Do as I say... not as I don't

So what do you do when someone asks for your advice on something, you give it, and then you realize that you yourself do almost NONE of the things you have just advised this person to do?


That's exactly what is happening to me at this very moment. Last night, I was invited to the house of a friend to talk with her father, a wonderful writer, about how to enhance his online profile, to improve the presentation of his existing blog and to attract more readers to his beautiful prose.


We had a wonderful discussion and I believe both my friend and her father felt they got good value for the time they invested in speaking with me.


The problem is, although I believe very firmly in every suggestion I made to them, I have come to the realization that I personally implement almost none of these excellent suggestions in my own work. It's really quite amazing: do as I say, not as I do.


In preparation for the discussion, I had read over most of the entries on his existing blog site, which has not been updated in some time. I was impressed with just how beautifully this man writes, how broad and creative is his vocabulary, how vivid his descriptions and how expansive his literary knowledge. This is wonderful writing and well worthy of a broader audience.


I also studied the site itself and how his work was presented. And I came away with a deep respect for his work as well as a number of suggestions on how to present it more effectively.


Among my comments and suggestions:

• Don't change your writing style to attempt to attract a larger audience -- write what and how you love and have faith in the quality of your writing to attract the right audience, an audience that can appreciate what you already do so beautifully;
• Include more images -- several of his posts include photographs and others include simply wonderful examples of his wife's creative endeavours (sketches and pastels) to complement the subject matter of his post. I think it is no coincidence that these posts, in general, attract the most attention and the most comments so I recommended that he try to include visuals consistently with each post, especially at the top of each entry;
• Add new entries on a consistent basis, at least once per week, so that, as readers find and enjoy the blog, they can get into a pattern of visiting on a regular basis, confident in the knowledge that they will find something new to read on each visit;
• Create an email list, to which he can send the link to each new entry as it is posted, and ask people to add their name to that list when they first visit the site;
• Be active on Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media in order to build a network, make more contacts and give himself more avenues to promote his blog;
• Use the front page of the blog site to promote the fact that he hopes someday to produce a book of his writings -- create interest in that project early and see if it helps propel the book into reality;
• Promote himself (and his artist wife), both on the blog site and in social media, since people will often want to read your work if they feel they know, like and/or respect you.

I think theses are all good suggestions. I just wish I myself followed more of them.

Write your own story, Herr Loser

I have achieved a milestone reserved only for accomplished writers and it has made my weekend: I have, through one of my blogs (my Harry Potter blog), been trolled.

I woke up this morning, checked out my Blogger homepage, and found the following comment posted on a blog entry from a year or so ago in which I discussed Harry Potter fan fiction, including my own Harry Potter novel: "write your own story dont steal other peoples work. loser".

For some reason, this comment brought me great joy. Thank you, Himmelfahrstrasse Stormalong, for this delightful surprise.

I honestly don't understand my own raucous response to this little piece of trolling -- why something that was apparently intended to be nasty has made me so happy I'm not sure. But it made me laugh out loud... and I've already shared it on Facebook and on Twitter.

The underlying issue, however, is an interesting one. Is there a problem, moral, philosophical, creative, with writing what is commonly known as "fan fiction".

The timing of this comment, and this discussion, couldn't be better. Just yesterday, I sat in a sandwich shop with my new writing partner on my historically-based children's stories and discussed the challenge of creating something entirely new, whether that involves introducing a new character to an established set of stories, introducing a new location or creating an entirely new novel.

In every such situation, the writer must make an almost infinite number of decisions, from the smallest detail to the largest strategic question, from what detail to include to what the detail entails.

And my troll has a point, one with which I have wrestled for some time. I have written three hard-boiled detective fiction novels, a creative task made somewhat easier by the fact that the genre has so many conventions that a significant number of creative decisions are already made for the writer. I don't have to make a decision on narrative point of view: the genre demands a first person narrator. I don't have to worry about tone: the tone of voice is acerbic, witty, dry. I have to follow certain rules of plot and characterization that are standard to the genre. Yes, there are still millions of creative decisions for me, as the author, to make but some decisions, at least, are made for me.

I have written and published a series of children's stories, set in a real location in the 1940s. I deliberately chose to pattern the writing style for these stories after the old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy books -- stories that were written in my target time period, for my target audience. Again, setting my stories in a real train station and hotel in a real town saved me from having to make an infinite number of decision relating to the setting. And deciding to pattern them in tone and narrative style after an existing set of stories meant I had a strong base from which to work.

