Pseudonymously Yours

I despise pseudonyms for the sake of pseudonyms. I snort derisively whenever I see beginning writers asking what their pen name should be. I roll my eyes when people talk about not letting their family know that they write.

I'm beginning to re-think my position.

A friend of mine recently submitted poetry to the New Yorker (as of writing, we are both waiting to hear back). She wasn't sure whether she wanted to submit under her name or a pen name. I told her to use the pen name. She works with children, in the mental health field. Having her name on poetry can't help her professionalism, particularly as my favourite collection of her poetry revolves around (unnamed, unspecified) children and the medications that they're on and how the medications change things dramatically. I think they are fantastic, and show compassion and depth of feeling. Parents of children sending them to her in a professional capacity might not feel the same.

Anonymity is never absolute, but a pseudonym seemed the smartest way to go in my friend's case.

Another friend writes both futuristic thrillers and erotica. She publishes the erotica under a pen name. It makes some sense to me to publish such different genres under different imprints, and the easiest way for an indie writer to differentiate is with pseudonyms. I don't necessarily agree with the reasons she chose to publish the erotica under a pen name: she did so partly out of embarrassment at writing the genre at all and fear of family finding out and being embarrassed. I, obviously, have no such compunction.

But it occurred to me that, since I want to write both YA and romance, a pseudonym might at some point become useful. Even though I know that as a teenager, I myself was alternating YA-designated things with Laurell K Hamilton and filthy smut on the Internet, as were most of my friends, school librarians might not agree with my assessment that teenagers probably won't mind searching for another title by their favourite author and picking up something significantly less family-friendly.

It is not anonymity. It will never be anonymity. But it would be a way for readers to know what they were in for before opening the book.

"True Writers"

I spend entirely too much time on writing forums. Frequently, new writers trying to define themselves in relation to their writing pop up. The endless quest for identity and the re-mapping that comes from new interests leads entirely too frequently to discussions of what makes a 'true writer' or a 'real writer' or what differentiates a writer from an author.


Sometimes, I feel the need to contribute concrete instructions to discussions that have become murkily existential. Thus, my recipe for a True Writer:

• 3ccs unicorn blood
• 3L bourbon
• 300mg of Diazepam
• at least one quill pen for every day of the week (only crow feathers may be used if completing recipe on the new moon; any will do at other phases)
• 200mL India Ink
• 1 dragon placenta (whole)

Crush the Diazepam and mix well with the India Ink and unicorn blood. Heat to precisely 333K in a copper saucepan. Exceeding this temperature will result in Romantic Poets; falling short results in postmodern photographers. A candy thermometer is recommended.

Remove from heat and slowly stir in the bourbon with a wooden spoon (not olive wood under any circumstances).

When mixture has turned blue, fill quill pens with mixture and carefully insert them into the dragon placenta. Do not spill.

When mixture has all been transferred, bury the placenta on unconsecrated ground. Cook for 30 minutes.

Serves 4 as main course, up to 8 if used as a genre writer.

Misogyny

I never wanted to write this post.

I am from the West Coast and from Madison, Wisconsin. I am from liberal places that pride themselves on being liberal and forward-thinking. I went to high school in the city that hosts the world's leading feminist science fiction convention, WisCon.

I also abhor ad misericordiam (I am sad so I am right) arguments or anything that sounds like them at all. Logical fallacies and fuzzy thinking are more objectionable to me than a great deal of sexism.

I'm just going to copy and paste part of a conversation here, because all of this is part of a broad conversation about society and what we think of it and how we are working on the parts we don't like.

• Mason: You interested in two articles on Sexual harassment in hacker and literary conventions?
• Me: yes, definitely
• Mason: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/12/220224/is-sexual-harassment-part-of-hacker-culture
• Me: unless it's about readercon
• Mason: Lolz
• Mason: Then ignore the readercon link
• Mason: And go with the Defcon one
• Me: lolk
• Mason: It'll pop into a few articles about various hacker cons
• Me: yeah
• Me: it's interesting
• Me: I am glad I am tall
• Me: I get very little physical harassment

I shared a story about work, which made him say 'bleh.'

