Vanessa Shields's Blog, page 59

Talking and Listening

The dishes are calling but I’m not listening. Cuss them.

Today.

Today I did a lot of talking. Like, a lot.

Never underestimate the power of talking. Of having a conversation.

Never underestimate the power of listening. Of being an integral part of a human-to-human exchange.

Writers write and writers read, this is true. Absolutely.

But writers listen too. And they talk. A lot.

At least I do. And so do other writers I know and love and learn from.

Writing dialogue is an important part of our craft. Doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or not – dialogue is everywhere. It follows then that engaging in real-life dialogue is kind of research, right? A sure way to practice this important part of the writing craft.

So, if you’re like me, and you realize that you spent three hours in a row talking and listening, know that it counts as work.

It counts as supporting your writing life and the relationships you have in your life, which likely also support your writing life in many different ways.

I started thinking that maybe this day wasn’t as ‘productive’ as I hoped it would be. But then when I really thought about it, I decided that train of thought was bunk. So I got off that train, folks.

And here I am. Sitting at my messy dining room table. Procrastinating, yet also, reflecting (see how procrastination can be a positive thing?), and feeling good about the productivity of the day.

We can measure our success in so many different ways, can’t we?

Talking. Listening. It counts.

And now…dishes.

Happy talking.

Then this happened…

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Gertrude’s Writing Room is a recipient of a $5,000 grant from the Starter Company Plus small business start-up program offered through the Windsor Essex Small Business Centre!

OH NO IT IS ISN’T!
HECK YEAH IT IS!!

Oh friends, I’m just bursting with joy and thanks for being a part of this program. I’ve been a part of it since September 2019 and I’ve learned sooooo much! I was pretty much in small business school for awhile there, and learning so much about how to run a business – that can grow and be successful. Friends, there was math involved. Like, lots of math! But, I did it! And, yes, I’m still learning so very much! But, I found out I got the grant at the end of December after finishing my business plan (94-pages in length. Yowch.) and pitching to a jury of small business experts/owners. I was a hot nervous mess…even dropped a chocolate bar into a coffee cup of one of the jurors. Classic Vanessa. But…it all worked out! Yippee!

LOOK HOW BIG THAT CHEQUE IS! 

I can’t take it to the bank, but I can take the regular size cheque and put it in my new ‘small business’ account. Golly!

The second part of the program includes a mentorship. I can’t wait to meet my mentor! May they be blessed with math brains! Ha!

This is super great news!! What a fabulous start to twenty-twenty!

Thank you to the Windsor Essex Small Business team (Myrtle, Sabrina, Shannon), the Starter Company Plus team, and YOU for all your love and support for keeping this mama’s…this small business owner’s...dream alive and thriving!

THANK YOU!

At the Library with Julia Roberts

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This morning after I woke up but realized I didn’t have to actually get up yet, I fell back asleep and dreamt that Julia Roberts and I were best friends. We met at a library and started talking about books. Through our love of words and storytelling, we became fast friends. The dream consisted of me meeting her in the library or in a house (her house?), and we’d talk and she’d tell me all about her life. She laughed her mountainous laugh. Her hair was always wild and beautiful. I was so happy!

I think I had this dream because last night we watched the Golden Globes. It was an interesting show. I watched until the end because I wanted to see who would win Best Actor in a Drama. We recently watched Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker’, and Joaquin Phoenix’ performance blew me away.

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Also, he (Joaquin as himself) reminds me of my dad…his eyes…his face shape…I wondered how lovely it would be to watch an award show with my dad if he were still alive.

While yesterday I was thinking about sleeping, today my thoughts are on dreams. The dreams we have with famous people. Do you have them too? I have recurring dreams about Tom Cruise, Madonna, and now, Julia Roberts. It’s really something to wake up and not know where you are because you were so sure you were with Tom Cruise running from bad guys like in a scene in one of his Mission Impossible films…or excited to meet up with Julia at the library or with Madonna backstage after one of her concerts. Famous people. There’s a part of my heart that wants to be famous. For my writing. It would be really amazing to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Keep dreaming, V!

Do I want to be famous? I ask myself this question sometimes. I always feel confused about the answers that pop into my mind. They’re never simple. I’d love for a lot of people to read my words and be affected, provoked in some way. I’d love to be able to afford to my craft every day and to help others do the same – but one doesn’t have to be famous to do this at all. I’d love to travel around the world reading and writing and talking with people about reading and writing. But how would that experience change if I were famous? See…not simple at all. I get a kind of tightened chest…tightened by a bit of guilt and a bit of…what is it? Shame? For the little part of my heart that does want to be famous.

