Historic Village of Bourlamaque, Quebec. 2014. Looks almost the same as when miners were hired at $2.75/Hour.

I grew up in Bourlamaque, Quebec. At Sigma Mine. Down the road from here. This doesn't look like much snow, but it sure is more beautiful than in the city where, as of today, we have none!

Life of a Writer. 2015 Readings

I am delighted that I will be reading from my new novel in Montreal in mid April at Paragrahe Bookstore (April 15) and at the Yellow Door Reading Series (April 16th). 

Also in Winnipeg at McNally Robinson Booksellers on June 2d. 
In Chatham in the spring, date yet to be determined.
In Hamilton in the LitLive Series on October 4th.

In Toronto/Oshawa a book club has invited me to a meeting on March 10th. 

A signing is upcoming at the Manulife Centre, date yet to be pinned down.

Other possibilities will arise and I will circulate them in the New Year. Just wanted to give a heads up to everyone now!

WHY DID I BAKE AN APPLE PIE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? Comments on Process!

A RANT (of sorts):

What is your process? Someone always asks this question of authors says the host, Antanas Sileika, informing the audience that the question someone has just asked is also on his list. If he had had time to get to it before turning the floor over to questions, he undoubtedly would have. As it was, there was a varied array of responses from the panelists. This led me to ponder about my own process that has varied so much at different times in my life.            

            Why did I bake an apple pie in the middle of the night recently? Maybe because in doing so I would realize the children’s story I had felt compelled to write of late would hinge on such a pie. Somehow any story I conjure up about a mining town with a gold mine in it has a cookery where the underground miners eat stews and pies and whatever else Sam cooks for them. Yes, the real Sam all those years ago when I was a child in a northern mining community baked pies that melt in my mouth at the thought of them even now, decades later.

            My process? At the moment, I am writing on the back of an envelope on the subway going from Union Station north on the University line. I will type from this onto my computer when I arrive home, after I have eaten something and looked at an odd email from a woman I scarcely know. I rode first on a street car that took me from IFOA (International Festival of Authors) at Harbourfront and the session hosted by Antanas Sileika in the Studio Theatre to Union Station.

I could have answered the questions. I went to hear others, but also wonder why I don’t get invited to forums to answer some of what was posed to these authors. What is the tipping point that recognizes I, too, belong in such a context? Of course, I did get to answer some of them at the recent launch of my third book, but at IFOA I am still invisible. One of the writers talks about being influenced by an author who had her first book published at 62. The implication is that this is amazing. I didn’t really expect anyone to jump up and down when my first book, a collection of short stories, was published when I was 70. And no one did.  It could have been regarded by some as a ‘flash in the pan.’ It did receive a good review in the ‘Globe and Mail’ and on this basis was purchased by the Toronto library system. Some good things did happen. Now here I am at book #3, published in the year I turned 77. I am not sure what I expect, but it almost seems the ‘tipping point’ is still just out there beyond my grasp. One man said, “So you’re a serial writer now.” Yes, I am. I no longer feel like a fraud, but it seems in the wider world of writers, I am still invisible. All the same, if I manage to live longer in reasonable health, there will be more books and that is what I set out to accomplish!

In the session I attended today at IFOA, one question posed to the writers asked for a comment on what they would say now to a young writer, to their younger selves, someone beginning at whatever age, to help them. Karen Connelly, Nino Ricci, Wayson Choy, Kevin Barry and Valerie Martin. What a variety of responses.

What would I say? Why did I make an apple pie in the middle of the night? Two of the five spoke of starting their writing day without waking up entirely to the outside world in an attempt to stay close to the dream state “where the best writing happens.”

What is there to say about someone as old as I am who may even miss the dream state when I wake up so often at two or three in the morning and grasp at a story floating by, trying in the attempt to quell the anxiety of the night. A time when there are no answers to the pressing questions of mortality, to how quickly the remaining time, however long that is, is shrinking.

