Category: Inspiration for your writing

“This isn’t work­ing!” I said over and over as I shif­ted my com­puter desk from the bed­room to one liv­ing room wall and then another.

In my writ­ing work­shops I al­ways stress the im­port­ance of a place to write. But all of a sud­den Rick and I were crammed into a liv­ing space less than half the size we were ac­cus­tomed to. And carving out a cre­at­ive spot for both of us was threat­en­ing to turn into a make or break issue.

In our three-storey her­it­age house, I had a spa­cious room with lovely big win­dows. Rick had even more space in his of­fice on the lower level. Selling our home of 25 years and tem­por­ar­ily mov­ing into an apart­ment meant go­ing from sev­en book­cases to one, six fil­ing cab­in­ets to two and three big desks to two.

Of course — even though I me­tic­u­lously meas­ured rooms and fur­niture – my care­fully planned place­ment of of­fice fur­niture didn’t work out. As non-fic­tion writers we seem to need an ex­traordin­ary amount of space to store and in­ev­it­ably spread out books, news­pa­per clip­pings and pho­to­cop­ies of old doc­u­ments, as well as our own scribbled notes.

So now, after nu­mer­ous trips to our stor­age unit, we live with boxes of file folders and stacks of books. I’ve ad­ded an­oth­er large desk to our writ­ing space and also a small table in the kit­chen. Whoever gets there first of­ten claims the kit­chen table as a work sta­tion out­side meal times. And from time to time, I even use the top of the mi­crowave as a stand-up desktop.

The largest wing of the L‑shaped liv­ing room has be­come our shared of­fice. That’s where we spend the bulk of our writ­ing time. And that’s the biggest chal­lenge of all. Before, we worked in sep­ar­ate rooms on dif­fer­ent floors of the house. Now, seated at our com­puters, we can just about shake hands.

Rick’s work­ing on a book about West Coast rum run­ning. He tries to re­strain him­self but sev­er­al times a day blurts out, “Listen to this!” and pro­ceeds to read me a quote by some pro­hib­i­tion era li­quor dis­tri­bu­tion entrepreneur.

I must ad­mit I’m not much bet­ter. I’m re­search­ing wolves and it’s nearly im­possible not to ex­claim, “Look at this photo!” Or to keep the volume down dur­ing a chor­us of wolf howls in a doc­u­ment­ary I’m watch­ing online.

But our trans­ition work space hasn’t been all struggle. Rick’s “of­fice” is closer to the main liv­ing area than in our pre­vi­ous home and he finds him­self at his com­puter earli­er in the day, thus pro­du­cing more. And the move has made us both ap­pre­ci­ate just how im­port­ant a suit­able work space is to our cre­at­ive well­being. All things we’ll con­sider while look­ing for our next house.

As of­ten hap­pens, I found the an­swer to my prob­lem in a book. I’d re­cently moved and couldn’t find a job. The heroine in the nov­el I was read­ing faced sim­il­ar cir­cum­stances and solved her di­lemma by tak­ing in laundry.

Domestic chores rank near the one mil­lion mark on my list of fun things to do. But, in the pre-com­puter days of 1989, there was a sur­pris­ing need – and luc­rat­ive pay­off – for people who knew their way around a key­board. So I de­cided to take in typing.

The first step in my self-em­ploy­ment plan was to call the Comox Valley Record to place an ad. But in­stead of reach­ing clas­si­fieds, my call was dir­ec­ted to the ed­it­or. I’d freel­anced for Bruce Winfield when he was ed­it­or at the North Island Gazette in Port Hardy. We struck up a con­ver­sa­tion and he in­vited me to cov­er arts and en­ter­tain­ment for the paper.

I had no idea the freel­ance gig would last more than a quarter cen­tury and in­volve writ­ing more than 720,000 words in ap­prox­im­ately 1,200 arti­cles — the equi­val­ent of 10 books.

It wasn’t al­ways easy. The first obstacle was to over­come my some­times pain­ful shy­ness. But I can now ask any­one any­thing and am al­ways sur­prised at what they’re will­ing to tell me. If I had $1 for every time I heard, “Don’t put this in the pa­per…,” I’d be a wealthy woman.

Older in­ter­viewees were sur­prised I was so young and young in­ter­viewees were sur­prised I was so old. I spoke to people who were sick, dy­ing or rid­ing high on their first glim­mer of suc­cess. I learned to ask ques­tions and really listen, how to take notes in a dark theatre and to al­ways have three pens in my purse just in case.

I learned how to sniff paint­ings when it’s dif­fi­cult to de­term­ine if they’re oil or ac­ryl­ic, was fed Gut-Buster Cookies and dis­covered that a sur­pris­ingly high per­cent­age of comedi­ans are cranky offstage.

There were some dodgy mo­ments. Most in­ter­views took place in the person’s home or stu­dio and more than once I doubted the wis­dom of be­ing alone with them. For a month I was stalked by a men­tally un­stable artist and twice a man fol­lowed me out of the com­munity theatre mut­ter­ing ob­scen­it­ies and hint­ing  at what we could do if alone.

But most of the time cov­er­ing arts for the Record was so much fun I couldn’t be­lieve I was get­ting paid to do it. My ap­pre­ci­ation for the cre­at­ive pro­cess and the people who prac­tise it in­creased im­mensely and I con­tin­ue to be amazed at the artist­ic di­versity and rich­ness of the Comox Valley.

One of the most im­port­ant things I learned was how to write a cer­tain amount of words by a cer­tain time. I can’t count the even­ings I went straight to my desk after a late night show to write a re­view. It didn’t mat­ter if it was mid­night and I was tired. Newspaper dead­lines wait for no man, wo­man or child. Word count and dead­lines are the holy grail of pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing wheth­er it’s for a news­pa­per, magazine or book.

Writing for news­pa­pers has launched many a writ­ing ca­reer. It’s a sure-fire way to learn how to write on de­mand, not just when the muse pays a vis­it. It can be crazy, chal­len­ging and very re­ward­ing. But after 25 years, I’ve de­veloped a fond­ness for in-depth re­search and the ex­plor­a­tion longer stor­ies al­low. So I’ve said good­bye to the Record to make more time for writ­ing books.

An ad­apt­a­tion of my farewell art­icle for the Record.