I was in a grade three classroom talking about writing and reading. I asked the kids in the class if anyone wanted to be a writer when they grew up. Only one person put her hand up. I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Every single one who answered prefaced the profession with the word FAMOUS. “I want to be a famous basketball player, Miss,” said one. “I want to be a famous football player,” said another. “I want to be famous on youtube,” said one kid who was bouncing as he said it. I didn’t hold back my surprise. “You all said famous before what you want to be,” I told them. They nodded at me like, yeah, miss, don’t you get it?

And so…I enjoy being baffled by young minds and my own mind as it ages…and regresses…and I continue to ask myself questions like: do you want to be famous?!

Speaking of having a lot of people reading words…I’m reading ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ by Delia Owens. So far…it’s marsh land poetry. That’s a good thing indeed.

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I wonder if Julia read this book? Maybe I’ll ask her in my next dream.

Sleep

[image error]I have slept so much over this break.

So very much.

This morning I woke up around 8:30am – naturally, without an alarm except the alarm that is my bladder telling me I had to pee. Then I went back to sleep and didn’t get out of bed until 9:45am.

It feels like my body naturally wants to wake up in the 8 o’clock hour. Then I don’t feel groggy or sore or wobbly. But if I can sleep longer, I do, and I can.

I have been basking in the softness of our sheets. In the warmth of the dogs laying beside me. Pages has been so close our noses touch. I am remembering the many dreams that my light-sleep brain has from the time I know it’s morning and the time I actually get up. This morning I dreamt about the characters on ‘Veep’ – a show we’ve started watching. It’s so darn funny.

But sleep. Oh, how I love it.

And tomorrow morning…well this version of sleeping will end until the weekend.

I’ll have to wake and get up in the 6 o’clock hour.

I used to be able to get up very early and write. Those days are long gone.

However, my strongest productivity hours include a stint in the morning, usually from 9am – 12noon…then again from 3pm – 5pm – which, of course, is not usually a chunk of time when I do my creative work, unless we want to agree that mothering is a creative feat that includes management and cooking! Yes, we can agree to that.

And so, I say farewell to the long sleeps knowing that they will be few and far between for the next little while.

Naps, you wonder. Will I nap? I don’t know. I don’t have naps built into my days. But perhaps a few quick 20-minute bursts of sleep will help? I’ll let you know.

The break is at its end. I’m feeling anxiety about getting back to a different routine. Alas, it is time. I am well rested. I have stuck to smart eating habits and fitness action which I haven’t done in years. Maybe it’s all possible because of all the sleep!

Enjoy this day, friends!

A Letter To Mitch Albom

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Dear Mitch,

Did Chika love dogs? I just finished reading ‘Finding Chika’. I’m sitting on my sofa in our living room. The Christmas tree is still up, the lights twinkling. Tears stream down my face. At Lesson Six, one of our dogs, a red golden retriever named Pages, who was laying on the sofa across from me, started whining. I always say she talks a lot, our Pages. Lesson Six. I read. She whines. Then page 200 and Chika sings, “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God” for eight minutes straight and you get it on video, and I’m sobbing. 

Pages jumps off her sofa and jumps up onto mine. She’s really whining now, with every breath, and she looks deeply into my eyes. I turn my face to her so she can lick away my tears, which she does, almost ferociously. I keep reading. She sits beside me and leans into me as I turn page after page and cry harder and harder. Page 205, “Please stay.” Then Oscar, our other dog, (another Golden but his fur is white like an angel), moves close to me and lays on my feet. I’m in a dog sandwich. Pages pants. Then your trip to Haiti to purchase two plots at the cemetery. This is unbearable. The dogs both pant. “What we carry defines who we are. And the effort we make is our legacy.” 

And I am still sobbing and thinking that sometimes, we carry other people’s legacies – we hold them, we shape them, we are the givers of these legacies to the world. I think of my ailing Nonna. Ninety-two years-old with dementia eating away her memories. I carry her legacy in my heart, on my skin, in my poetry and my storytelling. If you asked her if she felt her legacy, she’d wave you away and ask you what you wanted to eat. It is the Italian in her. It is the service. She wouldn’t want to ‘burden’ anyone with anything, much less a legacy. And yet, it is constant as each sun and moon rise and fall. It is love. 

Then April 7th. Pages 227-229. I sob so loud and hard my daughter comes to me and asks if I’m okay. The dogs are breathing all over me. She moves through them and leans into me for an embrace. I cry into her shoulder. She is eleven. She is healthy. She lets me weep into her soft neck. We hug for several minutes. I don’t want to let her go – even from this embrace. I love you, mommy, she says. I love you too, I manage through tears. She heads back to her room. I pick up your book. Find Chika, you, Janine again. And page 231. And you and Chika embrace too. You can feel her! “Where is Chika?” she asks. She puts her hand against my heart. “There she is!” And she is gone. 

We do this too. We – me, my husband, our son and our daughter – at least once a day, we each flatten a palm over a heart of each other. Sometimes we say I love you. Sometimes we don’t. The gesture is everything. 

