CREATIVE WRITING The Canadian Guide to Patricia Westerhof & PUBLISHING ADVANCE READING COPY JANUARY 2023
Writing Prompts include writing fiction, suspense, podcast scripts, poetry, personal narrative essay, and profiles
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CdnGuideToWritingAndPublishing @pawesterhof
A writing teacher and published author shares her wisdom and insight for aspiring writers, from the craft of writing to getting your work published
FORMAT
Introduces aspects of the Canadian publishing industry, including how to prepare a manuscript for submission and query letter, submitting to contests and literary magazines, finding an agent, publishing with independent and large presses, selfpublishing, and applying for writing grants
Four sections cover a comprehensive overview of creative writing and publishing: Creative Thinking, Style and Voice, Writing Prompts and Projects, and the Publishing Industry
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Patricia Westerhof
LAN005020 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Business Aspects
6 in (W) 9 in (H) 336 pages
LAN027000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Publishers & Publishing Industry
The essential guide for Canadian writers looking to have their work published Publication:today.
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LAN005060 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Nonfiction (incl. Memoirs)
ABOUT THE AUTHORPatricia Westerhof is the author of Catch Me When I Fall and The Dove in Bathurst Station and co-author of The Writer’s Craft She has taught writing for more than thirty years, working with writers of all ages, from teens to seniors. She lives in Toronto.
CANADA January 17, 2023 | U.S. February 14, 2023
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THE CANADIAN GUIDE TO CREATIVE WRITING & PUBLISHING
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How do you get your writing published in Canada? What are the industry standards for publishable work and how do you reach them? This lively, practical guide shows you how to think more creatively, cultivate a strong writing voice, and make your sentences powerful. It explains the elements of style and offers writing prompts to help you apply what you learn. It gives strategies for finding critique partners and beta readers, and for getting useful feedback before you send your drafts to agents or editors. The chapters are packed with up-to-date information about the publishing industry, including how to find an agent, how to submit manuscripts to literary journals, how to query independent presses, and how to apply for writing grants. The Canadian Guide to Creative Writing & Publishing confidently leads you through the process of polishing your writing and finding an audience for your work.
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More than a hundred years ago, Stephen Leacock, Canada’s beloved humor ist, observed that “writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself — it is the occurring which is difficult.”3Somewriters generate ideas the way sea horses produce eggs — hundreds upon hundreds, a scattershot approach, with most dying before they hatch. Other writers function more like orangutans, who produce offspring only once every six to eight years. These writers ruminate about their ideas, shielding and nurturing them, moulding them slowly into something fully formed.Probably you fall somewhere between these two ends of the continuum, your exact location on the creativity scale fluctuating based on your circumstances. The same writer may think of more ideas or better ideas in one stage of life than in another, some seasons providing more of the energy and time required for the creative process. However, serious writers cultivate their creativity continuously, never waiting for the ideal slant of light to beam
Seeing the World with a Writer’s Eye
Chapter 1
Cultivating Curiosity and Wonder
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Even as a writer engages with life — as they do the laundry, scoop the kitty litter, stand in line at the post office, listen to their co-worker rave or rant — part of their mind remains quietly observant. They note how people behave, how they themselves behave, how things look, feel, taste, smell, sound. They spot emotions; they attend to the way people — or they them selves — phrase thoughts. They perceive the gaps between what is said and what isn’t said, or between what is said and what’s meant. They ask ques tions — What’s happening? How is it happening? What is it like? What isn’t it like? Why this and not that? Why now and not then?
into their eye, or a mystical muse to dictate flawless sentences into their ear. Sure, some writers claim to experience an almost transcendental flow of ideas every now and then, but this is a rare event. Writers pursue creative thinking as a discipline, a habit, a way of life.
Turning on this reflective- observer part of one’s brain can render even the dull or the fraught events in life more satisfying. An otherwise mindnumbing staff meeting may become the opportunity to make a list of the boss’s military metaphors: front lines , in the trenches , bite the bullet , losing the battle You can collect the phrases to put in the mouth of your short story’s protagonist, enlivening the character’s speech and fleshing out the personality. You can attend your family reunion (replete with all its suppressed conflicts and your family members’ exasperating personality traits), and, instead of brooding about the disturbing DNA that spawned you, collect ideas. Whose mannerisms can you use for a character in your short story? What amalgam character can you create for your stageplay from your three eccentric cousins? Can you use the invasive and jarring questions from your uncle as a device to escalate conflict in your novel? Could you juxtapose the grand pastoral setting of the reunion with the simmering hostility to create a poem that comments on the gap between appearance and reality, or on the myopic perspective of humans compared to the epic scale of nature? For those who are looking, life offers a galaxy of writing material.
Seeing the world as a writer means cultivating a mind that actively reach es for ideas. This requires curiosity and wonder, with a good dose of objec tivity. Writers observe closely and they reflect on what they notice.
Seeing the World with a Writer’s Eye
Finally, read broadly to gain ideas. When you read, you inspire your imagination. See more about this in the next chapter, “Reading as a Writer.”
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Seeing the world with a writer’s eye means cultivating a sense of wonder. You need both the child’s sense of curiosity, discovery, and delight, and the adult’s ability to sift through what you perceive — to make sense of it, notice patterns, and see the possibilities in your observations.
Writers write. Perhaps this seems obvious, yet it needs to be said. Though you don’t hear people casually remark that they’ll compose a symphony or play pro hockey when they get around to it, many people claim that they are going to write a book in some vague future — next summer, or when their kids are older, or after they retire . “I’ve got a story in me,” they’ll say, or “I’m a poet at heart.” These people are daydreamers, not writers.
Along with keeping curiosity flowing during your day-to- day life, you can also seek out new experiences to inspire your writing. Meander through a neighbourhood you haven’t visited before or through your own neighbourhood at a time of day you’re not usually outside. Visit a quirky museum or a factory that gives public tours. Attend an event that’s outside your usual interests — an all-candidates’ debate, a public hearing, a protest, an auction, a race, a retreat, a religious service, a discussion group. Engage respectfully, but reflect as a writer, and use the material in real life to inspire characters, events, and themes for your writing. If your mobility is limited or your lo cation is remote, talk radio, the news, YouTube videos, and documentaries can feed your writer’s sense of curiosity and wonder.
Having ideas doesn’t make you a writer. To be a writer, you need to write, translating your observations, experiences, thoughts, and feelings into sentences. This takes significant time and effort — books don’t just emerge one day, showing up like zucchini in a corner of the garden you’ve neglected. Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, Canada’s revered short story writer, wrote with what she called an almost compulsive commitment to writing, sitting down seven days a week and giving herself a quota of pages
Writing Your Ideas Down
to produce. The initial drafts were chaotic: “I have stacks of notebooks that contain this terribly clumsy writing, which is just getting anything down.”4 The polished stories that won worldwide attention emerged through labour and craft. Angie Abdou, who was a competitive swimmer before she became an author, says, “I come to writing as an athlete, and I’ve transferred the discipline, routine, and work ethic I used in swimming to writing … Ideas only arrive — and the story only comes to life — when I commit to daily time with the manuscript.”5
In contrast to daydreamers who never get around to writing — and who don’t respect the work of writing enough — other would-be writers feel so intimidated by the process of writing their ideas down that they never start. At readings and author talks, these aspiring writers address published authors with veneration, even awe. Annie Dillard explains that perceiving a goal as unattainable stems from a false understanding of achievement: “We all want to believe that other people are natural wonders; it gets us off the hook.”6 Now, some of these published authors write as their full-time job, which means they devote much of their time and energy to writing. Many, however, (probably like you) earn their living some other way, and write in the cracks and corners they can find in their schedules. Some writers may be geniuses and prodigies, but most aren’t. They are ordinary people, but, while other ordinary people are binge-watching TV, scrolling through social media, hanging with friends, and engaging in a multitude of other pleasant pastimes, successful writers are writing. They are composing and revising their work. The difference between writers and non-writers is that writers write.So,
functioning in the world as a writer means not only observing the world with a writer’s eye but also sequestering yourself from that world to get the content that life has provided you down on paper or onto the screen. If you’re a writer, you must write. The chapters ahead will show you how to generate the best ideas and how to go from idea to polished draft.
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1. Attend an event that you wouldn’t usually seek out. Take notes about everything you observe during the event. Let the event widen your understanding of people or issues. What is the setting and how does the setting affect the event? What is curious or surprising?
