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We don't do it for the money ------ WE DON'T DO IT FOR THE MONEY Generally speaking, I don't read the comments sections on news websites, particularly if the original article has anything at all to do with race or gender or art. And, generally speaking, if I do happen to accidentally read something online that gets my dander up, whether it's about me or about some issue I care about, I don't usually make any comment on it publicly. Why give anyone the satisfaction in knowing that I even care? Better for people to think I'm above it all, even though I'm really not and spend a lot of time ranting to my poor husband, or writing scathing comments that I immediately delete after my blood has finished boiling over. When National Post columnist Barbara Kay wrote a review of Lisa Moore's newest novel, February, I skimmed it and thought, "How amusing that someone hates CanLit so much that she can make completely baseless claims about its quality and legitimacy." And then, when writer Steven Galloway (whom I first met when we were in the same first year class at UBC--big ups to Creative Writing 120, 1994-95!) offered a rebuttal, I thought, "Well, that's the end of that." After all, his editorial eloquently expressed every thought one could possibly have in opposition to Ms. Kay's original column. I felt smugly proud to be a Canadian writer. But then, I made the mistake of reading the online comments. Many of them made me upset, but one actually made me blind with rage. It was a comment that implied that Canadian writers don't work, that we sit on our asses all day collecting grant money and swanning around to galas (which I haven't been able to do lately because the Rolls is in the shop and my personal helicopter pilot has inconveniently come down with shingles), before returning to our home offices and banging out crappy books. The idea that I might write crappy books doesn't bother me (it's an opinion that I agree with on bad days). But the idea that I don't work or have no work ethic makes me want to set fires. When I first started writing The End of East, I had four jobs. Later on, I worked one job Monday to Thursday, wrote every Friday for about 12 hours, wrote two evenings a week after dinner, and worked on the novel some more for a half day on Sundays. I had no grants. I was living in an apartment I could barely afford. For the first five years into this novel, no one other than my husband offered encouragement and I had no idea whether what I was writing would ever see the light of day. It was a time of huge growth, during which I was alternately convinced I was a genius, or resigned to the fact that I was a talentless hack. But it was defintely not a time of no work. I hustle hard. Those 18 months after The End of East came out were exhausting. I'm not saying that what I do is more work than any other job, but it's not any less. While I may work at home now and can run out to the corner store and buy some Corn Nuts in the middle of the day if the mood takes me, I also have to do a million things to make any money at all, including perform readings, teach workshops and write articles. Yes, I've received grants for current projects, but they don't come even close to what most Canadians would consider a living wage. Probably less than half. This is not meant to be a lament on the economic plight of the Canadian writer. I chose this life, after all, and I'm much happier doing what I do now than I ever was with any of the other jobs I held that most people would consider real work. I just want people to understand one thing: Canadian writers may not write books that you care for, but it is very, very wrong to assume that Canadian writers don't work. And if you don't believe me, then I challenge you to write a full length book, try to sell it, and then promote it for 18 months, all the while holding down a day job. After all, it can't possibly be that much work, right? ------ WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW
P.S. This is of course one of my favourite books of ALL TIME. And Spike Jonze is one of my favourite filmmakers of ALL TIME. Which means that whenever I watch this trailer, I weep. P.P.S. Am feeling a lot better about the novel. Not to worry. Besides, if I ever stopped writing, that would be the day I crumble into dust and float off into the ether. ------JULY 20, 2009 HAVE I LOST THAT NOVEL-LOVIN' FEELING? Every once in a while, I find myself leading a writing workshop. Now, you have to understand that this is something I never thought I would do. The idea of teaching or doing anything even close to teaching has filled me with dread since I was a child. Maybe I’m worried that it will all turn into an emperor-with-no-clothes situation; if I stand at the front of a classroom long enough, the students will come to understand that I really know nothing. My advice will be revealed as faulty and riddled with inconsistencies. My ass will look both lumpy and saggy whenever I turn around to write something on the chalk board. And I’ll never be offered another gig ever again. (One of my defining traits is my ability to imagine improbable worst-case scenarios so that they sound as if they could actually happen. It’s a strange talent, one that combines my love of story-telling with stone cold, irrational anxiety.) In these workshops, I often tell the participants that they must never forget why they love to write. My reasoning is that if you remember why you’re besotted with sitting in front of a computer and typing, you’ll never stop doing it. True, but for the last few months, I haven’t been following my own advice. As some of my friends already know, I’ve been having a hard time writing-wise. I’ve been stalled, frustrated and disgusted with my own limitations as a writer. My confidence has been low and I’ve spent a number of days staring at my work and feeling stymied. I’ve been thinking, What am I supposed to do now? Why is this so hard? Why do I keep doing this? And I can never answer my own questions. I’ve been left with the conviction more than once that I should quit this writing business and take up something else. Maybe the kind of job where people don’t constantly offer their unsolicited opinions on the quality of my work. The kind of job where I am around other people and not stuck in a room with only my dog and the smell of my own funk for company. In other words, I’ve been feeling like shit. I know I should be grateful for every opportunity I’ve had and I know that there are many aspiring writers out there who are thinking at this very moment, All I want is to have one book published. Just one. I was that aspiring writer once. I don’t wish myself back to that time. Not at all. And I am so, so grateful that people read my novel and listen to me on the radio. It makes me feel loved. Sniff. But something funny happens when your first book comes out. You are assaulted on all sides by other people’s opinions of your work and, even if you try to protect yourself from the chaos, you find yourself taking on their criticisms. Eventually, you’re not really sure if how you perceive your writing and your writing career has been generated from your own brain, or if you’ve absorbed the sea of suggestions and reviews that surrounds you at all times. Your identity as a writer, previously an idea that was completely self-created, is an amalgam of what everyone else thinks, with tiny, half-hidden glimmers of the original you. I believe very strongly in feedback. I have a writing group. I have worked with fantastic editors. But at some point, you have to shut the doors and windows and begin writing something new, something that lights the fire everyday when you turn on your computer. Hearing the voices of others can muddy the creative process until you end up staring at this mess of pages and words without the foggiest idea why you even started this project in the first place. This is where I’ve been for four months, maybe longer. I desperately needed to remember why I love to write or else I was in danger of never writing another word again. I was with my writing partners Mary and June last week and it was through talking with them that I finally, finally remembered what has always pushed me. I love writing because it absorbs me completely. Whether I’m writing poetry or fiction, I can forget everything that is bad or stupid about my life and simply dive into a pile of words, words that I can play with, break apart or glue together. Now, this is still true, but the difference is that I’m fighting with the voices of others. Before, nobody ever bothered to offer their thoughts on my work, so if I wanted to shut out the world, all I had to do was turn down the volume on everything else in my life. Now, so much of what’s distracting me is related to writing, so it’s that much harder to forget about it all when I’m actually writing. If I’m working on character motivation in my new novel, I can’t help but remember that one reviewer who called Seid Quan’s life pointless. Or if I’m struggling with structure, I think of all those people who criticized The End of East for jumping in and out of past and present. What I’m learning now is that I must create a quiet space in my own head, one that allows me to trust myself again. For two years, I’ve heard and read what everyone else has had to say about what I do. Now it’s time for me to let my gut do the decision-making and to remember that I love to write because I want to be consumed by my characters and settings and fictional conflicts. I want to get lost in my own stories and I want to love them again. So, here I am, Novel Number Two. You’d better come and get me. ------ JUNE 25, 2009 5 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ME 1. My favourite food is potato chips. No kidding. 2. When I came home with pierced upper ear cartilage as a teenager, my mother, who was eating dinner, threw down her chopsticks and wailed, “Are you one of those people who sit at the back of the bus?” When I started laughing, she snapped, “Get out of my kitchen. You smell like a thrift store.” 3. I know all the words to the theme songs from WKRP, Growing Pains and The Greatest American Hero. 4. I wear a fur-collared cashmere coat of my mother’s that she bought from the Woodward’s Department Store in the 1960s. This coat inspired the scene in The End of East where Siu Sang goes shopping in Vancouver for the first time and is so frustrated that she ends up buying nothing. 5. I had laser eye surgery because I was too vain to wear glasses during my book tour. Truthfully, my vanity isn’t rooted in I’m so pretty. My usual thought is more like, what can I do to look less terrible? ------ CULTURE GOES POP Something I think about a lot, on an alarmingly daily basis, is the meaning of pop culture. You see, as much as we’d all like to believe that our primary interests are critical studies and multimedia work by emerging artists, the fact is that most of what we consume is irrevocably pop. Confession: I love all things pop. “What?” some of you might be thinking. “Aren’t writers supposed to be high-minded? Didn’t Jen write a whole book about cultural, sexual and familial identity?” I did, but if I had written, say, Gossip Girl instead, I would have made more money. Hee. See, this is the thing. Whenever people ask me if I only hang out with writers, my response usually is, “If I only hung out with other writers, I’d have nothing to write about,” which is not to say that I don’t have lots of good friends who are writers, just that most of my oldest friends are not. The same applies to pop culture. If I lived in a vacuum where the only films I saw were good for me or the cinematic equivalent of whole grain cereal (beneficial and cleansing, but not quite the same thing as bacon), then how would I ever know what was capturing the minds of the majority? And if I don’t know what the bulk of the world is thinking, then how could I ever hope to write about people at all? The characters that interest me the most are not the ones who feel extraordinary compassion or perform outsized heroic feats. I like characters who find themselves in strange, funny or tragic circumstances but who are, at their core, average people who are confounded, torn apart by unforeseen emotions or numb to the pain. The advantage of pop culture is that it’s a window into how fast the world is moving. Our preoccupations change by the day, sometimes by the hour, and they reflect our global anxieties and loves. How can a writer not dip into this rich well of material? There are soaring dramas, real-life characters who defy belief and, let’s face it, lots of eye candy for those moments when we’re tired of staring at a blinking cursor and our own words all day. (If you must know, my top eye candy picks are Ewan McGregor, John Cusack from the Say Anything days and Tony Leung Chiu Wai. I can feel my heart breaking right now. Sigh.) I truly think that those people who say they don’t consume pop culture at all just really don’t know how far-reaching it is. Do your children watch Dora the Explorer? Are your khakis from The Gap? Do you read The Huffington Post? It’s insidious, which might scare you, but don’t freak out. You can always just turn around and exploit the plethora of human folly and victory for your next novel. It works for me.
