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Friday, 23 December 2011
Wither they writing? Redux.
About a month ago, I waxed poetic (okay, I waxed but 'poetic' is a stretch) about my lack of writing output. The intent of the post was to spur my own writing by hopefully reminding myself publicly of the need to focus.  

Of course, by simply avoiding the post the reminder doesn't really carry much clout.

I was hoping to come back this month with an update on the third book in the Winston Patrick series that would sound much more hopeful than what I have to report.  It probably doesn't need saying, then, that the progress on the third book remains stuck in neutral.  I'm not certain I've even found the clutch.

A therapist would tell me - I assume, because I'm too cheap to pay for one - that I'm my own worst critic and slowing myself down by exerting too much of my energy focusing on why I'm not writing as opposed to simply writing.

Previously I provided some of my perceived obstacles to progress.  While some of them remain true (that dead spider surely hasn't gone anywhere) I may have discovered a serious impediment to literary output:

Cardigans.

Simply put, I don't have any.  And it seems to be holding me back.  

Each time I pass a store in which a cardigan is prominently displayed I can't help but thinking I would look so much more like a writer if I were enveloped in a decent cardigan.  I'm willing to forego a pipe and even the glass of bourbon but after all this head wringing about moving forward with the third (and ultimately the fourth book - already outlined and itching to be written) the problem must be in my lack of writerly uniform.

Currently I'm thinking about this one:

It has the cable-knit, sailor-like quality that allows me to picture myself at an old wooden desk, laptop afore me, staring out at the cold, stormy Atlantic seashore for inspiration.  That I live on the Pacifc, or 2,000 feet above and 40 kilometres inland from it, would surely be overcome by the authenticity of the attire.

As the weather warms, I could go with something lighter.

Light enough as to permit me to not sweat - I prefer my belletristic toils to be metaphorically perspiring - yet providing enough coverage to permit those short walk breaks, the amount of productivity expecting to increase to the point that breaks will, in fact, become necessary.

One more would complete the collection.
 
Note the important addition of pockets.  These would be used to carry around a small Moleskine notebook to record the inspiration derived from these artist strolls.

I don't know why I didn't recognize the sooner. The answer is so simple really.

Boxing Week sales are approaching. This ought to do it.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 11:52 AM PST
Updated: Friday, 23 December 2011 11:59 AM PST
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Monday, 28 November 2011
O Writing Where art thou?

 

I haven’t been writing a lot lately.

That’s sort of an understatement. I really haven’t been writing at all.  On the one hand, it could be I’m suffering from writer’s block.  For the most part, this is a fictitious condition, or so the psychologists would have us believe.  Of course, they haven’t had to write anything since their PhD theses and God knows no one wants to read those.

It’s probably difficult to get sympathy.  Kurt Vonnegut once famously said: “Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”  I am neither bound nor gagged by policemen and while the freedom in which I live is less than perfect, I don’t yet feel I have nothing more to say.

The fact of the matter is that like anything else, I’m sure, the longer one stays away from a thing, the harder it is to get back to the thing.  Take school – with which I have a fairly significant amount of experience.  Skip one class and going back doesn’t seem so tough.  Skip five classes and the thought of going back and catching up on all that has been missed seems so daunting that continuing to skip further seems preferable, even though it’s clear the longer absences are going to make the eventual return that much more difficult to face.

Writing, I find, can be like that.

And to be sure, writer’s block is mostly just a fear of re-starting that which I walked away from some time ago.  The blank page, the blinking cursor, the time alone all become these ominous demons to be slain before productivity returns.  And it’s amazing the list of reasons one can concoct to legitimize absence from the writing.  Here are some of my current ones:

-          I haven’t purchased an iPad.

-          my office is too messy/crowded/loud/quiet

-          I’m busy planning the release party of my new book

-          I haven’t finished writing my 3 x 5 index cards of the story

-          the cork bulletin board in the basement that I want to bring up to the office on which to organize the 3 x 5 cards has a spider behind it.  It’s a dead spider but it’s really large and it kind of freaks me out.  I thought of sending my 7 year old daughter to get the board and feign ignorance about the spider when she sees it and screams.

