IFOA 35 Weeknights 27Oct to 31Oct14

Monday night was the festival reception. Sadly it fell on vote night for a new Toronto Mayor. I don't know if that was why it wasn't as packed as normal but it wasn't as packed as normal.
The wine was tasty. I got to see four of my favourite current and past Harbourfront employee friends who I generally only see once a year. Did I mention? The wine was tasty. Heh-heh!

I, of course, brought up the fact that I was slightly disappointed that Karl Ove Knausgard wasn't at the reception and us women got into the nitty gritty of describing him to the other women who hadn't seen that God of a man! Ha! It was probably for the best that he wasn't there.

Tuesday night was the Penguin 40th Anniversary round table. with Authors Joseph Boyden; John Ralston Saul; Johanna Skibsrud and Lee Henderson. Each author discussed penguin book that had a lasting effect on them. It was so much fun and filled with lots of laughter and I didn't write many notes.
Joseph Boyden is such a pleasure to listen to, and look at for that matter. He's funny and interesting. The take away quote I got from him was, "There's no better way to see the world than as a writer."
And Johanna Skibsrud's was "Writing and reading both are acts of translation."

At the end of the Penguin event we got a Penguin tote bad that had a gorgeous Penguin key chain and a tiny blank note book titled "On the Road - Jack Kerouac" so you can be your own Jack Kerouac. And we had champagne in the event and after the event. Nods head and smiles.

Wednesday Night was the Humber School for Writers Program Round Table. With School teacher/ writers Kevin Barry; Wayson Choy; Karen Connelly; Valerie Martin and Nino Ricci. Antanas Sileika was the moderator.
They discussed most important advice to beginning or young writers.

Kevin Barry's advice - relax about success. Our books/ stories come out of our anxieties. Finis
everything that you start. If you know how to finish the bad ones, you can finish the good ones. Develop Patience - so many writers are so focused on sending out their writing that they send it out too soon.
Keep your overhead low. The place you live has to settle in to your writing (before you write about it).

Karen Connelly's advice. - I encourage you to be atypical. Hunker down and be protective of the self. Be brave, have courage. You take your life and return it to the world. Be Daring.

Valerie Martin's advice - Don't write sex scenes. (There was much laughter.) Be patient, be dogged, don't be afraid.

Wayson Choy's advice - if you are writing, you are a writer. (THANK YOU!!!) Investigate/ study/ figure out, how did someone begin a story that you can't let go of. And How did someone end the novel that way?

Nino Ricci's advice - You want to tell a writer to keep going and you don't want to tell them the truth. (The truth that writing is hard, that few writer's make a decent living from it etc, etc) Nino told the story of having W. Mitchell as his writing teacher and W. Mitchell telling Nino he wasn't a writer and that may have galvanized Nino to become a writer because he did every thing possible to learn the craft and to get better.
You need to be reinforced because so many things in life will tell you that you can't do it. You need a healthy amount of delusion. Just write, do as much as possible for as long as possible, everyday if possible.

And random comments I wrote down from the discussion:
What does it mean to be human in different places?
The sense of feeling born in the wrong place.
Be with your family, then leave your family
Carol Shields told Wayson, "Why don't you write about Chinatown. No body knows about Chinatown." And he did.
Not a historical novel, a retro-future.

Audience member asked about each Authors process
Kevin Barry writes first thing in the morning, half asleep, before coffee or anything. He says for him it's his time to get the first draft down. He writes longhand.

Karen Connelly said that procrastination is a very, important part of the process. She needs to make time in her day to read.

Valerie Martin writes longhand on looseleaf paper. Types up a section only after the section is done. So she is always behind on her typing and always writing more.
She believes in doing another art to loosen things up. Drawing, whatever...

Wayson Choy who is 75 years old plays with his fountain pens. I work on writing when I can and writing when I'm well.

Nino Ricci works on a computer but used to write longhand.

7:30pm Round table with Author's Nick Cutter, Charles Foran, CC Humphreys, Louise Welch. Hosted by Andrew Pyper. Their discussion was on our obsession with contagion and mass infection.
Charles Foran did a good riff on the cell phone as a scary device that can be used against us in so many ways. It can be used to track us. The cameras can be used to expose us.

I didn't write many notes again. Sometimes the talks are so interesting, it's just hard to write anything down. I know I suck!

One question was asked, How do we respond to danger? We don't really know until we're faced with it.

Thursday Night Louise Welch had an Artist Talk.
She said, "everything we write is affected by our childhood.
You have to write the book you want to write.
Very few of us feel that we're totally bad.
You know the way of the world when you come from a working class family


7:30pm was a round table on Writing in the Digital Age. Author's were Emily Lindin; Sina Queryas and Anna Todd.

Sina started the Blog Lemonhound in 2005. She started it primarily because she was a Canadian in New York and she both wanted Americans to know about Canadian poetry/ writing and she wanted to be a voice for poetry and there really weren't women bloggers so she wanted to be a woman's voice out there.

Emily Lindin started the Unslut Project. It was in response to the the deaths of Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd who both took their own lives after being shamed for what happened to them.

Anna Todd who found wattpad started writing on it and getting encouragement through comments and ended up with a trilogy called After.


One of the things that all the women marvelled at was that wattpad is a safe place. It's more like what people were probably hoping for when they first added the ability to comment on articles. That it wouldn't be where trolls go all half-cocked and full-cocked with horrible, often bullying comments. Wattpad's comments are supportive and encouraging.

Anna Todd admits wholeheartedly that she wasn't a writer, didn't know how to write and that her followers helped her to become a writer.

They were beautiful women, all three who are doing something on the internet and carving out safe spaces, offering different voices to the otherwise wide open virtual space that can seem dangerous and mean.

And tonight Friday I attended the Ann Marie MacDonald reading/interview. Susan G Cole of Now Magazine interviewed her.
Ann Marie MacDonald was wonderful and Susan Cole was the right kind of enthusiastic and appreciative of Ann Marie.
Susan said something that is so true, "You gotta love when an actor turns into a writer because they give the BEST readings of their work!"
Ann Marie tidbits that I wrote down:
If you love somebody write as if they are dead already.
She said she wrote this book, Adult Onset, because she needed to be able to work on it anywhere. Whereas doing deep research and having two small children at the time couldn't work together. She couldn't be as she was before as a writer where she could be all absorbed in her writing process. Stay up late and sleep in as long as she wanted to. So it left her with writing from within herself, in a sense. Writing something autobiographical.

She talked about intergenerational transference of trauma (I like that each year at the festival different author's will touch on similar subjects). When your child is the age that you were when a trauma happened... (my words here, this other self, within yourself reacts to your child maybe with anger, maybe from a place of pain, maybe with resentment. For me, I know this is important and it came to me as I walked home from the festival. When I asked my mother about myself, about my origins, when I was 7 years old it was the age that she found out about her origins in a jarring harsh way. My mother's reaction to my question was suspiciously overly angry for such an innocent question.)

Ann Marie feels that despite how different her novels are she is only ever writing about the same thing.
She said it's difficult to write every book.

An audience member asked about how you deal with self-doubt as a writer and how to continue on when yo feel stuck. Ann Marie said, "cultivate stamina. I have self doubt all the time. Soldier through it. It's always easier, better to give up and stop writing. So finish your work instead."

It's been a great week! :)

EY