4. Rummage through your old photos, school work, diaries, letters. If you don’t have these artifacts, use your memory. What ideas for writing emerge from your own life?
Seeing the World with a Writer’s Eye
TAKE ACTION: Train Your Brain to Notice and Reflect
2. Interview a senior — a family member, neighbour, or friend. Ask questions to learn about how the world has changed in their lifetime. Ask about their jobs, their teenage years, their childhood. Use the interview as an opportunity to learn about the world just before your time. If you are a senior, interview a young person. Learn as much as you can about them: their goals, fears, hopes, and habits. These don’t need to be formal interviews — they can be casual conversations with co-workers, friends, or relatives. The purpose is to develop your own curiosity and prevent myopia in generating ideas.
3. Read a type of book you don’t usually pick up: a collection of science essays if you usually read fiction, for example, or a book of poetry if you usually read non-fiction. Choose the book with care, looking for something that you find access ible and appealing. As you read, record your responses to what you’re discovering. What are your thoughts and feel ings as you explore the fresh territory of a new genre? How can you use what you’re learning and experiencing in your own writing?
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5. Page through a complete edition of a local daily newspaper, jotting down every writing possibility you can find. Does a news item prompt a short story? Does an editorial prompt a rebuttal? Does a photo prompt a character or setting? Do the classifieds prompt a catalogue poem, or do the headlines prompt a found poem? Try to gather at least twenty ideas from the paper.
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7. In a notes app on your mobile phone or in a small paper notebook, write down interesting things you observe or overhear in your day-to- day life. Add snippets of intriguing dreams that you have, images that come to you, phrases that you like, thoughts you have. Get in the habit of writing down ideas every day.
6. Read a book (or more than one) that combines genres or is its own genre. Canada’s Coach House Books publishes experimental and innovative poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction. After reading, experiment with genre in your own writing, trying out forms that you have not used before.
8. Make time for thinking. Turn off your phone and anything else that could distract you. Sit quietly or go for a walk by yourself and let your mind follow a train of thought. Creative thinking is active, so feel free to give yourself an assignment, such as solving a problem in a manuscript you’re working on, describing in words the sounds you hear around you, or imagining a character’s backstory. Or allow your mind to wander. Welcome lateral thoughts, but, as in mindfulness practice, bring your mind back to the present if you find yourself fretting about the past or future. Focus instead on brainstorming, free associating, inventing, and imagining. Clear space in your life for solitary reflection.
How we read depends on our purpose. We might skim a website quickly to get the gist of what it offers, but we’ll dissect a contract we’re signing, scru tinizing each detail. We’ll devour a bestselling thriller in the time it takes to absorb a single chapter in a textbook or an article in a professional journal. When we find a text elevating — a religious passage or an evocative poem, for example — many of us will revisit the text multiple times, meditating on theMostnuances.writers have read avidly since childhood, and they read for the vari ous reasons listed above: for information, entertainment, and inspiration. But writers also read differently from other people. Specifically, they read to understand the possibilities in the craft of writing; they read to notice, admire, critique, and even imitate. Just as a person who builds boats will observe a marina with a more attentive and informed gaze than people who occasionally board a ferry to cross a lake or climb into a pleasure craft for a sightseeing cruise, writers read with more conscious scrutiny than nonwriters. They examine texts, they notice the choices the author — their fellow craftsperson — made, and they pause to consider the techniques and their effect on the reader.
This kind of reading takes time and deliberate effort. It’s unlikely that you’ll notice elements of craft unless you specifically watch for them. A practised trapeze artist makes a journey through the air look graceful and
Chapter 2 Reading as a Writer
Through reading, you’ll learn what the range of possibility is, how vast and elastic the medium is, and what you can do with words. So, if you’ve been used to reading to take in content, as a writer you need to make a habit of reading for technique. You need to examine what the great writers who have come before you have accomplished, and you need to investigate what your colleagues are up to.
fluid; the viewer doesn’t perceive the flexion in the acrobat’s core muscles, the attuned awareness of each limb’s location, the minute corrections in balance and direction. Similarly, the best writers make writing look easy. Only with scrutiny will you notice the detail that shows mastery of the craft.
