Seven books, many short stories, a dozen radio plays, three stage plays and countless articles, blog posts and various other work behind me and I am still writing, still engaged, but the publishing landscape has so changed I feel like I am back at the beginning, struggling to make a meaningful story but also tell it in a new way and then find a virtual or actual outlet to publish it because the least thing a writer needs is readers. In the beginning I would check the mail to see if there was a response to a story I submitted. The walks to various rural mailboxes, in the Yukon, on Galiano Island, now in Gibsons. The moment of anticipation as I ripped open the envelope. Writers told stories about papering their studies with rejection letters. There was even a kind of hierarchy: the standard printed, Thanks but it's not for us. But maybe a personal note at the end of one. I was thrilled to see actual handwriting from "The New Yorker" on one of those. Better was, Try us again. Best of all, We are pleased to....Now it's easier. I only need to check email, or the impersonal Submittable site.
My goal was always to publish and after many rejections that started to happen when a story from what would become my first book was accepted by the long running literary journal Prism. Five more stories were published or broadcast, in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K, before that first book Suburbs of the Arctic Circle appeared from Penumbra Press. My publisher entered it in a competition, the Literary Press Group's Writer's Choice award, and it won. Our public broadcaster CBC commissioned me to adapt several of the stories for radio. I was happy, this is how a writer's life was supposed to proceed, and when the publisher of Who's Who in Canada offered me a listing, I declined. How crass, I thought. Hah! Raised a Catholic, accustomed to nuns talking about vocations as something holy, I thought my vocation of writing to also be something holy, and probably more fun, the way writers think of fun. I didn't think of it as a career, like the boring opportunities shilled on high school career days.Continue reading here