It’s January 4th, 2020. Twenty-twenty. Those two words together are odd in my mouth. Their meaning playing games with my mind…they are part future, part carnival. I remember thinking as a child how far away this year was…unreachable, really. And if reached, it would be to get in a flying car and hop on a hover board to get to a school in the sky. The future is a tricky shadow sometimes. I saved your book knowing that I’d read it over the holidays. That I’d have the space and the time to give my full attention to your words, to your family’s miraculous journey. I remember the front-page article in the Free Press after Chika flew to heaven…I stared at your faces in the picture and had to look away. I wasn’t ready to accept it…I didn’t want to let it into my heart. 

I do that. Some things…the news on most days…I just can’t let it in. I find this started happening when I became a mother. And as my children grow…up and out and beyond what I can protect, there is a constant belt of fear strapped tightly around my heart. Some information is just too much. It tightens the belt. I’m scared it will crush the love I need to keep giving. You know. It’s funny…or maybe odd…or hopeful…but when I was a kid and thinking of the future that is now, I never imagined that there could possibly be the strife, the challenges…the diseases that are still here or that exist at all. I thought all that would be handled somehow…and our biggest challenges would be what star to land on or what food we could eat that would taste great and not be bad for us. 

Christmas came and went…with challenges to family that I’m still trying to navigate…and the end of a decade, a year…slip, sliding into ‘twenty-twenty’ like the world is a just-zamboni-ed ice rink and I barely know how to skate. Your book, Chika, waited patiently for me to pick up and read. I read it slowly…bending up the bottom corners of pages where words struck me extra-specially…and I knew what was coming so I took my time. I ignored you for two full days because I just didn’t want to read to the… 

This morning, the house was quiet. The sofa was waiting. I made coffee. Took your book and my mug with its hot loveliness to the living room. And. I. Read. I read through tears and sobs. And I felt that belt on my heart try to squeeze a new break into it…but the break didn’t come. Instead, two dogs who magically knew to kiss and pant love on me…my daughter with her perfectly strong embrace and love…and the beauty of love that bursts so forcefully it feels like you die too…when a star comes knocking at the door…when an angel gets her wings…when the body frees a soul that has much more life to live and give…when God holds up a child to His lap in the garden of heaven for reasons we have to trust even though none of them feel ‘right’ and maybe never will. 

You. 

Us. 

Lesson One: I Am Your Protection

Lesson Two: Time Changes

Lesson Three: A Sense Of Wonder

Lesson Four: Kid Tough

Lesson Five: When Children Are Yours and Not Yours

Lesson Six: When A Marriage Becomes A Family

Lesson Seven: What We Carry

I want to see what they look like – stacked like a poem…like a list…like a lesson plan. It looks like a mountain with Chika on top. 

Thank you for your brave, vulnerable, honest and intimate sharing. Thanks to Chika for her light and miracles and humour and wisdom and hope. Thanks to Janine for her strength, trust, and resilience. Thank you all for the love you are able to give and receive – for it’s in the ability to love and be loved that enables us to carry the heaviest loads…

We’ve talked on the phone a few times, you and I. We met when I was a teen and you were on the radio and writing your sports columns…before Tuesdays with Morrie or a sparkle of the light that is Chika ever knew they would handle your heart. I have a photo of you and I at one of your book signings here in Windsor. Your face is smiling…calm. Mine is wide-eyed…my smile a little awry. We’re not friends, though for many years it was a dream of mine that we would be writing buds in the least. I wrote you letters over the years…like this one, but different. It’s amazing how much impact a person can have on another. Through short yet powerful exchanges….through words that one writes and another reads. Through love lessons that these words communicate. 

I wondered why you and Janine hadn’t had children. It was a passing thought…nothing more intrusive than that. I knew about your hard work in Haiti…and in one phone conversation you said you were headed there…perhaps I’d make it there one day too. I didn’t know about Chika until I saw the newspaper article with your faces on the front page. I wondered if you’d write about your family. I’m grateful that you have. That you will continue to write about it, I hope. I’m grateful Chika came to guide you through the writing.

My eyes are puffy from crying. Oscar is on the sofa beside me…keeping watch. I wonder, like I always do, if you’ll read this letter…and I feel a little shy for writing out the things my heart and head want to say to you…knowing that we don’t really know each other at all…yet it feels like we really, really do. And I am warmed by the simple truth that writing and reading is what connects us. We are writers. We are compelled and called to use our words to connect with others. It’s a gift. It’s a DNA strain of courage that is constantly evolving. 