GREAT WRITERS FEEL I think a lot about what makes a good writer. I don't mean what makes a good novel or book, but what separates a mediocre writer from a truly good one. (I'm excluding myself from this exploration because I am a terrible judge of my own work. Mostly I vacillate between thinking that I'm so awesome the world will fall to my feet to thinking that I should just stop writing now and go back to one of my old day jobs. If you see me editing cartoon scripts or brewing espresso somewhere, then you know what's happened.) The best writers are the ones who are capable of feeling their characters, who can step into their stories and see what their characters are seeing. Great writers can write themselves into states of pure joy or teary despair or sparkling young love. I say this to students all the time: if you can't feel or see what your characters are experiencing, then you will never be able to communicate that to your readers. We often think that writing is a purely intellectual enterprise. Sure, a large part of it has to do with logic and words and structure, but the intangible part of writing is all about feeling it, about crying a little when a child dies on the page, or catching your breath because two characters have finally, after years of longing, touched each other. Readers know when a writer is faking this; after all, they want to feel it too. My friend June Hutton is one of those writers with deep wells of humanity, who reaches inside to bring emotions to characters who are pathetic or brave or lost. Underground is her debut novel (out right now!) and there is no other writer I know who can fully inhabit her characters as June does. Al Fraser, the main character, breathes and hums with real compulsions and contradictions and I know that if I ever ran into Al on the street, I would know exactly who he is. Conclusion? My friend June Hutton is a great writer. Now, all of you must go out and buy Underground. For reals. Because I'll know if you don't. ------ MY FRIENDS WRITE BOOKS TOO It was 1990 when I first met Sandra Ka Hon Chu. We were in grade nine and introduced by a mutual friend while riding the Broadway bus. I remember thinking that I liked her jeans. A year later, I transferred to her high school from the alternative school I had been attending, and we became the best of friends, obsessing about River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke (we skipped school to catch matinee showings of both My Own Private Idaho and Before Sunrise), crying together over Kurt Cobain and dreaming about the adults we wanted to become (she wanted to be Christy Turlington and I wanted to be Linda Evangelista). All those years ago, we also spent a lot of time writing poems. In fact, both of us were published in student writing journals while we were still in high school and she was the only friend I trusted with early drafts of the painful poems I I wrote about unrequited love and the feeling that my brain wasn't quite understanding what was going on with my body. Come to think of it, I'm not sure my brain understands my body even now. Today, she's a human rights lawyer in Toronto who has lived all over the world, including East Timor, Libya and The Hague. Easily, our friendship has been the most rewarding of my life. No one understands me like Sandra does and for that, I'm continually grateful. Next week, Sandra, her co-editor Ann-Marie de Brouwer and photographer Samer Muscati launch their book, The Men Who Killed Me, a collection of testimonials and portraits of survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. All of the featured survivors experienced sexual violence and have bravely come forward to contribute to The Men Who Killed Me, which is raising money for Mukomeze, an organization that offers a sponsorship program for female survivors. I am so immensely proud of Sandra, Ann-Marie and Samer for bringing this important book to the world and I encourage everyone out there to buy a copy (or a dozen). While The Men Who Killed Me explores violence and war, it's also a celebration of humanity, and of the resilience that we all need to carry on. ------ CANADA READS! CANADA READS! What did I think of Canada Reads? SO MUCH FUN. The voting played out exactly as I'd predicted it would. Or more specifically, I thought to mysel that if Fruit was not voted off the first round (which I very much feared that it would), I could somehow convince everyone else to make it one of the last two standing. I numbered the books in my head the way I thought they would be eliminated, and, as it turns out, I was right! Chalk one up for my prophetess abilities. Since Fruit didn't win the big prize, I need all the alternate points I can get. HOWEVER (and this is a big however), I really do believe that Fruit and Brian Francis have both gained the most out of this whole crazy Canada Reads ride. We got to have as much air time as The Book of Negroes (kudos to Avi Lewis, by the way, who was the one that I was most afraid of as well, despite my confidence in the webcam confessionals) and because Fruit was the book that was the least well-known, it was also the book that received the biggest jump in attention. Now, Brian Francis is someone that all book lovers in Canada know about, and that makes me feel good, very good. In the beginning, I was worried I would sound stupid or tongue-tied, as I often am in my real life. Thank heaven for whatever radio idiot savant alter-ago I have hidden deep inside me. Without it, who knows what might have happened? Although I will say that I wish the cameras that filmed the debates for the online video were positioned somewhere else. In profile, I look like a black-haired lima bean. ------ MARCH 1, 2009
------ FEBRUARY 20, 2009 I know, I've been terribly negligent with posting on my site lately, but you will all forgive me when you find out that I've been writing blog posts for Canada Reads, which means that I've been all blogged out! And I've been working on my novel a lot lately. I'm starting to feel a touch of desperation, that I-must-finish-now-or-I'll-never-get-this-book-done feeling. Not to worry. It comes in waves so is, mericfully, not constant. If you're interested, my two blog posts about all things related to Canada Reads are here and here. A preview, perhaps, of what I might say when the whole shebang airs March 2 to 6? Or perhaps not! I'm messing with you all so you'll tune in. I'm very transparent. ------ JANUARY 9, 2009 HOLIDAYS ARE OVER AND LIFE RUSHES ON I've been terribly negligent lately with updating this page, partly because it snowed and snowed and snowed again here in Vancouver, which meant the city ground to a halt (people here are paralyzed by snow, which raises the ire of my Saskatchewan-born husband like nothing else), which also meant that between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day, I basically went nowhere, watched a lot of online television and drank too much sparking wine. That is, if it's even possible to drink too much sparkling wine, which I totally doubt. Speaking of online television, have any of you out there heard of book trailers? I remember two years ago when Londonstani by Gautam Malkani came out, his trailer generated some huge buzz, and, slowly, other publishers began producing them for their lead titles. A few came out last year that were quite fun (search for The Man Game by lee Henderson the next time you're killing time on YouTube and you'll see what I mean), but none has got me all hopped up like this one.
I tell you, I've watched this video 30 times and still it gives me goosebumps. June Hutton, of course, is one of my writing partners, and Underground is her first novel. This trailer captures the spirit of the book perfectly, in a way that surprises me and fills me with joy. That's right--JOY. That is exactly how I feel about Underground's trailer, and how I feel about the March 2009 publication of the novel itself. You can't see it, but both my dog and I are grinning maniacally right now (although my dog's love for June could be attributed to the fact that she brings a rawhide treat every time she comes to the house). ------ NOVEMBER 28, 2008 I have never in my entire life had to keep a secret for this long! Well, it's official, folks: Canada Reads 2009 has launched and, yes, I am one of the five panellists. I am defending Fruit by Brian Francis, a rollicking, spinning dance of a novel set in 1984 in Sarnia, Ontario where Peter Paddington--overweight, friendless and with a soaring imagination--lives with his two sharp-tongued sisters, his menopausal mother and his beleaguered father. Peter strongly suspects that he's not quite like the other boys in town, a suspicion confirmed when his nipples begin talking and telling him so. You see, I am easily the least famous person on the Canada Reads panel, and Fruit may be one of the least well-known of the chosen books, but I'm feeling that this may well work to my advantage. Like most Canadians, I know the reputations of Avi Lewis and Nicholas Campbell quite well (and if I know more, I'm not saying, I'm keeping that all under wraps, for now), and I've been familiar with Sarah Slean's music for years now. And, of course, Anne-Marie Withenshaw is both persuasive and funny. In short, I'm confident that none of the other panellists know anything about me, which means that I can sneak up from behind and take them all by surprise! I'm planning my strategy as I type this, cackling malevolently every few minutes so that I don't burst at the seams with evil genius. Here's my defence of Fruit in a nutshell: You see? How can we lose? I'm relying on all of you out there to create an upswell of Fruit-related support. Go to the Canada Reads site to post comments, join a discussion and just generally make it known that Fruit by Brian Francis is everything a nation of readers can get behind. P.S. I have other arguments ready, but I'm keeping them close to my chest at the moment. If there's anything I've learned from my casino-going, Texas Hold 'Em-loving mother, it's this: maintain an impassive poker face and never let anyone know what you're holding or what you're thinking. Incidentally, Nicholas Campbell seemed very impressed that my mother's game of choice is Texas Hold 'Em. I might have to get them together. ------ SPEAKING (AND DRINKING) EASY It took me a few days to recover, but I finally have the energy to write about this year's Vancouver International Writers Festival. My friend Mary Novik has already blogged about a few events that we attended together, along with June Hutton, so I'm going to to talk about the after hours event I went to on Saturday night, Speakeasy. As a fan of Paul Quarrington (I was 17 when I read Whale Music and was even more thrilled when it was made into a film with a soundtrack from The Rheostatics because I was convinced I was going to marry the whole band, one member after another), I knew that he's a musician. And I knew that I was in for a good show from Kinnie Starr and Willy Vlautin and Ivan E. Coyote, but what really bowled me over was how seamlessly each performance eased into the next. There was a theme, I think, of acceptance and love and how we all compartmentalize our lives when all we really want is for someone to understand that we are all whole people. Amazing. It was late, and I nursed one gin and tonic all night. I'm not quite sure why I was so restrained, other than I knew I had to see my mother the next day for lunch and my mother, as loving as she is, can also be what I would