Kathleen Molloy

Let me tell you about Lippy Zundar. I don’t know if I love her or hate her. How am I supposed to write a story about a protagonist that I am not sure if I love or hate? On the one hand, I love her vulnerability. I love her maternal instinct. I love that she kicks butt. On the other hand, she’s quick to jump to conclusions, she’s bitter, she dances between shades of grey in what is right and what is wrong. And now she is full of self doubt. I don’t like that.

How can she possibly do her job well if she’s always worried that the school is going to call because her kid popped another kid in the nose when the other kid said Daddy’s new wife had nicer boobs? Life distracts her from work and those distractions are deadly. Lippy Zundar is a paid assassin for Canada’s Department of Homeland Insecurity. And she’s worrying about baloney sandwiches, indoor sneakers with non-streak treads, and passing grades, when she should be focusing on her next mark.

And I have to get Lippy out of my head and into my computer. But some days I don’t want to let her out. I don’t like her. She’s mean.

I have been big lipping. Big lipping is when you sulkingly drag along your bottom lip. Big lipping is what my family calls it when someone feels that things just aren’t going the way that she wants but she’s too grateful for everything that is going right to complain.

I’ve had a sinister case of big lip for a couple of weeks. A scourge of Big Lip.

In the spring my distributor went tits up. Discouraging for me yes; disheartening for them. When I heard the news my eyes widened and my eyebrows arched in a “now what do I do” glare. They had ordered 500 copies of Dining with Death three weeks before closing shop. OFFO ran an extra press run and 500 copies were shipped to Georgetown. 500 extra copies now sit in my mother’s living room awaiting a new distributor.

That was the beginning.

A few weeks later I was reading the book review section of Quill and Quire and one of the books reviewed shared a similar plot with my current novel Knotted Knickers. Similar is perhaps not the right word – that my plot and my plot have nothing in common – all the same, there aren’t many Canadian stories set in a bra store. Big Lip. While I was plugging into Book #3 and #4 I felt stalled. I kept zapping story ideas to my muse, and he kept telling me to stay the course but I wanted a fresh start.

I figured I needed to switch tracks.

I needed to write something that would sell – forget plot!!! – so I launched into a collection of erotic short stories. I figured that I had the handy formula: I could write, I could have sex, therefore I could write about sex.

Yah, well, I soon discovered that I didn’t know the difference between erotic and ridiculous. So I set about reading erotic short stories. I tried on erotic novels. I picked up a series of “erotic” books from the Wakefield library book sale. The series was about lovers that turn into wolves.

The cover features a shirtless hunk and the back jacket promises hot lovin’. The one book that I tried to get through was about a whole bunch of people / wolves crossing the US to get to a wedding of another shape shifter. I’m all for wolves, and I’m all for shape shifting wolves that have a lot of sex. BUT. After every three pages the shape shifters were having sex. I didn’t bother to learn the characters’ names because it didn’t matter, they all looked the same to me naked. Every hook up included a loving committed couple made up of a woman and two men. Every woman was thrilled at the love shared between the men, the tenderness, … the balls on balls.

I read three chapters and returned the books to the library book sale donation box. The books I had bought from the book sale were part of a series of 27. That sries was sellin’ ! I had to ask my librarian about this genre. I didn’t even know the name of this genre. I called it: Women that like to read about bisexual men making love to each other while in love with the same woman.

My librarian confirmed that this genre is HUGU. HUGE she said. Especially huge in sci/fi and mythical genres. Okay. That settled it. I didn’t even know that the three-way sub genre existed – how could I have considered writing erotica if I didn’t know that such a HUGE sub-genre existed??

 The white towel was waiving.

I didn’t touch my keyboard for weeks.

I couldn’t face it.

I had a horrible case of Writer’s Doubt.

And big lip.

At what point does a writer stop waiting for readers to point out that they are a fraud?

 Do we ever get over the niggling doubt that someone will find out that we don’t know what we’re doing? Lately, I’ve been a bit antsy about a piece of work that I have to face. I know I can do it. I’m sure I can do it. I think I can do it. Can I do it? It haunts me in my sleep. 

Last night I had a dream that I was in an elevator with 1 man and two women. As they were talking about mattes of extreme importance… I was daydreaming. The man turned to me to confirm “Kathleen, are you going to be able to pull it off?” 

My answer was perfect. I looked him dead on and promised “If I keep my stick on the ice and stay out of the corners, I’ll be okay.” 

