Author: dianacranstoun

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From The Heart.

On March 13th, 1996, my daughter and I flew into Glasgow from Canada to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday.  Leaving a country still covered with snow, I was excited about seeing a wash of green awaiting us as we flew over Scotland. But it wasn’t to be. Scotland too lay shrouded in snow, a vision of bleak midwinter. An apt vision, as it turned out.  Mere hours later we learned of the tragedy of Dunblane.

It was only recently I learned that tennis player Andy Murray had been a child at the primary school that day. I can’t begin to imagine the horrors he, his family and the people of Dunblane experienced that day, and the pain and loss they continue to bear. But it feels as though his success at Wimbledon today is a whisper and promise of hope  – that no matter what happens, some people (hopefully most) with the support of family, community and an internal courage and belief in themselves can, and will, overcome tragedy.

From one Scot to another, can I just say how proud I am (and I believe all of us are) of your courage, tenacity and resilience, Andy.

On this most magnificent day, Thank you for being a beacon of inspiration.

Relish your success.  You’ve earned it.

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Happy Canada Day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsq68qRexFc

We Are More

BY SHANE KOYCZAN

“Define Canada

You might say the home of the Rocket
Or The Great One
Who inspired little No. 9s and little No. 99s

But we’re more than just hockey and fishing lines
Off of the rocky coast of the Maritimes

And some say what defines us
Is something as simple as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
And as for ‘you’re welcome,’ well, we say that, too

But we are more than genteel or civilized
We are an idea in the process of being realized
We are young, we are cultures strung together then woven into a tapestry
And the design is what makes us more than the sum totals of our history

We are an experiment going right for a change
With influences that range from A to Zed
And yes, we say ‘Zed’ instead of ‘Zee’

We are the colours of Chinatown and the coffee of Little Italy
We dream so big that there are those
Who would call our ambition an industry
Because we are vineyards of good year after good year
We reforest what we clear
Because we believe in generations beyond our own
Knowing now that so many of us
Have grown past what we used to be
We can stand here today
Filled with all the hope people have
When they say things like ‘someday’

Because we are more

Than a laundry list of things to do and places to see

More than hills to ski

Or countryside ponds to skate

We are the abandoned hesitation of all those who can’t wait
We are first-rate greasy spoon diners and healthy living cafes
A country that is all the ways you choose to live
A nation that can give you variety
Because we are choices
We are millions upon millions of voices
Shouting, keep exploring
We are more

We are the surprise the world has in store for you, it’s true
Canada is the ‘what’ in ‘what’s new’

So don’t let your luggage define your travels

Each life unravels differently

And experiences are what make up
The colours of our tapestry
We are the true North
Strong and free
And what’s more
Is that we didn’t just say it
We made it be”

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The Hero’s Journey

Please check out this video.  It’s probably the best explanation of The Hero’s Journey out there.

http://io9.com/joseph-campbell-and-the-heros-journey-as-explained-by-602633720

The comments following the video raise some interesting questions.

Does The Hero’s Journey apply to 100% of the population, or only 50%.  Does The Heroine have a (different) journey all of her own?

And what about the characters in Game of Thrones?

Hmmm.  Got a lot of thinking to do on this beautiful warm summer’s day.

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Calgary Catch-Up.

It’s been an unsettling week!

For the majority of citizens not directly affected by the Calgary flood, there’s been a surreal feel about the whole thing. The water has now receded and most people have managed to return to their homes. Desperately sad to see the sidewalks piled high with furniture, appliances, carpets and drywall waiting for the city to dispose of them.  A friend, whose basement was completely flooded, told me that she watched ‘her life’ being hauled away in a dump truck yesterday.

Hard to imagine.

 

 

 

 

 

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Writers’ Retreat – Day One

It’s 11.30pm, so I’m going to cheat here and repost an article I just wrote for the Alberta Romance Writers’ Association blog. If you are an ARWA member and would like to join the discussion tomorrow, please contact me and give me your Skype address.

If you live in Calgary or Southern Alberta, stay safe and warm.

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Despite the flooding here in Calgary, nine of us managed to get together for the first day or our retreat – five in person and four later on in the evening via Skype.

Our discussion brought up a few interesting topics.

1) Should we dumb down our writing – especially vocabulary – for our readers? Most readers read for pleasure/leisure and research shows that the most popular reading level is Grade 8/9. The reader wants to be able to lose himself a story, not constantly looking up the dictionary to find out what a word means. So, yes, do feel free to use the occasional ‘hard’ word but make sure the context is clear. If you want to find out what ‘level’ you write at, check out autocrit. There is also a facility on Word that allows you to do so.