But fan fiction is another step along that road entirely. Fan fiction involves using the characters, settings, situations, relationships, the entirety of another author's work as the base from which to build your own story. It's almost like creating an app for an iPad: someone else did all the very difficult, creative work of conceptualising the device, designing it, building it, creating the proprietary software that runs it and you just come along and add a little piece of new software and claim to be a creator.

Is that wrong? Is it stealing, as my apparently German troll has suggested?

Fan fiction is something of an industry in and of itself. Dozens of writers have fashioned very nice careers for themselves writing fan fiction novels using the original Star Trek material created by Gene Roddenberry and others. Is that theft? Is it morally wrong?

I agree that writing fan fiction is, like writing fiction that is set in a real place, involves taking something of a creative short cut. I also agree that it is a significant creative achievement to create your own work from scratch and even more significant to create a fictional world, as Rowling has done, that is not even based on our current reality.

But I don't know if I would go so far as to agree that writing fan fiction is theft. Or even wrong. As long as proper attribution and credit is part of the process and as long as no profit is made without the permission of the original creator.

Taking nothing for granted

I submitted my first ever application for an arts grant this week. What an interesting experience!

It is a pretty exacting process. You have to make sure that you submit exactly what the funding body requires as part of the application, right down to the number of copies, the size of the paper and the colour of the ink.

I actually quite enjoyed the experience. Part of the package the funding body required was my writing CV, including all of my publication credits, all media coverage I have received and all of the training and education, related to writing, I have pursued.

It was a lot of work, to be honest, but the final product was a bit of an eye-opener. I guess I have lost track, over the years, of just how much I have accomplished as a writer.

The only problem, at least from the stand point of the application, is that the funding body wants to know what category of writer I fall into and then to receive evidence that I meet the criteria they have established to qualify as a professional writer in that particular genre.

In constructing my CV, I came to realise that I am a writer of middling accomplishment in three different "artistic" genres -- literature, poetry and script writing -- as well as several genres of writing for which they do not provide funding, such as legal texts, magazine and newspaper articles.

And, while my grant application is intended to attract support for my proposal to adapt my Christmas novella into a play, I would most likely qualify as a professional writer only in the category of a writer of fiction (literature).
If I recall the standards correctly, someone who has published 10 poems would qualify as a professional poet. Someone who has published a single collection of stories or a single novel with a known publisher would be considered a professional literary writer, no matter how many copies their books sold. And a person who has written a single play that has been mounted by a professional theatre company might earn the title of professional dramatist.


So, while I have written 9 published poems, an award-winning short story, a legal text book (in two published editions),  parts of four other legal text books, four collections of children's stories (self-published but quite successful), a self-published novella, a coffee table book and two plays that have been produced at an amateur level and video-taped for training purposes, as well as literally hundreds of articles in newspaper and magazines, I may not qualify as a "professional writer" for the purposes of this grant.


Strange. I can only hope that the jury that considers my application will be willing to recognise the breadth and depth of my writing accomplishments across these genres in making its determination as to the merits of my application.

And funny. The most important thing I've written recently is a grant application that, if successful, would put me in a position to adapt my well-received Christmas novella into a stage play.

Writing: You don't have to do it alone

So now, after my brief brush with fame, it's time to get back to my own writing.


Yes, it was an amazing experience to get a chance to "work with" the likes of Jonny Harris, Fraser Young and Graham Chittenden of CBC's Still Standing last week (and I put the quotation marks around "work with" because, let's be honest, I did work with them in the sense that I went down and was interviewed and took part in the show but I really didn't work with them in the sense of writing with them in any way, shape or form) but now I have to settle myself back into life as a writer of middling success.


And try very hard to improve on the "middling" part of it.


I am very fortunate to have the chance, in my current writing pursuits, to work with some great people. I had long thought of writing as a solitary pursuit but, as this Abigail project in particular has progressed, I have learned the importance of creating a vibrant writing community around yourself.


On the Abigail stories, for example, I have always enjoyed the participation and input of my sister Lynn (who is both artist and designer for the books), my partner Patti (who is an exceptional editor and a wonderful sounding board for creative ideas) and some excellent reviewers (like Patty, Lola, Verne and Mary).


And now Mary O'Keefe has joined me in writing the stories themselves and I couldn't be happier. Mary is an upbeat, optimistic person with a wonderful writing voice. As a native of McAdam, she has insights into the community and its history that I simply do not bring to the table and, as an experienced writer herself, she is a great source of input and inspiration.