For the next bit of time, words will be triggers that reconnect me to ‘Finding Chika’. Someone will say something, and your words will appear in a line from your book. Or a feeling of deep love or hot grief will push on my chest. I think…that there are invisible strings of electric love that connect us. Every human to every human no matter what our circumstances…and maybe certain strings are soooo electric….soooo powerful that they exist differently and they turn into a song or a painting or a book…or a cure…and maybe the braver we each become in our abilities to let ourselves feel that zap – even when we’re afraid of how much it’ll hurt – when we do…it changes us in important ways. Ways necessary to keep this electric love alive. 

I used to hope that we’d be writing buds. That we’d have long talks about writing process and creativity and the power of words to change the world. I get it now. We are. Our long talks are built into the books you write, the stories you share, the courage you teach. Our conversations about process and creativity extend in the ways we share our stories, the way we pass along books, re-read, highlight, use to teach and learn from the words that are written. I feel like I know you because what you write is a door to your soul. It’s open. Like Chika’s is. And it’s enough. It’s bursting-more-than-enough to share a story that you must share because you are a human who is a writer and that is one of your most important gifts. 

Enough. That’s my ‘word’ for this new year…this new decade.

Sigh. I have to blow my nose…wipe my face. 

Okay. I’m back. 

I just put my palm on the cover of your book. And the tears erupt again. It’s like your heart…like Chika’s and Janine’s…like mine and everyone else who reads this miraculous story. We are connected. 

Thank you. 

Vanessa

Underground…

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I’m still underground, friends.

Still in jammy-mode.

Still on sleep-in time.

The kids go back to school on Monday, January sixth so I’m still on a break with them.

I’ve worked hard to stay ‘breaking’ this holiday season. It’s been difficult. Mostly, I’ve paid attention to how being on a break makes me feel. A few words to describe it: confused, discombobulated, unsure, guilty…but also calm, rested, reflected, productive. I’ve been writing in my journal every day. Pages and pages of unloading about, well, everything.

Last night I did my new year oracle card pull and journal. I also found my journal from ten years ago (since this is a new decade we’ve begun), and my journal from last year (shifting into 2019). Two very different entries! I had a good laugh when the entry from January 1, 2010 had ‘we started the year with a ‘bang” in its opening paragraph. Oh the pun. Oh the fun! Two of the oracle cards I pulled last night were the same as two that I pulled last year! They showed up in different places, but it was very cool to see that even after a year of life and dreaming, certain messages remain the same.

I’m not into resolutions.

I am attempting to slide into twenty-twenty like its a freshly zamboni-ed sheet of beautiful ice. I’m not a good skater, you should know. But, the slippery surface makes sense for how wobbly I’ve been feeling. And it’s okay.

The dreams are alive and thriving, so I’m sticking to their cultivation.

But underground I am and I’m enjoying this time for incubation.

INCUBATE: develop slowly without outward or perceptible signs.

Yes, that’s sounds and feels about right.

I wonder when I’ll feel like the sprouting has begun? March? April?

For now, I’m a soul-seed underground…reflecting on this slow development of transition into a new season.

FROM A TO ZIFFERY ZANKS BOOK LAUNCH THIS SUNDAY!

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Looking for a zany and gross but totally fun and wonderful gift for that special child in your life? Look no further – we are proud to announce the book launch of ‘From A to Ziffery Zanks’ – a collection of children’s clerihew poetry. Words by me, Vanessa Shields, and pictures by the great Glen Hawkes!

We’ll be at Rogues Gallery Comics from 12noon-2pm on Sunday, December 8th to sell and sign books – plus our other publications as well! 

GIVE THE GIFT OF A GREAT BOOK!! 

Cost: $15.00 – cash/credit 

THANK YOU! 

If you can’t make it – no sweat! Books will be available for sale at Rogues and Biblioasis! 

Twenty Questions with Harriet Bernstein – Part 2 of 2

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Thank you for reading our first instalment of ‘Twenty Questions with Harriet Bernstein’! Have you fallen in love yet? I hope so! We’ve got ten more questions and answers for you to read, and continue to get to know the incredible woman who is Harriet Bernstein!

Of course, if any of this has resonates with you, you simply must purchase her memoir! I honestly could not put it down, and half the time my mouth was open so wide in shock, wonder and awe it’s a miracle no bugs flew in! I kid, I kid. But really, it’s an important memoir to read on so many levels. Not only does it shine a brilliant light on the relationship between Harriet and Irving Layton – a different and very real ‘other side’ – it exemplifies the brilliant light that is Harriet Bernstein – writer, poet, reader, lover, traveler – and the first woman executive in the Canadian film industry blazing trails that didn’t exist before her. Her story leads us across Ontario and Canada to Italy to Greece…it is a whirlwind of worldly adventures with a young, brilliant, full-hearted, full-lipped feminist woman.

Here’s a link to purchaser Harriet’s book RIGHT NOW!

https://www.inanna.ca/catalog/irving-layton-our-years-together/

(And you can feel great about purchasing the book directly from Inanna Publications too!)

Alrighty friends, here we go! The final ten questions! Enjoy!