2) Episodic writing. Charles Dickens was the master of episodic writing, but it appears to be having a comeback. Alexander McCall Smith recently released his book 44 Scotland Street. It was first published in The Scotsman, one chapter every weekday for six months – 100 short chapters. Not all the chapters end with a cliffhanger, but McCall knew he had to create an ending which would made the reader want to check in with the story the following day.

So what’s created a renewed interest in the episodic style? It could be the prevalence of blogging – Julie and Julia for example. For a video take on the episodic story, check out The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a fresh retelling of Pride and Prejudice through the daily entry of a modern day blogger.

3) What we sometimes find from both unpublished and multi-published authors is the tendency to recount a scene/event from one person’s POV and then immediately retell the exact same scene from another character’s POV. Unless this is done with great skill it can pull the writer out of the story or bore them. Better to ‘move the story forward’, choose the most relevant POV character and only write the scene once!

We’re going to be meeting at 3pm on Skype tomorrow afternoon. If you’re an ARWA member and would like to join in the conversation you can do so either in person at Diana’s house, or via Skype. Just e-mail Diana with your Skype address and she’ll add you to the list. These are the topics we’ll be discussing:
1) How do we apply the ‘rules’ to our writing yet maintain our own ‘voice’?
2) Define ‘voice’.
3) Give an example of one piece of music/song that triggers your writing – and tell us why?
4) Define success? Does its definition depend upon which stage of the writing journey you are currently on.
5) Can/should an author put too much of themselves into their stories/characters.

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ARWA Retreat meets The Great Calgary Flood

The worst flooding for 100 years.  We’re less than a mile from some of the most badly hit areas, but fortunately we’re warm and dry and still have power.  Four ARWA members have managed to make it in for the retreat – others who were coming in from out of town are staying home for safety, but we’re going to meet on Skype tonight.

http://globalnews.ca/video/661728/raw-video-downtown-calgary-flooding

This is probably the worst disaster Calgary has ever seen. Our mayor,  Naheed Nenshi, has apparently just been on CNN. It appears that out of the 100,000 people forced from their homes, only 1,500 have had to use the public shelters, such is the generosity of Calgarians.  As a city, Calgary rocks!

Stay safe out there, everyone.

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ARWA Writers’ Retreat

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog this week as I’ve been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  I’m hosting ARWA’s annual writing retreat this weekend –  I’ll have eight people staying the weekend, with a few others popping in for the day and more coming on Saturday evening for a pot-luck supper – and I’m not renowned for being the best housewife in the world.

And then the rain fell!

I’ve been lucky.  Some seepage in my basement and a leak in my kitchen roof, but other than that I’m fine.  Not so more than 100,000 other Calgarians! A state of emergency has been called in the city and other areas in Southern Alberta. I’ve lived in Calgary since ’88 and I’ve never – ever – seen anything like this before.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Municipal+emergency+plan+activated+officials+Elbow+rivers/8553449/story.html

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Gary Bonn – WriterLot

Talk about keeping it in the family.  My ‘wee’ cousin, Gary Bonn, my guest blogger today, is Anne’s (from my Wartime Rations blogs) son.  Alex (Percy Huggins) – also from Wartime Rations – is our uncle, so I guess we both acquired the writing genes from him.

Gary has published two books, Expect Civilian Casualties and The Evil and The Fear and is one of the founders of the Writers co-operative WriterLot.

Over to you, Gary, and many thanks from your ‘big’ cousin!

 

Some time ago I invited Diana to contribute a short story to WriterLot. In return she suggested I write a blog post – on that very subject.

What is WriterLot?

A couple of years ago I contacted two friends and suggested we invite our favourite writers to team up on a website that offered at least one new piece of writing per day – to fill someone’s coffee break, wind down time, or supply a bed time story. A fiction and non-fiction site that people could access for free.

I had no idea it would be followed in quite the way it has. None of us were prepared for the response.

It was intended to be fun, and still is, but we didn’t expect 150,000 people around the world to look at it.

Part of the fun comes from challenges the other writers give each other. The intention is often to take you out of your genre and comfort zone.

“Gary, you’ve never written from the point of view of an animal. Write something from a frog’s eye view.”

“Write a short romance with dialogue but only full stops as punctuation – nothing else: and make it work.”

“Write a short story that changes genre half way through – but make sure the reader doesn’t notice.”

Lol, I love this gang – when I’m not swearing at them. Being challenged to work with unfamiliar genres and narrative techniques is very stimulating.

Recently I’ve been working with another writer, Christy, on a science fiction project for WriterLot. We’re stunned at the response to it – and it’s been picked up for publication.

Ren Warom and Stephen Godden invented whole worlds for WriterLot (Umwelt and Tales of the Shonri), and keep their stories for WriterLot mainly in these worlds. Tales of the Shonri was published. Ren has an agent for her first manuscript, and we’re all waiting to hold the book in our hands.

