"Ah," he Prevaricated: the Delights of Dialogue—from National Newsline, a publication of the Canadian Authors Association.

Bold Beginnings: Your Story's Inciting Incident—from National Newsline, a publication of the Canadian Authors Association.

Tips From a First Draft Survivor—from Word Weaver, a publication of the Writers’ Circle of Durham Region.

Judge's Comments: Short Story Competition 2004
CAA Niagara Branch— I was the judge of the Canadian Authors Assocation Niagara branch short story competition, and my remarks were published as the “Introduction” in a book of the winning stories.

The Write Stuff— an article about teaching a Creative Writing class for the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies appeared in “In the Hills” magazine in March, 2005.

Risk Taking for Writers—PWAC Seminar March 9 2004

“Ah,” he Prevaricated: the Delights of Dialogue

by Barbara Kyle

A wit once said: “The opposite of talking isn’t listening; the opposite of talking is waiting.” Sometimes people can’t wait to speak. Sometimes they’d almost rather die than speak. Sometimes people don’t say what they mean. Sometimes they don’t mean what they say.

All of this makes dialogue stimulating to read – and challenging to write. But it’s well worth mastering the craft because characters, like real people, reveal a lot about themselves by what they say and how they say it.

In fiction, dialogue is the only instance when there’s no barrier between reader and character, no interface of the author-narrator giving description and explanation. There’s just the character, virtually naked, revealing themselves by their words. That’s why readers respond intensely to dialogue, and why so many popular novels rely heavily on dialogue. It feels alive.

Hidden Depths

Actors have a name for the meaning beneath a character’s words: subtext. Subtext is what a character really means, which can be contrary to what they say. Look at the phrase, “I love you.” What does a person really mean when they say, “I love you”? The subtext could be: Forgive me. I wish I didn’t love you. Don’t leave me. You’re lucky to have me. Stop nagging me. I forgive you.

In Robert McKee’s screenwriting seminar he talks about subtext in the film “Casablanca.” There’s the famous scene in which Ilsa first comes into Rick’s café with her husband. Rick and Ilsa were once lovers, but her husband doesn’t know it. McKee says: “For Rick and Ilsa the text is cocktail chatter; the subtext is molten passion.”

Inexperienced writers of fiction often make the mistake of writing subtext as dialogue. They’ll have characters say exactly what they’re thinking and feeling. This is called writing “on the nose.” It’s heavy-handed, and does nothing to reveal deep character.

For example, imagine Casablanca as a novel in which the writer put Rick’s tortured feelings into dialogue: “I can’t bear it, Ilsa. I hate you but I still love you, and I want you so bad it’s killing me.” Sounds unrealistic and melodramatic, doesn’t it? The lesson is: don’t force subtext into dialogue. Put it into narration, or leave it out and let the reader infer it.

He Said, She Said

Another snare is dialogue attribution, the “he said” or “she said” that indicates which character is speaking. An inexperienced writer will often use an extravagant verb, believing it helps the reader hear the character’s tone of voice. “Go to hell,” he raged. “Stop,” she hissed. “Ah,” he prevaricated. Such overwrought verbs call attention to themselves instead of to the character. Trust that readers will know how your characters are speaking because they know the characters and the situation.

My advice for dialogue attribution is: stick to “said” and “asked,” with the occasional use of a nuanced variation like “explained.” Here’s the advice of Elmore Leonard, author of many bestsellers and a master of dialogue: “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the author sticking his nose in … I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ‘she asseverated’ and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.”

Just The Facts, Ma’am

The cardinal sin is using dialogue to deliver exposition – factual information the reader needs to be told. Tom Clancy wannabes tend to err here.

This kind of thing: a scientist tells a colleague about the project they’ve been working on together. “As you’re aware, John, it’s imperative that we find the XR5 submarine before those nuclear warheads – the ones we know are aimed at San Francisco – get into the hands of the Green Crescent. You know, that Arab suicide bomber cell that killed your wife and kids last Christmas.” Avoid this.

Dialogue is as fragile as breath. It cannot be expected to carry the heavy weight of exposition. Put exposition onto the broad shoulders of narration.

Body Language

Gestures are a living part of dialogue. Sometimes, instead of answering we look away. By punctuating dialogue with body language you can reveal some of a character’s feelings. A woman fidgets with her wedding ring. A man rakes his hand through his hair. A girl covers her mouth to hide a smile. Such gestures also give rhythm to a scene, filling the silences between the characters’ spoken lines.

