Author: Diane Ferguson

Diane is an accountant by day, an amateur astronomer by night, and a writer by morning. Having just completed her first novel, she has embodied the maxim: writing IS editing. Diane and her husband have raised two girls in the wilds of Grey County. She was involved with the Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival for over fifteen years. And now looks forward to more time writing as she enters the empty-nester phase.

Ready to re-write? Not so fast: You may need to go back to the drawing board.

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Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

After the first draft, my next struggle is reading it. I cringe at my bad writing and wonder if I should just throw-in the towel right there. What kind of writer could I possible be to write such dreck? So much telling! So little showing. Ugh. I’m embarrassed for myself.

But then I remember editing, that’s where it all gets fixed. And truth be told, I like editing the best. That’s where the wordplay really comes in. I love the challenge of taking a clunky phrase and turning it into a Cinderella sentence. And often, it’s easier than it looks. Except when it isn’t.

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Trouble with Transitions

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Image by Meghan O’Rourke

When I was raising my kids, they had a lot of tantrums. “The books” said to look for triggers, such as transitions. Does your child have trouble with transitions? Not only did my child have trouble with transitions, I realized I too had trouble with transitions. Certainly, not to the same extent, but “changing gears” for me took an extra push, an extra effort. And this showed up in my writing routine.

When I’m writing a first draft, there is a perpetual motion forward, of keeping the fire burning and just going. But now I’m editing and fine-tuning what is to be my final draft–except for some copy editing. I’m working on getting the rhythm and pacing of my plot, sub-plots and character arc, perfected. It’s an exciting time as I’m closer than I’ve ever thought to getting the story right, getting the rhythm right. I can go back and fix the prose, but getting the structure nailed down is vital.

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Information Overload

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I like history; I like to understand why the world is as it is. I like to make sense of things. I like to learn. I like to read. These times feel unprecedented and I’ve found myself caught up in the 24 hour news cycle. Before the internet and social media, I always read the letters to the editor, hoping it would shine a light on what my fellow Canadians were really thinking. Now this has exploded with facebook and twitter, where I can read what hordes of people think. Some of it scares me and some of it brings me comfort, but all of it is way too much distraction. I have to limit myself.

I’ve worked from home for a long time, so this new paradigm of social-isolating is not so strange to me. Saying that, I had a busy life with skating lessons, hockey, choir, writers group, book group—which are all things that feed my soul and exercise my body. In other words, necessary.

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One Writer on Vacation

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Varadero, Cuba

There’s nothing better than lying on a warm beach with a good book and your bathing suit on. A rare treat in the midst of a cold Canadian winter. I just returned from Cuba where we had days filled with sunshine, crystal clear waters and some of the best reading I’ve done in a long time.

To have that kind of time and space for reading was something I wasn’t even sure I could manage anymore. There’s alwasy so much that needs to be done at home, my days of reading for hours seemed long ago. At night, I’d be a few pages in and falling asleep.

And I couldn’t imagine a week of vacation without some writing in there, but I didn’t want to bring a laptop. So I took my fountain pen, my spiral-bound notebook and Sarah Selecky’s deck of writing prompts and Robert Olen Butler’s book on writing: From where you Dream.

But my biggest writing lesson was falling back in love with reading. Here’s my reading list and how I saw these novel’s from a writer’s perspective, in the order I read them:

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A Writer’s Need for Exercises

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I’ve been doing a complete re-write of my novel. I’m not quite at the climax, but I can see it from here. I’ve been working with my novel for a long time, so I thought I knew my characters. But in the re-writes, they’ve become a little unfamiliar. And because I don’t know them well, they’re feeling a little flat.

In my doggedness to reach the end of my novel, I lose my sense of play and creativity. One of my wrong ideas is that I don’t need writing exercises, that I don’t need to generate new ideas.

Of course I couldn’t be more wrong. New ideas are exactly what I need to bring my characters to life.

I was working at my day job and looking for a new podcast to listen to. I found: Inside Creative Writing, by Brad Reed. In Episode 3, Sparking your Creativity, Brad gives us two different idea generators to use on a character, place, or plot. The one I tried went like this:

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Coming Back to the Page

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I’m not writing. I’ve been busy. (Aren’t we all?) I’ve taken on a new job of teaching two courses. Preparing to teach was a steep learning curve for me. And I’ve been travelling. Not far–all within a three-hour drive. But enough that it’s disturbed my regular writing practice. And we’ve had company. But that’s summer.

The only antidote to not-writing, is writing. I’m a firm believer in journals and morning pages. I’m a student of the Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron method of writing–just getting it on the page. Now that I’m back in my routine, I’ve gone back to my morning pages.

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What I Learned from My First Marathon

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I wrote in my first novel marathon two weeks ago, in support of the Adult Education Centre in Owen Sound. The marathon was organized by the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Library but held at the Ginger Press bookstore. There were five of us in cozy quarters. There’s nothing like writing in a room full of books, whether at a bookstore, or a library. All those volumes goading you on, We did it, surely you can too…

I’m used to writing in short sprints, so the idea of a marathon was a little daunting. And I had other peoples’ expectations on me. Would I write enough to honour their donations? What was expected of me? I’d already stated that I need to sleep, meaning I wouldn’t be pulling an all-nighter.

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