11) How did it feel to find a publisher who wanted to publish your story? Was your goal always to get this story published?

Writing this book took a very long time, for reasons already stated. Initially, I may have just wanted to get our story on paper for myself, for some cathartic process, or for family history purposes. However, with time came many other people writing about our life, people who did not speak with me, but felt entitled to offer their usually uninformed opinions nonetheless. It is a truly horrible, traumatic experience to open the pages of your daily newspaper, and see a two-page story, with photos, that some journalist wrote, to sensationalize & exploit your life. Try to imagine how that feels. Then come the “serious” writers, those who take a more academic approach, who write serious biographies about artists; but you can’t speak with them either, because your legal counsel advises against it, and you are mothering a baby while all this horror is unspooling around you. Then you hear your former partner on television or radio, telling his side of your private life in a very public arena. And still you do not engage, you maintain your silence. So, I most definitely crafted this book with the ferocious intention of finding a publisher for it and, finally, putting my truth, the truth as I lived it, out there. I felt that Inanna would be the perfect home for my book, and I was overjoyed when they accepted it for publication. 

12) Describe the editing/revision process? Overall, how can you describe this process?

The process of writing this book took decades. In a way, the hardest part was getting down the first draft, because I am very self-critical, so just allowing the words to come out raw without self-editing was difficult. Then, in later versions, the fact that my young woman’s voice sometimes made me, as an older woman, cringe and I wanted to edit, to change my words from my journal, but I could not because this was a truth-telling book and to edit my words would have been dishonest. You have to, above all,  blacken the page and edit later. This book was edited more times that I can say, and like many writers, I probably would have kept on editing it forever. Deadlines are hard, but necessary, and force a clarity of vision, a distillation. The book is just the right length. At the end of my process, Inanna offered an invaluable editorial process for which I will always be grateful, and from which I learned much. 

13) How did you feel leading up to your book launch? 14) What was it like to get on stage, book in hand, and talk about and read from your book? 

The week of my book launch, I had a bad tooth that was causing acute & extreme pain. We’ve all had that experience, and know how absolutely distracting tooth pain can be. I was on antibiotics and painkillers! The tooth came out the very next week, in fact. So, that was an additional little challenge I would have loved to have done without. I was nervous and excited about the launch. Nervous partly because we had been a bit tardy in getting the final edited galleys to the printer, so I did not actually have the book in my hands until I arrived at the launch venue. I was trying to select excerpts to read at the launch, and I was having a very hard time doing that online, and I had to do it online because I hadn’t been able to get to Staples for toner, so I couldn’t print out anything! See how the tooth becomes a factor here

Twenty Questions with memoirist Harriet Bernstein – Part 1 of 2

Writer Harriet Bernstein is a force. A woman with a life story that rivals any Hollywood romantic drama Academy Award winning film. I think maybe Meryl Streep could play present-day Harriet…looking back over a lifetime of adventures. She’d at least get nominated for an Oscar! To play the leading man? Hmmm. Antonio Banderas, perhaps? But who would play young Harriet and her leading man, Canadian poet Irving Layton? The mind wonders. At least my mind does!

I’d like to introduce you to writer Harriet Bernstein. Her new book, a memoir entitled Irving Layton Our Years Together is like no story you’ve ever read before. And it’s all true.

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Yes, Harriet is a writer – a stellar poet too, but I first met her in the movie industry. When I was a manager at Cineplex Odeon theatres, Harriet was working for what was then Paramount (mega studio and distribution house in the film industry). I met Harriet at big distributors conference in Halifax because I had one a grand prize for a movie promotion we’d done at the theatre. Harriet and I became fast friends…and that friendship has bloomed into a beautiful garden of love! Indeed! So, when Harriet told me that her memoir was coming out, I was over the moon for her…and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her story! I was able to be at her book launch in Toronto, which is where the photos of her come from. It was a beautiful celebration of the culmination of her hard, hard work in writing her story.

Here are my thoughts on this extraordinary memoir:

Time does not heal all wounds. It can’t. It shouldn’t. Especially the wounds of true love. Time does, however, allow for reflection, for reckoning, for recounting and retelling. Harriet Bernstein’s memoir ‘Irving Layton: Our Years Together’ is a story about true love. It is unbelievable. It is maddening. It is passionate. It is sexual. It is sensual.It is torturous. It is extraordinary. 

On its surface, this book is Bernstein’s telling of her relationship with Irving Layton – a relationship that has been discussed, assessed, judged and dragged across the jagged landscape of the literary world. It’s quite possible you’ve not heard of Bernstein except perhaps in stanzas of poetry written by said famous Canadian poet – a man notorious for his biting love affairs with women. 

