What we can learn from Temple Grandin

Last weekend, I watched an HBO movie on Temple Grandin, Ph.D. Temple is an autism advocate and is well-known in the agriculture  industry for designing more humane and efficient livestock handling systems. As writers, there’s a lot we can learn from her approach to life and the challenges she faced.

Details Matter
At one point in the movie, Temple (played by Claire Danes) says that she notices details that other people are blind to. This is a large part of her success. For example, by observing cattle and walking through the chutes, she makes several important observations:

The Church

Front view of church

Everyone’s heard that we should write what we know. Well, a lot of what I’ve been writing about is stuff I don’t know, or didn’t know until I did some research. Even most of my characters are fictional, rather than consciously based on people I know.

But the setting for my novel is a very real place, a community set between Turtle Lake and Brightsand Lake, Saskatchewan. And the home of two key characters is based on an abandoned church near my house.

Creativity and the divine

I just re-watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted Talk on nurturing creativity. Gilbert brings up the link between creativity and suffering in our culture, and talks about alternative ways to view creativity. For example, the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed creativity as a gift from some sort of divine entity. These entities would help artists shape the work, and help the artists keep some psychological distance from their work. In other words, if your work sucked, it was partly the entity’s fault. If it was brilliant, the artist couldn’t take all the credit. By viewing such brilliance as a loan from the divine, artists were free to do their work without worrying (as much) about tapping into the zeitgeist.

Contest for people who like to write in coffee shops

Are you someone who likes to bang out snappy prose or paint poetic images while sipping a latte in a coffee shop? If so, the Coffee Shop Author writing contest is for you.

Humber and me: Part 2

With Christmas holidays behind us (boo!), I thought I’d talk about some of the things I’ve learned so far during the Humber program. I think that one of the most important things I’ve worked on is how to put together a strong plot.

Looking for a way to give back

When I was in high school, I loved to write. Poetry, short stories, everything. Living in rural Saskatchewan, I didn’t have access to writing groups or the same types of cultural events I would have in the city. But two adults, both good writers, editors, and teachers, took it upon themselves to mentor me. Their support and feedback helped me become a better writer.

Humber and me: Part 1

People have been asking me about my experience working through Humber College’s Creative Writing Program. J.L. Martin even suggested I blog about it, so I thought I’d take her advice.

The dreams my subconscious burps up

Last week I was in Saskatoon for business, and fit in a visit with a friend who happens to be a visual artist. We started talking about dreams, and using dreams as inspiration for art. Both of us liked the idea of keeping a bedside journal to write down our dreams, but neither of us has actually gotten around to it. But a recent vivid, disturbing dream has me considering starting one.

Canada Reads 2010 kicks off just in time for Christmas

Putting together your Christmas wish-list, or shopping for book-a-holics? The books on this year’s Canada Reads list will fit snugly into any stocking. My friend Alexis Kienlen explains below.

Hello, my name is Alexis. I’m an author, poet and journalist and one of the bloggers of the Canadian literary site, Roughing it in the books. This is the second year that Roughingitinthebooks has hosted the Canada Reads challenge. Starting December 1, we call on anyone who wants to participate to join us at our site and sign up for the challenge.

Here’s how it goes:

You pledge to read all five contenders by March 6, 2010, in time for the debates, which will run from March 8 to 12, 2010 on Jian Ghomeshi’s CBC radio show one “Q”. You can predict the winners by March 7, and then the results will be entered in three draws which will be drawn by Melanie, my co-blogger at Roughing it in the books.

Getting to Know Our Characters

Since I began this project, I’ve had a bit of a problem with Bea, one of my main characters. Bea is murdered at the beginning of the story, and her death and life situation are both very hard to write about. I started to create distance from Bea for a few reasons: