From wanna be writer to published author  — The story behind my first book

 

Wanting to write a book is one thing. Making the com­mit­ment is an­oth­er.  Especially if it’s your first book.

Three ques­tions I al­ways ask my­self are: Is my in­terest in the top­ic com­pel­ling enough to ded­ic­ate a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of time to it? Will the story in­trigue an agent and/​or pub­lish­er? Will any­one be­sides my moth­er buy the book?

I was will­ing to in­vest time to my first book – Sointula Island Utopia — but wasn’t sure about the agent, pub­lish­er and read­ers. Well, I thought my sib­lings would prob­ably buy books, as well as my mom, so I had four po­ten­tial sales. I de­cided to go for it.

Strangely enough, the seeds for that first book were planted in the Sointula Credit Union.

I lived in Sointula, BC for thir­teen years (19751988) and for ten of those years, I was the only full­time em­ploye at the cred­it uni­on. At that time, it con­sisted of one room up­stairs in the Sointula Co-op.

Having grown up in an urb­an en­vir­on­ment, life in a small sea­side com­munity of 750 people who pre­dom­in­antly had Finnish an­cest­ors and primar­ily made their liv­ing from fish­ing was an ex­cit­ing adventure.

The cred­it uni­on didn’t have chequing ac­counts, so mem­bers pur­chased money or­ders to pay their bills. That meant they of­ten spent fif­teen minutes or more with me.

I was en­thralled by their stor­ies.  Especially the ones about the early days of the Finnish set­tle­ment on Malcolm Island, the vis­ion­ary (Matti Kurikka) they in­vited to lead them in their uto­pi­an en­deavors, and the achieve­ments, set­backs and scan­dals that followed.

Paula WildFor sev­er­al years I had been ful­filling my child­hood dream of be­ing a writer and had mod­er­ate suc­cess pub­lish­ing arti­cles in magazines and news­pa­pers. But I was itch­ing for some­thing more. Something big and chal­len­ging to fo­cus on.

Every day at the cred­it uni­on, I thought, “Someone should write these stor­ies down.” Then one day, I wondered, “Why not me?”

I ap­proached the BC Archives in Victoria, and they agreed to sup­port me by provid­ing cas­sette tapes (pre-di­git­al times!) and guid­ance on con­duct­ing in­ter­views. Along with my oth­er re­search, I in­ter­viewed people liv­ing in Sointula, as well as oth­ers who had moved away. I was sur­prised at how eager every­one was to talk to me and how can­did their stor­ies were. A few people were so moved by their memor­ies that they cried.

Along the way, I conquered my shy­ness, learned what types of ques­tions gen­er­ate the best an­swers and honed my writ­ing skills. But doubt was a beast liv­ing in the re­cesses of my mind. Was what I work­ing on good enough to be published?

Then I saw an ad in a Comox Valley news­pa­per for Blue Pencil Café ses­sions with au­thor, Susan Mayes. I’d loved her book, The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin and knew she would give me hon­est feed­back. I signed up, paid my fee and sent three chapters for her to review.

I was so nervous when I met Susan that I wouldn’t ac­cept a cup of cof­fee or drink from the glass of wa­ter provided for fear I’d spill them. To my sur­prise, she was ex­cited about my story and en­cour­aged me to com­plete the manuscript.

I floated home and spent as much time as I could writ­ing. But Susan hadn’t totally ban­ished the beast. Early on in my re­search, I’d real­ized that the Sointula story had two parts. The first was the early Finns’ en­deavors to cre­ate a bet­ter life. The second was the sim­il­ar hopes and dreams of the hip­pies, back to the landers and war res­isters who moved to the is­land in the 1960s and 1970s.

Part one was fin­ished but did I have the stam­ina to write part two? Should I just call it quits and try to find a publisher?

Deciding I needed an­oth­er pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, I pre­pared an out­line of the book and sent that, along with a couple of chapters, to Harbour Publishing.

A couple of weeks later, I re­ceived a post­card from Howard White, co-founder and pub­lish­er of Harbour Publishing. He said they were in­ter­ested in the story and liked my outline.

One of many news­pa­per and magazine arti­cles I wrote while re­search­ing Sointula Island Utopia.

It was a shock when Sointula is­land Utopia be­came a BC Bestseller and was awar­ded a BC Historical Federation Certificate of Merit for its sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to BC history.

I couldn’t have done it without the help of many people – those I in­ter­viewed, those who trans­lated Finnish doc­u­ments into English, and the ad­vice of Susan, Howard, and the BC Archives. I am forever grate­ful for that early encouragement.

But here’s the thing, a suc­cess­ful book isn’t just about a good story and de­cent re­search and writ­ing. It’s also about the pro­fes­sion­al edit­ing, design, mar­ket­ing, and pub­li­city that a good pub­lish­er can provide. That’s what show­cases your work and makes the pub­lic aware of and in­ter­ested in the book. Of course, in the di­git­al age, a good so­cial me­dia plat­form helps too.

