant with my son, who was born October 13.
Jan. 17, 1984
It has just occurred to me and dawned on me and hit me like a beam of light and the blow of a hammer: I do want to be a good writer. I do I do.
There is something about this process – this sitting alone at a desk with paper and pen – that I love, that feels right, that should be. This I feel respect for, as a craft, a profession, a life’s work. Another futile page of words – a profession overcrowded and underpaid in a world increasingly less literary – but the beauty of writing, the decisions between brain and pen, gut and brain and pen – and then what there is, what is left behind, is something to READ.
So it is time to DO this. Do it hard and often and with concentration – and with only your own eyes to tell you if it’s working, and only your own need to get you in here and sit you down, and make you bend over this page and get on with it.
You must believe that not only are you meant to be doing this but that it means something to others that you do this – that someone will want to read you. And that what you write, when you eventually learn how to do it well, will move someone, or give someone pleasure, or a new thought.
I want to be a writer when I grow up.
And I did, though it took me a very long time. My first book wasn't published until 23 years later. But I got there eventually. And here I am. With numb bum.
August 22, 2015
Margaret Atwood takes on The Man with the Iron Hair
No one has offered box seats to the McCartney concert yet. Where are you, knight with shining tickets? Never mind - maybe someone will. And if not, I'll just have to line up (on the internet) on Monday morning with everyone else. And you can be sure that I will.
Another absolutely perfect mild sunny day, and again I am aware of my stick-in-the-mudness - hardly ventured from my backyard. I did have to walk to the Y, because yesterday I'd ridden there for a class and left my bike, taken the TTC for the rest of my errands, which included having my right ear blown out with warm water at the doctor's. ("It's completely blocked!" she said, as she peered with her little light. What a relief after.) So today I went to get my bike and while there, discovered the "Green Day" event on the Y roof. Got a new bike map and met a man from The Backyard Urban Farm Company, made an appointment for them to come and give me advice on my veggies, which need help. My tomatoes are out of control and my zucchini are invisible. There must be a happy medium.
I have not made my anti-Harper buttons yet, but Richard appeared at the door yesterday with a great button: October 19, 2015: Harper's Last Day. I wore it all day and had many compliments. Everyone downtown feels the same way. Unfortunately, downtown Toronto does not control the political future of the country. More's the pity.
Speaking of which - the redoubtable Margaret Atwood had a wonderful anti-Harper article in the right-wing National Post, which was taken down from the website only an hour after it was posted. But luckily, thanks to the vigilance of the websters, it is available to us. On this stunning August weekend, please ENJOY!
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ANNY9M7J2kGIJ%3Anews.nationalpost.com%2Ffull-comment%2Fmargaret-atwood-stephen-harpers-bad-hair-days+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
Another absolutely perfect mild sunny day, and again I am aware of my stick-in-the-mudness - hardly ventured from my backyard. I did have to walk to the Y, because yesterday I'd ridden there for a class and left my bike, taken the TTC for the rest of my errands, which included having my right ear blown out with warm water at the doctor's. ("It's completely blocked!" she said, as she peered with her little light. What a relief after.) So today I went to get my bike and while there, discovered the "Green Day" event on the Y roof. Got a new bike map and met a man from The Backyard Urban Farm Company, made an appointment for them to come and give me advice on my veggies, which need help. My tomatoes are out of control and my zucchini are invisible. There must be a happy medium.
I have not made my anti-Harper buttons yet, but Richard appeared at the door yesterday with a great button: October 19, 2015: Harper's Last Day. I wore it all day and had many compliments. Everyone downtown feels the same way. Unfortunately, downtown Toronto does not control the political future of the country. More's the pity.
Speaking of which - the redoubtable Margaret Atwood had a wonderful anti-Harper article in the right-wing National Post, which was taken down from the website only an hour after it was posted. But luckily, thanks to the vigilance of the websters, it is available to us. On this stunning August weekend, please ENJOY!
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ANNY9M7J2kGIJ%3Anews.nationalpost.com%2Ffull-comment%2Fmargaret-atwood-stephen-harpers-bad-hair-days+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
August 21, 2015
Macca in T.O.! Ticket info please?
Just trolling on FB - and there it was, the announcement that Macca, our beloved PMc, is coming to the Air Canada Centre on Oct. 17. Yay yay yay. So here's my question - do any of you out there know anyone who knows someone who knows how to get good seats? I'm a member of the Macca website and got a seat through it last time, but even though I started trying just as the site opened for the sale of these particular tickets, my seat was way on the side. How do people get up close? I guess they pay an enormous amount of money or know someone. Anyone, I thought I'd put it out there.
GOOD MACCA TICKETS ... information, please.