But this is a not a story of surface. This is a story that begins in the fiery depths of true love – the kind of true love that literary giants like Homer and Shakespeare wrote about. Except this story is real – our heroine and her poet travel to distant lands, face the furies of nature and nurture, sip wine, smoke cigarettes, make love on floors and in beds, and chase the seemingly uncatchable ‘poems’ that live at the core of two creative souls. 

It reads like a story only a goddess could experience – and perhaps that’s exactly what happened. There is no doubt in my mind that Bernstein’s role as muse, lover and mother was lived in a realm that only a woman of fierce, empowered, tragic and magical love could endure. This is a story that my own goddess soul has been waiting to read. 

We cannot come out unharmed at the end of this story for it slaps the soul into oblivion with its wildness and its pain, with its passion and its devastation. At the centre of ‘Irving Layton: Our Years Together’ is a woman with an extraordinary ability to love – this story expands beyond the ‘surface’ of the relationship between two people destined to love each other. The poetry lives in Bernstein’s soul as much as it does in Layton’s, and we are at once voyeurs witnessing the daily endurance that is being a poet’s muse – an inhuman expectation – and being a woman in undeniable love with a self she is fighting to continue to discover and uphold. 

As the pages turn, rampant with adventure and pain, disbelief and forgiveness, the brilliant mind and strong heart of Bernstein is revealed. But she is not indestructible. She is not unfeathered. She exerts rage and hurtful vengeance like any goddess – and we learn as she learns. As she writes in her journals, as she writes letters to her dearest female friends, as she reads books by authors who teach her fortitude, attitude and wisdom – keep a pen and paper nearby for as you devour this unbelievable memoir you will be schooled in how to find your ‘self’ amidst a love affair every heart hopes to at least taste.  

Bernstein is more layered than ten onions – and as sharp and juicy and sensual too. Here you receive a window into a soul that is part muse, part poet, part lover, part goddess, part feminist, part mother, part wife, part professional, part princess, part player, part crone, part friend, part daughter and part gypsy. You may find it difficult to take in this love story as Bernstein unveils lust, lies and love that reads like a Hollywood script but feels like a literary masterpiece. And that’s because it is. It is both Hollywood epic and literary gold. 

Harriet Bernstein is a living muse. These are as rare as unicorns, and yet here we see how one lived and breathed life into a man – a poet – and what happened when love met torment met passion met creativity met madness…and how the muse, scathed, learned to navigate the many faces of true love.  

This is also a story of creative damnation. A story of how the birth of a poem can trump even the birth of a home, a marriage, a child. Bernstein was not blind to the power she held as the ‘muse’ for part of her loving Layton was her understanding and respecting (with extreme devotion) his creative process. Sometimes creativity moves a spirit to madness and murder – to taking the pen which is indeed mightier than the sword for a stab at an outcome that finds glory on the page rather than in the person. How does one breathe with the disease that is ‘muse’ spreading over body and mind? If ‘Irving got a poem out of it’ it would seem it was worth the disaster of living through the pain. Is the poem more important than the person? This is a question that plagues the pages of this story. 

The lesson here is not to shun love or throw a belt of caution around your heart – no! The lesson here is to learn how to listen to the many songs that a heart and soul emits. The lesson is to dive in – get wet, get dirty, get hurt – be broken – so you can learn that for all the pain that love explodes it will always rebuild a much deeper, much thicker, much more magical heart that will be able to love more profoundly than before.  

To be clear, Bernstein was her ‘own woman’ before she met Layton. Her life experience was rich in work and sexual endeavours that built a strong foundation for the kind of love and passion that would at once consume and devastate her. And, despite how it may seem as we are hurled around the pages by this muse and her poet, in the depths of this woman remained a force that pushed her to make choices that would inevitably give her freedom from the man who was more a poet than a partner – and what remains is a beautiful child made from love and light who is the essence of the best of both of her parents. 

‘Irving Layton: Our Years Together’ is an exhalation, an exaltation, an explanation on a love story that is up to this point in time only half told. Behold – let the herstory unfold. 

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I asked Harriet if I could send her twenty questions for this blog…and she said yes! So here are the first ten questions. The rest will follow next week with a reminder about her upcoming reading in Toronto (poster below). Thank you Harriet!

1) At what point in your life did you begin to feel/know that you wanted to write a book to share your story about your relationship with Irving? 

I think somewhere around 1984 or ’85 was when the idea began to germinate. There was just so much written about our separation, and it was so horrible to see my private life displayed in such an exploitative manner. My legal counsel advised me not to respond to any of the incidents, so I was holding my tongue. Everything was too fresh and painful to be able to write about at that time, but the more others wrote lies about my life, the more I resolved to one day set the record straight. 

2) Do you remember the day/time when you sat down and started to write it? 

I don’t actually remember the precise date when I began the first draft. What I do know is that it took me a very long time just to get that first draft down. I kept having to walk away from it, because I was too raw, the pain was too much. The other thing I know is that my initial goal was just to get the story down, without self-editing along the way. That was hard. The first draft was much longer than the final version, because I just poured everything out.