call bracing (as in, "for the love of God, she's going to point out that zit on my chin and then tell me that the sun spots on the left side of my face are getting so bad I'm like one giant freckle, so I'd better brace myself"). In short, having to spend a couple of hours with my mother with a hangover is its own special kind of torture and best to be avoided at all costs. I'm not quite sure how this post morphed into being all about my mother. Anyway, Speakeasy was great fun, and I hope the Festival does it again next year. I'll be there! ------ VOTE, OR I'LL HUNT YOU DOWN Here's the thing: I'm not actually a very political person, except maybe for that time I ran for school president at my elementary school in grade seven (I lost, to the girls' softball team pitcher and deservedly so, she totally could have kicked my ass in a fight), but I find myself getting worked up about this next election in Canada (I'm worked up about the one in the US too, but I can't vote in that one). I do this every election. I say I'm not political, but then I start reading about the campaigns and policies and I laugh uproariously at the bad TV ads. So maybe I am political. I'm just in denial. I have a point though and it's this: every single one of you who is eligible to vote has to get out on October 14 and do it. For as long as I can remember, my father pounded into our heads that we must vote, that it was our responsibility and duty, no matter what. As a child, I didn't really understand my father's rabid insistence that everyone should choose a candidate, but I do now. Chinese Canadians, of course, were not allowed to vote until 1947, four years before my father came to Canada to join his father, 39 years after my grandfather first arrived in Victoria, and some 70-odd years after my great-grandfather came to BC to try his hand at panning for gold, only to be chased off every claim he ever held by thugs until he gave up and went back to our home village in China. My family has lived and worked in Canada for over 130 years and have only been allowed to vote for 61. Right. Now educate yourselves about the candidates. I'm not kidding. Do it now. I never tell people how to vote. That's a very personal decision that is and should be private. I will say this though: I care deeply for arts funding and no one has written a better defence of support for the arts than the one and only Margaret Atwood. Read it here. Other issues I care about that you might want to consider while you make your decision: criminal justice, especially for youth, immigration, civil liberties and a humanitarian-based foreign policy. Maybe it's time for me to acknowledge my inner political beast. Or maybe not. I suspect she's not very funny. ------ WRITING OUTSIDE THE BOOK Holy cats, it's September already! If you've been wondering what on earth I've been doing all August, I'm also wondering the same thing. How is it that I managed to accomplish so little in one entire month? In one word: in-laws. As much as I love my husband's family (and I really do, I'm not just saying that because my mother-in-law could very well stumble across this post), we have a very small townhouse, which meant that his two teenaged nieces slept in my office, which meant, in turn, that I couldn't work. I have a compulsion to keep my workspace spotless at all times--no errant paper clips, not even a stray sticky note. So, up until a week ago, when my office was overflowing with skinny jeans, portable DVD players and more makeup than any human should ever own, I couldn't settle my mind down to focus on the inevitable: THE NOVEL. I've fallen behind. It's the sad truth. And anyone who knows me knows very well my strange obsession with NOT LOSING MOMENTUM. See how frustrated I am? All caps. Another thing that's been keeping me busy: I'm the new Westcoast Words columnist on CBC Radio One's On the Coast here in BC. I talk about writing every Wednesday afternoon, but I don't just talk about books, I talk about the words that are all around us--online, on stage, on the street--and the people who write them. Writing outside the book is how I like to think of it. And, I've just taped a segment for Shelagh Rogers' new show, The Next Chapter, so listen to the debut episode on September 27, also on CBC Radio One, to hear what books mean home to me. I'm also readying myself for the CBC Studio One Book Club where I'll be co-hosting the event with Margaret Visser! She is undoubtedly the queen of narrative non-fiction in Canada, so I'm very excited. Plus, maybe I'll sneak in a few questions about food, which is my favourite topic. Outside of celebrity gossip, that is. No, I haven't forgotten. THE NOVEL. Stop nagging me already. Geez. ------ JULY 21, 2008 I'm seeing the end, that beautiful, lovely bright light at the end of a long, writerly road that means, perhaps, I might be finished my novel some day soon. When I say the word finished, however, I mean that it might be finished soon on my end, not, of course, taking into account the editing it will inevitably need. But I'm feeling optimistic today, maybe because the sun is shining and I'm feeling magnanimous and flush with vitamin D and a tan the likes of which my skin hasn't seen since that summer I worked at the Pacific National Exhibition as a sweeper (a funny euphemism for the teenaged girl who cleans up crap). Of course, now that I say all this, the novel will somehow take fifteen steps backward and I'll be working on it until my hair starts to thin and my back is permanently bent into that crouching position I take on every time I begin typing. To be honest, I need a break. I feel like I've been on a novel-writing tear, if that's possible. Now that I think about it, it's probably not. Can you imagine a rioting crowd of novelists running amok in the streets, snatching books from the hands of innocent bystanders, scribbling nonsensical plots in the margins and making devil horns on the tops of their heads with their fingers while chanting, "Down with Dickens," or, "A whammy on Murakami"? Seriously though (are you starting to wonder if I'm ever actually serious?), The End of East has developed a strange kind of life of its own, which means that I've been out and about supporting it for something like 16 months, which is much longer than I ever expected. This is great; I love that people respond so well to it and to me too. But I've never been this busy in my entire life. When I'm not writing, I'm away talking to audiences and workshops about writing, and then, when that's over, I'm back to writing again. I fear it's all taking a bit of a toll and, soon, I won't be able to even write birthday messages in greeting cards. All the words will have been wrung out of me. So this post is really just a long explanation for my fatigue. And a warning that, after this novel I'm working on now, I might do something completely unexpected and go work at a plant nursery (something I've always not-so-secretly wanted to do, so if you own a nursery, email me!) or write a different kind of book. Who knows? Right now, I like the not knowing. Last weekend, I was on Denman Island for their fine, fine festival. It was a really special time, not least because the island itself is so beautiful and full of enthusiastic people who are passionate about their books. bill bissett was at the festival as well and it was a thrill for me to listen to him read, but also to re-meet him. I first met him many years ago when I was 16 and he appeared at a high school writing event I attended. In fact, I did my very first public reading in front of him, so seeing him again was an especially resonant moment for me. He did much to light the fires of my poetry-writing. Outside, a warm breeze. Inside, a novel that needs finishing. Not such a bad life, is it? ------ BEING CRUSTY DOESN'T PAY Perhaps some of you are wondering how my trip down the West Coast went. San Francisco was warm and sunny and beautiful and I read at three bookstores in the Bay area. I had a fun time at all of them and met some amazing independent booksellers who manage to fit everything you'd ever want to read in small spaces. And all of these stores were busy, full of people hungry to get their hands on new books, which heartened me greatly. At Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Building, Ron and I had a nice chat about our shared Toisan heritage and even made a few jokes in the county dialect about bodily functions. In our defence, when your fluency with a language is restricted to what you learned as a child at home, it's potty humour or nothing! Which is not to say that potty humour isn't funny. Because it is. Just ask me. In Seattle and Portland, I learned that I was reading at the same stores as Salman Rushdie, only just two days ahead. I concluded that he must be my biggest fan and was following my tour because I'm so awesome. No, actually, I found it quite intimidating to know that we were going to be standing behind the same microphones in the exact same spots. The only thing that would have scared me more was if I had the chance to meet him. Probably the only words that would have come out of my mouth are, "I loved you in Bridget Jones' Diary." When I was touring, I found that many of the people who came out to see me were aspiring writers and they asked me advice about publishing and finding an agent and the like. One thing I forgot to mention is that, in publishing, so much is out of our control. Either a book catches on or it doesn't. But, the most important thing that writers can control is how professional we are. Bringing a book out into the world is an emotional process, one that I comapre with sending off a barely adult child to university. But I've learned that it's always better to keep your cool, to be nice to the people you meet, and to make every working situation as easy as you can for those around you. Sounds obvious, I know, but it really isn't. We love our books so much and have put so much time into them that it can be hard to put aside how we're feeling. And, you know, I'm a naturally crusty person who, normally, snipes at people who walk too slowly ahead of me on the sidewalk (seriously, people, if you can't keep up, then get out of my way), so being nice isn't as easy as it seems. I'm only half-kidding. Or am I? Next for me? Some weeks of actual writing (hooray!) and a stop at the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. Long evenings, a few mint juleps and I'm a happy girl for the rest of the summer. ------ NEW YORKERS DON'T THINK I'M FUNNY New York, what a city! My husband and I had a great time (perhaps he had a more relaxing time than I did because, after all, I did have to do a reading, but more on that later) roaming around the city and eating, eating, eating! The highlight for me was the Jeff Koons' sculpture exhibit on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a beautiful evening with the skyline and Central Park in full view and a martini bar under a trellis. We only took one picture though because there were many nonplussed, beautiful people wandering about and I didn't want to seem like too much of slack-jawed dork from the wilds of Canada. (Yes, I know Canada isn't just full of igloos and forests. I'm being cheeky, people!) My reading (made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts) with Preeta Samarasan at the Asian American Writers' Workshop was a lot of fun, although I did have a bad case of nerves as soon as my feet hit the stage. See, the thing with me is that I don't usually get nervous anymore when I have to do a reading. Generally, the process is the same every time: someone introduces you, you get up on stage, say something amusing about the introduction, talk a bit about your book, read a passage and then take some questions. Simple, right? At this reading, though, I was very much aware that I was standing on a stage under bright lights in New York City. I started having these terrible thoughts like, "Isn't the Apollo Theater in New York? Don't they throw stuff at you if you suck? Don't comedians get booed and heckled all the time in this city? Good God, why am I here?" Meanwhile, the audience was sitting there, very politely, waiting for me to say something. Don't worry too much, it all turned out fine (although my congee joke totally bombed, not even my husband laughed out loud because he "didn't want to stick out") and the audience was lovely. Some came up to me afterward