So, I make an apple pie. The first one isn’t perfect, not like the ones Sam baked in the cookery at the mine. It seems important to get it right because Sam has turned up in a children’s story I have been writing recently about a family who live in a mining town in contemporary time. And among them are some of the characteristics of the family of my childhood. In this story, called “Big and Little,” where the miners go underground, there are two sisters so named by their father. In this tale, Little can hear the men in the tunnels under the earth talking every night as she drifts off to sleep. It is the only time she hears them and it is possible she thinks she is already asleep and dreaming.

I like these thoughts. It clears my mind of everything else, including all thoughts of mortality.

Since the first pie is not perfect, I decide a few days later to bake another. After riffling through a looseleaf binder of collected recipes, I find my grandmother’s for pastry. She was the food editor for the Toronto Telegram for twenty years and her pies were as good as Sam’s. No one else I knew could claim that, except Mina who worked for the manager at the mine. Yes, both my grandmother’s and Mina’s apple pies were excellent.

The second pie is better. The pastry is flaky. The filling is spiced perfectly with ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. It is a lot easier to outline the process for making pie than that of writing, although I do know what mine is. It is erratic and requires me to write only an hour a day (often it turns into a much longer period of time) at any time during that day. It may turn out to be a lot longer, but it does not have to be. I have followed this regime ever since I retired over ten years ago from working at the Assaulted Women’s Helpline. I may not be asked to talk about writing fiction, but I was recently asked to speak along with two colleagues about violence against women.  I can still do that, though by now I know a lot more about writing fiction than I do about responding to crisis calls. Maybe that is not true, maybe that kind of ability one never loses. But aside from isolated presentations, my days as a counsellor are over. I write fiction and in this hour every day, done consistently day after day, sentences and passages begin to cumulate and stories and books actually emerge. But I can’t tell anyone how to write, only offer some comments here and there and wish them all the best. And tell them most of all to follow their hearts. Encourage them to get going after they have their fill of IFOA. That’s what it takes in the end, to face the screen or page on my own and overcome the isolation and create my own world of stories. As it turns out, I can’t tell anyone much about how to write, but if you want the recipe for apple pie, just ask me!

Downtown Toronto Colour. Oct. 19, 2014

 

 

Book Launch. Would I Lie To You. October 9, 2014

 LAUNCH OF MY THIRD BOOK, WOULD I LIE TO YOU?, A NOVEL. 

The launch took place at The Supermarket in Kensington Market in Toronto, Ontario. It was a most exciting evening with a stellar turnout. The books of two Inanna authors were launched, Mary Lou Dickinson (moi) and Loren Edizel.

 

Preparing for the launch. Daughter took photo and you can see her in the mirror.

Mary Lou Dickinson at the microphone reading from her new novel

The Audience.

Mary Lou Dickinson & Loren Edizel. Q&A

f

Two Inanna Authors. Dickinson and Edizel. Q&A

Signing

Sigma Mine, Bourlamaque, Quebec. 1940s or 1950s.

This is the mine where my father worked from 1935 to 1962. It no longer exists in this configuration. It all disappeared when the mine became an open pit operation many years later. Even the highway from Val d'Or to Montreal was moved. Gold motivates decisions, not town planning! That head frame was designed by my father as was the hoist. Memories!

I have posted this because the most popular post on my blog has been one on Sigma. Perhaps those people will find a photo of the actual buildings on surface in the early days of interest!

Tagged on FB by prolific, exciting author Lisa Nikolits to write about my writing process:

I've been tagged by the exciting and prolific author Lisa Nikolits to write about  my writing process:

• What am I working on?         

At the moment, I am editing my third book with the wonderful editor of Inanna Publications, Luciana Ricciutelli. A novel, Would I Lie To You?, it will be launched on October 9^th in Toronto. I have also recently completed a mystery novel. When I have time in the midst of editing, sending out invites for the launch, figuring out how to use my website and the Mailchimp program, I am working on a memoir called ‘Restless.’