• Me: and it's better here than it was in the midwest
• Mason: Really?
• Me: it's been over a month since anyone called me 'sweetie,' and no one has called me 'doll' here even once
• Me: I get maybe a customer a day who drifts to talk to a male coworker at some point
• Me: I get an average of a customer a week who will ask me and a male coworker the same questions and only believe his answers
• Me: this is -better- than Madison
• Mason: I was just going to ask if sweetie was that bad, but I can't imagine it being said in any capacity that doesn't convey condescension

He ended up linking me to the Red/Yellow Card Project, which is really neat, especially in that it does not require me to continue to be verbal. That's important, as I tend to shut down when people are behaving inappropriately. If someone is making inappropriate comments or staring at my chest, no matter how much I object to it in principle and wish the behaviour would stop, I can rarely find the words, or am not brave enough to say them because it'll make the whole group awkward, and so I smile vacantly and don't associate with the group again if I can at all help it. This is not good. I am letting myself be cut off from social interactions, and they are not being told that what they are doing is not okay.

Those awkward moments that come from someone being called on behaviour are important. One of my coworkers didn't learn until his late 30s that 'gypped' referred to being cheated, as by gypsies, and has now wiped it completely from his vocabulary. If someone had pointed it out earlier, even if it had caused some momentary awkwardness and tension, if would have stopped him saying such things in front of people who might have been hurt by it.

White Knighting is a related but opposed concept. If you are in a group, and someone is saying something sexist to a woman present, and you are a man, before you step in to call the person on it (which is going to be your first automatic reaction, because you are a decent human being), consider: how is the woman reacting? 

• Does she look like she's gearing up to tell him off?
•  If so, cutting her off is part of denying her agency, and is also a problem. 
• Does she look really uncomfortable and unsure how to respond? 
• Then your calling the other person out is probably appropriate. Refer to Seebs' guide on calling people out for generally good principles and ideas on how to communicate that you want him to stop the behaviour without inducing defensive behaviour.
• Is she ripping him a new one? 
• Reactionary vitriol is not constructive: shout at everyone.
• Don't do this.

I never wanted to write this post, but I realized I had to when Mason asked my about my experience of sexism and misogyny and I responded that it wasn't that bad. I should not be minimizing and making excuses. I want to be the kind of person who can call people on their nonsense no matter the context. Part of that is admitting that the problem exists, and it is a problem.

It's the kind of problem that escalates into the ReaderCon fiasco, the kind of problem that means that I hadn't heard of WisCon until after I moved away, the kind of problem that means that pay disparity still exists. Just because it's not much of a problem for me personally doesn't mean I'm allowed to ignore it, which is why I had to write this post.

"Owed"

It is a persistent idea, that readers or authors may owe each other something beyond just the reading or writing of that which established the initial relationship. Part of what I think brings it up so perpetually is that, with author blogs and pages on Facebook and Twitter feeds and easy email and easy ways to publically review books, it is easier to contact authors. They are more commonly considered real people. Actually, that's a slight mis-statement: they are more commonly considered accessible writing machines.

I see a number of authors being asked 'So when will this update?' 'Is this abandoned?' 'How could you do X?'

Most of it is of the first variety: compare to the fan reaction when G. R. R. Martin doesn't get a book out weekly. Like this blog. That blog is entirely dedicated to being an entitled jerk as relates to a series that apparently the writer is so invested in he is writing a blog about it. I don't understand.

What I do understand are lists.