to tell me what I should see and do while I was in town and we had some fried chicken and soju at a K-town restaurant just down the street. Fried stuff and booze--there's nothing better to calm the nerves. The end of my trip to New York means that the start of my trip to the American west coast is next. I'll be reading in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland and Seattle beginning June 5 (check the News page for details), so please come out and laugh at my jokes even if you don't think they're funny. I'll really appreciate it, I promise. ------ GENIUS OR MADWOMAN? I've been a little bit crippled lately with my second novel in the sense that I'm at the point where big issues are rearing their ugly, warty heads, big issues like, can I cut out Part 2, or is this character working. There comes a time in every writing project when the story is done and the borders of the narrative are set, which means that the other problems, the ones that you've been conveniently pushing aside until you've worked through one or two drafts, become impossible to ignore. I always find that I can't see the themes or undecurrents working through a novel until the second draft and that's when I start to write pages of pages of scribble in my beleaguered notebook in an attempt to make sense of all the clues and images and signposts I somehow wrote into the manuscript. It's only a pile of words until you can organize everything and give shape (and therefore depth) to the mess. Sigh. Which is not to say that I'm not enjoying this process (once again), because I am. Every new idea that works is a breakthrough moment and then I think to myself, "I'm a flipping genius!" "What an ego that Jen Sookfong Lee has," you're all muttering to yourselves. The thing to remember is that, like most writers, I live for those genius moments. Those moments are often the only things that keep me coming back to my desk for more. Otherwise, I would have given up by now, and The End of East would never have seen the light of day, because, somewhere during the first draft, I would have crumpled into the fetal position on the floor and cried so hard that the manuscript would have dissolved into the teary puddle that collected around me. Yes, the line between thinking I'm a genius and succumbing to pure madness is really that thin. Be thankful I don't share your office. Listen up, the big news around here is that my good friend and writing partner Mary Novik has won the Ethel Wison Fiction Prize for her novel, Conceit. I'm so, so pleased because Conceit is a totally complete novel, one that transports and seduces and shocks (in a good way, but, then again, I never think shocking is bad) and whose pull is irresistible. Mary, you deserve the accolades in every conceivable way. Congratulations. If any of you are in New York May 9, please come see me at my reading at the Asian American Writers Workshop, where I'll be launching the U.S. edition of The End of East. I did a bit of research today on Chinese American history, just so I could make sure my reading is relevant, and I found a surprising number of similarities in immigration barriers, Chinatown societies and the trajectory of the Chinese communities in American cities. Fascinating stuff. ------ I'M COMING TO AMERICA That's right, people, my U.S. tour has been confirmed! I'm going to be in New York in May and speeding through the west coast in June, stopping in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland and Seattle. Like any good Vancouverite, I've been back and forth through California, Oregon and Washington state a number of times (the most memorable: when I was in university I drove with five of my girlfriends to Los Angeles in a mini-van that started to smoke through the gas pedal just east of Barstow as we were trying to get to Las Vegas, prompting us to pull over in the middle of the night at a rest stop inhabited only by a short, bespectacled tow truck driver with a stained undershirt and roving eyes and a colony of bats that swarmed our heads while we called AAA on a barely functioning pay phone), but I haven't been to New York since I was five years old. All I remember of that trip? The subway and the shadows cast by what seemed like impossibly tall buildings. I've been very carefully compiling a list of restaurants to eat at during all of my tour stops. I have priorities, you know. Perhaps some of you are wondering how my new novel is going. Well, it's going, that's all. I forget sometimes that The End of East took six years to write and I find myself growing impatient at my own slowness, but it does take years for books to build resonance (my wise friend Mary said that to me one day when I was feeling particularly sick at the years ahead of this book) and the last thing I want to do is publish a novel that isn't ready. If I wanted immediate gratification, I should have chosen another career, like clowning in a circus. Come to think of it, I might be good at that. Hmm. P.S. If you want to hear the rest of my Las Vegas story, just ask me after I've had a couple of drinks. I also once went to Hawaii when I was 18 and somehow left after a week with a sunburned scalp and a marriage proposal. I might tell you about that too, but you'll have to buy me a whisky sour. ------ IT'S ALMOST SPRING & ENTHUSIASM IS CATCHING I've been bad at updating my thoughts during the last while, not because nothing has been happening, but because too much has been happening. This month, I flew out to Edmonton for a quick reading at the University of Alberta. Now, let's get something straight: I really like doing readings and other literary events. Writing is a lonely business. I spend most of my time with no one to talk to but myself, which, I'm sure you can imagine, grows pretty boring after a while. Readings are a chance for me to hear what others think about books and reading, and I learn a lot from the people who attend. The thing is, though, I sometimes worry that the audience is smarter than me. At the University of Alberta (where my friend and one-time mentor Thomas Wharton teaches and, presumably, enjoys all the Canada Reads hoopla; if it were me, I'd be cackling with glee and disbelief during each and every broadcast), the audience was mostly made up of English students. Once upon a time, I was also an English student, but that was a long time ago, when my mind was fresh and not so full of holes as it is now. I was, of course, terrified someone would ask me a question related to a literary theory that I'd either forgotten about totally (because I don't think about theory much anymore; I think about how to make a good curry) or, worse, had never even heard of. I'm very thankful no one asked me anything like that, although I do remember babbling about the future of Chinese Canadian literature, possibly incoherently. This is what I call, "talking out of my ass." Just yesterday I led a writimg symposium for North Vancouver high school students with Brendan McLeod (who doesn't love Brendan--no one) and it was great. The students were engaged and excited and not at all shy, which is much better for me because I prefer a rowdy crowd (perhaps this is because, as a teenager, I used to work at the Pacific National Exhibition, which meant a lot of drunken crowd handling; exciting, yes, but also very, very messy). The kids wrote some amazing pieces with us and showed a facility with words and language, as well as an absolute fearlessness; they were willing to try anything, and, personally, I think we don't see enough of that in Canadian publishing. Their enthusaism was contagious. I came home and thought, "I can finish my second novel--tomorrow!" Don't worry, I came to my senses sometime this morning. I'm still enthused and re-energized, but it might take me longer than a day to finish that book currently shoved pell-mell into a recycled binder. ------ JANUARY 18, 2008 It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I basically took all of December off to read the books that had been accumulating in a pile by the side of my bed. And then, I hightailed it to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island to spend some quality time eating chocolate, watching my dog plunge into the ocean in pursuit of seagulls and trying not to blow away during the windstorm. I also indulged every single food-related craving that I usually deny myself. What that means is that I tore through mountains of potato chips, cheese and croissants. If you see me wandering the streets looking vaguely like Bonhomme, please don't say anything. I'm quite aware of the (hopefully) temporary resemblance. But back to the reading. I've been terrible at keeping up with books that I should have read a long time ago, so am really pleased that I finished a number of titles this winter whose uncracked covers were starting to haunt me day and night. Among them: Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens, Effigy by Alissa York, Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz and Soucouyant by David Chariandy. Each book took me to a totally different place and time and, even though some of these settings were more familiar than others (for example, I visited Scarborough once in the 80s, but doubt that I will ever make it to Utah during the reign of Brigham Young), I had the very distinct feeling of physically inhabiting each--disorienting, yes, but also thrilling and pulse-quickening. I came across a blog entry that David wrote on the CBC's Words at Large website and several things he wrote about the origins of Soucouyant really resonated with me.
Well said indeed. He articulates something here that has been percolating in the back of my own head for some time, that there is something big coming to change Canadian literature, something that will fire the imaginations of our readers in a totally new way. It will be along the lines of what I said in a previous entry on CanLit and grow from our existing works and writers, but it will also surprise all of us with its force, vitality and perspectives that we can't yet foresee. Well listen, I'm doing a reading at the Vancouver Public Library's Central Branch on January 31st at 7:30pm. Please come, one and all. I'll be chatting about the special relationship The End of East has with the city of Vancouver and I might just even explain why there's so much rain in my novel! Do you want to know all the different words for rain? Read my book and you'll see them all. Hee. ------ THE CANLIT MUD PIT I don't usually post this often, but last Saturday, I was a guest on Gail Anderson-Dargatz's discussion forum where I discussed what books I'd like to give and receive this holiday season, along with other writers including my good friends Mary Novik, June Hutton and Neil Smith, as well as Robert Wiersema, Richard Van Camp, Ameen Merchant and Catherine Bush. Of course, we didn't just stick to talking about gifts. We ended up talking about The Globe and Mail's list of the 100 best books of 2007 (Mary and Neil made it--hooray!), Canadian book prizes and the general state of the Canadian book industry. I find it amusing that Canadians are always decrying their own literature. It seems that everywhere I turn lately, someone is saying Canadian fiction is static and boring, and that we have no national identity, so how can we possibly produce a national literature? I've posted about CanLit before, and I've said all I want to say about the quality of what we're creating. What's burning me up today has to do with our perception of what Canada is and how that applies to our perception of the books we publish. On a side note, I think my perspective is a bit different from those of other writers who have talked and blogged and written extensively on this topic. I am always identified as a Chinese Canadian writer, which is fine, because that's what I am, but what that means is that I often think of CanLit as an exclusive club. This is not necessarily because there aren't a lot of Asian Canadian writers publishing in this country (although it's true, there aren't really, but that's a topic for another day). This feeling of being on the outside looking in has more to do with how I've been conditioned to see myself. By always being called Chinese Canadian instead of just Canadian, I feel that my admission into the CanLit clubhouse is always being qualified. Imagine someone saying, "Ah yes, you're Chinese, but you can come in anyway." Not