As a writer, listen to people. Watch people. Hear what’s unsaid. As Henry James wrote, “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”

Barbara Kyle is the author of five novels published by Penguin USA and Warner Books, New York, the last three under pen name ‘Stephen Kyle.’ BEYOND RECALL was a Literary Guild Selection, and over 110,000 copies have sold. In 2008 Kensington Publishing, New York, will publish her next book, a historical novel, and its sequel. Barbara teaches creative writing courses for the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. This article is condensed from her series of workshops on DVD, “Writing Fiction That Sells.”

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Bold Beginnings: Your Story’s Inciting Incident

by Barbara Kyle

Knowing where to start your novel is crucial. It’s also difficult. New writers often make the mistake of beginning with description – pages, even chapters, describing characters, backstory, setting – before the story gets rolling. The trouble is, readers can’t feel involved with characters until they see them in action.

Start at the Beginning? Never

Aristotle said a play should begin "in media res,” Latin for “in the middle of things.” Two thousand years later that’s still good advice. Whether you’re writing a mystery, a romance, a thriller, or a literary novel, introduce your protagonist when something vital is already at stake.

There’s a Bruce Springsteen song with the line, “You can’t start a fire without a spark.” For the writer of fiction this means an event that incites your protagonist to take action. This is called the “inciting incident.”

Tipping the Balance

Definition: The inciting incident is the event that throws your protagonist’s world out of balance. What they do to try to regain that balance forms the story.

A person’s life can be horribly upset by a murder, or a call to war, or by getting fired. But the event doesn’t have to be negative. The balance of anyone’s life can be upset by winning the lottery, or getting married, or having a child.

The Bard Knew Best

Shakespeare’s most powerful plays start with an inciting incident that seriously upsets the balance of the protagonist’s life.

In “Macbeth,” his medieval thriller, Macbeth has just won a battle for the king when the three witches tell him that one day he will be king. Their prophecy upsets the balance of Macbeth’s life by inciting his ambition. How he forces the prophecy to become reality is what the play is about.

In “Hamlet” the ghost of Hamlet’s father tells him he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle. This utterly upsets the balance of Hamlet’s life, inciting his desire to avenge his father. His quest for vengeance is what the play is about.

High Stakes: a Kingdom

“King Lear” opens with Lear announcing to his court that he’s stepping down and will divide his kingdom evenly between his three daughters. All they have to do is declare how much they love him.

His two older daughters praise him lavishly, saying he’s the best father in the world and they love him more than life itself. Satisfied, Lear turns to his youngest, Cordelia, his favourite. But she finds the exercise ridiculous, saying, “I love your majesty according to my bond, nor more nor less … Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all?”

This enrages Lear: that Cordelia would talk back to him in front of everyone. He disowns her on the spot and banishes her. Her refusal upsets the balance in Lear’s life, inciting his fury, and from that moment the play hurtles toward its tragic conclusion where Lear finally sees how wrong he’s been about everyone.

Inciting the Inevitable

Put your inciting incident as near your novel’s opening as possible, but don’t rush it; it needn’t be on page one. The important thing is to know what the incident is and how it upsets the balance of your protagonist’s life.

Write a powerful inciting incident and “it must follow as the night the day” that your characters will lead you headlong onto their conflict, into their world, and into a compelling story.

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Tips From a First Draft Survivor

By Barbara Kyle

You write fiction because you’re creative. So why is creating so difficult? I believe it's the tyranny of expectations. You sit down in front of that blank screen and you have to produce. I don't know any writer who isn't somewhat cowed by that pressure.

For me, the good news was discovering a secret to dealing with the pressure: keep expectations low and standards high. It all comes down to three words: embrace the work.

The work of writing can be a joy, but it takes concentration, focus, and will. If you wait for inspiration, you'll never put fingers to keyboard.

I like author Wayson Choy's advice: "The only secret to writing is AC – ass on chair." You sit down and write, then rewrite, then rewrite. There's no other way to master the craft. It's a process – a fact my agent still reminds me of when I face the uphill slog of creating a new novel. Except, being a New Yorker, he says, "It's a process, sweetheart."

Let me share with you five tips that help get me through that uphill first draft.

Tip #1: Get dressed

I mean it. When I sit down to write at home, I don't do it in a ratty old track suit and slippers. I get dressed as if I’m going out into the world to work. I take a shower, put on clean clothes, brush my hair, and go to meet my characters.