So here we go, what authors owe:

• to themselves
• output
• Most writers start to feel icky and stale if they don't write. So it is probably to most writers' benefit to write something. Whether it's 1000 words a day or 10 a year is completely up to the individual writer, to be determined by them and no one else.
• time off
• Intense creative effort is hard to sustain indefinitely. Time off allows one to recharge. Even if it's just time off from Serious Novel to outline smutty sex scenes that will never be included in anything: that can be a form of time off. What constitutes time off and how long it has to be is completely up to the individual writer, to be determined by them and no one else.
• pacing/deadlines
• It can be easy to be swept away and keep writing until three in the morning. It can also be easy to rewrite one section over and over and get nothing else done. Self-assigned deadlines and markers can be helpful. Keywords are 'self-assigned' and 'can be.'
• keeping it fun
• If writing becomes a chore, everyone loses. Some parts are always going to be a pain to write, and some editing is frustrating, but finishing those comes with a sense of satisfaction that is definitely fun. A lot of external pressure can make a project less fun.
• to readers
• nothing
• You heard me.
• still nothing
• This is not the most community-building approach. A lot of authors reach out and try to engage readers through social media and answering questions and such. But readers are there to read what you wrote. If they stop liking it, they will stop reading it. If they continue to like it, they will continue to read it. Being able to talk to the creator? That's nice, that's like sprinkles on the cake, but that's not part of the writing itself. Neil Gaiman does speaking engagements. If Neil Gaiman did nothing but sit on stage and write during the speaking engagement, that would be bad. During the time he is being paid to speak, he is taking on that as his job. During times he is not at speaking engagements, engaging with readers is optional. As are progress reports and news about upcoming projects. They make good business sense to provide, because, hey, readers will know what to look for. But they are not something owed.
• not destroying the fabric of society
• This is one that probably not all authors would agree with me on, but I think it's important. I don't mean never to write anything that rocks the boat, but I mean give serious consideration to what on earth you're doing before you contribute to damaging cultural narratives.
• to editors
• meet deadlines
• It is hard work, editing. It is made harder when you don't get a final revision to edit until just hours before your own deadline. Most writers find their editors a huge help: in some cases, it is the editors who are responsible for publication at all. That means that writers should treat their editors with at least the respect of meeting deadlines. Negotiating to set deadlines that are realistic will help both authors and editors.
• answer calls/emails
• Your editor does not want to hound you. It will feel a lot less like hounding if you return calls or emails, even if it's just to say there's been a delay.

I really love lists. The one above can be boiled down to writers owing themselves self-care (like everyone else), owing their editors consideration, and owing their audience nothing but their best output, no matter the quantity and frequency of said output.

A lot of things - like running a formspring or a blog or a Facebook page or a forum - that allow readers to interact with the author are good things. They make fans happy, and can boost engagement and therefore sales. They make some business sense. But they are in no way owed.

Connecting

At work, we can now directly email people their receipts. This is a handy feature, as a few weeks ago I managed to accidentally explode the printer for a while (it got better). It is reliant, of course, on people having email.

Modern life more or less requires some level of electronic engagement, even if it's just a cell phone. I'm usually the odd man out in a group in that I don't have one. I have a laptop and an old laptop that'd work if I just got a charger and a Wii and a Kobo Vox, but I'm still cell phone free (I make up for this by nearly constantly being on my laptop and having a Skype number). Most cell phones now come with the ability to browse the web - thus the rise of QR codes. Which means that even ads on the sides of busses now have an online component.

This is a long lead-up to tell you that, if you are an author, you need a website.

They're not hard to set up - Wordpress.com and Blogger both have easily navigable back-ends. They both make excellent blog platforms, but it you have no wish to blog, then you can set up a static site, just listing your works and where they can be purchased.

That is a bare minimum for engagement, in this modern era. Giving readers a way to contact you or interact with you is a better route: a contact email (set up a free webmail account if you don't want it sent to your personal email), or a blog. A forum is perhaps not quite the thing unless you know there will be interaction on it, but it is an option as well.

Binary Politics and the lure of Historical Romance

Many of my Canadian friends don't understand how American politics can be so polarizing that discussing politics at all at family events is considered a bit of a taboo. Part of that, theorizes one friend, is that we have not had a viable third party in elections in 90 years.

To paraphrase one of my favourite authors, we tend to see zebras. Us versus them is a really easy conflict, even more so when we frame it as good versus evil.