Waking up this morning I applauded myself for convincing him. It was a great line, after all, but it was a line. A bluff. And isn’t that what writer’s do  – bluff and try to convince readers that they aren’t frauds?? I understood that by staying out of the corners I won’t get beaten up … but what was the stick on the ice business all about?

The line bugged me until lunch time when I finally called my dad to ask him what the h “keep your stick on the ice means”. Days earlier, at age 69 my dad scored 2 goals during a game of pick up; I knew he’d be my best shot for deciphering the code “keep your stick on the ice”. Dad provided “Stay focused, keep your stick on the ice, and get ready for the assist.” 

My beau disagreed. He said it meant “keep your cool, don’t whack anybody.” 

Have you ever given yourself advice by way of a dream? I figure, if I keep my writing focused and don’t whack anybody, nobody will know that I’m bluffing.  

Leafing through this month’s Chatelaine, I stumbled upon an article on Slash Fiction. I expected to read about the newly popular Flash Fiction where writers cram an entire story into less than 1000 words.  

Boy was I wrong!  

Chatelaine introduced me to an entirely new form of fan fiction called Slash Fiction.  Lets step back a bit and start with fan fiction. Fan fiction, is a story written by a fan of a fictional piece, be it a book, a tv show, a cmic book, a mythology etc. With fan fiction, writers tend to stay close to the script  – using established plots and characters. The writing is posted on fan fiction blogs and shared freely, sometimes added to by other fans.  

Slash Fiction messes with this premis. It takes two wildly loved characters and puts them in bed. In the original work these characters would never have fallen in love but in Slash Fiction they are naked. And they are gay. Think Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. 

Readers of Fan Fiction will be able to identify a newly told gay coupling of traditionally straight male characters by the / in the title: Kirk/Spock. The slash is supposed to represent their fictional liaison.

Think Ernie/Bert.  

My first question is “Who wants to imagine Kirk on Spock????” 

According to Chatelaine, it turns out PLENTY of straight women do. In fact, straight Canadian women are not only reading Slash Fiction but writing it! The article featured an eighteen-year-old blogger from Quebec who is making a name for herself in Slash Fiction circles. Charlotte Rainville is one of many young Canadian writers that are encouraging straight male characters to experiment with their gayness through Slash Fiction. 

Let me see… if I were to try my hand at fan fiction, under the Slash Fiction genre, and apply it to CanLit …  I would start with Mordecai Richler’s Duddy Kravitz. We know that Duddy idoilized tough-guy Jerry Dingleman — was it a crush? Kravitz/Dingleman.

But what if a Slash Fiction character could jump from one man in one book to another man in a different book? What if Kravitz could leap over to MacLennan’s Two Solitudes and stick it to Paul Tallard? Tallard is an honourable fuddy duddy while Duddy is, well Duddy is Duddy. Kravitz/Tallard

Life lessons are rarely useless. Yet much of what we learn in junior school has no practical application in adult life. I was thinking about this last night in bed, trying to remember how many times since grade 7 that I’ve hopped up on a pommel horse and swung my body around by the wrists.

I can’t recall a single instance.

I suspect that the numbers of times in my youth that I fell off the pommel horse had no direct influence on me becoming a writer.

Life lessons, practical advice, teaching, … everyone is an expert but at what point do we decide which information is useless and which bit is applicable?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that I welcome all advice on the business of writing.  Can a writer make a living in Canada?

Guelph author Lisa Mac thinks so. On her website Lisa Mac’s Musing she reposted an article that she had written which encourages writers to apply for a GST number. It’s good, practical, easy to follow advice.

She made no mention of pommel horses.

Olga of Toronto got me thinking about writing about writing.  I’ve spent the last year blogging about what I am reading but little about what I am writing, or how I write it, or when or why.

She has inspired me to start a feature on this blog On Writing.

To start, I’ll answer a question that many new parents post to me: When do you have TIME to write??

I don’t.

I steal a few hours between when the kids go to bed and I drop my head on my pillow. This could mean 2 hours per night for three nights a week. But that doesn’t mean that I am writing that whole time. I freely admit to goofing off, surfing the net, doing banking, even shopping on line.  I might get a blog blurb in and about a good 40 minutes of actually writing or editing if I am at my desk in my office.

If I’m writing in the armchair in the living room, lulled by the glow of the pellet stove, and the dogs are not underfoot, and there are no newspapers lounging around waiting to be read or burnt, then I can usually write steady for about two hours. Hiding out in a corner in the living room puts me closer to the pantry and the snack shelf. So make that: 2 hours minus 1 trip for a snack and 1 trip for a glass of port.

