IFOA 35 Sunday Oct 26, 2014

I attended the Round Table discussion with Adam Foulds; Karl Ove Knausgard and Tim Winton.
I just have to say when Karl Ove Knausgard walked onto the stage in my head was a very loud WOOF! Oh my goodness, a tall drink of a smooth liqueur! ha-ha! It's always nice to see a good looking author! :)

Anyway, The suggested topic was 'Boys to Men'.

Karl Ove said that writing for him was a way of reminding him of a place where he was as a boy reading.
Tim Winton said that the number of books you've written doesn't make you better equipped to write a novel.

Age range
Karl Ove was writing when he was ten. Adam was an adolescent poet who didn't read poetry. And Tim Winton wrote his first novel at 19.

They discussed the age ranges in life. Karl is writing about his childhood primarily because he likes that a child feels the world so intensely.
Adam, I think, chimed in about the lack of self consciousness as a child. As a teen or young adult or adult, "It's not just about the joy of riding a bike, it becomes about riding a bike and looking cool." As a child you're not second guessing yourself. You're not self-conscious about your confusion. In your adult you're at the mercy of what your childhood life was like.

Yes, being at the mercy of your childhood is for some of us why we write. ;)

Tim sees midlife as a second childhood.

The men discussed the self and how we still feel young even in our older bodies. That feeling of not feeling like an adult. Karl Ove talked about looking at pictures of his father at 22 and how his father always looked like a man. He made me think of my mom and me seeing and feeling the same thing. She always looked like a woman, an adult and I still feel like I'm 19 years old at 50.

They discussed the realization that everyone before you looked like an adult but they were only acting like adults. "Kids look to you to know what to do and the kind thing is to pretend you know what to do."
I love these topics. I can remember sitting with my sister discussing some of the drama we witnessed growing up, our feelings about certain memories etc. The big thing for us was discussing the moment we separately reached the realization that these adults (my mom, her dad) were only 33 years old, how young we both felt when we reached that age. How ill equipped we were to walk in their path of being in love with each other and combining their children from other relationships. It's messy and difficult, and they were so young, how could they not screw up? That's why I love attending interviews and round table discussions, the ideas!

The interviewer asked, "is the moment we lose our parent the moment we become a man?"
Karl Ove said that death didn't change anything, we could still feel his presence."
For me, it was always about my mother's rings. I would try on her rings every year as a child and teenager and I'd pick one that I would spend the year asking her for. There were many rings though that didn't look right on my hands. They were rings for a woman. I remember after my Mom passed away and I put on her big diamond tulip ring and it was the first time ever that it looked right on my hand. I was 32 years old and it was the first time that I FELT any sort of a change or growth.

at 1pm I attended China at IFOA a round table discussion about translations in China
I wrote down the Authors names based on what the interviewer said, not knowing the spelling, and then had the brainwave, oh how's about I look them up in the IFOA brochure. My dizzy Pisces moment. So I've got to write both because I'm an idiot and I crack myself up. I'll put my idiocy in brackets. :)
Tashi Dawa (Joshi Daway)
Yan Li (Young Lee)
Yucheng Jin (Yu chuc Ji)
Zhanjun Shi (Sho Chan Choo)

For most of the panel, translation of their books was like reading someone else's book. Yan Li translates her own work. She doesn't wants her work in other peoples hands to translate. She talked about what can be lost in translation because Chinese characters have a picture in each letter (I guess) whereas the A,B,C, language can't quite cover it. Shere prefers her writing in Chinese because of that. The A,B,C, language can't encompass the fullness of the Chinese characters.

Tashi Dawa said that translation from Tibetan to Chinese - there's a transformation of his work.
One of the gents was an editor and he said that for the Chinese magazine they have 6 people go through the full magazine to translate into English before it goes to him for the final edit.

An interesting note for Novelists is that the Chinese market translates 2000 foreign (Non Chinese) bookes every year.
Canadian writers who are famous or well known in China are Alice Monro and Dennis Bock. Dennis Bock won best foreign novel translated into Chinese.

2pm was Koffler @ IFOA
Shelly Oria and Alison Pick
Both read about 5 minutes of their books.
I didn't get much in the way of notes as I fell asleep for a bit. They weren't boring or anything. I simply fall asleep at some point. I fall asleep in movies, I fall asleep in plays. I fall asleep...
They did talk about renegotiating your relationship with religion. Alison Pick's father didn't know he was Jewish and found out, I think while Alison was a child. So there was some practice of the Jewish faith at some point in her life. And now she practices some with her daughter (two sabbaths a month). Alison brought up the transmission of trauma, how its in the genes. The secrecy, the not knowing of their religion or culture and how it plays out and how depression can develop.

Shelly talked about how she still practices but in a way that feels right to her. For Yom Kippur she doesn't observe it in the same way. She does make a list of all the people in her life and writes about them, asks for forgiveness and forgives. She said the one thing she 'shouldn't' be doing (writing) is the one thing that brings her closer to her faith/practice.

I'll take the quote from the brochure, Alison Pick - Pick presents her moving and unforgettable memoir, Between Gods, which explores family secrets and the rediscovered past.
I have a belief in the transmission of trauma energetically speaking. You know that you don't know. I remember John Bradshaw talking about Family Secrets when he used to do his seminars on PBS and how everybody knows (specifically children) that there is something wrong, or something unspoken and it affects the family system. It causes a lot of problems. There was a secret about me growing up and I always felt out of place because of it. It was a relief when I was finally told the truth at 18 years old. And there was the upset that I set up to fail, in a sense, because I needed that knowledge. It would have changed the way I viewed everything. I wouldn't have felt like I was a mistake or the unlucky one.

Shelly Oria has a short story collection called New York 1, Tel Aviv 0. She has 1st person stories, 1st person plural, 2nd person and 3rd person. It sounds like a good learning aid for writers.

3pm was a round table discussion on humour.
Elyse Friedman; Robert Glancy and Simon Rich.
As you would expect there was a lot of laughter in that one.

Simon Rich said that getting the reader to keep reading is the most important which includes humour but doesn't try to be funny.

Elyse Friedman talked about the type of stories she writes which lend them selves to humour : a family reunion where the family hires actors to play their deceased parents. An ugly woman who wakes up beautiful and discovers that it's what is on the outside that counts.

Simon Rich used to be a writer for SNL. He was smart and funny and looks like he's 19 years old.

Humour has to have emotional heart. Catch 22 laugh one page and then cry the next.
The best jokes are short cuts into the human heart.
Even serious events in life have humour.

Robert Glancy said the best email he received about his novel was from a friend who wrote, "You managed to get out of your shit job by writing a book about a guy working in a shit job."

There was a good discussion about books that are humourous that are considered serious today. Jane Austen's books are romantic comedies etc.

4pm was Ann Eriksson; Damon Galgut and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
The topic was the Construction of the Novel.

advice was to let yourself loose on the first draft. Write the first draft as quickly as possible.
all three tend to plot after the fact or they create timelines for characters.
Damon - get it down in some shape or form and the rework it.
There was some talk about being too busy to write so Kathryn, I think, wrote in her head and when she was able to write she just wrote it.

It reminds me of the ways that I made writing work in my life in the past. And the skills I need to pull out of the vault.

EY