3) From start to holding the book in your hand – how long was the process of writing to publication?

From start to holding the book in my hand was probably around 29 years.

4) Where did you do your writing (at home, cafes, etc.)? How important is writing ‘space’ to your writing process?

I do my writing in my home. That said, if something comes to me, I always make a note of it, no matter where I am. I’d love to have a designated office with a green lamp and an ergonomically proper desk and all, but the fact is, I write at my dining room table, or on the couch, or in bed.  I don’t have a desktop anymore, just my Air laptop, so any place can be my office. 

5) There are excerpts of letters and journal entries in your book – did you always know you’d include them in your book? What made you decide to include them?

Over the many years, the book began to present itself as a weave: my journals were the foundation, the truth as I recorded it at the time; the letters presented Layton’s voice, in its truth.  I struggled not to edit the voice of the young Harriet in the journals, because there were times I was embarrassed to read what I had written. I had become a more mature woman over the years, of course, and that was the voice of a young woman, so in love with this man….but I had to resist the urge to edit, because either the truth was going to be told as it was, or I could not publish the book. Any edits that were made in Layton’s letters or in my writing were made only to minimize potential hurt to others that might have been caused. My book is not a revenge piece. My book is designed to tell the truth, so that all the distortions and lies that others have written about me and my life with Layton will not be all that there is out there. The writing that joins both those components, and presents  the perspective I now have, is what ties it all together and makes it a story, a story of a great love, a story of a feminist in the most seemingly anti-feminist position possible, and a story of how a marriage can end even though love does not. The book also, of course, presents a view of the CanLit scene during those years, as well as insight to the genesis of some of the best poems Layton wrote in his last years. 

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6) What was it like reading back in your journals and letters – did your memory serve you well or did the journals/letters reflect something different?

This is an interesting question. Memory is selective and unreliable. There were times when I was working with my journal that I actually felt as if I were reading some other woman’s journal. That’s how much I had forgotten or put away, for self-preservation’s sake. I had forgotten some of the cruel things Layton had said or done, but there they were in my journal so I had to present them if I were to tell an honest story. Some of it was painful to read, because I sounded like a silly fool, besotted with love. Some of it was like when you’re watching a movie and you know what’s going to happen when that character on screen goes into that room or opens that door, and you’re yelling at the screen ” Don’t go in there!”; well, parts of the journals were like that for me, when I felt like I wanted to shout at myself : “Don’t fall for it again, don’t let him pull you back again!”  But of course I did, and I have no regrets about that.

7) Would you recommend writing letters/writing in a journal to writers – as a way of keeping those memories alive and/or fodder for writing ideas?

I would think that anyone wanting to write a memoir would be very well served to keep a journal, otherwise it is impossible to accurately remember events. I also kept a “Samantha Book” from when my daughter was born until she married, and it’s a fantastic thing to do. Because no way can even the most adoring, attentive mom remember every thing their child does or when they did it. So even if it’s a couple lines a day, just jot down some thing your child said, or did, get it down! Kids love to hear about themselves, so for many years, once Samantha was old enough, on her birthday each year we would read a selection from “The Samantha Book”, which was always fun for us both. Journaling daily is something that can be helpful, and if a person has the discipline to do that, that’s great. But of course our lives are very full and writing for a half hour a day or whatever is not always possible, and then people beat themselves up about it, and I’m not in favour of that. So, whatever works. When I kept these journals on which the book is based, it was because I somehow just knew, without thinking about it, that it would be important for me to do this. My soul told me. 

8) At your launch you mentioned that you’ve had some health issues over the years, how does your relationship with your body/health affect your writing life? What advice would you give to writers who have challenges with their health but still also feel that need to write? 

Health/body issues make life in general quite challenging. As a glass half-full kind of woman, I am usually in a state of gratitude & appreciation for the blessings in my life; that said, there are times when illness or pain make it impossible to do many of the things I would like to do, or in fact have planned to do. When I had pneumonia last year, and recurrent upper respiratory issues following that, there were weeks when I had to be in isolation in my home. Those times for me increase introspection, and since I’m an introspective woman to begin with, I go deep within. My daughter and granddaughters are an incentive to be as well as I can be, however my life is separate, and so at those times, it is writing that anchors me, writing that gets me out of bed ( even if it is only to get my laptop & bring it back to bed with me!). I feel better when I write. I feel like I have been in touch with a core part of myself, when I write. Writing, after all, is one thing we can do, alone, so forced solitude has its upside too! If one has to write, one will, even if it is a few lines. As Gertrude Stein said ( I am paraphrasing): if you write every day even if it is a few lines you will find over time that you have quite a lot of writing done…..

