With all the foreign editions of Red is Best already published, the announcement of more to come from the Sales & Rights Manager at Annick Press last week came as quite a surprise. Also, it’s now 30 years since the book’s first publication!
But this year will see the addition of two new French versions, one through Editions de L’Ecole/ Pastel in France and another (as a board book) through Editions Scholastic in North America.
However you choose to say it, it seems that red really is best!
I love taking pictures. Last summer someone complimented me on my eye and even said she’d like to hang some of my work in her gallery. I haven’t done anything about that yet, but her encouragement gave me the idea of sharing some of my photos on my blog.
I hope that what I pull from my files will give you some sense of a sight that has given me pleasure – and I hope it will give you pleasure, too.
For this wintry month (albeit not as wintry as some Januarys), I chose a what I believe is a Michaelmas Daisy. I took this picture in a Nova Scotia meadow early one September morning in 2010.
Canada Council for the Arts
A national agency created to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.
Canadian Booksellers Association
A national trade association representing independent trade and campus booksellers in all provinces and territories
Canadian Children’s Book Centre
A national not-for-profit organization and registered charity founded to promote, support and encourage the reading, writing and illustrating of Canadian books for children and teens.
Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers (CANSCAIP)
An organization of professional authors, illustrators and performers, people aspiring to be professionals, and others who wish to support the creators of works for children and young adults.
Rules for Writers
Esteemed contemporary authors share their expert advice.
IBBY-Canada
A non-profit organization which represents an international network of people who are committed to bringing books and children together.
Organized Assistant
Virtual assistance and website services free up time for writers to focus on their writing.
PEN Canada
An association of writers committed to defending freedom of expression.
Places for Writers
Writing contests, submission calls, literary news, publishing information, and links to great Canadian writers and organizations.
The Writers’ Union of Canada
A national organization which works to advance conditions for all writers, to unite writers for the advancement of their common interest, and to foster writing in Canada.
Writers In Electronic Residence
Connects students across Canada with writers, teachers and one another in an animated exchange of original writing and commentary.
As promised during the first week of December – the second installment of my Packaging Your Imagination keynote . . .
Matilda Martin and Edna Bauman,
Mam and Lucinda and me –
my first time quilting with the women.Noisy greetings as we settle in around the quilt frame,
then silence as each begins.
Only the pop of needles through sky-blue cotton,
the creak of the wooden frame,
horses clopping snow from their hooves
against the icy laneway outside.And then it starts again,
the clatter and chatter of women, the laughter, the talk –
Lucinda cautioning me to keep my stitches even,
while hungry needles scoop up fabric
in tiny, equal bites.That night, I crawl into bed beneath another quilt –
from another winter, other chatter –
wondering what stories this quilt has heard,
and who will be warmed by the one we’re making.I press my cold feet against my sister’s legs;
she grumbles and rolls away.
Back to back, heavy with dreaming,
I tuck my toes beneath her legs,
and run my fingers over rows of stitches,
counting them to sleep.
That was “January: The Quilting Bee” – from Winterberries and Apple Blossoms: Reflections and Flavors of a Mennonite Year by Nan Forler. Just out, this season, it’s Nan’s second book, following a beautiful picture book about bullying called Bird Child, two years ago.
Nan Forler represents for me all the writing workshop participants I have worked with over the years, people who have inspired me with their perseverance in the face of apparent odds against their ever being published, or even finding time to write, and despite frequent crises of confidence. No matter where we are in our careers or our artistic development, we can become discouraged (Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Who am I kidding? I can’t write this story and even if I could, who’d want to read it anyway? What? Another publisher going under, I was just about to submit something there. Why can’t my husband / kids / boss / lover understand why I have to have quiet time, alone, to write?)