I'm immersed in the world of music these day - my dear friend the musician Shari Ulrich was staying with me for a few days, leaving her violin, mandolin and several guitars in the front hall. She practiced on my piano, including the beautiful song "Flying" which I first heard her sing in 1975, the year we became friends, she performing with Pied Pumkin and I with the Valhallelujah Rangers. How long ago that was. She suggested I get a Beatle piano music book, which this afternoon, I did, am already picking out Yesterday. She is now at Owen Sound's Summerfolk which sounds wonderful - hope to get there next year.
A friend just invited me to her cottage for the weekend - and I said thank you very much, another time. I would love, just love to be at a cottage, to dive into a lake and walk in the woods. But I'm sitting here looking at the dusk light touch the flowers, listening to the sparrows going to sleep, with absolutely nothing on the schedule for the weekend except delving into my writing project, maybe seeing the family across town, maybe not. Eating drinking sleeping reading writing - does it get better than that? So renting a car and driving for two hours, though it would take me to a serene woodland retreat, is not on the agenda. I'm becoming a happy recluse.
Except for on October 17, when I would like to be front row centre, throwing Paul copies of my book.
GOOD MACCA TICKETS ... information, please.
I'm immersed in the world of music these day - my dear friend the musician Shari Ulrich was staying with me for a few days, leaving her violin, mandolin and several guitars in the front hall. She practiced on my piano, including the beautiful song "Flying" which I first heard her sing in 1975, the year we became friends, she performing with Pied Pumkin and I with the Valhallelujah Rangers. How long ago that was. She suggested I get a Beatle piano music book, which this afternoon, I did, am already picking out Yesterday. She is now at Owen Sound's Summerfolk which sounds wonderful - hope to get there next year.
A friend just invited me to her cottage for the weekend - and I said thank you very much, another time. I would love, just love to be at a cottage, to dive into a lake and walk in the woods. But I'm sitting here looking at the dusk light touch the flowers, listening to the sparrows going to sleep, with absolutely nothing on the schedule for the weekend except delving into my writing project, maybe seeing the family across town, maybe not. Eating drinking sleeping reading writing - does it get better than that? So renting a car and driving for two hours, though it would take me to a serene woodland retreat, is not on the agenda. I'm becoming a happy recluse.
Except for on October 17, when I would like to be front row centre, throwing Paul copies of my book.
August 19, 2015
cast and crew
Wow, it's hot. Had a group of my friends from the Y over for lunch and we sat on the deck glistening with sweat and devouring large plates of food. Funny how even great heat does not diminish appetite. And eating really a lot doesn't either; after an enormous lunch at 3, I just had a full dinner at 7.30. The amazing stomach. Lunch was because a group of us have met for years in class but had not actually talked outside of the Y, with our clothes on. So we did today. And how.
Eli is off at a cottage with his dad for a few days, so it was only Ben and his mama here last night; they stay here Tuesday nights because of Ben's early morning appointments at Sick Kid's down the road, to change the cast on his leg. Last night, in the absence of a bouncy 3 year old, Anna and I watched a Bill Murray movie, St. Vincent, while Ben expressed his displeasure at the world loudly from his car seat. Loudly; he is a more demanding baby than Eli, who was, of course, two pounds bigger at birth and grew exponentially. I thought again, as we tried to stop the squalling, this is a young woman's job. But Glamma will do her best.
Anna had invited me to come with her to Sick Kids. We left the house at 7.20 a.m., soaked and took off his cast ourselves, then met Barb, the phenomenal woman who does all the casting for club feet there, as the many pictures of turned and then healthy feet on her wall attest. She showed us how very far his foot has turned in only two weeks - quite amazing, it's almost straight. Another few weeks of the cast, then a "procedure," a small operation, and then he wears boots with a bar between them 22 hours a day for a few months, then only at night for a few years. And then - though one leg will always be a bit smaller - he will walk perfectly normally and can do any sport. Barb said the incidence of club feet is one in 800 births. I marvelled - but I've never encountered one before! Oh sure you have, you just didn't know, she said. It used to be a stigma and people didn't talk about it. Now you can get a t-shirt at the hospital that says "Feet under construction."
The wonders of the modern world.
I'll leave you with a rant about something that drives me crazy - the thoughtless denigration of writing classes. There's a book review in the Saturday Star by someone called Andre Van Loon that begins, "The Given World is a debut novel by an American author who has spent several years in formal creative writing education, yet who achieves her best effects through innate honesty."
YET? YET?!! As if there's something about a writing education that dispels honesty, when in my classes, that is our most important goal. Well, that and craft - skilful writing in the service of telling the truth. Phooey on you, Mr. Loon. I'm so miffed, I need another substantial snack.
