I was born in London, Ontario; it doesn’t matter when – a while ago. I’ve lived in Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa, Vancouver, Pender Island, Victoria, Calgary, Banff, Berkeley, California and Chicago, and I am now back in London, where I spend most days tucked in the corner of my basement letting my imagination rip. On good days anyway.
I have a BA in English Literature from Wilfrid Laurier University, and I did a qualifying year at the University of British Columbia. I’ve taken creative writing classes at UBC and completed the Humber School for Writers long program.
Around age eleven, when I was in Grade 7, our class was given a writing assignment. I read mine aloud to the class. What I remember so vividly from that day was the miracle of language. I was enthralled at how units of sound made words, and specific words put together made images, which could then be transmitted to someone else, either on paper or read aloud. Words on a page could become solid images, like a painting in my brain. It was magic.
I decided at that point that I needed to learn everything I could about books, but we didn’t have many at my house. I was the youngest of four, and there might once have been time for reading, but by the time I came around no one was focused on my literary stimulation. We lived ten miles from the city and our nearest library. I asked my father to take me to the library, but once I got inside the building, which at the time seemed enormous, I didn’t know where to begin. I made the very logical decision to read everything beginning with the closest stacks, in the room to the right of the front door. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the insects section. I withdrew the maximum allowed number of books – ten or twelve – took them home, scanned one and never once looked at the rest. I was after stories, not explanations about thoraxes and antennae, and I imagine I was too timid to ask where I could find the fiction section.
I ignored the notices from the library that came in the mail: overdue, first notice, second notice, third notice, last warning, and then the collection agency: must now be returned or risk further charges, court date impending. The more notices I got, the more frightened I became, and the more convinced I was that I was going to jail. All because I wanted to read stories. Finally, I approached my father. He drove me back to the library and paid the $26.00 fine, and we agreed not to tell my mother.
Books frightened me then. They did so before the insect incident, and that experience just heightened my fear. Books were spoken of with high regard in my household, as my mother was a school teacher who thought that reading was of great educational value. But I had three older brothers who created lots of drama, lots of action, lots of work, and we did not gather around in the evenings and read from literature’s mighty tomes. My lack of access only increased my fear and curiosity about books. They were sacred and unknowable, at least in my child’s mind. I was drawn to them, and to the fear.
When I was 50, a friend of mine, an airplane pilot, talked me into going to Cedar Point, one of the largest roller coaster parks in the world. I’d never been on a roller coaster before. As we waited in line for one of the highest coasters in the park, she explained to me that a person should ride in the very front, no hands, because hanging on worked against gravity and free fall, which was not good. Besides, she added, it looked tacky. She was a pilot, and I trusted her. As I waited in the long line, under the hot sun, my stomach twisted into a ball of nervous excitement as I pushed myself to do something that repelled and intrigued me.
After I finished my English degree, where I tried to learn as much as I could about literature, I started writing fiction. This was well beyond my comfort zone, and the experiences I had as a kid still echoed in the background, though significantly weaker. Somehow, books were still scary and sacred, reserved for the likes of Joyce, Faulkner, Atwood, Woolf, Munro, Lawrence. Why on earth did I think that I could ever write one?
My writing journey has been exciting, rewarding, filled with thrills and apprehension. Every time I start a new short story, or a new novel, I face the fear. Every time I set about to tell a long or short story, I feel like I am learning all over again. Like my very first roller coaster ride, I’m sitting in the front, not holding on, not fighting gravity, allowing my imagination to go into free fall.
Jumping into a new fiction is an edgy ride, and that’s just the kind of ride I want.