-          I’m a horrible father.

On their own, none of these items ought to prevent progress on the next book.  I even started watching the West Wing again for inspiration.  But focussing on Aaron Sorkin’s writing could only serve to make me feel incapable and thus joins the list above.

Julia Cameron claims to have a sure fire method for releasing me from writer’s block and to be sure, I have tried her program before and I have had some success.  On the other hand, it involves writing three pages a day of basically journaling, which seems to me to be taking up the precious little time available for writing and thus belongs on the list above.

Still, I’m not ready to give up and I’m pseudo-publicly committing to increasing the output so feel free to hold me accountable.  If you read this (and who would?) feel free to nag me. If you bump into me on the street or the Apple Store, remind me of my commitment. 

Progress reports to follow.


Posted by davidrussellbc at 7:12 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 28 November 2011 7:30 PM PST
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Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Relaxing. Or chillin'. Or whatever it's called.

I'm not very good at relaxing.

 

In that total, unadulterated, undisturbed, complete and total sense of the concept, I confess to being somewhat of a failure.

 

I don't say that as a martyr or as one critical of others able to just completely let go and unwind.  I admire those people.  You don't need to be Bikram to know and appreciate the benefits of unplugging, recharging and re-energizing.  And not just the laptop batteries.  Whole publications are devoted not only to convincing people of the merits of downtime but also teaching them how to do it.  It's probably a said statement a publishing arm exists dedicated to and finding a sustainable market for teaching people how not to do anything.

 

But I'm a writer.

 

So what, one might be inclined to say.  Writers aren't necessarily such hard workers (with apologies to those fellow scribes who are).  I've heard writers described as actors who are too lazy to wait tables.

 

I'm the kind of writer, I suspect like many of my brethren and sistern, that makes the majority of my income from sources other than writing.  Thus (writers like to say things like 'thus', even when we're speaking), the bulk of the writing occurs during the down time from generating other sources of income, which conflicts with the relaxation time.

 

Take right now.

 

I am sitting around a swimming pool at a resort, being served drinks, watching other people relax, and about all I can think is the writing I'm not doing while I'm sitting here reading Stieg Larsson's admittedly very good book in a genre in which I'm supposed to be writing. 

 

There are others like me.

 

Looking around the pool deck I count three people pecking away at laptops.  They may not be fellow writers (they may be, though - look how many people James Patterson has writing for him) but they're working.  What's a guy to do?

 

Unable to take it any longer, the reminders all around me, (I think I even saw the guy next to me check his email on his Kindle when he was supposed to be relaxing) I started to write.  On my Blackberry, on which this entire posting was composed.

 

At poolside.  Drink beside me.  Relaxing.


Posted by davidrussellbc at 8:34 PM PDT
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Monday, 26 July 2010
Comfortably Numb - and near broke

I'm not one to complain but...

 

Recently. I was interested to hear Van Morrison was coming to town.  It's worth noting I was 'interested' he was coming to town, not 'excited' or in frothing at the concert-going mouth.

 

Still, it's summertime, and would continue to be so whence the aging rocker performed.  What a pleasant way to spend a summer evening: kicking back, maybe a cold one in hand (okay, I don't drink beer but it fits the imagery - I might even grasp a bottle to have something other than a lighter with which to sway to the classic tunes), tapping my sandals and dancing in that awkward public way a forty year-old white guy can pull off at a classic rock concert?

 

So I ventured to both Ticketmaster and Live Nation, entities both selling tickets to the show and thought, "Okay.  I work hard.  I'll treat us to a nice summer evening of nostalgic music and even celebrate that we'd likely be among the youngest concert-goers in the crowd.  And what the hell?  We could splurge.  We don't go to a lot of concerts.  Let's avoid the nose-bleeds and see the show up close.  How much could good seats to a nearly geriatric rocker be?