that anyone's ever treated me like that, but the constant repetition of my ethnic identity is a funny trick of the language that implies that my Chinese-ness is the sole thing that makes me different. (Other things that make me different: weak fingernails, a spot of eczema on my right earlobe, a great honking laugh and how quickly I forgot everything I ever learned in piano lessons. Feel free to use these identifying traits the next time you talk about me.) I've done some work with Schema, an online magazine started by my charming and ubiquitous friend Alden Habacon, who often travels the country talking about being a cultural navigator. Essentially, what this means is that the idea of Canada as a mosaic is tired and old, and that there's a new diversity model taking shape, what Alden calls our schemas. Instead of being defined by our ethnicities and nationalities, we can now also define ourselves by where we live, where we travel, what we like to eat and whom we choose to be close to. For me, this means that I'm a writer, a home cook, a sister, an enthusiastic but terribly amateur gardener, a wife, a dog owner, and many other things. My identity map overlaps with other people's whose interests or identity markers are the same or related. Simply being called Chinese Canadian only covers a very small portion of what I am. Canada, then, is an intersection of individuals and their communities, where people's schemas overlap. Canada is the place we all live together, sometimes peacefully and joyfully, sometimes not. Canada is where we bounce off each other, where we love and hate each other, and where communities are created based on an infinite number of common interests or origins or challenges. Forget the idea that Canada has no national identity. Sure we do: we're the place where the party happens. The best Canadian books--to me, anyway--are the ones that explore this intersection, the consequences of our interactions with each other and the processes by which we learn and grow together. It's almost like that old joke: a priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar, except that the variables are endless. Looking at Canada in this way, I think it's possible to have a national literature, and that we've already created one, only unwittingly (another marker of Canadian writers perhaps--we're all idiot savants?), which is really the only way to do it, otherwise it wouldn't be a national literature, it would be a literature of what Canadian writers want everyone to believe is a national literature! I almost want to say that no one has to agree with me, and that my opinion is just my opinion, but that would be just too Canadian, don't you think? ------ WRITING, OF ALL THINGS For the first time since The End of East came out in March, I've had an uninterrupted stretch of time to actually work on my new novel. Imagine, a writer actually writing? Madness! I actually really enjoy doing readings and discussions out there in the public world (to be differentiated from the private world, which is really just a triangle bordered by my bedroom, the bathroom and the office, broken occasionally by intermittent trips to the kitchen and into the park to walk my dog), but it was nice to be able to sit down and work again on getting to know my characters and charting out their progressions within their stories. I've been trying to write some poems as well, but really, they're pretty bad. My poetry pen is rusty--very, very rusty. I went to the Ha Jin reading at UBC Robson here in Vancouver last week and I was totally, completely starstruck. Ha Jin is what I call a complete writer; with his books, you get the whole package. Character, plot, landscape, everything. He talked a little about how writing in English when it's not your first language means that you approach English more playfully than a native speaker would, how the quirks of the language are more apparent to you as an outsider. This, to me, is why I go to readings by other authors at all: to hear something about writing that I've never considered before, that gives me another peephole into understanding this craft that I occasionally wonder how I came to be consumed by. I sometimes think that I should post thoughts on other topics other than writing, like about how my teenaged nephew glooms about, snarking at his parents and dripping with sarcasm. Or about the Grey Cup party we had at my house last night (my husband is from Regina and we were celebrating loudly with the green and white) where I made chili, but realized halfway through that I had run out of chili powder. Hmm. Not so interesting. Maybe I'd better stick to posting about the writing. ------ OCTOBER 25, 2007 GO-GO DANCERS CAN DO THE SPLITS I should have written about the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival a long time ago, but the festival was so much fun that I've been EXHAUSTED. I tell you, I have never, in my entire life, had so much fun at a reading (which is to say a reading that I was appearing at because sometimes I bore myself). My first event was Wednesday night, right after the opening reception. Let me tell you, there were piles of food at the reception and if you know me at all personally and have had the misfortune of sharing a meal with me, you know that there is very little in the world that I love better than eating, and eating passionately at that. However, I can't eat or drink alcohol right before I appear at an event because it just all sits like a ball in the bottom of my stomach and booze makes my vision go fuzzy, which means I can barely see the words I'm supposed to be reading. So, I had to walk by the tables of cheese (oh my, I love cheese) and sushi and everything else with a glass of water in my hand. Yes, water. The event I was doing was called The Weight of History, with James George, Nancy Huston and Linda Rogers. I ended up being so hungry, I asked Nancy why all her characters in Fault Lines have very intimate relationships with food. You see? All I think about is my stomach. The next night, I was in GAWK, the infamous Thursday night event, hosted and curated by Billeh Nickerson. If you think you don't know Billeh, just think harder and then you'll realize that you actually do know him, because the man is everywhere. This is where the go-go dancers were entertaining us in between readings, which is a good thing, because if I had to appear on stage with them, I'm quite certain no one would pay any attention to me. I was so impressed with the other authors on that bill (Jenn Farrell, Catherine Kidd, Brendan McLeod, David Chariandy, Steven Price, Nick Thran and Andrew Wedderburn). I think we were all nervous going in, knowing that this event is a big deal and has a reputation for outrageousness. We were all wondering, I think, if we were going to be outrageous enough (not usually a problem for me, but then, I'm not usually called to be outrageous on command; it just happens). But everyone was great and funny and lovely and did a wonderful job both enthralling the audience (a rather rowdy audience, incidentally, who sometimes shout things) with their books and amusing all of us with jokes and whatever else. The writers I read with all went and drank at the hospitality suite afterward. I was sorely disappointed that I had to go home because I had a third event early the next day, a Friday, called The Fresh Face of Fiction. Of course, David Chariandy also appeared at both events, but I think his stamina must be better than mine. Although, I'll tell you something right now that you must keep under your hats: he looked a little green around the gills on Friday when he arrived. Not that I feel sorry for him because he got to have a late night of fun while I, sensibly (I curse my sensibleness, it's all my accountant father's fault), went home and had a hot bath. Also on stage with me that afternoon were Ameen Merchant and Neil Smith. Neil is, of course, my fellow New Face of Fiction representative and we had a great time together. We're very comfortable with each other and have no qualms about teasing or being silly while appearing at the same event. There were quite a few kids in the audience, who seemed a leetle shocked by a few things we had to say, but being shocked is good; it makes you grow taller. Saturday, I was so pleased to be able to relax and enjoy my friend Mary Novik's event, Bringing the Past to Life with Peter Behrens. She was so funny and just generally chilled out that I was puffed out with pride (I said pride, not bloat). And, because it wasn't my event, I could finally eat and drink! So, the festival was a success for Mary and me, I think. The volunteers were so great and giving and friendly and the staff really outdid themselves organizing things so we wouldn't get lost or throw writerly hissy fits. So, thanks Hal Wake and everyone at the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival. Now, I must go and silence that piece of pizza calling to me from the fridge. One last thought: make sure you come out and see Mary and I read together (with June Hutton moderating) on November 4th at the Chapters on Granville and Broadway. ------ I MIGHT JUST FAINT WITH EXCITEMENT Listen up, folks. My good friend and writing partner Mary Novik is my hero this morning. Her novel, Conceit, has made the longlist for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize!!!! Oh my, I am so excited, I might just faint right here and fall face down into my keyboard. My writing group SPiN has had the most amazing year and for those of you who don't know why, here's a short recap. My novel, The End of East, came out in March. June Hutton's novel, Underground, was sold to Cormorant Books the same month. And Mary's Conceit just came out the first week of September. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. Mary, if you're reading this, you deserve this nod more than anyone I know. You worked hard, kept going at your craft during days when it seemed as if it wasn't even worth it. I salute you, Mary Novik, for writing a great book, and, most importantly, for being my friend. For those of you who are looking for an update on my adventures in Whistler, I wil tell you that, at the evening event for Whistler Reads, I got to see my own face on a movie-sized screen and it's not an experience I'm anxious to repeat. Do any of us really know how annoying our quirks are until we see them on film in a room full of strangers who are supposed to think we're smart and poised? Well, as it turns out, I'm actually kind of twitchy and I play with my hair too much. I think I need to lie down. ------ PSST...WAYSON CHOY IS SITTING IN THE BACK That's what my ever helpful husband whispered to me just minutes before I was to step on stage for my event at the Sunshine Coast Festival. I was already nervous, but it seemed ten times worse when I knew that Wayson Choy, the writer to whom all Asian Canadian writers are compared, was actually going to listen to ME. All of a sudden, I imagined myself tripping on the stairs up to the stage, dropping my notes all over the floor and being unable to say anything at all except, "There's Wayson Choy," over and over again. Luckily for me, it was the audience who put me at ease. Really, the people who attend this festival are some of the most informed readers I've ever met. They were engaged and enthusiastic. Their questions were great and really made me think about The End of East in different ways, and also made be think deeply about what role the book might play in the Chinese Canadian community, a thought that had passed through my cluttered mind before, but only in a transitory and impermanent way. And during all this, I managed to forget that Wayson Choy was even in the room! Which meant, of course, that I got through my reading and chatter without freaking out and crumpling into a ball of nerves on the floor. By the way, he very nicely complimented my event afterward, and we got a chance to chat. He's simply a nice, gentle man, the kind you want to talk to for hours and hours, laughing quietly over shared jokes, winking at each other when one of you says something a little bit naughty. I also spent some time with Richard Van Camp (Angel Wing Splash Pattern, Lesser Blessed), whose energy both surprised and invigorated me. He's very funny, but he's also a great listener and I imagine that he walks through life with his ears pricked up so that he doesn't miss a thing. Also, all the