Nan first came to me in 1994, her satchel full of stories and ideas and optimism. As years rolled by, rejection letters piled up. Teaching elementary school and raising her own children took its toll on her energy. But she kept on smiling – her smile is genuine, infectious, (it’s radiant) – and she kept on writing. She kept meeting with other writers, when she could, and attending conferences and workshops. Because Nan Forler loves writing, and even though she was already good at it when I first met her, she also loves getting better at it, as she continues to write. So do Jenn Ryan and Kim O’Gorman and Rob Morphy and countless others I could name whose writing, though largely unpublished, is more powerful than much that sits on bookstore shelves.
Even with a body of published work behind me, I have often enough felt like giving up writing and going back to selling Tupperware or waiting tables at Steak & Burger, because no writing career is without its bumps, its setbacks. But then I think of Nan and her smile, and I think: if all these writers without the validation that being published represents can keep at it, what is wrong with me? And back to my writing I go.
Lena Coakley is another writer whose perseverance I’ve witnessed and been inspired by over many years. She’s now had starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly on her first published novel, Witchlanders. And Cheryl Rainfield, after years of self-doubt and hard work, personally and artistically, had her book, Scars, nominated for a GG last year. Their examples should be heartening to all of us. But please don’t make the mistake of comparing where you are with your writing with where anyone else is. It may well lead to professional envy (I know), which is a terrible waste of time and emotional energy that can better be spent living with one’s characters and playing with words.
Want to catch up with parts of this talk you missed?
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Ever wondered what’s in some of those little notebooks writers interrupt conversations, or suddenly sit up in bed, to scribble in? As the year draws to a close, I’m going to give you a peek at a sampling of my 2011 scribbles, with remarks added at the time of this posting in square brackets.
4/4/11
Redo the outline in 2 columns – 1 for the D&H thread, 1 for the D&S thread. That may be the best way to see if the whole thing is hanging together (or to put it another way, if the 2 threads are coming together as a whole. They better be!) About 12 weeks left till “summer” when you hope to submit. Is submission by the fall a more realistic goal? Don’t give up on spring yet, look how much you got done last week in just a few days, and today. Now to sleep.) –> + maybe a 3rd column for what H is doing in the background that D is unaware of, but which will influence what she brings to each scene where they overlap.
[The novel referred to here has since been completed and accepted for publication.]
Undated
John Irving – Until I Find You – Jack was 1st person narrator, he changed it after it was all done.
[I haven’t actually read this book. I must have read an author interview somewhere.]
June 28/11
Words spoken by Frida Kahlo in The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver – “The most important thing about a person is the thing you don’t know.” A character also.
12.22.11
How to make it about appreciating beauty and about pursing excellence.
[I still don’t know if that’s a desirable goal, or not. It’s very early days for the project ‘it’ is referring to.]
Okay, so I left out some of the most revealing scribbles. I guess I’m still not over the feeling I expressed in one of my earliest blog posts.
Wishing all my blog readers lots of everything that makes life worthwhile in 2012.
Can you imagine, as a writer, not having your own computer?
Having access to only a few public computers, at the library, which isn’t always open?
And, when your chance to use one of the computers does arise, having your time on it limited because demand for its use is high?
Or maybe, when your turn comes, the generators go down and you have to wait till next week to continue your work?
That’s the situation for most Liberian writers I’ve had the privilege of working with for the past few years, as a volunteer for CODE (the Canadian Organization for Development through Education) and the We Care Foundation in Liberia.
Meanwhile, how many writers in Canada have laptop computers gathering dust in their closets, having upgraded to a newer model in recent months, or will soon have a laptop they don’t need because there’s an upgrade in their near future?
The contrast between dire need and likely availability led me to the idea of “Laptops for Liberia”. If I can find some not-too-old laptops that would be of value to writers in Liberia, CODE has agreed to pay the not-insubstantial cost of shipping them there, as a way of supporting the Reading Liberia program which is designed to create Liberian-authored books for Liberian children. We Care in Liberia is working out details of fair distribution of any laptops that are donated.
So I’m now reaching out to my Canadian friends and colleagues through my blog, CANSCAIP and IBBY-Canada (who originally arranged for my involvement in “Reading Liberia”), and possibly The Writers’ Union of Canada, too, in hopes that you’ll want to support this initiative.