This doesn’t mean you need a degree in literature to become a successful writer. It doesn’t even mean you have to read the classics. But you do need to read. The American bestselling author Stephen King says, “I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they ‘don’t have time to read.’ This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn’t have time to buy any rope or pitons.”7Overand
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over, famous authors mention the centrality of reading to their own writing practice. Some read specifically in the genre in which they want to write; others read broadly in many genres. All of them seek out excellence, although, as the Canadian author Steven Heighton commented in Workbook: Memos & Dispatches on Writing , encountering such excel lence kindles “two vying urges: to go and write, and to give up writing.”8 Nonetheless, just as serious track and field competitors analyze videos of the fastest runners on the planet to see what new techniques they can acquire, writers study material that not only sets the standards but also motivates them to improve their own writing. In Heighton’s words, “Reading great prose or poetry is like undergoing corrective laser surgery; it sears away the cataracts of habit.”9
So, whether you choose to read broadly or to read mostly in the genre in which you want to write, seek out the best writing. Do this by looking at regional, national, and international writing awards lists and per using readers’ reviews on websites such as Goodreads, The StoryGraph, or LibraryThing. Read book reviews published in newspapers and magazines.
Get to know avid readers who have developed their tastes through thousands of hours of reading. Subscribe to a magazine that publishes contemporary creative writing (see the list of Canadian literary magazines in appendix A).
And when you read, examine the text through a writer’s lens. Notice how other authors have used a particular writing element or technique effective ly, meaning with dexterity and innovation. Examine a writer’s use of the features common to all kinds of writing, such as diction, sentence structure and length, voice, and tone. Also examine the techniques particular to your genre, such as the way a journalist weaves exposition into a profile, or the way a short story writer uses dialogue to develop character and advance the plot. When you read about writing, much of your understanding remains abstract, but when you pair your learning about technique with examples of that technique, the lessons become concrete. For example, if you examine how and when the reader figures out that the narrators in Dionne Brand’s Theory and Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square are unreliable, the texts dem onstrate the techniques in action and may inspire you to try them yourself.
Highlight as you read, stopping to admire the well-wrought sentence, the scene that evokes an emotion, the metaphor that delights or surprises you. Read like an ambitious aspiring chef tasting a soup someone else made. Test its flavour and consistency; probe at the ingredients; determine if you could make something similar at home. And learn to read critically — become the writerly equivalent of the meticulous carpenter who can’t help noticing the shoddy materials and lack of plumb lines in a dwelling, the orchestra conductor who hears instantly that the second violin is out of tune. Noting what irks you in other authors’ works can help you avoid those blunders in yourAsprojects.youseek mentor texts, read with a humble heart. Esi Edugyan, twotime winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction, describes discovering Leo Tolstoy. “I was actually somewhat obsessed for years, constantly reread ing War and Peace.… I remember finishing the last page and thinking ‘Oh, my God’, then reopening it at the beginning right away and starting again. I then explored it in various different translations. I was really in a more learn ing stage then — though, of course you’re really always in a state of learning as a writer, but then I was just immersed — and I found the text amazing.”10
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Reading as a Writer
Some beginning writers also worry that, if they read in the precise sub genre in which they write (for example, cozy mysteries, dysfunctional family memoirs, or financial self-help books), they may end up inadvertently borrowing another author’s ideas or writing style. Of course, writers must avoid plagiarism, and if you feel concerned that the inspiration you feel when you read will metastasize into imitation when you write, then read books in a neighbouring genre instead. However, for business reasons, you need to acquaint yourself with what publishable work in your genre looks like. Moreover, and more profoundly, when you write, you participate in a conversation that has been going on for centuries. You can’t escape influence, whether you can pinpoint the source of it or not. Why not choose your influences deliberately? Children who for years listen to lofty dinnertime conversations on art and politics and philosophy will learn to think and
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Some novice writers claim that reading work by other authors will make their own writing less original. This is a solipsistic and self-sabotaging point of view. Writers who don’t explore what quality and distinction looks like in the works of others can too easily consign themselves to mediocrity. Novice writers who are self- satisfied with their own ingenuity can easily delude themselves that their work is better than it really is.