9) When you were in the thick of writing – so reaching back into your life/relationships – what was it like? Were you emotional? Did you have to stop? Did you have days where you wrote and wrote and wrote – and days where you couldn’t write at all? Describe the process of writing about your past – the hard parts and the lovely parts.

Writing this book took a very long time – decades – because it was so emotionally difficult. Over and over I had to walk away from the project, knowing that I was going to complete it, but not that day….I had my journals, after all, which form part of the weave of the book. The young Harriet in the journals told the details of what was happening as things happened; it was the truth, unvarnished. The current Harriet, reading those words, often cringed, and wanted to edit, but could not because that would not have been honest. So, I had to face myself, and allow that woman to speak. At times, it was as though I was reading the words of someone else, because memory, as we know, can be unreliable; I had forgotten a lot, or put it away because it was too painful. And this process made me go through it again. That was the hard part. Also, re-reading Layton’s letters, very beautiful and also painful. Then came the days when I wrote and wrote, did not get dressed, did not go anywhere or see anyone, and those days were some of the happiest. As any writer knows, the feeling of being in the flow is divine. And I mean that literally, because it is as though something is moving through us, some energy that is just splendid.

10) There is much writing in the book about ‘muse’ – certainly your experience with this…shall we say ‘power’ has changed over the years. Can you share your definition of what a ‘muse’ is – do you think you embodied this definition? How did that make you feel to be someone’s muse? Who was/is your muse? And, finally, do you think that a muse is necessary for creative output? 

I do frequently refer to myself as a muse for Layton, and I believe I was. I also believe that an artist’s creativity can be sparked by anything; certainly the world and everything in it was inspirational for Layton. That said, the role of muse is, to me, more specific, while still held within the generally accepted broad concept of “inspirational”. If a woman has an affair with a man, is she automatically his muse? I would say no. I would say she may have inspired some painting or writing or song composition, but she was to my way of thinking an inspiration, not a muse. It’s something like that saying in the metaphysical realm: all mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums. All people can be inspirational – in a positive or a negative way – but not therefore necessarily also a muse. The relationship with Layton was fertile ground: being 36 years older than me, there was automatically the piece of the picture that represented passion lit anew by a much younger, beautiful woman. That obviously inspired him. However, we also loved each other, which kicks everything up a notch or ten. Add to this cocktail the fact that I came to him out of my deep love and admiration for his poetry. I loved the work long long before I met the man. So, I brought that added component, a deep respect and passion for his art. I do believe that any woman who has a significant relationship with an artist must admire, respect, love the artist’s work, because living with or marrying or having a longterm relationship with an artist is not easy! And why is that? In part because his or her first love will always be his art, and the partner must accept that she will always be second; in part because writing is done alone, so the partner must accept that he or she will shoulder the bulk of some responsibilities (often domestic), and be able to do things alone; and in part because the creating of the art is like always giving birth, so requires a lot of understanding, support, lovingkindness, and reverence for the creative. I revere creativity. I was excited, amazed, and grateful to be a paticipant in Layton’s creative process. Watching his process, sharing his life, being the first person ever to hear a new poem was an experience unlike anything else in my life. To be asked for input, to comment on his work, was challenging because I admired it so much and how was I to feel qualified for that opportunity?  I was deeply humbled and also extremely excited to realize myself as not only an inspiration for Layton, but in fact, his muse. His last great burst of creativity was during our years together, and I will always be proud of my role in that.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, be sure to mark your calendars for this fine event!

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The Words Will Come

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The words will come.

Sometimes it takes years for our words to figure out how they’ll get out of our heads…how they’ll reach up from our souls and navigate a path to our fingertips.

But the words will come.

I want you to read these words and really feel them in your self because we can be hard on our creative spirits as we wait.

I met with a dear friend and brilliant writer just now. This person has had a book (at least one!) inside for years. A lifetime. And we’ve met on several occasions to figure out just how the words should come out. There have been many starts and many more stops. No ends in sight. And too many shoulds to count.

I know how this feels. I know what the starts and stops can do to a story. They can bury it deeper and deeper into those darks corners of ‘I Can’t’ or ‘Not Good Enough’ or ‘What’s The Point’ or ‘Who Am I Anyway’ or…the monster ‘It Doesn’t Matter’.

Listen.

The words will come.

Say it out loud. Do it. Go into another room if you’re shy to say it out loud in the middle of your work space.

The words will come.

Because they are always there. Inside you. And guess what: you are the storyteller in your life.

I’m gonna say that again too:

You are the storyteller in your life.

So know that you’re not alone in your waiting.

Trust that the words will come. Receive them joyously whether they come in bursts or starts-and-stops or in painful journal entries or in instagram posts…the words are alive just.like.you.

Suddenly you will see it – the map of your story as created by the cartographer that is your soul.

The connections will be made between soul and fingertips.

The words will come.

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