ladies at the Festival seemed to think he was handsome and I wouldn't dare disagree with them! And before I forget, I had a great conversation with Peter Robinson; I've read all his books and am a huge fan of Inspector Banks (my husband likes to say that he's not sure if I have a crush on the fictional detective or the real author). I had a brief vision of myself as Bridget Jones and wondered if I would just become totally starstruck and only be able to ask him where the loo was. I really love good crime fiction and Peter's books are among the best. So, that's enough of an update, yes? Reminder: I'm doing a reading commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Vancouver Chinatown riot at UBC Robson on September 6 with Michael Barnholden, who knows much more about the historical significance of these things than I do! It'll be an intriguing event, with two different perspectives from Michael and me. See you soon! One last thing: have you pre-ordered your copy of Conceit yet? ------ AUGUST 7, 2007 A FULL HOUR OF...WHAT, EXACTLY? It was only last week that I finally realized the enormity of my event at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts. I will be on stage for ONE FULL HOUR. By myself. With no panel. As my father used to say, "Holy moly." Most of the readings I've been doing have been no more than 20 minutes long, which is just the right amount of time to recover from any blunders, but also to exit gracefully if things are going badly. I really enjoy readings and I really enjoy being able to share my work with an audience and hearing their questions and comments. I just fear that I'm not nearly as entertaining after the 30-minute mark. Maybe I'm like a risotto: best served immediately, or else I get gluey and unpalatable. However, I have been preparing and practising for my dog (whose attention span tops out at about two and half minutes, and only if there are no squirrels to bark at), so I expect everything will go smashingly, provided I don't suddenly go blind from nerves, thus rendering my notes totally useless. No, don't worry. I'LL DO JUST FINE. Everyone should know that my writing partner and dear friend Mary Novik is launching her debut novel, Conceit, on September 1, when it will be available from fine Canadian bookstores across the country. It's a beautiful, bawdy, slightly raunchy, great big novel, exactly the kind to settle down with on a rainy and windy fall evening with a glass of brandy (or, if it's me, it would be a glass of sherry). I really do think it's a brand new kind of novel never before seen in this country and that it will knock the pantaloons off anyone who reads it. So, that said, EVERYONE MUST NOW GO OUT AND PRE-ORDER IT. Wow. I must be feeling really exclamatory today. It's all caps, all the time. See you all in Sechelt and in Regina. ------ LOVE ME, WRITE ME Do you want to know what's a huge surprise? I get fan mail! In the last few weeks, I've ben receiving emails from people who have read The End of East and have enjoyed it or learned something from it or had some kind of relationship with it (I also received one hate mail, which was more amusing than alarming). I really did want to put up this website so I could have some communication with the people who read my book, and I'm glad that it's working. It really means so much to me to hear what readers think and how they interact with The End of East. On a sort of related tangent, I'd been planning on a quiet summer so I could really get some substantive work done on my second novel (don't even ask, it's coming along but don't expect a book out next month), but it seems that the universe is conspiring against me. As it turns out, when you publish a book, people from your past start to notice and get in contact with you, which is great, provided, of course, you're not getting emails from someone you'd rather forget, which hasn't happened to me yet, thank you. Anyway, I find it hard to refuse old friends or family I haven't seen in a long time, which means I have less time to write this month than I thought I was going to. Of course, trying to see everyone while still working a reasonable amount means that some people start to complain and wonder why I'm so busy. Hmmm, maybe because I'm embarking on another multi-year project that requires more mental power than I fear I have left? That might have something to do with it. My fall is starting to fill up as well as festival and reading season gets under way. Keep checking my News page to see what's shaking and where I'm going to be. For my friends and family and readers in Regina, I'll be reading at the Book and Brier Patch on Friday, August 17, right after my appearance at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts. Maybe someone could bring perogies? ------ A WRITER AND POSSIBLY NOTHING ELSE? So, I just returned last Friday from a short trip to the Netherlands to visit my friend Sandra (who, impressively, works for a NGO that advocates for gender-inclusive justice at the International Criminal Court in the Hague) and totally forgot that I was a writer for seven days. Funny, I thought it would be a relief, but, instead, I felt bereft and a little anchorless. My identity as a writer has been really paramount lately, with people asking me questions all the time about publishing and the creative process and what it feels like to see my book on bookstore shelves (it feels great, by the way, and I spent a whole 45 minutes the first weekend my book was on sale lurking around a local bookstore trying to see if anyone would pick up The End of East--no one did). This little trip was supposed to be relaxing and a little brainless (although not totally so, for I soon discovered that the Dutch are a brainy group of people), but it turns out that I don't particularly take well to relaxation. My normal state of being is wound up tight. I work, I mull about work, I work some more. This is, of course, tiring, and every once in a while I feel as if my head is caught in a slowly narrowing vice. But, unless I'm working, I'm a little lost. Who am I if I'm not a writer? A woman with a sassy mouth? The owner of that charming, fuzzy dog? Housecoat lady? Anyway, it's good to be home and writing again. The rest of this summer I'll be hard at work on my second novel, forgetting to wash my hair and change out of my pyjamas. Ah, happiness. For those of you who are into reading about writers and writing, I'll be in an online discussion with Gail Anderson-Dargatz at her website on Saturday, June 16. The conversation should be posted around noon, so come by and see what Gail and I have to say to each other (knowing her and knowing me, there won't be any lack of words, that's for sure). Also, tickets are on sale now for my event at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts on August 11. I'm stepping in for Noah Richler (I'm nothing like him, so I find this rather hilarious) and am promising everyone who comes a raucous (or maybe not so raucous) good time. ------- MAY 7, 2007 BREAK OUT YOUR CHOPSTICKS AND DIG IN May is Asian Heritage Month! Of course, every month is Asian Heritage Month in my house, but there's some good stuff happening all over the country, events that celebrate what it means to be Asian in Canada today. We are so used to the idea that Asian and Canadian are two separate things and that every Canadian of Asian descent necessarily feels torn between two worlds. Well, things aren't that way at all. When I talk to my oldest sister about identity and what it means to be Chinese Canadian, she sees being Chinese as very different and distinct from being Canadian. When she was growing up (I won't say how old she is, because she'll kill me, so you'll just have to guess what decade she came of age in), she felt she had to make a choice between the Chinese-ness of our parents and the Canadian-ness of everyone else. This, of course, can lead to a very defined sense of disconnect, of feeling markedly different from your origins but yet also not fully Canadian either. I came of age in the 90s, when the Asian communities in Vancouver and its surrounding suburbs were growing quickly. Also, the 90s were a time of grunge and raves, generational ennui and backpacking. Race never seemed that important to me, and hot-button cultural issues seemed to be getting replaced by sushi restaurants and teenaged pop tarts. Now, of course, we know that there were many events-- often violent and revolutionary--happening all over the world that were being ignored by Western governments and media. For much of the 90s, our heads were in the sand. What all this means is that I am a whole person, one whose ethnicity, nationality, race and cultural origins are so fully integrated together that the term Chinese Canadian is woefully inadequate. After all, having to use two words to explain my identity immediately signifies that I am from two places, or am, somehow, divided into two parts. Not true. The language just hasn't caught up to my reality yet. It looks like my CBC Studio One Book Club event, part of Vancouver's Asian Heritage Month celebrations, will be broadcast the third and fourth Saturdays of this month, on May 19 and 26 in British Columbia on the North by Northwest program between 8:00am and 9:00am. Tune in and see if you can catch how many times I make a joke at my husband's expense! Also in celebration of all things Asian, I will be reading at the Richmond Museum on May 29 at 7:00pm as part of the Asian Heritage Stories event. I haven't yet done an event in Richmond, and this reading will be a great opportunity for me to meet and hang out with everyone there, so please come out and ask some questions! ------- APRIL 23, 2007 DISHEVELLED HOUSECOAT LADY CLEANS UP NICELY What a month! As a writer, I spend most of my time in my sweatpants (not yoga pants, mind you, but good, old-fashioned, baggy in the rear sweatpants), sitting at my computer in my office. The only people I usually see during the week are fellow dog-walkers, with whom I might be a little over-friendly as I don't often speak to other human beings in the middle of the day. (In case you're wondering, yes, I do talk to my dog, who also serves as an audience when I do run-throughs of my readings. I try not to take it personally when she inevitably falls asleep.) So, when I'm as busy as I've been these last few weeks, it's a huge disruption to my usual commute out of bed and to the desk. What do you mean I have to put on makeup? Presentable clothes? Socks? One of the dog-walkers I see on a regular basis mentioned that she saw my photograph in the newspaper and said, "You looked quite different." Translation? "My, what a change from your uncombed hair, uneven skin and mud-covered jeans." In the end, it's a good thing I've had to go out and be presentable lately. Without all these events and readings, I might have been in very grave danger of becoming permanently attached to my fleece hoodie and fuzzy slippers! Good news: I'm going to be the CBC Studio One Book Club author for the month of May! For all of you living in and around Vancouver, the taping on the evening of Wednesday, May 2 is a live event in front of an audience, and if you'd like to come, ticket information is at the Studio One Book Club website. I'll read, answer some questions and hopefully make you laugh and think a little. And don't worry, I'll do my best not to show up in my housecoat. ------- NEED...SLEEP...NOW This has been the busiest week of my life so far. Sunday, we had our launch party at Salt Tasting Room in Blood Alley. It was great fun (see the photos at the Quill & Quire site) and I was so touched to see that many people come out just to cheer me on. It was a bit like a wedding, except in a Gastown alley and with no slow dancing to a tinny version of "Endless Love." My husband and, of course, Alden Habacon, Mary Novik and June Hutton helped me with dozens of small tasks--they were great co-hosts! The next morning, I was on a plane to Toronto, where I was interviewed, photographed and fed at an alarming pace. I'm surprised I remained conscious! I didn't even have time to notice the blisters on my feet until I arrived home yesterday afternoon. I was really fortunate to have some time to hang out with Neil Smith and Ami McKay, both New Face of Fiction writers and the only two people I have ever met who truly understand the badly mixed feelings I've been experiencing lately of fear, giddiness, anxiety, relief