The Writer

I’d been writing for a few years by then. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to go to France, to see with my own eyes the hallowed hills of Vimy Ridge, where my great-grandfather had very likely fought during the Great War.

How did all this begin? With a picture. Two pictures, actually; one of striking miners carrying banners down what would become 3^rd Ave in the early days of Timmins’ mining history, the other of a lady prospector with a pistol on her belt in the years before the Great Fire of 1911.

I began earlier than that. I’d begun as a teen, to no avail. I was fascinated with the process of imagination. I’d break out my parents’ Underwood, lugging the hefty typewriter to the dining room table, and hammer out a page of two of the most atrocious drivel akin to ‘50s red menace horror films, melodramatic tales of monstrous insects mutated by near-miss nuclear tests. They were as camp and kitschy as you’d expect, not good, simple, devoid of plot, just the hint of a story, without developed characters, without any idea how a story should unfold, let alone end. They certainly didn’t begin, either. Prior to that, there were hints of my interest. My mother preserved bits of poetry I’d produced. I pursued nothing. I was discouraged by my lack of understanding of story.

I required experience. I required reading. Years of reading. I required untold pages of story and text before I was prepared to take a stab at writing.

Then I saw those pictures. They sparked something within me. I bought a notebook. I jotted a few lines. I went to the museum and inquired as to what they had on the subjects, asking the curator as much, but beginning with the awkward statement, “I know this sounds stupid, but I have an idea for a novel and I’d like to find out more about what lay behind those pictures. Do you know what pictures I’m talking about?”

She did. She was even enthusiastic about the prospect of someone interested in the city’s past and that person’s desire to write about a chapter of its history. I wonder how many others asked her such a question? A few, I suppose. We’ve some local historians who’ve self-published their books. Not many novels, though, if any.

She invited me to visit as often as I liked, awarding me access to what materials the museum had. I began to pore over details of the Great Fire of 1911 and the Great Strike of 1912, deciding that the two might make good a beginning and end to the story I had in mind.

I wrote throughout my research, small passages of text, some advancing my plot, others filling in gaps I’d left behind. It was a rather haphazard approach. I had a beginning. I had an end. I had no idea what happened between the two. That resolved slowly.

I began to think about character. Where did my characters come from, what brought them to a mining camp at the dawn of the century? What motivated them? That led to more research. What sort of immigrants came to Timmins then? What did they do when they got here? Where did they stay? What pasts had they? I decided that my protagonist was a veteran of the Boer War, suffering from his experiences there, yearning for better, to be free of his torment, and needing money to chase his dreams.
I knew I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. Not true. I’d read a lot over the years and had an instinct about whether what I was doing was any good. But I needed better skill. I knew that, so I began to read books about story structure, writing technique, elements of style, and grammar. I read histories, too. I read books of collected letters from that age. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I did not read fiction for a time.

Then I stalled. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block. I was just struggling with how to connect the dots.
Then I read about short story competitions. So, one evening I wrote the lion’s share of a fictionalized account of one of my travel experiences, the one where I found myself upon a glassy Sulu Sea with the Milky Way above me and a sea of effervescent plankton below me. What do they say? Write what you know? I can say that I knew a little about me, so that’s what I wrote about. I polished it for a month while reading short stories in Literary mags, and rereading “Elements of Style” while I was at that.

Then I began to send “She, the Sea, the Stars” to magazines, getting a ton of form letters back in return. I did get a few encouraging letters, those few who applauded passages and said I had a talent for writing, newfound skill, but “thank you for your interest, but we will have to pass at this time.”
I was still stalled on my first novel, so I began to write whatever came to mind. A story of a soldier of the Great War resolved from them. Once again, I had a beginning and an end, but not a middle. More research, this time histories and novels of the time. I decided that the main character was my great-grandfather. To be clear, I have no idea what happened to him during the war, but I had stories about what did up to when he left and what happened after he came back. He never once mentioned what happened to him while there. Not many veterans of the Great War did, but enough of them published memoires, enough to begin developing a narrative. I recalled my first novel and how my characters yearned to escape to Paris and decided that they too would be part of the story. Then that too stalled. What was it about? I asked myself. Without a theme, without an understanding of the human narrative, the story, it was just a collection of anecdotes. And I had no clue what that theme was. Not yet, anyways.

I returned to the first novel. I reread what I had. I rewrote whole passages. And in time, those passages were linked. I had a story of a Boer War veteran (Michael) who travelled to a mining camp to make money so that he could go to Paris to write, and a woman (Kimberley) who came North to find herself. He was adrift. So was she. He was just running away. So was she. They met, he fell in love with her, and she with him. But another man (Gunter) already loved her, and he flew into a rage at the loss of his unrequited love. Then the strike happened. Michael recalled a similar strike he’d been embroiled in years past and tried desperately to avoid this one. He failed and was caught up in it. Kimberley killed Gunter when he tried forcibly to take her. Michael disposed of the body and they ran away to Toronto, and ultimately to Paris and the Great War.

I finished the first novel and called it “A Three Penny Opera,” and began to send out writing samples to publishers. Those met the same response as “She, the Sea, the Stars.” No thanks. You have talent, but no thanks.

When I discovered the theme of the second novel, "Sticks and Stones," the love and camaraderie of men in times of war, and it all but wrote itself. I completed it in three months. I began to send that one away too. And it met a similar fate. Thank you for your interest. One publisher said, “We’d love to publish this, but we are already publishing a war novel this year.”

Paul Quarrington

Why wasn’t I published? I don’t know. I had friends and family and co-workers read all three and they said they liked them, but maybe they weren’t critical enough. Maybe the novels just weren’t good enough. Maybe it was because I had no patron. I once saw an interview with a Canadian writer, Paul Quarrington, who’d taught at many writer’s workshops. He hummed and hawed, thinking, avoiding eye contact when asked, “how can new authors get published?” He never actually answered the question posed to him.

What he did say was, “I’m trying not to say, ‘Get you famous writer friend to submit your manuscript to his publisher.’”

But he did say that, didn’t he?