Life of a Writer: Writing a Memoir. Who Does This?

Apparently a lot of people write memoirs. With some, they can finally tell a story that promotes healing for them. For me, it has been a long journey, often wondering whether my story was/is sufficiently interesting for a memoir. Well, whether it is/was or not, it is now almost finished. Recently, I revised with the aim of cutting at least 30,000 words. It might benefit from more than that, but as I go through it now it has become harder to eliminate further. I have managed, however, to change the focus and to start from the beginning with that in mind. The title has also changed more than once. I like the present one and hope that it will stick.

The most recent title is "Now Or Never." My friend, Michele, in Montreal liked it better than the previous title, "Better Late Than Never," and after some thought, I made the change. Your comments on this are welcome. The title before this massive revision was "Restless." That no longer seemed to fit. So I moved the prologue well on into the manuscript and wrote a new one. I am not ready to share it yet, but probably will at some point.

Such is the life of a writer. Even though the fourth book, a mystery, will be launched next spring, there are (I still have) qualms and questions about the next. C'est la vie.

The Writer's Life. Revision #2.

45,000 words to cut. Score card. 22,000 done, 23,000 more to go.

Question: "Can I cut 1000 words before breakfast?"
Answer:   "Done!"

Of course, it is not quite that arbitrary or easy, but once the knife has been sharpened it starts to get easier.

"There, you were a good sentence, still are, but you don't really belong here."
Ruthlessly I draw the delete line  through the words of that sentence and it is gone.

Then : Breakfast!

More to come soon... Or go...

The Writer's Life. Revision.

I am revising a manuscript.  At this point, I have managed to cut 20,000 words. Do you suppose the next 20,000 will be easier or harder? Yes, Yes, Yes - it was way TOO long!

Moosemeat Writing Group Annual Chapbook Readings: June 2, 2017.

Moosemeat Writing Group annual chapbook launch, will occur on June 2d, Friday from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. at The Supermarket at 268 Augusta Ave.,Toronto

This event has become a tradition for the Moosemeat Writers. The 14th year of the chapbook! Always a celebratory event and fun for attendants as well with short readings by the writers who have items in the chapbook. And prizes for those who come out and answer trivia questions!!! Chapbooks are for sale at a low and affordable price. I think it is $2.

Come on out and join us. I will be there. And I will be one of the readers.

The Writers' Life. Toronto Events. Spring 2017

If you are in Toronto, please note you are invited to my appearance on May 10th at the Brockton Writers Series (BWS) along with Ayesha Chatterjee, Ian Keteku, Gregory Scofield and a special guest talk, “From Tarot to Creativity”, by Hoa Nguyen. The Brockton Writers Series event is on Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.in the new home of the BWS, Glad Day Bookshop, 499 Church St., Toronto, (PWYC). If you are not in the area, I thought you would be interested in this event as an update to what I am doing these days.

I did a talk about my writing for the Friendship Force Toronto Club recently as well as reading and speaking  at the Rowers Reading Series and a Toronto book club in the winter. If you have been a follower of the Moosemeat Writing Group annual chapbook launch, or if you are interested in coming out to it, that event will occur on June 2d, Friday from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m.at The Supermarket at 268 Augusta Ave.,Toronto

And...on a personal note, a new granddaughter was born to Therese and Phil in Montreal on April 23rd and joins my two grandsons, Max (Andrea & Mark) and Maurice (Phil & Therese).



Daniel Perry writes (on the BWS blog): Mary Lou shared a sample from an unpublished memoir ahead of her May 10 visit to Brockton Writers Series. Enjoy!

Excerpt from a chapter titled “Graveyard Shift”

 The mine was twenty miles from town and on the graveyard shift, the bus driver picked me up on the highway near our house and dropped me off on desolate mine property at close to midnight along with all the men who worked underground.

On the first day, I was introduced to Alice, an older woman who would train me. She spoke no English so my facility in French improved quickly. Before the end of the summer, I had started to dream in French most of the time.

On two of the shifts, I often worked with women other than Alice who spoke openly about their lives. They were not much older than me, but they were either involved with boyfriends or married and their conversation was quite lurid, replete with the kinds of jokes and descriptions that most people imagine happen only in men’s locker rooms. I soon learned that women  could also be  crude in their discourse, telling their own off colour jokes, competing over the length of their partners’ penises, using  words like ‘cock’ to  describe them.

“You ought to see it,” one woman was fond of saying in quite a loud voice. “Must be 7 or 8 inches. Never saw anything like it before.”

They exuded pride, a significant sniff with head thrown back, if they could give a measurement larger than the colleague who had just spoken.

At first I was not sure what they were talking about, but I was not going to let anyone know that. Or I did know really, but had never experienced what they were describing and did not have a clear idea of what such a cock would look or feel like, not like the little dinkies I saw in the younger boys like my brother, running to the bathroom trying to hide their private parts.

At the assay lab, I also learned some useful things about mining from testing the samples and even knew the value of what was being dug out under the surface.  In the days and evenings, I always worked with others, probably because there was more work to do then. On the graveyard shift, from midnight to eight in the morning, I was alone. And I was aware that anyone could break into the small building across from the mill on this isolated mine property and attack me. It took a while to stop jumping nervously when I heard any sound. But the only man who ever came to the door that I locked from the inside during those long nights knocked first with a sound that I soon learned to recognize. He always arrived at the same times, twice during each shift. As soon as I opened the door, he greeted me.

“Bonjour,” he usually said before handing over small brown paper bags that contained the samples I was to process.

As soon as he left, I weighed out tiny quantities from each bag on an old scale with a pan on one side and the weights to be adjusted on the other and put them into separate beakers. There were precise amounts required, as well as certain acids to test for lead, zinc and copper.

Etc...

Life of a Writer. An Update. Point of View. POV. March 2017

As I prepare for the publication of my next book, a mystery with the title THE WHITE RIBBON MAN (2018), I have been writing short stories. These stories are primarily from the first person point of view, although they are fiction. It is a challenge for me to write from this POV, but I am having fun doing so. Usually when I try it, people in my writing groups suggest that the third person might work better. In many cases, it has done so and I have followed their suggestions. This time I am determined to leave the series I am working on in the POV I have chosen for it, so it will be interesting to see what my colleagues have to say.

One piece was critiqued a couple of weeks ago in my small writing group of women with at least two books each. They actually liked it and never suggested a different POV, but made helpful suggestions to improve it as it was presented. It will be interested to see what the other group thinks of the next story in this series. A group composed of a different demographic, but just as interesting and helpful with their critiques. I don't usually submit the same work to both groups, but I have when I think the feedback might be different and helpful for that reason.

I have been reading short stories again as a prelude to this period of writing. I particularly liked Norman Levine many years ago and went back to his work to see what I thought. Far more complex than I remembered, but still about rather ordinary people in rather ordinary circumstances, if not entirely ordinary nonetheless times and experiences of many people in the days written about. I liked the stories just as much on a later reading! Other writers as well, ones I may mention later in another post. Or not!

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 2016.

Happy and Healthy New Year to everyone who happens to drop by. I hope your year has been meaningful and healthy and that the challenges in 2017 you will be able to manage. I look forward to another interesting year and hope that it will include time with grandchildren (the two boys who live in different places, one in Montreal and the other in Blenheim - below), a bit of travel and completion of some more writing projects.  At the moment, a mystery is scheduled to come out in 2018 and I have just submitted a memoir.

Maurice's drawings.

Maurice.

Max and Grammaloutoo