Category Archives: A Year of Re-Skilling

A Year of Re-Skilling

Writing My First Book

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Want to know how it feels to have a dream, work really hard at it for a long time, and then have that dream come true?

It feels amazing.

I’ve wanted to write books since I was five. I know that because I have an illustrated flipbook I made in kindergarten that says: “When I grow up, I want to … write books.” Despite being an uber-responsible eldest child, I checked the box beside “creative writing” on a whim when filling out my university application form, and then reveled in five years of English literature seminars and fiction workshops with only the occasional panic attack at the thought of making a living post-graduation.

At age 24 I stumbled into a job in “corporate communications” and have sat at a computer for the eight years since. This career could have been a death sentence for my creative writing, and for awhile I did forget that I wanted to write books. Luckily, one day I was bored and depressed and asked Brock: “what’s my purpose in life?” and he said, “I thought it was writing.” And then I remembered.

So for the past two years I’ve been, once again, working on my writing. I started the Renaissance Women and this blog to motivate monthly posts. I found myself a wonderful mentor, Susan L. Scott, a writer and editor who sees themes and angles to my stories that I can then develop. And this year I started writing monthly columns about our life on the farm for The Winnipeg Review, an online literary magazine.

Island Grains: the project that gave me a book to write.

Then, out of nowhere I got an email from New Society Publishers. They saw a need for a book about all the amazing local grain-growing projects in North America, and they wanted me to write it because Brock and I had created the Island Grains project. I slaved over two sample chapters, put together a proposal and eventually signed a contract for my first book deal.

I’ve been writing this book for a month.

And ohmigod, I am so meant to write books.

Sometimes my heart hurts because it feels so right.

And then I feel a bit guilty, because not everyone knows what they are “meant” to do, and because not everyone is lucky enough to have a husband who invents innovative projects like Island Grains that cause publishers to cold-call wannabe writers.

Today I realized (while drafting the book’s introduction) that I am writing in my own voice, for my own purpose, for the first time … ever? I’ve ghost-written for CEOs and government officials, and composed essays to impress my professors. I’ve written confident how-to articles for magazines. I write perky marketing pieces for our farm. But my book is mine — at least until the publishers get it in August — and I don’t have to write in someone else’s voice, or consider brand, or even try to craft a piece of fictional art that literati will appreciate. It’s a story about something I find interesting, and I get to tell it.

(Okay, I just realized that this blog is kinda the same thing. It’s mine to write as I wish. But it’s never inspired the heady feeling of freedom I get with my 60,000 word book.)

I can use the word “apocalypse” as much as I want to.

I can insert a side comment that I think is hilarious.

And, I can start a sentence with “and.”

One more wee story:

I had a panic attack last Sunday. My manuscript is due in 73 days, and I work full-time and commute three days a week: there isn’t a lot of time for me to write. Although weekends are my book-writing time, I committed to making food for a family dinner. I got back from the grocery store, felt a tsunami of guilt from not working on my book, and imploded.

After a good cry and a hug from Brock, I realized that my book is mine (despite the contract and the publisher’s expectations): this is the dream I’ve been working toward for decades, and it is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be able to write books while also having a life that includes family dinners. So I calmed down, made the food and enjoyed the family time.

I am learning how to live as a writer.

Okay, now back to work.

[2013 update: the book is now available! We titled it Uprisings: A Hands-On Guide to the Community Grain Revolution. Check it out on the New Society Publishers website here.]

[2017 update: check out some retrospective thoughts on this “commit to writing a book before you’ve written it” experience.]

A Year of Re-Skilling

Teleportation & Animal Kinship

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Re-Skilling in a Virtual Reality …

I’ve never been a gamer. Aside from Mahjong Solitaire and the occasional click through Minesweeper I’ve never been tempted. Perhaps it’s because I already spend the majority of my day staring down a computer screen, so when I earn a free evening or weekend I prefer to debate philosophy with my sweetie (e.g. “is there objective truth?”) or sip a crantini while reading Can-lit.