Resist snobbery about genre. Literature study in high school and uni versity still tends to privilege highly literary writing, but writers need open minds, especially if they hope to write material that will sell. Read whatever gives you pleasure, including works that, because they provide easy entertainment for the reader, might seem at first glance to demand little from the writer as well. But do more than gobble the fast-paced text. Put it under the same microscope that you would an esteemed literary classic. What makes it so appealing to you? What are the elements of craft that entice you into it? What makes you keep turning the pages? Many people claim they could write a bestselling romance or thriller — until they try to do so. Margaret Atwood recounts that when she first decided to be a writer, she picked up some True Confessions magazines, thinking she would dash off stories for this popular publication since it paid its authors well. “I thought, ‘Well these plots are pretty easy, I can write this.’ But, in fact, it was a lot harder than I thought. The vocabulary was very specialized.”11
articulate their own thoughts more precisely and eloquently than the chil dren who sit in silence. As long as you are deliberate about avoiding theft in your writing, the reading you do will elevate your writing.
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The activities on the following pages are designed to help you practise reading for technique. Use them to help train your eyes and your mind to read as a writer. In time, noticing the writer’s choices and their effect on you will become a habit. You will read with appreciation and shrewd awareness of the writer’s craft.
Reading as a Writer
So read in depth, and also read broadly. Even if you’re doing research, don’t constrain yourself too much. When Eleanor Catton prepared to write The Luminaries (which won both the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction) she re searched a quirky expanse of topics including the history of New Zealand’s gold rush, confidence scams, and astrology. She also read copious amounts of nineteenth-century fiction to immerse herself in the time period. Her intelligence- gathering took two years, and her comments in interviews reveal that her purpose in reading went far beyond just getting the details correct in her manuscript.
TAKE ACTION: Read Like a Writer
1. Choose three pieces of narrative writing by three different authors you admire. For each author, read some reviews of their work to know what they are particularly noted for in their craft (if you don’t know this already). Then note in the margins of the text all the examples of the techniques the reviews mentioned. Note not only what the author does but the effect the choice of technique has on you as you read. For
instance, if the author is known for creating an unrelenting sense of foreboding, what did the author do to create sus pense and to maintain the mysterious, anxious mood?
4. Pick a book you’ve read by someone you identify as a famous Canadian author. Imagine that you are the literary agent for the author of that book, the book has just been written, and you are trying to find a publisher. Write the cover letter to accompany the manuscript. How will you describe the book — its plot, characters, style? How will you entice the publisher to want to read the manuscript?
5. Imagine you were teaching a literature class in which your story/poem/article was the text. Annotate your text, iden tifying the deliberate decisions you made. Be sure to note only what is actually on the page, not what is in your head. For instance, if you wanted to paint a visceral picture of
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2. Print out or take screenshots of the most memorable pages from stories you’ve read, choosing scenes that induced an emotion. Note what the author is doing in those scenes. For instance, if the scene is funny, identify the kind of humour. Is it a quirky narrator with droll observations about the world? Does the piece use wordplay, such as puns, irony, or hyperbole? Does it have a funny plot with slapstick elements or startling and hilarious plot twists? Identify what is making you laugh. Then try this technique yourself by writing a scene that evokes that same emotion.
3. Write a piece of fanfiction as an exercise. Don’t just use the world and characters of the original text; rather, do your best to mimic the voice and all the stylistic features in the text you’re basing your work on. Give your piece to someone well acquainted with the original author’s work and have that reader judge your success.
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6. For the next book you read, do so with a pencil in hand — or if you read ebooks, use a markup tool to annotate. You may simply highlight, underline, or put a check mark next to things you notice and like, or you may take the time to make marginal comments as you go. If you listen to audio books, pause the recording when you hear something striking, and jump back thirty seconds (or more) to hear wellphrased sentences a second time. Keep a notebook or an audio file in which you save your reactions to the text. Break the habit of reading only for information or entertainment. Linger over the words to appreciate the craft and to react to the choices the author made.
a shabby basement apartment in order to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and despair in your reader, note the sensory details and diction you used to create this effect. To be sure that your writing actually communicates what you think it does, find a willing partner and “teach” your text to that person. Ask questions to see if their reactions to the text match your intent in the passage. If not, you may need to tweak your manuscript.
Reading as a Writer