Mary and I met yesterday for a working lunch. Our goals: set down the basic structure of the upcoming fifth volume of Abigail stories, agree on some book-long plot arcs and start to settle on the plots for each of the individual stories.


It was a fun and productive meeting. In this next collection of stories, Abigail and the folks at the McAdam Railway Station will move in interesting new directions and face fun new challenges. We'll introduce some new characters without losing the innocent, playful joy of the first four collections of stories.


I can tell Mary was as excited as I was by our meeting: she's already sent me a long email, filled with the thoughts and ideas she's generated since our lunch less than 24 hours ago.


On the other projects, I am very lucky to be working with Nancy Lynch, who is as energetic as she is creative. She's working on several film projects of her own but still has the time and enthusiasm to push me to work on the scripts for The Station, our proposed web series.


And then, over coffee the other day, she looked across at me with a twinkle in her eye and said, "I think we need to get back to working on the Abigail play."


Creative colleagues can push you to be better and they can push you to be more productive. I'm very fortunate to have so many such colleagues in my life who are pushing me to the best writer I can be.

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to other writers

I am a self-identified "writer of middling success". I take writing seriously as an art, as a craft and as an intellectual pursuit. And, with a number of professional publishing credits to my name, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles out there as well as a series of surprisingly successful self-published collections of children's stories to my credit, I think I have some grounds to feel I can comment on the writing accomplishments of others.

Jonny and me with Abigail Vol 1

But what I witnessed this weekend in McAdam, New Brunswick, is a feat to which I can only tip my hat and offer a sincere "Well done".

Jonny Harris, Fraser Young and Graham Chittenden, from the CBC show Still Standing, supported by a cast of producers, directors, camera, sound and lighting folk, strolled into McAdam, New Brunswick a week ago and, over the course of just those several days, researched, wrote, rehearsed and staged a truly remarkable set of stand-up comedy that focused entirely, and affectionately, on the Village and its people.

I was aware of the concept of the show going in: host Jonny Harris arrives in a small Canadian community that has managed to survive all the challenges of our modern world, talks to a representative cross-section of its citizens, then takes the material collected through those visits/interviews and turns it into stand up comedy to entertain the townspeople.

The show's own promotional material calls it "an entertaining and affectionate love letter to small-town Canada" but the worries of those of us who were interviewed for the McAdam episode (called "contributors") still surfaced:

• were we being suckered into participating in a show that would mock and insult us for our efforts?
• would the final stand-up routine be simply a rehash of canned "how ridiculous are small town people" jokes with a couple of mean-spirited shots at the people who opened their hearts, their homes and their community?

To be honest, it took only a brief chat with the show's advanced rep to assuage any fears I might have had on that first count. It became clear very quickly that there exists a genuine interest, respect and affection among the show's crew for the people with whom they were interacting.

The second concern remained with me right up until show time. As a writer (and one who has tried and failed to write "funny" on several occasions) I simply could not believe that Jonny, Fraser and Graham could turn around an extended, detailed, specific and genuinely funny set of comedy about McAdam and its people in so short a time.

I thought for sure that the show Saturday night would be rife with retread material about small-town life and that the local content would take the form of a shot here and there at the people who participated as contributors. And I think my concerns were echoed throughout McAdam.

How else could they possible turn things around so quickly?

Me, acting calm before the show

So it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that we all filed into the McAdam High School gymnasium Saturday night for the show, especially among us contributors.

And, I think it's safe to say, we were all blown away.

The show was exactly what Still Standing's promotional material promised and more.

Fraser opened things up with a very funny review of the rules of the evening, followed by a hilarious set from Graham that covered everything from the joys of being old to the challenges of loving a dog. Then it was back to Fraser again, with a very funny set that seemed oddly fixated on eating meat, and finally the introduction of Jonny as the headliner and McAdam comedian.

As hard as we were all laughing at that point, I think those of us who had contributed to the show drew a collective intake of breath in anticipation of what Jonny Harris was going to say about us.

Now, I have been asked/directed not to discuss the details of Jonny's set nor of the information and material that will be covered in the Still Standing episode when it airs this summer and I will respect that restriction. I won't go into any details here.