However, if I am writing in my bed in my pjs and the house is quiet and I have no magazine’s piled beside my table lamp and the cat is curled on my feet …. I will easily exhaust 5 hours minus refill s of roobios tea and short hops to the toilet.

I’m good in bed. I mean, I’m prolific when I write in bed, but my beau detests it when I work there. He’s old school; he thinks beds are for sleeping and making love. So if he hops into bed while I am finishing off a bit of work, he will launch into a discussion about the family budget. Or he will call his distributor to leave voice-mail purchase orders. Or he will read aloud the bank statements for his company.  That’s my cue to log off to nod off.

To answer plainly, I write in stolen moments.

There are a lot of book blogs that prove to be utter distractions for authors. I spend a lot of time snooping around author blogs and reader blogs and writer blogs. “So how many words did you pump out tonight?” my beau demands at the end of the day.  When I tell him the measly tally and remind him that it isn’t about the output…  he accuses me of goofing off.  I call it research – research mixed with interruptions to scrounge for snacks.Happily, I am not alone. I am not the only writer that “goofs off”. On the blog called A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land Scott writes about how Canadian science fiction author Nalo Hopkinson sets a daily word count goal of 400 words or 20 minutes of hard core writing. I get that. For me, thirty minutes of vacuuming allows me to work through two pages of dialogue in my head before I sit down at the keyboard.  In the time it takes me to fold the laundry I can kill of a character, write a love scene, and plot a coup.So the next time my beau demands a word count I might recommend that he surveys the house. If I’ve unloaded the dishwasher, changed the cat litter, and taken out the trash, he’ll understand that I’m good for at least a half a chapter!

I’m a sucker for stats. I think I’ve passed it on to my eldest child. “Mommy, three people in this family like purple. Three people like blue. Red and blue make purple.”“So does that mean 6 people in our family like purple and blue?  Three likers of purple plus three likers of blue must mean there are 6 likers of purple and blue?”Big sigh as tiny fingers point to the chart, first to the purple column then to the blue. “Mommy, there aren’t 6 people in our family!”Purple and blue aside, what is it about stats that get some people so excited?J. Steve Miller posted a whack of stats on his freelance writer blog about the US publishing industry and American reader trends.  He suggests that it takes 475 hours to write a fiction novel.  Me, I like stats but I like footnotes better. I need the proof for all my stats.  I need to know which factures were factured in. Does Miller mean it takes 475 hours at the keyboard? Do those 475 hours include the time it takes to move one bed of lilies to the back garden as an author works out bits of dialogue – digging and talking to himself?  Do they include the time spent in the bathtub – soaking while dreaming up plotlines? What about the dinner parties an author has to host in order to argue out a point with halfwit friends just to make sure they get all of their facts straight when the time comes to hit the page?Miller must mean 475 hours at the keyboard. He can’t possible mean the time an author uses to fold the laundry when she should be writing.If it takes 475 hours to write a book of fiction, how do the Three-Day Novel Writing Contest participants cram 475 hours into a mere 72 hours?  You’ve read about the Three-Day Novel Writing Contest where authors get locked away with coffee IVs strapped in their arms; isolated from friends, families, and dictionaries. They have 72 hours to produce a work that is publishable.  Maybe it isn’t a masterpiece, maybe you won’t see the GG stamp on it, but it has to be publishable.My beau and I have a suspicion about the participants of the Three-Day Novel Writing Contest. We think that each writer arrives with 475 hours of book in their heads and they then spend 3 days shaking the book off their fingers.  

What I’d like to know is if the Three-Day Novel Writing Contest host assigns each participant a separate plot or storyline. “Dude with the Maggie Atwood wig, you do the story about the African prince that loses his memory and ends up working in a recycling plant in Regina.” And for the librarian who secretly writes erotica “Okay, for you, two cowboys end up fighting the cod wars off Fogo Island.” For the guy in the corner who professes to be a first timer but who has actually self-published six Sci-fi masterpieces “Rewrite the English Patient, leave out the boring bits.”

Now that would be test of courage. At the end of Day Three I wonder who would be the last author standing and who would be waiving his memory stick, begging, “But Sir, I only need a mere 16.79 days more to finish it.”

In the latest edition of Geist, Stephen Osborne reminds us of the origins of Canada’s Three-Day Novel Writing Contest. Check it out.