When I am asked how long it took to write the three books that will have been published by October, I wince. All were underway before I retired in 2002, when my goal in my retirement was to see that I actually finally got my books published. (Collection of short stories, One Day It Happens 2007; Novel, Ile d’Or 2010).

 

I also occasionally work on another collection of short stories.


• How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I do not write one specific genre, although I began with short story and novel writing. Mysteries were not in my future, nor was a memoir. But when given an idea for a mystery, I set out to learn how to do that by reading endless mysteries recommended by avid aficionados of the form and review recommendations. The memoir began to unfold when at Banff many years ago I found a manuscript written by a maternal ancestor, who had discovered the Banff Springs, about discoveries in the west during the construction of the CPR railroad. Again I have read endless other memoirs. How does my work differ from others in these genres? I find it difficult to say, but I suspect that my focus to some extent on social justice and that I am a feminist infuse my work. Not that this is not also true of the work of others, just that it always underlies my concerns. I am told that my voice is straightforward and gentle, authentic and honest. I would like to believe that.

 Why do I write what I do?
What choice does a writer or an artist have? Some theme or character or situation takes up residence in my psyche and demands that I deal with it. Once I have a story or book finished, I have new members in my family in the form of characters who have become so familiar that they are friends for the duration. And if I disagree with them, they exhort me with the fact that I have created them so I had better pay attention.

I write because it is apparently a call, or so a nun on a bus traveling along the St. Lawrence River many years ago told me. A gentle voice, hopefully, that conveys stories, but also appears to listen and validate the experience of readers. I used to think I wrote to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable, but I don’t think that any more. I just write what I write because the words are what come to me and the circumstances are those that demand to be told. I used also to think that writing is a crazy way to stay sane and that may be what it is for me… my handle on sanity. Creativity as the saving grace in a troubled world. Or something! And hopefully the writing also conveys some level of healing to others.

I also write to understand the world, to figure out what I am thinking, to create a record, to have fun. . It is satisfying to write a good sentence. I hope to be remembered for at least one memorable sentence!


• How does my writing process work?

I have been writing since I was 7 and my first book was published when I was 70. This might suggest a very slow process! What can I say! It took a long time and the explanation would be a book in itself. Maybe the memoir I am working on will explain it for me.

Rarely am I facing the blank page (screen) any more, but rather starting with material that needs revision. If you consider that revision might be as much as 90 % of the writers’ work, this seems realistic rather than pathetic. If something simply won’t work, I switch to something else. This is a far cry from the early days when each piece was new and the blank page was an unending terror. Persistence has it’s benefits, I guess, because I often have more material now than I can deal with.

Sometimes the material I am working on is new. Then I am apt to become a dinosaur and find myself writing in longhand in the middle of the night. Once I have entered this into Word, I work with the computer. I recall the days when I had to retype hundreds of pages when I shifted material around. I remember the days of white out. And am eternally grateful for my computer.

I have, for the last ten years, worked with a writing group (Moosemeat) and the critique that has led to has been very beneficial.  I often wonder why I waited so long to see the value of such an environment.  In the last year, I started working with another, smaller, group as well.  I am submitting my memoir to this group, chapter by chapter. The other writers have books published and as well as being good writers who submit segments of their work, they offer very helpful critique.

I don’t have a consistent schedule for work. I have worked in various ways at different times, depending on the circumstances. When my children were in their teens and I took a sabbatical from a job to write, I wrote five days a week during their hours at school. When they left home and I went back to the employment world, I wrote on Mondays (and weekends). Now that I am retired from all of that, I try to enjoy being retired (whatever that is) as well as put in a modest amount of writing a day (it becomes cumulative after a while) and don’t worry about how much that is unless I find that I am procrastinating rather than enjoying the rest of my life.