Jedi versus Sith, practically everyone versus Nazis, British versus French in the Napoleonic Wars: these are conflicts easily understood as binaries. The only exception is the second world war, which was actually quite complex politically. Most of the stories we tell about it,* though, are ones about one aspect of conflict, with one enemy, easily identified. One possible explanation for this is that real life is complex enough, and fiction is an escape from that. Those stories with grand conflicts tend to be geared more towards entertainment than the elevation of society, because they provide that escape. Thrillers, military historical fiction, and a great deal of speculative fiction tend to all focus on the binary conflict.

Another genre that focuses on simpler conflicts is historical romance. One of the great tools of the romance genre is throwing together two adults and keeping them together through some plot device, and then having them fall in love through repeated exposure. One of the favourites of the romance genre as a whole is having two people married on a slim premise and fall in love afterwards. In historical fiction, we have a great many plausible options to force a marriage, from alliance to scandal. We have divorce as an awful scandal to be avoided at all costs, and heirs as the goal of all marriage, both of which encourage the wedded to get along with each other.

I know I go for simplicity sometimes in my reading material, because historical romance is like chicken soup for the mind when I am sick, and sometimes I just want the good guys to beat up the bad guys. But when I'm all here, I want more. I want the speculative fiction I read to give me something more than 'us', the living, versus all 'them' zombies,** unless the zombies have no fewer than three levels of social commentary.

Two requests stem from this:

1. I would very much appreciate recommendations for fluffy historical fiction.
2. If you're a writer, don't give me a binary! Find more nuanced ways to make great plots.

*Harry Turtledove's In The Balance series is a notable exception, in which aliens arrive and it's everyone versus everyone in an ever-shifting tessellation.

**Heinlein jokes are a thing that happen and I am not sorry

Fandom, part two

I don't read Kristen Britain anymore.

Not because I don't like her writing: Green Rider was excellent, First Rider's Call was a delight to discover a couple years later, and The High King's Tomb left me hungering for more in the series.

Because I wanted to know when I could get my hands on the next in the series, I checked out her website. All authors should have websites: especially ones that they update with the release dates of their next books. As I browsed around, looking for extras like Sherwood Smith has on her site (she has maps!), I found Kristen Britain's FAQ, and her response to fan-fiction.

It confused me, at first. Fanfiction does not affect your copyright as the author, since, uh, you created it first, and everything is automatically yours. Most fanwriters will prominently label their works with at least the name of the original work, if not your name, because they want other fans to be able to find it. They label them as fanfiction. Of course, anyone trying to sell fanfiction is doing something illegal and violating your IP and should be reported, but non-commercial fanfiction is generally treated as falling into slim grey fringes of Fair Use.

But that's the legal stuff, and has very little bearing on my decision.

Fanfiction is, at its core, a love letter to the original work. People write it because they can't get enough of the world, they want more, they want to explore an aspect of it that won't be further explored in the text (like someone's ambition to become a pirate which is derailed by plot). Saying that it's all unwelcome seems very much a denial of your fans' emotional investment in your work. Obviously they will never be as connected as you are as the creator, but does that mean no one else is allowed to fall in love with it?

I thought that was king of the point of writing. Kristen Britain's answer to the question of fanfiction struck me as very much a refutation of the validity of fans loving her work. Anne Rice behaved very similarly and was higher-profile, but I stopped reading her for other reasons, so this is prompted by Kristen Britain's stance. From what I've read, we're supposed to buy her stuff, read it, and care about it only as much as necessary for us to buy the next one and not one iota more.

Full Fathom Five

Full Fathom Five is James Frey's latest project. We all remember Frey, right? The notorious author of the 'memoir' A Million Little Pieces, he's now using his notoriety - er, sorry, industry contacts - to get young and bright-eyed MFAs published, with aims at movie deals for all of them.

Sounds great, right?

Except that said MFAs don't get to claim credit for it. Their names appear nowhere on the published book. The recent movie I Am Number Four was put out by Full Fathom Five, and the author has sued for the right to claim in public that he wrote the original novel. He's now allowed to talk about it, but his name still doesn't appear on the book.