There's a story about Florenz Ziegfeld and his famous Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s. These were lavish Broadway shows filled with beautiful girls in stunning, though scanty, costumes. One day Ziegfeld felt the girls had lost their zip. They didn't look sexy, because they didn't seem to feel sexy. So he told the stage manager to order pure silk underwear for every girl. The baffled stage manager asked, "Why? The audience won't know they're wearing silk underwear." Ziegfeld replied: "The girls will know."

Now, you may or may not want to wear silk underwear when you write. The point is: it's all in the head. Small ambitions invoke small efforts. Every good writer is trying to be a great writer.

Tip #2: Write every day

Question: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Answer: Practice, practice, practice. Musicians practice every day, for several hours. Dancers are the same; they take class every day to stay supple and receptive.

My advice to writers is, be like these performers in honing your craft. Try to write every day, even if it's just for an hour. Make that writing period sacrosanct.

Tip #3: Read every day

I try to read great books, of course. But I read bad books too, and I'd like to say a word in praise of bad books. I’ve learned a lot from them. With a great book it's hard to see how the author did it. Their work is so seamless the craft becomes invisible, and so compelling you get drawn in and stop examining the structure.

But with a poorly written book it's easy to stay detached and study why it doesn’t work: faults of craft like a passive or unempathetic protagonist, no clear conflict, too few dramatic turning points, or a flat, unsatisfying climax. So I recommend studying both kinds, good and bad. Keep reading, and keep learning.

Tip #4: Give yourself time to think

I spend a lot of time daydreaming. I’m at work. I’m pondering what choice a character will make under pressure. Or I’m considering how to bring in my inciting incident earlier, or I’m mentally testing the introduction of a reversal into a scene.

Don't let anybody tell you you're wasting time when you're staring out a window or gazing into space. You're at work.

Tip #5: Keep expectations low and standards high

Years ago, whenever my writing wasn’t going well, I’d dread going in to my desk. It was that tyranny of expectations thing. Every morning I’d stay in the kitchen with my mug of tea for as long as possible and think, I can't do it, I just can’t go in there and write something good. Then one day I got so frustrated, I actually said out loud, "OK, I’ll go in and write something bad."

It was instant liberation. The pressure evaporated. Because I knew I definitely could write something bad. So I went in and sat down … and I did write something bad. Hallelujah. So, adopt this guiding principle: Give yourself permission to write something bad.

Because the corollary of that guiding principle is: Everything can be fixed. It's true. You can rewrite and fix something that's bad, but you cannot fix something that doesn't exist.

So there it is. Embrace the work. Remember – it's a process, sweetheart.

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Judge's Comments

Short Story Competition 2004
CAA Niagara Branch

Great fiction kindles enlightenment about the human condition. A novel ignites understanding in a floodlight, while a short story creates a small but fiery flash. The illumination can be equally intense.

The three winning stories produce this kind of light, using elements essential to all compelling fiction: empathetic protagonists who deal with conflict which they experience personally and passionately.

The first place winner, "The Royal Oak," is exceptional for its richly layered characters rendered in a few deft strokes, and for a conflict that is very clear and focused: a solitary young woman is withdrawing from life until her lover's ultimatum and her uncle's plea lead her to embrace the lives around her. The second place winner, "A Two-Martini Day," masterfully uses the protagonist's good-natured humour to portray this character's deep grief. The third place winner, "Truth," depicts a street-smart loner whose experience has taught her that appearances can never be trusted.

The seven stories in the honourable mention category would benefit from fine-tuning to increase their impact, but each has praiseworthy elements, from the driving narrative of "Leona Nigra," to the powerful controlling idea of "Party Line," to the engaging suspense of "Reflections."

Of the twenty-three other stories that comprised the "short list" finalists, many were mere character sketches rather than stories. A story requires reversals, preferably two. This is known as three-act structure. Forged in ancient drama, it remains to this day the most satisfying structure, whether on stage, in film, or in fiction. Constructing a story around two reversals always pay off.

This phenomenon – constructing art – belies our society's myth that fine writing flows from inspiration, unimpeded, as though the writer were a passive medium. The myth persists because when writing is good it looks easy. (Conversely, and ironically, if it looks "impressive" it's not good writing.) Art in writing does not spring forth whole and complete. It is shaped through a process that requires the planning of plot and characters, then testing the plan in a draft, then editing and re-writing, invariably through several more drafts, until the story is clear, compelling, and concise. This is the writer's craft – and craft leads to art. The shaping is what makes it art; the opposite is "real life."