I re­cently donated the re­mainder of my Sointula re­search – oral his­tory tapes, tran­scrip­tions of the tapes, hand­writ­ten notes, news­pa­per arti­cles, and more, to the Sointula Museum. I’m so glad the ma­ter­i­al has gone home.

Photo on book cov­er by Rick James

Adventures from an author’s book tour journal

Paula Wild's books

I went on my first book tour in 1995. Even though my pub­li­cist did all the ground­work and prepped me like a pro, I had no idea what to ex­pect. I still don’t.

The biggest un­known is the audi­ence. There may be two or there may be 200 plus, and the size doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily re­flect the qual­ity of your book, your name re­cog­ni­tion or all the work your pub­li­cist and the host have undertaken.

Return of the WolfWhat you can count on is that at some point, there will be a wild­card. My first was an eld­erly man, ob­vi­ously in some stage of de­men­tia, who kept ask­ing why all the im­ages in his book were dif­fer­ent from every­one else’s. Then there was the home­less wo­man who at­temp­ted to dom­in­ate the Q & A ses­sion with in­co­her­ent stories.

But the most wor­ri­some was the men­tally dis­turbed man (even­tu­ally in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized) who got a hold of my phone num­ber and called re­peatedly to say he wanted to “get me alone some­where” so he could tell me what ob­scene acts my friends were en­ga­ging in with chil­dren. In his first call, he said he’d been at my present­a­tion the night be­fore but there were too many people around for him to talk to me privately. The gig had ended late at night and vehicles left the isol­ated park­ing lot quickly. I was glad a friend had ac­com­pan­ied me.

’ll nev­er for­get the trip on a gravel road that was so full of potholes I kept look­ing in the rear­view mir­ror to see what part of the car might be fall­ing off. But at least I had con­trol over the vehicle’s speed and was the only per­son reacting.

That wasn’t so while fly­ing to east­ern Canada for a present­a­tion at a writer’s fest­iv­al. The wo­man on my left had a pan­ic at­tack when the plane ex­per­i­enced tur­bu­lence. Despite mul­tiple flight at­tend­ants of­fer­ing re­as­sur­ing words, as well as coach­ing on deep breath­ing, the dis­traught wo­man shrieked at every jostle. I asked if she’d like me to hold her hand and she said yes. Lunch had just been served so I nibbled at my sand­wich with my free hand. When the man on the oth­er side of me began moan­ing and hy­per­vent­il­at­ing, I put my sand­wich down and held his hand too.

My ac­com­mod­a­tion while on tour has ranged from me­diocre to wa­ter­front ho­tels. The icon­ic Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver’s west end is my fave. Quaint charm at its best. But that isn’t al­ways the case. At one des­tin­a­tion, I was es­cor­ted to an un­oc­cu­pied but fur­nished house where I was to spend the night. As we entered the front door, the loc­al or­gan­izer said, “Oh good, nothing’s in the traps. Yes, plur­al, as in five baited mouse traps.

Presentations in­volving PowerPoint can be tricky. I al­ways re­quest a tech per­son be present to as­sist with setup, but that isn’t al­ways pos­sible. Several times I’ve had to crawl along stage floors with the audi­ence look­ing on while try­ing to con­nect com­pat­ible cables.

Once, after re­cruit­ing a teen from a nearby cof­fee shop to get things go­ing, someone turned on the wash­room light at the same mo­ment someone else plugged in the kettle for tea after the event. The room was plunged into dark­ness and when power was re­stored the screen re­turned to “no in­put sig­nal found.” Once again, I ran down the street to get the teen.

A book tour of­ten means at­tend­ing as many gigs as pos­sible in the shortest amount of time. On one Vancouver tour, I was in­ter­viewed by two ra­dio sta­tions, ap­peared on three tele­vi­sion shows, gave a present­a­tion at the down­town lib­rary and had a photo shoot for the Globe & Mail all with­in 24 hours.

To say I was ex­hausted is an un­der­state­ment. That’s why hav­ing a good road­ie is a god­send. They can drive, carry boxes of books and sell them if necessary.

Yes, tak­ing ex­tra books is im­port­ant. Buyers may ex­ceed the host’s ex­pect­a­tions, or the ship­ment may be waylaid.

A road­ie can also be de­terrent to po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous strangers.   

Going on book tour is the coun­ter­point to be­ing a writer.  You are no longer se­questered in a room by your­self; you are at the head of a room in front of a lot of people, in many cases, most of them unknown.

It is ex­cit­ing and daunt­ing. Will they like your book? Will they buy your book? Will they stare at you in rapt awe or will they bom­bard you with awk­ward ques­tions? All are possible.

The im­port­ant thing is to re­mem­ber that you are an au­thor on book tour, which is some­thing to be proud of no mat­ter what happens.

Photo cred­its:

Woman with books Mykta Dolmatov/Dreamstime.com

Red car Irina Miroshnichenko/Dreamstime.com

 

New Year’s resolutions vs New Year goals

 

As the dark days of winter creep to­ward the end of the year, many people con­sider res­ol­u­tions they want to make for 2025. I used to make res­ol­u­tions but some how they nev­er las­ted long. Two to four weeks was av­er­age. Two months was con­sidered a success.