It's an interesting concept, a think tank for coming out with cool young adult novels, surrounded by other people trying to do the same thing, with someone acting as literary agent for the whole group. Even the idea of branding as a think tank more than as a collection of individual writers is kind of fun, in concept.

Where Full Fathom Five falls off into creepy and exploitative is that James Frey is modeling it after Damien Hirst's art factory - it's all to be rewritten to his orders, and bear his stamp more than that of the writer, or even of the collective, for low wages and no recognition. The contract is a nightmare.

Which is why, despite pretty people and sparkly special effects in the previews, I will not be seeing I Am Number Four, or any future project from Full Fathom Five that makes theatres.

Writing Software

Another frequent topic of debate is the technology used to write. Most frequently I see pen and paper vs computer, but not nearly enough do I see comparisons of the writing software available.

Microsoft Word and Notepad are the most obvious tools, since they come bundled with a Windows package on almost any PC you can buy commercially. But if you've had to wipe your hard drive and have lost your discs or are more interested in freeware in general, there's OpenOffice. It has a lot of the same features as Word, except it can save in more formats. The default format isn't Word, and Track Changes is hard to translate to another machine that doesn't run OpenOffice, but it's free, not particularly buggy, and has lots of online support. Probably not best for absolute computer beginners, but if you can google "how do I ___ in OpenOffice" and aren't particularly set in your ways with Word, it's a nice way to go. And if you feel bad about using freeware, you can just donate: a substantial donation at OpenOffice.org can still be cheaper than Word.

But what if you're frequently switching between machines, and can't keep track of a flash drive to save your life? What if you're collaborating on a project with six people and can't keep track of the latest version? What if, like me, you don't want your hard work tied to your hardware? Then there's Google Docs. Available anywhere there's internet, they have a few fewer formatting capabilities than some software, but are free and perfect for collaboration. There's a bit of a learning curve for using it, but it's been well worth it for me.

Then there are the writing-specific softwares, like Dramatica and StoryWeaver. The only one of these that I've tried is yWriter5 (which everyone will be shocked to find is freeware). I found it interesting, the way it encourages planning and structure and pre-writing, but didn't find that it gave me any appreciable advantage that couldn't be filled by a spreadsheet. For people with large, sprawling worlds and huge casts of characters, it might provide more of an advantage.

Like every other aspect of writing, it's a matter of finding those tools that work for you.

Why are your aliens wearing Prada?

Writing science fiction opens up a plethora of fascinating aspects to explore: "physics"-enabled magic, cool weapons, thought experiments on everything from economics and ethics to the viability of a nitrogen-based lifeform. It can be what-ifs for how we would deal with disaster if it struck in the next week to far-future scenarios on Earth or Earth-parallels or on spaceships dealing with revolution or alien encounters or just internal politics or relationships against this new background.

That last part is key: no matter how futuristic and strange the world, there are characters acting on that stage. And, unless those characters are all time-travelers, they come from a society shaped by the technology available in the story.

That's what baffles me most in some sci-fi stories I read: the world changes, but the social mores don't: in fact, they're about mid-90s and a little conservative, with no obvious in-world reason they'd be that way. Technology alters culture. Look at what the printing press and the industrial revolution and the Internet have done to society. It's the industrial 'revolution' for a reason.

How human beings react to new situations is the point of all fiction. More so in speculative fiction, where inherent social conditioning can be more easily examined by removing or changing the conditioning the characters have. If their conditioning is the same as that of an average modern person, it's removing an entire dimension from the story.

Of course, one doesn't want to completely remove those elements of a character which make them relatable. But everyone needs air, food, shelter, companionship no matter their environment nor their relationship with it. How they approach their search for their basic needs (are they employed? living in luxury in a post-scarcity economy like someone from Heinlein or Doctorow or Stross? do they get their social interaction in person? for pay? online?) illustrates a world as well or better than all the ray guns you can fit in the prop room.

So when an otherwise promising story has characters who might as well have grown up in the 90s in North America, I'm disappointed: we can all do better.