But.

A casual conversation with my friend Kate introduced me to Glitch, a multi-player virtual world created by Tiny Speck where players “learn” skills that allow them to interact in progressively more interesting ways with the pigs, trees, barnacles, fireflies, etc. that populate the game. (Note: I’m justifying this blog post with the “skills” bit.)

My alternate personality, phase 1: Mellow Yellow, the Bootlegger.

An innocent foray into this alternate universe one evening led to Glitch becoming my new favourite past-time. (Along with Twin Peaks, courtesy of Netflix.) Within a week I’d logged 11 hours as a glitchling and found a new passion: bootlegging, courtesy of a virtual still and backyard patch of potatoes and corn. Now, three weeks later, I’m at level 19 and am mastering Teleportation III, which will make it even easier to move from my homestead in Groddle Forest to the Community Herb Gardens and the caverns of Ilmenski Deeps where I can collect the guano I need to make Raw Bio-Organic Carob-ish Treats.

Anyhoo.

Here’s why I think I have fallen in love with a computer game:

  1. Intellectually stimulating down-time.
  2. Community & Eco-ness.
  3. No pixels wasted on cleavage or muscles.

Elaboration follows:

Intellectually stimulating down-time

My alternate personality, phase 2: Mellow Yellow, the Heather Avatar.

Glitch offers interactive escape. Unlike TV, which is passive, Glitch requires that you interact with its virtual world (at your own pace and schedule). Every time I play, I do something new. I’ve gone on a vision quest, hunted down eight ghosts, attended a farmers’ market and crashed a party for miners. (I’ve also re-learned a whole lotta polysyllabic words that I haven’t heard since UVic. Glitch is a logophile’s dream.)

As you explore the world of Ur, learn more skills, finish more quests, and interact with its various inhabitants, you earn “experience points.” So true to life. So true.

Because of little touches like that, I often get the feeling that there’s some intellectual in the backroom, giggling. Why else do I have to stomp grapes to redeem myself when I “die” in the game? What’s up with that? Glitch’s founder, Stewart Butterfield, has a Masters in Philosophy from Cambridge. I can smell his brain when I walk the desert streets of Xalanga and am almost overwhelmed with Ancestral Nostalgia.

One last point under this bold heading … I have yet to find a typo in Glitch.

Community & Eco-ness

Yes, I said it: there’s a farmers market in Glitch. It’s organized by an everyday glitching, not Tiny Speck’s programmers. There’s also a grassroots-founded community kitchen and a welcome wagon. Community gardens and communal Machine Rooms are part of the landscape.

Another cool community-building strategy: the quests in Glitch encourage and reward cooperation. You can give gifts and “bestow random kindness” on your fellow players. And if you’re a newcomer to the game, watch out: you will be inundated with presents from the veterans.

The Glitch “community” extends to its flora and fauna: trees must be “pet” and watered to stay alive. A “save the wood trees” (this is not redundant in Glitch) movement began because some plank-greedy players were clear-cutting.

There is a bizarre, logical-if-you-don’t-think-too-much interconnectedness in this virtual world. For example: to make cheese you first massage a butterfly, then milk it, then shake the milk and compress the resulting butter. Note that you have to massage a butterfly first: you must give before you can receive. You can also get meat from pigs without having to kill them, as long as you pet them nicely first.

Cleavage-free avatars

Most computer and video games I’ve seen feature practically bare-breasted women with DD-cups, and men whom I doubt read novels. Why would I want to play a game like that, where I get points for killing people? As you’ll note from my portrait above, glitchen look more like kids playing dress-up. And there are some very cool clothes to dress up in.

Come to think of it, Glitch is a lot like the golden days of kindergarten. You can dress up, explore amazing new worlds, make friends, and do pretty much anything you can imagine, from teleporting to making potions to starting a business. You can also bootleg hootch and mix martinis … it’s no wonder I’m hooked.