 

Two hundred and seventy-six dollars.  Each.  Five hundred and...hell, I can't even readily do the math for the pair.

 

This is not a diatribe against outrageous fees.  For the record, I paid $2.75 per ticket as a facility charge, which one would have thought would simply be based into the cost of hosting the concert, and $15.00 per ticket as a convenience charge, though for what convenience I'm paying other than providing a convenient means for Ticketmaster to conveniently move money from my wallet to its coffers, is not clear.  But plenty has been written about that near monopoly organization and the fees it is able to pay by virtue of a general lack of competition.

 

My shock comes from the base ticket price itself.  Van Morrison was not the top grossing concert touring act in the past year  - he wasn't even in the top ten.  Yes, I know supply and demand is at play.  Obviously, Morrison believes a senior citizen rocker can attract the kind of client willing to part with that kind of cash to see him or he wouldn't charge that kind of money.

 

But it's just another highlight of how live music, at least of big name acts, is increasingly becoming a pastime for the wealthy.

 

See you in the nosebleeds.


Posted by davidrussellbc at 3:15 PM PDT
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Saturday, 10 July 2010
O Integrity, where art thou?

I'm not one to complain, but...

Similarly, I'm not one to write political commentary, at least not for awhile, but every now and again, one must speak up.

No, I'm not going to rant about the G8 and G20 stupidity.  Enough venomous ink has spilled on both sides of that debate, if it can be called that, with neither side, if there really are sides, able to clearly articulate their issues, if they've defined even for themselves what those issues are.

But I can't help but comment on BC provincial finance minister Colin Hansen's press conference on Friday about the costs of hosting the Winter Olympics.  You remember the Olympics, right?  People were plenty angry heading into them, asserting, rightfully, that there might be about a million better ways to spend the millions of dollars it would cost to invite the world to participate in one big winter track meet.  The usual parties made the usual arguments, some in more sophisticated, convincing manners than others, but regardless, the show went on.

And once they did, there was more or less agreement that the games were successful in any large number of ways: number of medals won, opening and closing ceremonies - the temporarily non-erectile phallic symbol notwithstanding, the cultural and entertainment events, a new, if temporary, increase in national spirit and pride, the parties in the streets and venues.  Even many of the opponents confessed to being impressed and even enjoying the games themselves once they finally got underway. 

Why then, did Colin Hansen insist on such ludicrous, outrageous, political spin in his efforts to not rationalize the games being over budget, but to deny altogether the government had suggested the games would only cost the provincial taxpayers $600 million in direct costs.  Putting aside the arguments about what is and isn't an Olympics-related cost (the Skytrain extension to Richmond, the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion, the new trade and convention centre - two out of three of which came in over budget), Hansen's attempts to deny the provincial government ever claimed to budget $600 million for the games takes political spin doctoring to a new high - or low, depending on your perspective.

For anyone who lived in British Columbia during the build-up to the games, I don't need to provide examples of government representatives using the $600 million figure.  We heard it time and again from the premier, from the finance minister, from the minister responsible for the games.  Veteran political commentator Vaughn Palmer provides but a small sample in his excellent column on the topic in the Vancouver Sun.  News outlets will provide plenty of others over the coming days.

Now that we are now well past the point of questioning the validity of the games, that the majority of Vancouver residents look back on the games with fondness, enjoying the memories of whatever small or large manner in which they participated in the events, is there really any need for Hansen to try to fake his way out what any competent chequebook balancer could only describe as cost overruns?  The games cost more than what we really anticipated, or at least more than what we told you they were going to cost.  Here's why.  Here's why we think it was still worth the investment.  Take it or leave it.  The games and the money's gone now.anyway.

I know, I know.  This kind of political 'truthiness' is nothing new.  And maybe I'm just sensitive as we head into summer time and our own incomes take their two month annual beating.  But to me, Hansen's performance yesterday, and by extension that of his government, sunk to new depths yesterday.  For the love of all that's good and holy, just once - once - I'd love to hear a politician speak with unwavering, unfiltered, unfabricated clarity, treat the public with the respect it so richly deserves and just speak the whole truth, the plain truth and nothing but.