Rationalists Ruin Romance

One of the key ingredients, the glue that holds the genre together, is that tension between people in love before they admit it to each other. Forlornly wondering "but does (s)he love me?" is very nearly a staple of every romance novel I read, and that's if the character currently narrating even knows they're in love themselves.

Which is why rationalist main characters make for poor romance novels. In striving to behave rationally, it is imperative to assess one's own emotional state, which would eradicate those doubts about whether one is really in love oneself. From there, if one is indeed in love, that which would most increase happiness longterm is discovering that ones beloved is in love in return, so it only makes sense to ask.

If the answer is positive, the book is over by chapter five. If negative, then it's hardly a romance at all, and the sensible thing for the main character to do is to try to forget that they were ever in love. If the answer is uncertain flailing and ignorance on the beloved's part of their own feelings, then, well, ask again in a week.

There. Happily ever after approached and seized sensibly within a very short time span. But there's no catharsis in this, no sweeping moment of passion where all misunderstandings are forgotten. No encounter in the woods with Mr Darcy, because their engagement would have been announced shortly after Jane and Bingley's wedding, which in turn would have been only shortly after that of Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins.

It is one of the more interesting disconnects between literature and life that the most desirable outcome for real people is the least engaging in the genre of romance novels.

This examination was inspired by the Twilight retelling Luminosity and its sequel Radiance by writer and rationality blogger Alicorn. The major departure in Luminosity is that Bella is a rationalist. As you might imagine, it changes the story significantly. One of the ways I've noticed (in hindshight: the two books are now over) is in genre: Meyer's novels are romance, with fantasy elements. The focus is on Edward and Bella's relationship, and when will they finally be fully together? In Alicorn's, while Edward and Bella are still totally and completely in love, it is a fantasy novel with strong relationships in it. The focus is on Bella and Edward's adventures in changing the world.

Soundtracks

Stephanie Meyer is the first author I know of who let people know on a wide scale the sort of music that inspired her to write; I remember going up to the music section of Borders a couple of years ago and seeing a large central display with the Twilight covers plastered over it, advertising that the selection of Muse below was what had accompanied the writing of Twilight.

The role of music in writing comes up frequently on various of my writing forums, too: the validity of inspiration by music, stories written specifically to accompany certain songs (referred to as songfics), whether background music is distracting or beneficial, the genres of music best conducive to certain kinds of writing, theme songs for certain characters or stories and whether that extra dimensionality helps hold the characters in the writers head.

The answers to all those questions vary from writer to writer: some can only work in utter quiet, and consider using music to set a mood frivolous, others listen to classical to stimulate the creative portions of their brain, still others have a hard time writing unless they have a specific playlist whose lyrics exactly reflect the mood of the piece.

Like every other aspect of writing, there is no one true way, none that is inherently superior to others. As long as a good story is coming out of it, the tools and environment that foster it are little more than interesting side notes.

Music can definitely be a tool. Like lighting or temperature or having other people in the room, it can set the mood for writing. I know I would have trouble writing most parent-child affection moments to an accompaniment of death metal. With collaborations, I've found jointly putting together a soundtrack helps us gel the tone of the world: if we're both suggesting 90s punk, we have roughly the same idea of the tone, if one of us is suggesting disco and the other bluegrass, we obviously have more discussion to do to make sure we're on the same page for the story. I've found this focus on tone useful for my solo writing projects as well, though to a lesser degree, as, well, I'm the only one working on the world.

It's possible to take enjoyment of it as background and use for mood setting too far, of course: if you find that you're unable to write unless listening to a particular song, that's probably not conducive to better writing in general.

Beyond the writing end, music can be a good way to engage readers: the Twilight soundtracks were intensely popular, and people liked listening to them as they read the books. It creates a more immersive experience to have the ears engaged as well as the eyes, and can help the reader be more fully transported to the author's world.

It can also help the author engage the readers, as almost any peripheral to the story itself can: asking for music recommendations from readers creates a community atmosphere and can foster a feeling of being invested in the story. And who doesn't want readers who feel personally engaged?