Whether you write for children or adults, novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, or picture book texts, and whether you’ve upgraded your computer recently or expect to in the near future, I hope you’ll consider donating your used laptop to “Laptops for Liberia”.
You can email me to let me know of your interest in doing so at kathy@kathystinson.com. Please put Laptops for Liberia in the subject line.
Find out more about the Reading Liberia program, about the We Care Foundation, and about my involvement with Reading Liberia.
Here I am with Margie Wolfe at a party in spring 2006. Her company, Second Story Press, published King of the Castle (for readers of all ages) and 101 Ways to Dance. Margie and I don’t always agree about everything, but we get along famously just the same. (Thanks to Naseem Hrab for permission to use this photo.)
I’ve also been lucky to have worked with Rick Wilks at Annick Press on almost all my picture books, with Mary Macchiusi at Pembroke on my books about writing, and with a number of other fine Canadian publishers, too.
“Spectacular!” “Inspiring!” Two words people used to describe my keynote speech at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference last month. Pretty gratifying feedback!
You missed it? Fear not! I’m going to post the whole speech here at “Turning the Pages”, a little at a time, on the first Wednesday of each month, starting today . . .
“Sock Fluff” was my introduction to Loris Lesynski, back in the early 90s, before it was published by Annick Press, in Dirty Dog Boogie. A participant in a workshop led by my partner, Peter Carver, she had given him some of her work to read and he couldn’t resist showing it to me.
In recognition of whose shoes I would be stepping into today, I decided to call my talk “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff”. I am not a poet and I am not funny, so this will be a very different talk from what you would have enjoyed with Loris at the podium, but it’s my sincere hope that we’ll be treated to that experience at another Packaging Your Imagination conference in the not too distant future.
Sock fluff, as Loris’s poem suggests, is precious. It’s personal. And it’s revealing of character. Writers and illustrators are concerned, often, with character, along with other matters such as setting, plot, and so on. But when is the last time you examined your characters’ socks, or the fluff they produced?
Thick socks leave more fluff than thin ones. What do thick, multi-bright-coloured socks say about a person? Or thin pastel one with lace around the edges? Are your character’s socks arranged neatly in pairs in their drawer or thrown in helter-skelter?
I digress. This talk is about sock fluff. And today I plan to pull some out from between my toes, and let it reveal to you what it may, or may not, about what’s important to me, as a writer, what inspires me. Rest assured: the brown fuzzy stuff currently nestled between my toes will remain firmly tucked in. Today’s sock fluff will come through poems that have spoken to me at different points in my life.
Loris’s “Sock Fluff” – no matter that she works very hard at her craft – is a great reminder to me to be playful. Most of us come to writing (or illustrating) initially, because it’s fun. Some of us, in the face of the trials that the business of writing lays before us, lose sight, from time to time, of the fun of what we do. I hope today’s “intimate examination of sock fluff” through a dozen or so poems will help remind us of the fun to be had in what we do.
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Sock Fluff image from Dirty Dog Boogie by Loris Lesynski, Annick Press 1999
I haven’t done it often, but within a reasonable distance from my home in Rockwood (which is near Guelph) Ontario, I do.
So far I’ve only met with adult book clubs, but I think it would be fun to meet with mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, father-son groups too.
Depending on who your book club members are, I’d be happy to recommend a title for you to read, or go with the book of your choice.
Please contact me if you’re interested in discussing the possibility of a visit to your book club.
I wanted a website that would help promote me and my books, but I had no idea about how to set one up, and wasn’t willing to take time away from my writing to learn. Luckily for me, my sister knew how to do it. Creating websites is part of her business.
Since setting up the site (many years ago now and it’s been through many changes), Janet and her husband Scott have done a great job of maintaining it and keeping it up-to-date.
Am I luckier to have Janet as a sister or as a virtual assistant? Hard to say! But I’d recommend her highly for either position!