Not the kind of truth that Hansen can tell himself he is speaking by rationalizing and twisting and tweaking.  Just the whole, unadulterated truth of the matter. 

It could have gone something like this: "The original $600 million we projected turned out to be not enough to really successfully do what we thought we should do with the games.  It turns out the state of the economy, the cost overruns, the revenue generated were worse than we anticipated and we had to spend more.  We still believe the games will be worth the cost and the province will be better off economically and in spirit in the long run." 

Sure they would have taken some heat for less than accurate forecasting.  Opponents, media and yes, bloggers, may well have taken them to task on their abilities to handle the public's purse.  But on the one issue that nowadays really does matter more than that, they would have been untouchable:

Integrity.


Posted by davidrussellbc at 5:28 PM PDT
Updated: Saturday, 10 July 2010 5:42 PM PDT
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Friday, 9 July 2010
Change, change, change

So this isn't meant to be a total rant against change in general but last evening, a few minutes on hand, I found myself perusing the magazine selections at Price Smart Foods.

Let's start with that.

Now I'd heard of Price Smart, caught their little spots on the radio and had actually wondered: who are these upstarts? Starting a new grocery chain and going up against the big boys can be no easy feat. They must bring some deep pockets on their blazers, which must mean back east dollars, which translates to Toronto funding, which pretty much at least loosely affiliates them to the Blue Jays, ergo, I was quite prepared to dislike them from the get go. Still, it was nearby a shoot on which I was working so I was also prepared, by necessity, really, to give them a try. Change can't be all bad, right?

Only they're not some grey smoke interlopers. I walked in and the first thing I noticed was the sign promising deals if I used my 'Save-on More' card. What the hell? They're Save-on Foods?

I've been shopping at Save-On for years - and notice I'm flexible enough to drop the formality of 'Foods' for the more colloquial 'Save-On' - and I'm comfortable with it. Sure, I've been occasionally thrown off my shopping game when I've stumbled into an Overwaitea: it looks the same, takes the same rewards card, offers the same products at more or less the same prices. This begs the question: why not just call it Save-On but I've learned to adapt. Urban Fare? Well that's just crazy. It may be the same company but the Yaletown hipness of it makes it un-doable.

So now they've got a fourth entry into a market they already dominate. And I fell right into their change trap.

I can live with that.

But I wanted to buy Atlantic Monthly. And I couldn't.

You see, the Atlantic Monthly, a storied institution in the magazine world, isn't the Atlantic Monthly anymore. It's just The Atlantic. Primarily, I suspect, this moniker makeover was the result of the ever changing nature of the publishing industry: The Atlantic, in its print edition, now only publishes ten times per year and the paper on which it's printed is noticeably smaller than that on which I used to enjoy it when I got the time to getting around to reading it.

So what, you might ask.

Before I got into this novel-writing game, I, for awhile, envisioned myself something of a freelance writer, who someday, God willing, might write for such a venerable institution as the Atlantic Monthly. Its diminutive size and reduced publishing schedule, seems to make that possibility, however remote ever it was, ever more thus.

Change is coming, and even as my writing priorities changed, so does the publishing world around me. It is both encouraging and discouraging that those very publications to which I inspired, the gold standards of writing excellence, themselves fall prey to the weaning purchasing desires of readers and the ever growing movement to the web for information and entertainment.

Of course, if you're reading this, maybe I have reason to be more encouraged than discouraged.

 

Posted by davidrussellbc at 10:18 AM PDT
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Sunday, 3 May 2009
The second draft

Nearly four months since my last post and I have only this update to report: I finally completed a second draft of the book scheduled for release next year.

One of the key ingredients that helped was my publisher sending me a message asking for the draft.  We had not yet specified a date for the updated manuscript but all of sudden they wanted it.  By the end of April.  

