Latest Project

I have begun to do research on the life of Mary Pickford. The Encyclopedia of World Biography calls her, "the first star of American cinema. Immensely popular in the silent era of motion pictures, Pickford was also a shrewd businesswoman and the first female movie mogul."

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1893, she started stage acting at an early age. Here and in the U.S. she worked her way up the theatrical ladder until, even to this day, more than thiry years after her death at the age 86, we still remember her as "America's Sweetheart."

Her marriage to the swashbuckling actor, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., was dubbed "the marriage of the century," and the couple's adoring fans considered them Hollywood Royalty.

Mary was very proud of her Canadian roots, and today she has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. I love this photograph of her, writing, and I know I'm going to enjoy getting to know this rare woman.

Memoir Writing

Anyone interested in writing a memoir was given plenty to think about at our monthly "Spirit of the Hills" writers' meeting on Saturday. Our speaker was Pat Calder, one of our own group and someone who taught creative writing for thirty years.

Pat shared with us some of what she had learned from a workshop on memoir writing that was presented by Judith Barrington, as part of the San Miguel Writers' Conference in Mexico in February of this year.

The most important thing, we were told, was to get the memory down. Just write! The art comes later, in shaping it. If part of the memory has become lost, keep writing around it. You may find a new memory. The more you write, the more you will remember.

Someday I may decide to write my memoirs. I've been collecting anecdotes in a file for years, fleshing them out a little whenever the spirit moves me in that direction. These stories from my life aren't in any chronological order, as they would be if I were writing an autobiography. Yesterday I learned that memoir is driven by theme, rather than by a sequence of events.

Defining a theme could prove to be difficult because, to this point, I've gone off on all sorts of tangents. A reader might find that boring. I can see now the importance of narrowing it down, in "finding the linkages that give resonance to the chaos of life."

Judith Barrington says there's no such thing as a fictionalized memoir because memoir is true. She says that the best way to learn how to write memoir is to read the good ones. We came away with a list of recommended titles. Right now, I'm going to track down a copy of Barrington's Writing Memoir: from Truth to Art.

Write on!

Keeping the Story Alive

I know that the story I've been working on is incubating because it comes to me when I wake in the night.  It is still there. Even when it's been several days since I've been able to work at it, it's alive in my subconscious.That's comforting, at least.

I've been busy writing press releases about a book signing I'm doing in two weeks, sending off announcements about events I have coming up in the next six weeks, selecting audience-appropriate readings to give, preparing a presentation for two school classes early in October, and getting around to all the area bookstores and signing their in-stock copies of Growing Up Ivy.

It's all part of the business, but I can't help feeling that I should be writing. Better days ahead!

Back to Basics

One last weekend at the cottage. Our retreat is pretty rustic, but occasionally, I find that is a good thing. There are times when I need to get away from all the distractions technology brings about. We have no television at our cottage, no Internet and therefore, no social networking (my biggest time waster). There is no telephone either, except for our cell phones, with a limited number of people on the other end who have access .

The quiet at the lake allowed me to sort out some of the complications in my novel-in-progress. How much information would the man who ran the village art gallery have about the two women in the house across the alley? One was an artist; he'd sold a painting for her once. But neither of their names matched the one on the watercolour.

How was I going to make this work? What a muddle I had created! I had written myself into a corner in more scenes that just this one.

Over the weekend, I sat down with my lined, yellow notepad and listed what the problems were, which changes had to be made to the story in order to bring about the outcome I need. It would be back to the noisy world soon enough.

Write on!
 

Making Connections through Story

On Friday, I accepted an invitation to read selections from Growing Up Ivy to a group of men and women who could themselves have been characters in the book. My audience was the Book Club at a nearby retirement residence.

I was fully prepared to have one or two of them get up and wander off while I was reading. In fact, I'd been warned that this could happen. It didn't. Everyone listened with great interest, and when it was over, several of the group contributed memories of their own about life in the Great Depression.

A couple of residents recalled a man who used to sharpen knives around the countryside. He used to travel from place to place in a horse-drawn caravan, similar to the one Ivy spent the summer months in, with her father.

One woman, who had lived as a child next to a golf course, identified with Charlie collecting golf balls and  re-selling them at the golf course. Someone else recalled getting paid to shovel manure from the street after the delivery horse had gone by.

Many in the audience told me that they used to go everywhere on their bicycles. And soon we were all laughing with one gentleman's tale of learning to ride a bike, how he forgot to look ahead rather than down at the road, and ended up ploughing into a woman crossing the street. The poor soul had cursed him out soundly in Yiddish.

It was a very pleasant afternoon, and I was delighted that these elderly people felt a connection to Ivy's story.  That, after all, is why we write.

Real Settings for Fiction

I first saw this house out of the corner of my eye as we drove past it last year. Since then, it has become part of the setting for the novel I'm working on. The large, log house on its high foundation of fieldstone stuck in my mind. It was perfect.

Last weekend we drove north to visit family, and I tried to find "my" house again. It wasn't where I thought it should be. We took a different route home, and suddenly, "That's it!"

Turning around, we went back to get a closer look. I was surprised to find the place deserted, the big front door padlocked, and the grounds overgrown. But that afforded me the opportunity to photograph it from several angles, without fear of being run off the property.

This isn't the first time I've gone looking for a real setting for one of my works of fiction. I was inspired by a spooky-looking mansion, set among tall trees, in deep shadows at the end of a long driveway for the mystery, The Deep End Gang (2003). 

I kept a picture postcard of the massive rock at Bon Echo on Mazinaw Lake, Ontario, above my desk when I was writing Sky Lake Summer, back in 1999. It kept reminding me of what my characters were up against in the story.

For Treasure at Turtle Lake (2007), I needed to count the number of steps in an outside staircase that led from an alley to a flat over a store. There were twenty-two.

It was a "belvedere" I was after for Trouble at Turtle Narrows (2008), a room at the top of a house, with windows on all four sides that "perched on the rooftop like a little glass hat." I found just the right architecture in some of the older houses in northern New York State.

Write on!

Where Are They Now? Life Beyond "The End."

What happened to the characters in Growing Up Ivy, after the end of the book? To Ivy and Charlie, to the seemingly uncompromising Maud, and the irresponsible Frannie?

Because Ivy is still so real to me, I like to speculate, at times, about what happened to all these characters in the succeeding years.

 Authors have to present the idea of an ending to their stories, but I know that life went on for Ivy, beyond the end of this book.

In one of the early versions, I began Growing Up Ivy with a flash forward scene. Ivy, Charlie and their adult children are sitting in the front row of an auditorium. The occasion is a ceremony where Ivy is to be presented with a distinguished award for literature.

The Master of Ceremonies is on the dias, giving his opening remarks, when the door at the back of the auditorium opens slowly. An older woman -- a faded beauty, you might say -- takes a few tentative steps inside. An usher hurries up the aisle toward her, hoping he can find a seat for her at the back as quickly as possible, so as not to disrupt the procedings.


"Is Ivy Chalmers here?" the woman whispers.


"Of course. She's the guest of honour." The usher has a firm hand under the woman's elbow as he attempts to steer her to the nearest seat.

"Could you point her out to me, please?" The small woman stands her ground. "It's been so long, I might not recognize her."

The woman is, of course, Frannie, Ivy's mother. I never used this scene because I thought it gave too much away. But it lingers in my mind. It suggests one way Ivy's personal story might have gone.