Sadly, the myth of inspiration can hobble an emerging writer, who, underestimating the process, and convinced that their writing "should" be effortless, can get discouraged. The advice from this writer is: persevere. Love the process. And be ruthless in honing your writing. If something isn't working – a character's motivation, a plot strand, a convoluted paragraph – throw it out. Rethink it and reshape it. Keep doing this until you've trimmed the flab, until your characters are living, breathing people, and until the controlling idea of your story shines through.

Is writing hard work? Yes. But the effort can produce a thrilling result for the reader: a priceless glow of enlightenment.

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The Write Stuff

On a brisk evening last October, fifteen strangers sat in the windowless meeting room of the Orangeville library, pens in hand. Among them were a lawyer, an HR manager, a computer programmer, an actress, a former insurance executive, a young mother, a chef, and a dressage judge. They had only one thing in common. They wanted to learn how to write.

Can writing be taught? Aren’t stories born from inspiration? That’s how the myth goes: touched by a magical muse, the writer taps into a wellspring of creativity and the words effortlessly flow. Nonsense. As author Wayson Choy says, “The only secret to writing is A/C: ass in chair.” You sit down and write, then rewrite, then rewrite. There’s no other way to master the craft.

I believe the fundamentals of writing can be taught. So when the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies asked me to conduct a four-week “Creative Writing: Getting Started” course in Orangeville, I knew what I’d focus on. I always encourage writers to break down story structure into five essentials: Inciting Incident, Conflict, Reversals, Climax, and Resolution. Create a compelling protagonist, then develop those basics, and you’ll get a story. Each two-hour class would consist of a lecture followed by writing exercises, then critiques.

Nevertheless, the first time anyone sits down to write seriously can feel daunting. The knots of worry tighten. The demons of self-doubt pester. Have I got what it takes? Starting to write is an act of courage.
Here’s how it happened for a few hopeful writers in the hills.

First exercise: Write a few paragraphs about a character coming into a barn to do a task. In this barn, some time ago, the character’s son hanged himself. Show the barn and the character’s actions without mentioning the suicide.

I watched fifteen heads lower and fifteen pens jerk across notebooks as the class bent to the exercise.

Shirley Bray had signed up because she knew she needed help. For years she’d been working on a fantasy novel called Druids Lost, and she felt she’d gotten lost herself. She didn’t lack ideas; she’d filled notebooks in her Caledon Village home and generated reams of manuscript material. What she needed was guidance in organizing the jumble of storylines. Desperation had begun to gnaw, when she saw a notice for the course. She felt then, “It was a blessing that I came across that notice when I did.”

Trained in computer programming at Humber College, and self-trained in graphic design, Shirley brings a no-nonsense approach to her work. Arriving for the first class, she was struck by the variety of her fellow students: men and women, aged thirty to seventy, with a surprising mix of backgrounds and careers. “And yet,” thought Shirley, fascinated, “suddenly we’re all here.”

I allotted the class twenty minutes for the barn/suicide exercise. As their pens stilled, I saw gleaming eyes, flushed cheeks. Writing is such a high. Several people read out what they’d written, and Shirley listened, her flush of excitement turning to alarm. “I was flabbergasted,” she says. “I thought, ‘I can’t write that well.’ I admit, I was intimidated.”
It lasted for just a split-second. She told herself, “No, we’re sticking this out,” and threw herself into the remainder of the class.
It would be difficult to intimidate Jim Noonan. He came to the course with an uncommon wealth of expertise. Listed in The Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada, he is an authority in labour law. Though retired as a partner from his Toronto firm, McCarthy Tétrault, the Mono resident still acts as counsel in business development. Yet, as he arrived for the first class, Jim battled his own demons of doubt. Six years ago he took a sabbatical to write short stories. “I’ve been able to achieve most of the things I’ve wanted,” he says ruefully, but producing publishable fiction eluded him. Of the writing sabbatical, he says, “I took a hard run at it and ran into a brick wall.” Nevertheless, reading remained a passion. “I love fiction. I’m well-read. I always have a collection of short stories to read.”

Now, six years later, his wife had told him about the creative writing course, and Jim decided to try again. But at the first session, that “false start” brick wall still loomed.