I have found that hard deadlines do prompt me into action.

It was a tremendous amount of work.  I'm actually embarrassed by how bad the first draft was.  In my desperation to have a completed manuscript to send to the publisher before they forgot all about me I basically ran a cursory spell check and send it away.

Dear God!

Typos galore, sloppy usuage, occasionally overwrought language.  That was in Chapter 1.  I also changed a couple of characters' names along the way inadvertently.  Here's a good note: when submitting a novel be sure to read the damned thing before giving it to publishers.

 I've had a couple of very thorough editors on it, Lou Allin, who I think I've mentioned before, and my Dad - who went to town on editing.  The stuff others pick up for you is amazing - and I didn't have to pay editor's fees!

I'm going to be hard at another edit but I'm going to give it another couple of weeks to freshen my own perspective again.

Book three continues.  December 31st is still the target completion.


Posted by davidrussellbc at 5:12 PM PDT
Updated: Sunday, 3 May 2009 7:57 PM PDT
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Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Looks like it's a go: 2010!

Once again, it's been so long.

But, for those of you following along - the sequel to Deadly Lessons was finally finished, in draft form, about a month or so ago.  Believe it or not, it is, I believe, six years in the making.

Of course, that makes it sound like it's some kind of epic follow-up to the first novel so I want to dispel the notion that I've been toiling away at it non-stop for six years.  The truth of the matter is far from that.

In fact, my work on the sequel, tentatively titled Last Dance has been an incredible on and off - mostly off.  The journey happened in stages.

I believe, though I'd have to check the original document on the other computer, that I began the book around November of 2002, shortly after I'd completed Deadly Lessons, though before it had been accepted for publication.  I guess I was feeling cocky.

But in the summer of 2003, while vacationing in Italy, I began another book, temporarily shelving the first 80 pages or so of Last Dance I had begun.  The Italian Story, as I've taken to calling it, was written in the third person, unlike both my Winston sagas, and was more political and espionage thriller than murder mystery.  I wrote much of it by hand while sipping wine and overlooking the sunflower valley in the rented farmhouse we were occupying in Tuscany.  I know - who wouldn't be inspired in that locale?

So I worked on that for awhile, then flipped back to Last Dance, then went back and forth awhile.  Classic author's attention deficit disorder.

Eventually I determined that I had better finish Last Dance as I had kind of entered into the publishing process with the understanding that Deadly Lessons would be a series.  Alas, the perils of working full time, having a child, trying to do publicity for the first book, trying to do a litany of other things slowed down the process enormously.

The editor at my publisher, Napoleon Press, sent me an email and has said I am on the shortlist for 2010, which means it's not an absolute certainty that it will go ahead that year but it is sounding positive.  He also made some comments about some rather intense editing that needs to be done.  Much of it I totally concur with: I tend to be wordy.  I think it's the teacher in me that feels a need to explain too much. 

Some of the things he mentioned I find quite intriguing: as in the first draft of Deadly Lessons, someone else's eye, particularly the trained eye of publishers, often pick up nuances of which I was completely unaware.  For example, in Last Dance, the editor has noted that Winston's detective friend Andrea (fans out there remember about whom I'm speaking?!?) comes across as a less sympathetic character by some of her actions and wondered if that was my intent.  It wasn't, which makes me really curious about how I've portrayed her. 

Of course, taking six years to write the damned thing means I barely remember some of the situations into which I wrote her.  Editing is going to be an interesting challenge.  I'm seriously thinking about hiring a private editor so I can get this thing to be as slick as possible.  If you know of any good ones (not so good that they're hugely expensive, mind you!) feel free to let me know.  I want to make sure this book is absolutely as good as it can be.

My plan is to try to document the process as I go along so interested scribes can follow along and see what it's like.  I'm also planning to have book three in the series written this year.  And yes, this time I mean it.

Here I go.  Stay tuned!

 


Posted by davidrussellbc at 6:40 PM PST
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Friday, 1 August 2008
August 1st and all's well

Someone actually wrote to me and chastised me for not blogging for as long as I have.  Sigh.  At least it's nice to know that someone is reading.

Have you ever been in the middle of writing a climax and just can't seem to get finished?  When I was working on Deadly Lessons, writing the climax was actually exciting.  Now I'm finding it hard to get enough time in one sitting to actually get any writing done.

Maybe if I keep reminding myself to blog I might at least be writing regularly and keep people pestering me to get the book finished.  I keep telling myself that I do not want to return to work in two weeks without having the book completed. 

That's right: the first draft of the book tentatively called Last Dance is scheduled for completion within two weeks.

Stay tuned.  And keep nagging.  Tongue out


Posted by davidrussellbc at 9:11 PM PDT
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Sunday, 30 March 2008
Turning forty - or how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Andrew Coyne

I confess to having recently turned forty, a milestone that often sends its conquerors into prolonged therapy but that I have survived more or less intact.  I still have my own hair, teeth and bendable joints so who am I to complain? 

I have wondered of late though if there exists a correlation between chronological age and the amount of times one agrees with Andrew Coyne. 

Among my friends, political persuasion, if such tendencies even mean anything any more, tends to fall somewhere in the centre to centre-left category.  Sure I have a few friends on either extreme, who I tend to keep apart from one another in social gatherings, but for the most part most friends and associates would find agreeing with Andrew Coyne akin to an Edmontonian cheering the Flames.  It’s just not done in polite company.   

Often I would read the National Post for sport; its layout remains one of the best in the land but its content is best suited for partisan jabbing and general mockery.  Coyne, until his departure from that publication for the pages of Maclean’s - a magazine for which I have written, for Heaven’s sake! - was frequently the chief target of our disdain.  Well written and articulate he seemed to kill his own arguments with extremism that made him fun to mock. 

Now I’ve always had a fiscally conservative side to me so economically Coyne and I weren’t always so far apart.  The simplicity of his economic theorems is sometimes comforting, easy to digest when too tired for careful and/or realistic analysis. 

But lately I’ve found myself agreeing with him more often than not.  Coyne’s not getting any hipper; this must surely be the aging process in action. 

Of particular interest prompting this response is a recent column decrying the ever-increasing practice and expectation of tipping. 

Sorry lefty friends; I could not possibly agree more with Mr. Coyne on this one.  From the coffee shop to the hairdresser to the garbage collector, the number and variety of occupations for whom I am expected to provide extra has grown to ridiculous proportions.   

And please don’t try to tell me that these employees rely on the generosity of their patrons as a significant portion of their livelihood.  That ought not to be the way it is and it is perpetuated by our insistence on going along with it. 

In the past several months I have had occasion to stay at the Delta Ocean Point Resort in Victoria and the Fairmont Chateau Whistler.  At both these fine hostelries, parking is not included in the price of accommodation; to have one’s car parked guests fork out an additional $15 and $28 per night respectively.  On top of this we’re expected to tip the young university student or ski lifty respectively to whom I’ve just nervously handed over my keys? 

Truth is, were I not already paying outrageous prices for the service provided I would be less reluctant to “give a little something” to the service provider.  At $28 a pop, buddy, your tip is included, even if I have you retrieve my vehicle several times while I go for drives and return to the hotel. 

The same is true at Starbucks or other coffee houses (even the fair-trade ones, lefty friends): were the price of the product not already beyond what normal, sensible people ought to be paying for beverages, the thought of adding a tip to the bill might not seem so implausible, despite the fact all most coffee house employees due to earn such extras is pour the java into a cup, hardly an example of going the extra mile.  In fact, it barely covers the mile. 

Coyne’s anti-tipping crusade of one makes sense and I’m willingly on board.   

I just worry about with whom I’ll agree by the time I turn fifty.  Foot in mouth


Posted by davidrussellbc at 7:23 PM PDT
Updated: Sunday, 30 March 2008 7:29 PM PDT
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