I will say, however, that I was impressed in the extreme by the quality of the stand-up set that Jonny delivered and that Jonny, Graham and Fraser had written. It was smart, it was funny, it was creative, it was respectful and it was affectionate. The audience was in stitches and the contributors walked away feeling tickled rather than attacked.

The set was also of extremely high quality from a comedy standpoint, with strong internal structure and jokes that built off each other and referred back to each other over the course of the 45-minutes during which Jonny delivered it.

I love stand up that isn't just a series of jokes but that actually has movement and development throughout and this set delivered all of that.

I take my hat off to these three writers and comedians. Well done. What you accomplished this week, I didn't think was possible. And the fact that you will do it over and over again over the course of the show's season just blows me away.

We may have to re-subscribe to cable TV, just to watch Still Standing this season.

Creative tension helps make better scripts

To make matters even better, as I work to produce the first five scripts for The Station, I am coming to the realization that I have really lucked in to a fantastic creative partner in Nancy Lynch.


Thanks to her exceptional training and experience as a screen writer and short-film producer/director, Nancy brings to the table a great many skills and abilities that I lack. That's very important to the creative process -- a diversity of talents.


Our process to date has been as follows:

1. We met first to talk through the themes, structure and characters of our proposed show. In this meeting, we also came up with an outline of the first five episodes, both in terms of individual plots and overarching story;
2. I then drafted episode one and shared my draft with Nancy;
3. Nancy read, reviewed and revised that first episode while I went to work on episode two;
4. I reviewed Nancy's revisions to the first episode, gave her my feedback and she went through and did another polish based on our discussions;
5. I submitted episode two, draft one to Nancy and we started steps 2 and 3 again, this time with the second episode as the subject of our work;
6. I, meanwhile, drafted episode three. I sent it to Nancy but, in light of an intense discussion we had on episode two, three now needs extensive revision.

It's an amazing process. We are both creative people who respect each other's input and neither of us is afraid to challenge the other and his/her ideas.


For example, episode 2 involves a bit of a mystery and I, with my children's book sensibility, thought it important that we wrap up the mystery by the end of the episode. Nancy thought otherwise: let's leave some question as to whether or not the obvious resolution was actually the correct resolution so that we can play with the mystery -- and its impact on the people involved -- in future episodes.


I never thought of anything like that. And I love it. It means that episode three needs to be revised but I think it is going to be much stronger as a result.


On the other hand, I find myself having to challenge Nancy's instinct to add extra conflict/action to every story. I agree conflict is important and action is absolutely necessary in the visual media of a web series but I also think that one of the strengths of any good show is character development and the introduction of more thoughtful, emotional story lines to the series.


I don't think Nancy would disagree with my position, to be honest. But I think we are going to continue a respectful debate on how much action is required. And that debate, like any conflict of that kind, is going to be healthy for the final product.

In the groove with a more mature Abigail storyline

After complaining about being tasked with writing five scripts for the proposed web series, The Station, I find myself in the position where I have to offer an apology. I shouldn't have complained.


I am actually quite enjoying the experience. And I've completed the first drafts of three scripts already.


It's an interesting challenge, to be honest. My colleague, Nancy Lynch, and I have agreed that the web series should be based on the Abigail Massey children's stories but should aim for an older, more mature audience. As a result, I basically need to re-write the larger Abigail story arc, adding depth and detail and a great deal more conflict.


Where Abigail Massey of the children's stories responds to tense situations with an "Oh, golly" and a can-do attitude, Abigail of the web series will be forced to face much more difficult situations and much more challenging moral questions.


I'm having fun with the project. I don't want to give too many details away -- we are hopeful of securing funding for the series and then revealing details over the course of the show's first season -- but I will say that Abigail's family relationships aren't quite so rosy in the new series, her love life is more complicated and the group of young women she meets at the Station include not just a couple of nice girls like Jenny and Alice but also a group of "Mean Girls", as I've dubbed them in early drafts.


My sister, Lynn, suggested that I should name the two main "Mean Girls" after her and my other sister, Janice. But, when I explained to Lynn some of the things the Mean Girls get up to, she quickly retracted the suggestion. Yes, they are that mean...


What's fun for me is that, now that I have made the adjustment from writing stories for 8-12 year olds to writing scripts for teens and adults, I am finding myself in the same writing groove I have so enjoyed over the first five books of Abigail stories.


I feel I have a strong understanding of the characters, the setting and the overall arc of our storylines -- and that makes the writing easy and enjoyable.


Let's hope it keeps flowing along so well for the final two draft scripts.