Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?
Ottawa was home for 19 years. I arrived from Nova Scotia in 1986 to do an MA in English at the University of Ottawa. Ostensibly it was university that drew me to the city, but really it was a man. My boyfriend at the time was headed for Carleton. I decided to move with him.
What took me away from Ottawa (specifically Chelsea)? Another man.
In late 2004, I went to Vancouver to teach a report-writing workshop. The first
person to arrive was the man who’s now my husband. We were struck by this
thunderbolt of love that you could never write about, it’s such a cliché. Three
months later we were looking for a place together.
Q: How did you
first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I wrote nonstop as a kid, sporadically as a teen, and earnestly as an undergrad, when I took a couple of creative writing courses. It took two rejections—two! that’s how naïve and fragile I was—to squelch my dream of becoming a writer. By the time I hit Ottawa, writing felt like an embarrassing youthful indulgence that was best left behind, like smoking or being in love with Peter Frampton.
Following my MA, and brief stints as a telemarketer and a real
estate agent, I went back to writing. Except to my mind it was not “real”
writing; it was “professional” writing—producing copy for government
departments, nonprofits, businesses, etc.. In that respect, Ottawa was an ideal
place to be. I made a good living from freelancing.
Q: How did
being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at
all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since?
When you suggested this Q&A, I thought, “Why me? I was never
part of the Ottawa writing community.” But that’s not entirely true. To prepare,
I looked at the most recent interviews on your blog. Three of the seven writers
on the first page were people I’d intersected with. John Moss and Gerald Lynch
taught at U of O when I was there. I went to a couple of readings organized by
Gerald Lynch because a fellow student, poet Nadine McInnis, was in the lineup. The
third writer is Michelle Sinclair, whom I’ve gotten to know a little from afar.
We both had debut novels last year and have chatted about the experience.
For a while after university, I hung around the fringes of the writing
community. I have vivid memories of seeing two of my favourite Canadian authors
in Ottawa. One was Timothy Findley, whom I approached with a bag of books to be
signed. That’s how little I knew about etiquette at literary events! The other
was David Adams Richards, then writer-in-residence at U of O. I slipped in to a
reading by Guy Vanderhaeghe, who had just begun when I realized David Adams
Richards was in the audience, two seats away. Guy Vanderhaeghe is not
part of my vivid memories because I couldn’t focus on anything except Richards.
He was my idol then. (What? You can write lyrical, heart-rending stories about blue-collar
Maritime life?)
Why did it take me decades, plus a move west, to return to “real” writing? I
think that has less to do with place than with stage of life. When midlife
arrived, it hit me—if I don’t give it another try now, I never will.
Q: What did
you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa
provide, or allow?
I’m astounded at how distanced I became from Ottawa’s literary scene once I started earning a living from words. I quit going to readings. I didn’t hang out with creative writers. My creative outlet became music. I learned to play bass after a fashion and was in a basement band with my then-boyfriend (the drummer) and a couple of guitarist friends.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
There was this period after I got back into creative writing when I lamented the Ottawa years. All that time I’d spent writing for pay instead of love—was it all a giant waste? If I’d kept at it, would my first novel have come out when I was 27 instead of 57?
Fortunately the self-pity party was short-lived. I now know those years were an apprenticeship. They taught me to produce, to not be precious about my words, to trust that a crappy draft will improve. And they built my network. For my first novel, the second-biggest launch was in Ottawa. So many friends, colleagues, and clients came out to celebrate.
Q: What are you working on now?
My second novel, Uncontrolled Flight, comes out September 1. My publisher is hoping to do an Ottawa launch again, so keep an eye out. I’m chipping away at novel #3. Like the first two, it bears little resemblance to my own life—though it does feature a female bassist.
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