Mansfield Road Tour – with Stuart Ross editor, Sarah Dearing, Jason Heroux and Jim Smith

Something’s different after the tour. Am I in love? Am I in love with being on tour? With the feeling of reading to and the sumptuous quiet of being listened to? Not that the personal moments around the reading were as fabulous as I was hoping for. I felt abandoned after reading in Kingston. Waiting for audience members to approach me.  And so I did. I waited. In Ottawa there were more takers, I felt less exposed. 

Last month, at the Toronto launch, Lynn said my reading was endearing. I was surprised by that. Endearing? 

On the road I noticed so many people gathering around and talking to Jason. Jim too arrived like an illustrious gunslinger with an audience of renowned poets ready to take him in. And Sarah, with this her third novel, her voice, how Sarah’s voice pushes through clear and fierce when she reads, and then how whatever that clarity is, attracts audience members towards it and her like a magnet. 

Something happened along the way making me stop feeling jealous against their success. In the car on the road a lot of talk, perhaps even gossip. Who better at gossip then writers? Me, my part of the conversation, sharp clever digs, like how I am, like how I write, and the others, they generous sharers of themselves and their perspectives, how they sometimes didn’t quite know how to take me, my unevenness needing an editorial hand, how to read me. 

Which made me feel weak. Lesser than. Made me wonder about the stuff my writing is made of. And even if my being this way made me think that they, Stuart, Jim, Sarah and Jason must be judging me, somehow it didn’t matter, because all of it, the driving up to reading venues, the being dropped off at billets or hotels, the going out for Chinese or bar food after, even including the not being approached by as many people as I would have liked; what these moments added up to was that it was all only the sidelines, the glad shuffling around the edges of, it - the worlds of our creations, the ones we write in, read from, where we live.

Voicey - blogged Sep 12 12

I’m struggling to blog about my novel Flip Turn because I can’t figure out the right voice to do it in. I feel like I want to talk in its voice. I also feel like I want to talk in this more, what I would call – social – voice. The social voice would be one of those voices that knows a lot to do with critical thinking, that knows how to connect to others in a mature, relating way. Further, I suppose could write my blog in a more personal voice, like the one in Flip Turn, but one that is more mature. Like me. Now. I’m not a young girl anymore. But then I like saying shocking, direct things, more suitable to a young woman, actually, would be a better description of the voice in Flip Turn. Although, come to think of it, the voice in Flip Turn, is hard to pinpoint age-wise. It’s both young girl and young woman.

Another pull to my voice is the audience. I do like to talk to my audience.

 I have been reading a book of poetry written by a friend recently. Which for me can really help sometimes, feeling a personal connection to the writing, but I just could not hear her voice. It was really hard for me to read her work, even despite the fact I know her.

I was thinking she probably just isn’t a very voicey writer. I was thinking maybe she writes more from the word level. I thought maybe the reason it’s hard for me to read her is that I think words are dangerous. I don’t trust them. But then I thought, no, that’s not it. Quite. I think the distrust is more about the person, the being pulled into their grammar, their world view, I don’t trust. (can you believe I just admitted to that?)

Which makes me think, while my writing voice may be maturing, my ability to read is still pretty immature.

Or to let myself off the hook some, maybe I just prefer to read voicey writers. Which similarly I am.

 As far as voice goes, I also talk to my cats a lot in a sort of voicey way too. In the talking-to-pets voice. My son has had a lizard for year now and for a while I really didn’t know how to be with him. (the lizard) But now I talk to him in that voice too. I put him on my knee and put blueberries on my other knee. I coo to him and once all the tension with the cats trying to figure out how to catch and eat him wanes, he thrusts his pretty pink tongue out, capturing a blueberry at a time with it and gobbles them down.