If you're interested in what I listen to as I write this, you can find it here. I'm always happy to take recommendations.

Books As Personal Identifiers

What we read says a lot about who we are, or at least about who we want people to think we are. I read Wired and BBC Breaking News' Twitter feed and Silicon Valley Insider's Twitter feed (bit of a trend, there -- headline-surfing is much easier when everyone's limited to 140 characters) and romantic suspense and paranormal romance and science fiction and fantasy written by rationalists and webcomics. Those say a lot about who I am as a person - I like up-to-the-minute technology and thought, and I'm an old-fashioned romantic at heart.

Sometimes, though, I'll cave to boredom or a weakness for shiny advertising and pick up a book that's 'in' right now. The other night before a meeting in the Starbucks in Chapters, I was seduced by the New and Hot shelf near the door and looked at The Sentimentalists. A Giller Prize winner, it is also the product of small press: the initial print run was 800. It's a testament to the power of literary awards in Canada, to the fact that story still trumps all the gimmicks in the world, that I was able to find the Nova Scotia-printed small-press novel in Chapters in Victoria less than a year later.

The win for The Sentimentalists also says a lot about who we are collectively as readers. Introspective and focused on the past, it also tries to make sense of war and human relationships: current, universal issues more easily approached through veils of fiction and historical context. It says that we as readers want to know more about how everything works in our own psyches.

Robert Wiersema

Last Wednesday Robert Wiersema came to talk to the Victoria Writers' Society about writing in the real world and his new book Bedtime Stories. He will be touring the Island and the Gulf Islands for the next eight weeks. His wife will drive, to protect society. In the book, father and son bond over bedtime stories, since father is a big reader - a writer, actually - but the son is dyslexic. Despite the similarities to Wiersema's own life, he reiterates often that his main character is not him. They may both get up at 4am to get in an hour and a half of writing before facing the day, and both write everything longhand in fountain pen before typing it up, and both have sons the same age. But the character is not him. "Chris is not me. I want to be very clear on these things," Wiersema says with a smile.

The very funny Wiersema never plans what he's going to say . . . ever. Which has gotten him in trouble on more than one occasion. He doesn't specify the occasions, but talks of surreal moments in his career as a writer. "Some days are strange. Some days you stay after work getting your picture taken for the Globe and Mail lying on the floor with the book open on your chest like publishing it has killed you." He nods at the VWS audience, "some days you give speeches you're in no way prepared for."

His topic for the night was "writing in the real world," so he elaborated on how and why he got into writing. He started by as an English Literature student, commenting that "there are few things more arrogant than a second or third year English Literature student, especially one with creative writing pretensions." Working in a bookstore was one of the two more important things in his career as a writer - the other being getting together with his wife. Working in a bookstore exposed him to what people actually read, not just what was considered part of the CanLit canon. "That was a great moment for me as a writer, realizing that there was value outside of what was considered normal."

He then posed the question, "What part of your real life gives birth to the writing?" For him, it's fear. What kick-started his first novel was he and his wife getting pregnant. He realized that he was going to be a father, and thirty. He was happy, then terrified, then wrote Before I Wake in three months in a white fear of "what's the worst that can happen?"

As a last point, he said, "If you take nothing else away from this, take this. This is the double underscore point. Write what you know is bullshit. Write out of what you know. If you have a happy marriage, don't write a happy marriage. Write about someone else's happy marriage, or about someone's bad marriage. . . . Give your characters their own tragedies."

He finished with a reading, then entertained questions he promised to answer entertainingly; a promise he fulfilled. As a writer and reviewer and bookseller, Wiersema has a lot of insight into the local book world.

An interesting note from the question period is how he got his agent; he already had a reputation as an honest reviewer who didn't pull his punches, and that got his name moderately well known, and known for integrity. That came up particularly glaringly in my notes as I've been writing this, as this is the first time I've let a speaker know I'll be writing about them for my blog.

The perfect solution

The meeting for the Victoria Writers Society tonight was fascinating. Nicola Furlong spoke about e-publishing and social media, and was largely the impetus for me to finally get this going.