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- David Small’s powerful tale of how presenting his memoir Stitches to his previously estranged brother mystifyingly transformed their relationship.
- Jane Christmas and Catherine Gildiner argeeing it’s better to base your memoir on memories, not the research you do afterward (which you’re probably doing to procrastinate, anyway).
- Elina Hirvonen explaining how her generation in Finland is better able to address the repercussions of civil and international conflict three generations post-Winter War.
- Dave O’Meara and LM Rochefort handing out wax-paper cups of champagne to toast 10 years of Plan 99 and business owners who support the arts in meaningful ways (read: with their wallets).
- Struan Sinclair recounting the tragic consequences when you leave two bags of candy tied to a doorknob in Winnipeg and then get on a plane to Ottawa.
- Getting the backstage intel on David Byrne’s and Nick Cave’s recent appearances at the festival (all gracious, all good).
- rob mclennan and I trading stories of how so many international authors name Ottawa as their ideal city to read in because the audiences are informed and unpretentious.
- Go on tour with your band for the umpteenth time in 20-odd years. Write a book to escape the tedium.
- Base it on one of your unproduced but finished film scripts.
- Choose an improbable vocation for your anti-hero. In this case: hand cream salesman.
- Take inspiration from the SCUM Manifesto, the Gospel of Mark, British kitchen soup dramas and British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg.
- Give yourself four weeks.
Posts Tagged ‘Ottawa Writers Festival’
How to Feed the Writing Muse
Photo by Colin Rowe
Last week, I moderated a session at the Ottawa International Writers Festival in the cabaret-style basement of Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, stayed for the Plan 99 reading series 10th anniversary bash and lingered at a table of writers trading tales of what motivates us as writers, namely attending events like these. Here is just a brief overview of some of our “aha” moments:
And finally, as an author, how it is so necessary to attend these types of readings and debates, how they feed you creatively far more than your average (often expensive) writing workshop. During Plan 99’s celebratory readings, when I wasn’t tweeting+ clever lines from the readers, I found myself compelled to sketch an entire a chapter for my next-next novel (the one in ethereal thought-to-first draft stage). Today, I’ll dive in and flesh out that sketch, that unexpected gift that you sometimes receive when you aren’t expecting it but are unintentionally feeding the muse.
The Writing Life Tonight @Writersfest
The Writing Life #3: The Past is Present
Saturday, October 24, 2009 @ 8:30 p.m.
Saint Brigid’s, Ottawa
Tonight, I’ll be hosting this session of the Ottawa International Writers’s Festival featuring Toronto author Don Gilmorr, Finnish author and filmmaker Elina Hirvoven and all the way from Oxford Mills, recent Relit winner Michael Blouin.
Elina has also asked me to read an excerpt from her intelligent and understated anti-war novel When I Forgot; it’s an honour and a wee challenge. My goal this afternoon: learn how to pronounce “Rautatientori“. Suggestions?
Nichole McGill also blogs at: http://www.nicholemcgill.com
Nick Cave at the Ottawa Writers Festival
Most authors don’t make this type of entrance: confident, striding onstage to hoots and applause, wearing a funeral suit dissected by a splash of pink satin and gold chains hanging off paltry chest hair. The Author states that there will be two minutes only of pre-reading photography and preens and poses before a sea of flashing cell phones before tucking into an old-fashioned literary reading.
This was Nick Cave appearing at Ottawa’s Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts on September 17; the alternative musician who had happened to write a novel, his second, The Death of Bunny Munro.
His loyal fans are eager. They have packed the pews of a former church, their hands filled with pints of poured drink – Shit, can you believe Nick Cave finally came to Ottawa? ‘Course not to sing but to read. And where the heck do you rest a tumbler of whiskey when sitting in a pew? The answer becomes obvious – cradle it on your knees.
So Cave reads, flanked by statues of Mary and Saint Patrick, their heads crowned with an amber setting sun while Cave reads humorous profanity, literary enough to draw chuckles and nods – laden with “p” and “c”-words. Luckily the century-old Lowertown sanctuary for Irish Catholics is deconsecrated and Saint Brigid herself is hidden behind an Ottawa Writers Festival screen. Still…
Cave gives two 10-minute readings of Bunny Munro, which is two more than he gave his Toronto audience. Then he seduces the audience. He talks warmly of Avril Lavigne and her “patina of innocence” and wonders if her father happens to be in the audience. He apologizes for the tragic and piteous 1989 And the Ass Saw the Angel, a book bogged down in glorious language. But, as Mr. Cave, points out: “taking an enormous amount of amphetamines actually makes you feel that you wrote a lot.”
Message for future authors: coffee is better.
The recipe for Bunny Munro, or “How to write a novel in four weeks”, was much simpler:
(Caution: if you don’t belong to a band or have a finished script, this may take longer.)
But persevere! Narrative has apparently set Cave free, turning him into a happy go lucky card fielding introspection from host Dave O’Meara, internationally lauded local poet (and Lucky Bastard).
“There was nothing I could do to change the fact that people thought I was a gloomy old bastard,” he said, “People thought I was Lord of the Goths. So, I decided to get up out of my coffin…”
Has Saint Brigid’s heard this much laughter? Yes, he also dared audience members to join his band or meet him for a drink after, trashed poor old Charles Bukowski (Never give him a script copy of Barfly enthusing ‘OMG, you’ve got to READ this!’ You can, however, print out and present to him a copy of Gladiator 2, which he penned. See hilarious clip below for the synopsis.) and discussed the woeful state of the audio book which he addressed by writing with Warren Ellis, an evocative, gorgeous spatialized score set to his reading of the book.
And why not exude some joy? This is a man who jumped into the abyss only to find it came to his knees, shrugged, then got on with it.