For Barbara McKenzie, walking into the first class brought on anxiety “big time.” She thought: “I’m middle-aged, I can’t start writing now.” Creating fictional worlds was a world away from her job at PMC Film, a packaging manufacturer on the outskirts of Tottenham where Barbara’s office looks out over farmers’ fields. She is manager of Human Resources and Payroll, “and anything that needs doing,” she adds, her chuckle making it clear that she meets all challenges with an easygoing humour.

And grit. While working full-time at PMC, Barbara took night courses for over four years at York University, driving to Toronto twice a week from her home between Bolton and Palgrave, and earning her BA in Business Administration.

Now, she was taking on a new challenge: her dream of writing a book-length collection of facts and lore about tea houses. She has visited hundreds. Her fascination with tea and its ceremonies goes back to her grandmother who used to prepare tea for her and her two sisters. Fine china cups and saucers, the ritual of warming the teapot, “and the conversation,” Barbara says wistfully, “the telling of stories over tea.” Since then, she has searched out tea houses far and wide. She yearns to translate her voluminous travel notes into a narrative non-fiction book but, she said, “the thought of having to participate in a class scared me,” and she wondered: “Can I really write?”

At the first exercise, her fear vanished as thoughts spilled out onto paper. During the critiques, she says, “I was getting great energy from everyone in the class.” She thought right then and there: “I know I can do it now.” She adds with a laugh, “I could use a whole lot more exercises!”

The barn/suicide exercise got Ramona D’Agostino so involved, she hated to stop writing after the twenty minutes. Ramona had been working on a screenplay for over a year and had signed up “to get a better handle” on the craft – all the while juggling the schedules of two small sons at her home in Bolton, her acting career in Toronto, and part-time drama teaching. Ramona has a delightfully infectious confidence, and she rushed off after that first class eager to carry on with the barn tale she’d begun – but came home to her two-year-old throwing a tantrum. No writing that evening. Life always wins, I tell her. But life is the stuff we write about, and the wise writer embraces such experiences, saving them like a magpie.

Sue Silva did keep writing that evening. Deeply affected by the barn piece she’d started, she was “abuzz with ideas” and could hardly wait to get home to continue. For several years Sue had been working on short stories at her home in Alton, but knew she still had lots to learn. Three weeks after a magazine rejected a story idea of hers, she saw a notice about the U of T course, and it seemed like a sign. Sue’s sunny attitude imbues everything she does. Maybe it’s her Portuguese heritage. She was born in the Azores and came to Canada at age seven. She came to the course with “no trepidation. Just an eagerness to get started. I love it, and wanted to know everything.” Right away she enjoyed the camaraderie, too. “It’s great to be with other people who love to write.” After that first class, Sue worked on her barn/suicide piece late into the night.

So the lectures continued – Story Structure, Characterization, Building Scenes – and the exercises and critiques went on, the new writers enjoying the process. By the second week Daureen Murphy said she felt “inspired.” For years she’d been working on an epic poem about a fantasy horse world. Her great love, after her family, is horses; she has five on her Mono township farm. As a Dressage Canada recorded judge, Daureen spends every summer weekend judging competitions. But, coming to the first writing class, she had wondered, “Am I out of my league?” Excited now by what she was learning, she “suddenly had all these ideas flipping around.” The lessons on structure made her think: “Can I apply that to my poem? And I saw that, Yes, I could.”

Darlene Kolodziechuk wanted to apply what she’d learned about structure to storytelling for children. After working in libraries for twenty years, Darlene had dabbled in writing – “When something moves me, I write about it,” she says – and now she wanted to create a children’s book about her experiences saving orphan baby raccoons and releasing them into the wild. A big thrill had been seeing some of her charges scamper free in Algonquin Park, released on Mother’s Day. A book was a big undertaking, though. “I had a lot of ideas but they weren’t focused.” After three weeks of the course she felt, “I can do this.”

Last exercise. For the final assignment I handed out the openings of two short stories, telling the class to choose one and compose a scene to follow, to be written at home. I didn’t tell them the stories were by Earnest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker. Who needs that kind of pressure?

They worked hard on the scenes, and at our final session a few read out their work, which the class then critiqued. One reader was Michael Cooper, who, though he’d spent a self-assured lifetime in the corporate world, admitted to feeling trepidation about his first attempt at fiction. The class was impressed by Michael’s vivid development of Hemingway’s opening. As Daureen said: “He delved so deeply. Even picked up Hemingway’s style. Amazing.”