and fatigue. Neil, of course, is screamingly funny as I'm sure most of you have figured out from his writing, but he's also geunine and sweet and endearingly soft-spoken. I won't say I have a crush on him, but if anybody else does, I can totally understand! And Ami is just a bundle of energy and enthusiasm and kindness. She deserves all the success and praise that has been heaped on her since The Birth House was released. For the New Face of Fiction party we attended on Tuesday night, she even wore a special jacket just so she could match the cover of The End of East! And all I was worried about was the fit of my sausage-casing-esque girdle contraption. As tiring as it all was, it felt great to finally meet the people at Knopf who have helped my novel get to the bookstore shelves. I have never met a team of people who work as hard as they do (especially my publicist, Colleen Clarke, who may just be a superhero) and who love books as much as they do. Also, I met a lot of readers, book lovers who approach a new book with excitement and a sense of adventure. You know, I really did write this book for people like them, not for critics or awards juries, even though positive reviews and nominations would be thrilling and wonderful. All I ever wanted was for people to read it. And now, my bed beckons. ------ THE TIME IS (ALMOST) RIGHT NOW We are five days away from on-sale date of The End of East. Gads. People ask me all the time if I'm excited. Well, if excitement is a combination of anxiety, trepidation and giddiness, then I suppose I am excited. I want people to read it, but I'm also afraid they'll hate it. There's nothing that scares me more than the possibility of a scathing review, one that zeroes in and magnifies every single flaw in The End of East, one that somehow exposes me for being an imposter, a strange, delusional woman who fancies herself a writer but really isn't one at all. I just want people to like it. I love my little book in a way that I can only describe as maternal. I know, really and truly, that it's not perfect, that it's a product of me and my millions of flaws and blind spots, but still--The End of East represents seven years of hard work and worry, and it looks like the worrying part isn't going to be over any time soon! Be kind, reviewers. Or, if you can't be kind, at least be...not so mean. ------ BOOKSELLERS SURE KNOW HOW TO PARTY I was in Victoria on Monday for the BC Bookfair (incidentally-- perhaps not that incidentally because it sure felt integral to me--the breakfast at which I was to speak was at 7:30 in the morning and we were expected to eat first and present our books later, which meant I had to be careful not to eat things that would get stuck in my teeth or crumb up the front of my shirt), which is a kind of conference for booksellers across the province to preview the upcoming season and hear about new books from authors like me. This was, of course, my first official outing as a New Face of Fiction representative. I should say there was a wine and cheese reception the night before, at which I tried not to drink too much, which wasn't hard because booksellers really know how to make a dent in both wine and cheese without my help, God bless them. And I can say this because I used to be a bookseller myself. In fact, the first time I ever had a whole pint of beer to myself was at my old bookstore's gala opening. I was, of course, only 18, but nobody but me and my tax form knew that. I was the only fiction writer on the bill, which included Colin Angus (Beyond the Horizon, Doubleday), Ted Barris (Victory at Vimy, Thomas Allen) and Richard Cannings (An Enchantment of Birds, Greystone), and I think that helped in garnering me a little more attention than I might have had otherwise. The booksellers were great--enthusiastic, kind and genuinely interested in The End of East and what I had to say about it. The most surreal thing for me, though, was when the host at the breakfast announced, "The authors will be available after their presentations to sign their advance reading copies." I have never autographed anything IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I think in the first five copies I signed I might have even spelled my own name wrong. The lesson? Practice signing your name and writing witty things in books, kids. You never know when that skill might pay off. -------NICE WORDS FROM BOOKLOUNGE.CA This isn't really a "thought," but since I Google myself far more than is healthy, and since I have a cadre of friends and colleagues who also Google me, I came across a nice blog entry about The End of East on BookLounge.ca, written by Random House Canada's marketing manager, Randy Chan. Read it here and find out why he calls me "sassy." ------ DECEMBER 19, 2006 Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend an advance screening of Dragon Boys, a new mini-series set to air on CBC television on January 7 and 8. You see, this is the thing: I heard about this project some time ago and knew long before I saw it that it would be a two-part film that fictionalizes the world (and underworld) of Chinese Canadian gangs. "Hold up," I thought, "haven't we all heard enough about that?" When I was a teenager in the early 90s, Asian youth gangs were big news. Terms like dai lo, snakehead and triad were being bandied about in the media everyday. One night, I was sitting in my friend's parked car, outside my own house when a police officer pulled up and demanded to see our identification, not trusting, of course, that I actually lived where I said I dd and suspecting that we were home invaders. To me, this was a lot of fear without a lot of substance. Sure, we all knew one or two bad seeds who swaggered through the hallways at school or waited for their grilfriends across the street leaning on their sports cars. But I emerged from my youth, as did all of my friends, totally untouched by the gang experience. So, I had mixed feelings going into the Dragon Boys screening, fearing that I was going to watch three and a half hours of well-produced gang hysteria. As it turns out, I was totally unprepared. Dragon Boys is easily the best-acted and best-written television movie I've seen in years. The actors (including Byron Mann, Tzi Ma, Lawrence Chou, Eric Tsang, Steph Song, Michael Adamthwaite and my two favourites, Jean Yoon and Simon Wong) were so great at giving their characters the kind of depth most television shows can only dream of. The screenwriter and producer, Ian Weir (who, incidentally, taught me my very first term of creative writing at UBC, but I'm sure he has no memory of my crappy, crappy screenplay), wrote a sensitive and far-reaching script with multiple narratives, a little like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Chinese Canadian gang activity is a sensitive topic, especially here in Vancouver where gangs are often linked to ethnicity in the media. Dragon Boys is about gangs, sure, but in the same way that The Sopranos is about the mafia. The gang thing is really a landscape, a kind of stage where all the characters and their plotlines converge. (I should mention that Vancouver and Richmond play a huge role and are almost characters in and of themselves. The accuracy of how these two cities feed and play off each other is really very incisive.) Am I gushing? Yes. Listen, I'm not a film critic and never will be. All I know is that this movie, which I expected to be either pedantic or hysterical, was neither of these things and is, in fact, something far greater. Flawed characters who sometimes rise to the occassion and sometimes fail miserably. Plotlines that reveal we are all connected. And a particularly Canadian cinematic portrayal of violence: few guns, no car chases, just suggestion. Brilliant. ------ NOVEMBER 21, 2006 For you other writers out there, does this sound familiar? "Why aren't you on Oprah?" Good God. I don't know if this is a common problem or not, but I find that the closer I get to the launch date for The End of East, the more excited and exuberant my family and close friends become. They all expect my novel to make a huge splash. They expect to see my face in the newspapers. They expect that I will become the next big thing. Part of the problem is that most people don't even hear of writers unless they're humongous successes, like Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. I mean, even Margaret Atwood isn't as famous as someone like Kevin Federline. Because other writers who are also successful--but maybe to a lesser degree--are basically unknown to most of the world. People equate the word writer with Stephen King. So, what this all leads to is the perception that writers make a lot of money, or that fame comes to most of them. Not true, my dearies. Not true. My family and friends' optimism is touching, but it works my nerves to the breaking point sometimes. Anyone who knows me also knows that I put a lot of pressure on myself, that I'm not happy unless I'm giving so much to my work that I can barely remember to brush my teeth at the end of day. I never expected to be a commercial success, so up until recently, that part of my writing career has been mercifully free of anxiety. However, all those chirpings from the people in my life have begun to build up, and I feel an immense weight, a weight I have never felt before. So, in addition to my considerable self-imposed pressure to be the best writer I can be and to work as hard as humanly possible to make sure that people will want to read what I produce, I'm feeling that I have to live up to the fame and sales expectations of those closest to me. And this, as we all know, is an impossible task. I don't think I can stop people from telling me I should be on Oprah (by the way, Oprah, if you're reading this, I would LOVE to be on your show--call me!), but what I can do is just forget about what my loved ones think or suppose about my writing and just concentrate on the word crafting and hours spent in front of the computer. You know, the things that make me happy. I never said I was normal. ------ OCTOBER 6 , 2006 I AM NOT ASHAMED TO LOVE CANLIT Canadian fiction gets a bad rap sometimes. People talk about how all the stories are the same: rural youth comes of age while wading through snow after experiencing a kooky (or sometimes painful) sexual epiphany. I'm not going to say that these stories don't exist, because they do, and there's certainly plenty of them to choose from. But I think sometimes critics of Canadian fiction are seeng only what they want to see in these stories, and are only seeing the novels or short stories that conform to this archetype (or is that stereotype?). Let's look at this point by point. First of all, Canada, whether you want to admit or not, is mostly rural. This is a huge country and most of it is not urban. And then think about why people become writers. Most of them, like me, were hungry readers from childhood. What kind of children read a lot of books? Children who are either socially awkward and lonely (that's my excuse) or children who have long stretches of time to fill up, who are, in all probability, living in a place where there aren't too many activities to distract them from their books, places like small town Canada. (Of course, I'm as urban as you can get, but then it was a different sort of isolation with me. Living in East Vancouver, my mother was all sorts of paranoid about safety and basically forbade me to ride my bicycle further than half a block away from the house.) Coming of age stories come from everywhere. Think of those writers from the American South like Flannery O'Connor or, more recently, Donna Tartt. The Violent Bear it Away (which I love and I can't even tell you how much)? Coming of age story. The Secret History (which I also love)? Coming of age story. Curious. And don't get me started about sex. Everything has sex in it, from the Victorian passion in Possession by A.S. Byatt to the crude flashes of underwear whenever Paris Hilton goes out to party. Honestly, people! I have to admit that there was a time when CanLit seemed odious to me, when I was slightly embarrassed to be seen reading it. Well, no more. My love affair with Canadian words began when I was 14 and read The Stone Angel for the first time and has never really gone away. And it's exciting to me that fiction that truly illustrates this crazy quilt of a country is coming fast and furious, as