Of course, that left me won­der­ing about my will power and feel­ing like a fail­ure. Gradually, without even real­iz­ing it, I shif­ted to a new way of mak­ing plans for a new year. I now make a list of goals.

Resolutions and goals are sim­il­ar but also quite dif­fer­ent. A res­ol­u­tion is some­thing you want to change.

A goal is some­thing you want to achieve. It in­cludes the steps you’ll take to ac­com­plish your goal and the date you plan to achieve it by.

It took me a while to fig­ure out what a goal is. I want to write a book and have it pub­lished is not a goal, it’s a dream. It’s like know­ing where you want to go but not how you’re go­ing to get there.

A goal goes some­thing like this: I want to com­plete an 80,000 word ma­nu­script by August 31, edit and re­vise it by December 31 and send it to a pub­lish­er or agent by January 1. To ac­com­plish this, I will work on my book for two hours every week­day and for four hours every Saturday.

Goals I know will be on my 2025 list are com­plet­ing a sol­id re­vi­sion of the nov­el I’m work­ing on and sev­er­al home im­prove­ment pro­jects to make my home more en­ergy ef­fi­cient and cool­er in the summer.

The home im­prove­ments – a ceil­ing fan, new blinds and new ap­pli­ances will be re­l­at­ively easy. Each one of those goals can be ac­com­plished with­in a month, leav­ing plenty of time for writing.

The writ­ing, how­ever, is al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent. My cur­rent draft of the ma­nu­script con­tains 33 chapters. The thought of re­vis­ing that many chapters, es­pe­cially know­ing that half of them need ma­jor work, is daunt­ing. So, I’ll break the pro­ject down into man­age­able chunks.

Months that I’m work­ing on a fairly pol­ished series of chapters, I can re­vise four or more a month. While work­ing on chal­len­ging chapters, I may only be able to re­vise two a month so I’ll plan accordingly.

From past ex­per­i­ence I know it’s easy to be overly am­bi­tious and that mod­est, real­ist­ic time frames tend to be the most successful. 

But simply hav­ing a goal of­ten isn’t enough. To be truly ef­fect­ive ex­perts say you should write your goal down, make a com­mit­ment by telling someone your plan, and be­ing ac­count­able to that per­son. I con­sider my­self lucky to have two cre­at­ives – writer Caroline Woodward and artist Judi Wild — to share my goals with.

I try to be reas­on­able about what I can ac­com­plish yet push my­self a bit too. To be per­fectly hon­est, I nev­er meet all my self-im­posed dead­lines. But they keep me on track and mo­tiv­ate me to try harder.

Of course goals can be made any time of the year but I usu­ally map mine out dur­ing the last few days of December. I al­ways look for­ward to that in­ter­lude — the cusp of one year passing and an­oth­er be­gin­ning — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies that brings.

Feature im­age at top: Night in the Forest, a paint­ing by Bev Byerley. 

 

 

 

Winter is a time for Reading

 

When the days be­come short and dark­ness des­cends far too early, I reach for a book. What bet­ter way to trans­port my­self to an­oth­er era, place, or person’s life?

I come from a long line of read­ers. As a child, there were al­ways stacks of books in vari­ous places in the house. As far as I can re­mem­ber, there were no book­cases, just piles of books here and there. Some were for my grand­moth­er and par­ents; oth­ers for me and my three siblings.

As I got older, I slipped volumes from both piles, hap­pily en­scon­cing my­self in an­oth­er world.

For many years after I moved to Canada, my fam­ily vis­ited fre­quently. For some reas­on, they seem to travel in herds and of­ten my two-per­son house­hold ex­pan­ded to sev­en or even nine.

Of course, this meant ex­tra bed­ding and cre­at­ive sleep­ing ar­range­ments. But even more im­port­ant were lamps – some­times with ex­ten­sion cords – so each per­son could read in bed be­fore clos­ing their eyes to sleep.

Those in the know sug­gest that read­ing fic­tion is bet­ter for the brain as it re­quires ima­gin­a­tion. But I usu­ally have two books on the go at once. The day­time book is of­ten non­fic­tion, while the even­ing and bed­time book tends to be fiction.

Books I am or have re­cently read include:

There is a Season by Patrick Lane 

Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling by Michele Barker and David Griffin Brown

The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad

Books on my to read list include:

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

The Waiting by Michael Connelly

Gumboots in the Straits: Nautical Adventures from Sointula to the Salish Sea ed­ited by Lou Allison, com­piled by Jane Wilde

Books open the door to oth­er worlds, both ima­gin­ary and real, as well as dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing, eat­ing and mov­ing. They are com­pan­ions on dark, winter nights and al­low us to es­cape the drudgery or demons of every­day life.

Top im­age: some old books by Dickens that my great-grand­fath­er brought around Cape Horn long ago.