Eli is off at a cottage with his dad for a few days, so it was only Ben and his mama here last night; they stay here Tuesday nights because of Ben's early morning appointments at Sick Kid's down the road, to change the cast on his leg. Last night, in the absence of a bouncy 3 year old, Anna and I watched a Bill Murray movie, St. Vincent, while Ben expressed his displeasure at the world loudly from his car seat. Loudly; he is a more demanding baby than Eli, who was, of course, two pounds bigger at birth and grew exponentially. I thought again, as we tried to stop the squalling, this is a young woman's job. But Glamma will do her best.
Anna had invited me to come with her to Sick Kids. We left the house at 7.20 a.m., soaked and took off his cast ourselves, then met Barb, the phenomenal woman who does all the casting for club feet there, as the many pictures of turned and then healthy feet on her wall attest. She showed us how very far his foot has turned in only two weeks - quite amazing, it's almost straight. Another few weeks of the cast, then a "procedure," a small operation, and then he wears boots with a bar between them 22 hours a day for a few months, then only at night for a few years. And then - though one leg will always be a bit smaller - he will walk perfectly normally and can do any sport. Barb said the incidence of club feet is one in 800 births. I marvelled - but I've never encountered one before! Oh sure you have, you just didn't know, she said. It used to be a stigma and people didn't talk about it. Now you can get a t-shirt at the hospital that says "Feet under construction."
The wonders of the modern world.
I'll leave you with a rant about something that drives me crazy - the thoughtless denigration of writing classes. There's a book review in the Saturday Star by someone called Andre Van Loon that begins, "The Given World is a debut novel by an American author who has spent several years in formal creative writing education, yet who achieves her best effects through innate honesty."
YET? YET?!! As if there's something about a writing education that dispels honesty, when in my classes, that is our most important goal. Well, that and craft - skilful writing in the service of telling the truth. Phooey on you, Mr. Loon. I'm so miffed, I need another substantial snack.
August 18, 2015
THIS PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.
I've dreamed, each election, of having a giant poster in my front yard of Harper's face beside a timber wolf, with their icy eyes - the wolf, however, noble, the other vile. This year, I decided to at least have a button made that I can wear and also give out to anyone else who wants one. Anna found a button making place near her, and this morning, I asked my genius friend Chris, who's extremely adept with images on his computer, to make a specific image. He sent this. Perfect perfect perfect. Please feel free to make buttons of your own, share, get it out there. Thank you, Chris!
August 17, 2015
seafood ahoy
For those in Toronto seeking good times next Sunday ... my son's restaurant and his cocktail throwdown. Whatever that is. I myself can't stand the thought of all those lobsters in boiling water and will not be there. And I'm a good Nova Scotian too. But you can go.
August 16, 2015
Oliver Sacks on the Sabbath, and life
Met Anna and her boys to explore "Open Streets" this morning - but it is very hot today and the streets, while open, are very long. Eli is feeling the displacement all first-borns feel after the birth of the second; this most independent and forthright young man is clinging to his mother and anxious about her whereabouts - and just when he needs her most, his mother is exhausted and preoccupied.
Been there, done that - both as a mother myself, dealing with a 3 year old daughter and a newborn son, and as a first-born, painfully displaced from my place in the sun by my new baby brother. One of life's tough transitions, no doubt about it - and no doubt, too, that young Eli will get through it just fine, and so will his mother and brother. But when it's very hot outside, everyone's drained.
Almost nothing gives me greater pleasure than reading an essay that resonates deeply, that's beautifully written and deeply personal and wise. Oliver Sacks is one of my heroes - an extraordinary man and a very good writer, writing with ever more generosity, clarity and depth as he faces death from terminal cancer. Here's a particularly beautiful essay in today's NYT - the same paper with the superb takedown of Stephen Harper. Please read the other articles by Oliver attached to this one, about finding out about his cancer at the age of 81, and a further reaction to it. Stunning, moving, uplifting - as good as personal essay writing gets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks-sabbath.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
Been there, done that - both as a mother myself, dealing with a 3 year old daughter and a newborn son, and as a first-born, painfully displaced from my place in the sun by my new baby brother. One of life's tough transitions, no doubt about it - and no doubt, too, that young Eli will get through it just fine, and so will his mother and brother. But when it's very hot outside, everyone's drained.
Almost nothing gives me greater pleasure than reading an essay that resonates deeply, that's beautifully written and deeply personal and wise. Oliver Sacks is one of my heroes - an extraordinary man and a very good writer, writing with ever more generosity, clarity and depth as he faces death from terminal cancer. Here's a particularly beautiful essay in today's NYT - the same paper with the superb takedown of Stephen Harper. Please read the other articles by Oliver attached to this one, about finding out about his cancer at the age of 81, and a further reaction to it. Stunning, moving, uplifting - as good as personal essay writing gets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/oliver-sacks-sabbath.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