it should. (Honestly, the novel that really killed me recently because it gives us a new perspective on the very foundations of Canada-- meaning bureaucracy and mistakes that turn into something else that are not quite mistakes--was Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam. Urban, inventive and, I think, so incisive on the ways in which passion and bloodlessness and tragedy can, accidentally, shape a city and a country. Brilliance.) And why should we be ashamed of our archetypes? The End of East is a story about immigration and a family and, dare I say it, a woman's coming of age. I worried over whether I was telling the same story that was told so well by SKY Lee and Wayson Choy, but in the end, I knew that while the frame may be similar, the body is totally different. It's my body, and people might slam it for being too CanLit, but so what? I did my best to subvert the archetype, and in some ways, I think I succeeded. But ultimately, my novel isn't about subversion, it's about one fictional family. Period. And if the CanLit crowd embraces The End of East, then I'll embrace the crowd right back. ------THE HAPPIEST AUTHOR IN THE WORLD Normally, the public thinks of writers as slightly unhinged, all-black-wearing, melancholic wisps of people. I can't deny that I've spent more time than is necessary mooning around the city feeling sorry for myself and then wandering home so I could write about it. When I was a student and Keith Maillard was heading my poetry workshop at UBC, he said to me that young writers write from sadness and as you get older, you have to find other sources for material. So true. Last Wednesday night, I attended Robert Wiersema's launch party for his first novel, Before I Wake. Seriously, he must be the happiest writer I have ever met. It's funny; I've learned to keep my elation at having a book contract under wraps a little because I fear that my enthusiasm will be taken badly and that I will find myself with a reputation for having a big, fat ego. Now, however, I have to say that Rob's sheer joy at being a published author has forever changed the way I view my own success. From now on, I won't be afraid to express how very fulfilled I feel at having the opportunity to send my words out into the world with Knopf by my side. Really, it's my lifelong dream come true. I was never the little girl who pulled pillowcases over my head so I could play at being a bride. Instead of weddings, I dreamed of book signings. So, how to resolve that tension between depressed writer and contented published author? Easy. I'm just not going to be depressed anymore. I'm sure I can find another, sunnier source of inspiration. ------ ACTORS WHO WRITE? Did you know that Ethan Hawke has adapted his own first novel, The Hottest State, into a screenplay and is currently directing its production in New York City? I think I may be the only person in Western Canada (I would say all of Canada, but I'm guessing there's one other person in Thunder Bay or Miramichi who may have picked it up somewhere) to have read that book. I was working at a bookstore at the time and obtained an advance reading copy; I was besotted with Ethan Hawke back then. Who didn't love Todd in Dead Poets Society (although Knox was really more my style) or Jesse in Before Sunrise? I loved his pallor, his mumbly yet strangely articulate line delivery, the way he seemed to tremble with nerdy, New England-esque angst. The Hottest State surprised me. Even though, in many ways, the novel seemed like either a personal fantasy (what good-looking, out-of-work actors get up to New York when they're too young to know better) or a thinly veiled autobiography, the writing was pretty tight and I liked his characters enough to finish it. Maybe the women got the raw end of the deal in terms of character development, and maybe the novel just skimmed the surface, offering the basic narrative and very little else, but when you think about actors/celebrities who write, The Hottest State is a total masterpiece. By the way, did you know that Naomi Campbell once wrote a novel called Swan? No kidding--and it's even still in print. My point is that I still have a soft spot for dear, old Ethan (yes, I know he cheated on Uma Thurman, but it's not like I'm going to marry him or love him in any real, un-celluloid way) and am interested to see how he handles his own material and what updates he'll make to the text. The novel came out at a time when raves and grunge competed for our attention (hard to say who won that battle--any suggestions?), and when meeting people and developing sexual relationships occured without the help of internet dating. Personally, it's hard for me to separate The Hottest State from that time--I was 20 years old when I read it and mooning about UBC campus, probably in love with some boy who looked suspiciously like Mr. Hawke and who wanted to be an actor--or a writer! Ha. Ethan, I want you to blow the lid off this film and make me fall in love with you all over again. ------ HEAD TAX APOLOGY FINALLY IMMINENT So.This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is set to officially apologize on behalf of all Canadians for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1923. Interesting. Now, people who have been privy to the development of The End of East over the years know that the head tax plays a large part in my novel. And people who know me and my family also know that my grandfather paid that head tax when he entered Canada as a young man 93 years ago. It stands to reason then, that lots of people have been asking me my opinion on this apology Stephen Harper is offering. The short answer? I don't even really know myself. Listen, the official apology will be nice and is certainly long overdue. Chinese Canadian families suffered to pay and repay that head tax. Men died working on the railway. Men were left for dead after the railway was completed. Unable to bring their wives to Canada, men lived in isolation and loneliness, saving every extra penny to send to their families in China and also to return themselves for short, infrequent visits. And when the families were finally reunited after the Second World War (after Chinese Canadian men fought for Canada), they found that they hardly even knew each other and the painful process of mending and learning to re-love began. All of this affects me deeply; the isolation and suffering and scrambling for any extra money that can possibly be saved are so much a part of me that I cannot separate them from my body. I may as well try to rip out my liver. However, I am struck with two feelings. First, I cannot shake the thought that this is too little too late. It's almost as if I've been in a painful relationship with some horrible, abusive guy. Finally, I leave him and work--alone--to undo the harm that he's caused. After years of this inner work, I'm in a place where I can view that relationship without bitterness and where I can even point to lessons I may have learned from all that pain. And then, just when I'm feeling good and whole, the bastard comes back and starts to apologize, wanting me to forgive him because of all the guilt he feels. So, even when he's feeling contrite, his self-flagellation is still all about him. In many ways, I feel that the apology has more to do with guilt and political grandstanding than anything else. I don't doubt that this Conservative government wants the goodwill of the Chinese Canadian community, which is big and prominent in many different spheres. But would Stephen Harper bother if the community was smaller and less vocal and therefore less likely to influence voters? Second, I would love it if the money that might be allocated to financial redress be used to amend high school social studies textbooks to better reflect the unfair and racist immigration policies the Canadian government enforced in the past that affected many communities, not just the Chinese Canadian one. I meet educated adults all the time who have no idea what the head tax is, or who have never heard of the stranded Sikh immigrants on the Komagata Maru. Simply put, this kind of ignorance should not be happening. I guess what I'm saying is that this apology will be good for Stephen Harper and his Conservative government from a public relations perspective. But whether it will be good for the Chinese Canadian community in any appreciable way remains to be seen. P.S. I promise that I won't post any more political ramblings. At least, not often! ------ A BRIEF HISTORY OF WHAT I CALL "THE DEAD YEARS" When I left school in 1998, I was at a strange place in my life. I thought I wanted to go to graduate school and eventually teach as a way of supporting myself as a writer. However, almost as soon as I started the program I was enrolled in, I realized that academia just wasn't the place for me. I remember thinking that reading more criticism and more theoretical texts was simply boring me and that the only way for me to become a writer was to just write. And so, I came back to Vancouver with that goal in mind. As soon as I returned, I realized very quickly that I had been paddling around in a very different pool as a student writer. Your instructors and the publications that are open to students are more forgiving than the big, bad world of Canadian publishing. I began working in social services, first as a receptionist and then, eventually, as a communications manager. I wrote some poems and diligently sent them off. Nothing happened. I still have a file of my rejections, and keep them because it's sometimes a good exercise to remember how much other people think you suck. In 2000, realizing that I had no more poems to send out, I began to write a novel. When I started, it was really just a 10-page series of prose poems. But then it grew and grew, and I had the brilliant idea of turning it all into a novel. Never mind that I had never written any serious fiction before in my entire life, and never mind that I didn't have the least idea how to structure or pace any piece of writing longer than three pages. Clearly, the pile of rejection slips hadn't dampened my confidence too much. By 2002, I had a first draft and was working part-time to dedicate more hours to this novel. I applied to the Booming Ground Writers' Community at UBC and that summer, joined the novel workshop facilitated by Thomas Wharton (Icefields, Salamander, The Logogryph). There are several things Thomas said to me that I will never forget. Through this workshop, I met June Hutton and Mary Novik, and we formed our writing group, called SPiN. For three more years, we worked together on our books, shared our challenges in signing with agents and generally did a lot of swearing and drinking behind closed doors. I signed with Carolyn Swayze and in 2005, that all-important call came in that Knopf Canada was going to buy my manuscript, now called The End of East, and include it in its New Face of Fiction program for 2007. I cried. My husband danced around the kitchen with the dog. And then we went out for a really nice dinner. The deal with Knopf was life-changing, but not in the way that most people think. I'm not a millionaire and will likely never be one. What changed for me was how affirmed I felt as a writer. How, for the first time in a long time, I felt that people really valued my words and the care I took in choosing and arranging them. And it felt really good to have the discerning readers at Knopf and Vintage (my editor Kendall Anderson, Louise Dennys, Diane Martin and Marion Garner) so enthusiastically on my side. I felt like I was a legitimate member of the Canadian literary community. Now that the unknown writer role is starting to end for me, I can say, honestly and without bitterness, that those years--during which I tapped on my keyboard with no reward in sight, wearing my paint-stained and disgracefully thin, navy blue sweatpants--were really quite valuable. I had to learn how to motivate myself. I had to create and stick to my own deadlines. I had to understand that not everyone is going to like what I write. I had to work harder than I ever thought I could just to pay the rent while still writing as much as I needed to. How puritan I sound, and how salt-of-the-earth Canadian. But it's all quite true. Would I ever want to go back to that time in my life? Of course not. Not all writers are crazy. |
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