Others write whatever comes into their heads, or indeed, house – as Island Writer has done so vividly.

Recently, some of us have used the site to supply whole, or part, books scene by scene or chapter by chapter.

This has built followings of avid readers for the writers. With the audience requesting weekly posts rather than two weekly. They also ask when the book will be published and where it’s going to be stocked.

There’s a slightly bittersweet edge to WriterLot too. We only meant it to be recreation, but soon realised readers want us to produce work absolutely on time – and that can be a struggle when writing/editing/family – even tragedy, get in the way. But you don’t mind – the readers are giving us a huge compliment and that’s a spur to action like nothing else.

If you’re feeling low, Bill Webb will tell you a hundred ways to please your husband, “Be in the same room when you speak to him”: Bill brings us beautifully observed sanity and madness – wrapped in humour.

WriterLot’s mysterious Issy comes at us from all literary angles – never the same twice.

Alison Gardiner… what can I say? Just go and look at her titles to see that you’ll need something wrapped around your abdomen to stop your laughter muscles exploding. Only read for short periods.

Cat Coffey always approaches things laterally. She creased me up with a one minute short, “Navigational Error” and goes from strength to strength.

Alf Haywood, well, he just gets better and better. Mostly romance – with a little naughty on the side.

Boopadoo, a great writer of short stories in anthologies, is about to have complete novels published – deservedly: his writing blows us away.

Jae Erwin takes into what could almost be a genre unique to her – the spiritual thriller. Be prepared to gasp and go dizzy with amazement from time to time.

Girdharry, who has so many enchanting short and serialised stories on WriterLot, has given in to her increasing popularity and is writing full length novels.

Russell Jones had some “guest” slots offered and, after impressing everyone again and again, joined us. He’s built quite a following already – and it’s growing.

WriterLot may be launching whole careers. Patrick LeClerk is published, with his headlong thriller “Out of Nowhere”, and has more books on the way. Janet Allison Brown – already a successful children’s writer, has blossomed into paranormal and romance too. Louise Cole is about to be published as well – with a book that is so breathlessly exciting I’d describe it as aerobic reading.

I’ve had a couple of books published, and another being edited now. Busy times for all of us. What made this all happen?

Behind the scenes of WriterLot are very special elements. The secret formula contains such ingredients as, an obsession with writing, an obsession with each other’s writing and the knowledge that, if you ask one or more of the gang to do a 20-30 hour structural edit on your latest manuscript, they will – without hesitation. And they’ll do all this for you again and again and again. They’ll go on to copy edit, proof read, whatever you need.

And, when they ask you to do the same, you feel a heady flush of excitement, and dive in.

The workload is immense, and I doubt that, after helping each other, any of us have much in the way of free time.

The final element in this formula, is brutal respect. You are required to be as negative, pedantic and nit-picking about each other’s work as possible – quite aggressively so. We know that “nice” comments are worse than useless. When any of us receive someone else’s work to look over, before it goes to an agent or publisher, the writer expects us to tell them every last thing that could possibly lead to rejection and every way that the manuscript could be improved. You simply cannot be sweet about it. It’s taken us some years to understand that if someone has just spent 20-30 hours tearing your work to shreds – it’s because they think the story and writing are worth it.

The best comment I’ve received in an edit? “Gary, your head is a strange and possibly dangerous place.”

Hmm, actually I think “Before you write another book – see a therapist”, tops that (thank you Louise Cole).

I’m not sure how all this happened, but it’s wonderful to be in this gang of skilled and generous people.

Right, Diana, your turn: a short story for WriterLot, please!

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Lorraine Paton

Congratulations to Lorraine Paton – writing colleague and former president of The Alberta Romance Writers’ Association – on the release of her first book – Devin’s Second Chance.

Please check out the excerpt below.  She’s a gifted writer.

I’ve already downloaded a copy to my Kindle and can’t wait to read it.

Congrats again, Lorraine.  May this be the first of many!

http://www.lorrainepaton.com/2013/06/DevinsSecondChanceExcerpt.html

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Forget-Me-Not

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front recently. No excuse, really. Just distraction.

Elona Malterre talked to The Alberta Romance Writers’ Association a few weeks ago on Writing The Short Story. She’s a multi-published author and one of the founding members of The Alberta Romance Writers’ Association. One of the comments she made really stood out for me: A short story involves unity of Place, Time and Action.

I’m probably not going to be blogging much next week. I’m hosting a writing retreat at my house next weekend, so between then and now I’m going to be busy cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! Until then, here is a short story for you to read, Forget-Me-Not.

I hope you enjoy it.