Ramona broke us up. “I wrote for hours, wrote five pages, obsessed. But the next day I read it,” she wailed in mock horror, “and I thought, ‘This is five pages of crap!’”

We all laughed, but I assured her she’d made a fantastic intellectual breakthrough: the ability to identify what doesn’t work. The wise writer studies it to see why it doesn’t work. You do another draft, throwing out what’s weak and reworking what’s strong. It’s one of the most important lessons a writer can learn: give yourself permission to write “crap,” knowing it can be fixed.

This concept was “a revelation” for Jennifer Hogan. Before, when she saw weakness in her writing she’d “treat it as a wall.” Now, she saw that she could treat it as an exercise – could “change it, and take out the bad.” Jennifer had come to the course to “re-start” her writing. A dedicated writer in school, she had put writing aside since then. First work, then children, filled all her time. But after four years at home with two kids under the age of five she decided she “needed to write. I wanted the course to force me to do it.” Still, she wondered, “Was my writing any good?” Very good, as Jennifer, to her quiet delight, found when the class critiqued her scene. She found the exercises incredibly helpful. “I used to wait for ideas,” she says. “But the exercises gave me strict parameters, making me feel I can just sit down and write.”
I tell the class that this paradox about restrictions always delights me. Limits liberate you; freedom constrains.

An hour after the final session, five excited writers sat around a cozy table at the Winchester Arms, agreeing the course had been far too short. As the October wind scoured Broadway outside the pub, someone suggested, “Why not keep going?” And so, clinking glasses of wine and beer, they agreed to form a writers group. Once a month, Shirley, Daureen, Sue, Barbara, and Darlene meet at the Coffee House beside BookLore to read out their writing and get feedback. Shirley finds the group’s constructive criticism invaluable. “I relish every morsel they can give me.”

Barbara’s husband gave her a computer for Christmas to write her tea house book. Ramona has given the second draft of her screenplay to a few people in the TV industry. Watch for the TV series. Jennifer is at work on a mystery and a short story. Jim plans to submit an entry to the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Darlene is researching children’s book publishers. Sue has expanded her barn/suicide exercise piece into a story called “Abby.”

They’ve all started; they’re on their way.

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Risk Taking for Writers

PWAC Seminar March 9, 2004

Who Do Think You Are?

All of you who've come here tonight have taken a shocking risk: you dare to think of yourselves as writers. That may be the biggest hurdle – the psychological one. Denigrating artistic endeavour is a tradition in Canada. Remember Alice Munro's story collection titled: Who Do You Think You Are? It's a reference to the small-town Ontario pique at any young person who presumes to elevate their standards and dares to excel: "Just who do you think you are?" Well, you folks here don’t just think you're writers, you know you're writers. So, congratulations for taking on such a big risk and overcoming it.

Writing a Novel? You Must Be Crazy

Is writing a novel a risk? Definitely. In fact, it's a risk minefield. Let me enumerate the explosives. Some are in plain view, some lurk well-buried.

1. You'll be making a huge investment in time. It will take you at least a year of writing, likely far longer, to create a marketable novel. (My first novel took three years.) Even after a publisher buys your novel, another nine months or so will go by before it's actually printed and on the shelves. (That's the approximate length of time a novel is "in production" with your publisher.) This can feel upsettingly endless. And, if you're taking time off from a paying job in order to write a novel, this year or longer spent on the project is a truly major investment. It is the biggest risk.

2. You risk elevating your hopes and dreams. You want your book to be successful, to reach a large readership, and to sell well. The longer you spend writing the novel, the more intensely you dream of these things. You wouldn't be human if you didn't.

3. You risk alienating loved ones. People around you, even those who love you, won't ever really understand why the silly book takes so long to write. Or that when you're staring out a window for an hour, you're working. They really won't get it. And it won't help matters if you protest to your spouse or partner about needing peace and quiet to do "your art.” These people have more tangible jobs, and they work hard at them too. If you love them, you'll keep that in mind. It's a delicate balancing act.

4. You risk being an object of pity from friends and acquaintances. At parties, new acquaintances will ask with a kind of bored skepticism: "You write? Oh really? Would I have read any of your books?" And this can go on for years.

5. You risk questioning your own judgement about taking the risk of writing a novel. You're going to hit some very low points. Writing a novel is like running a marathon: it takes stamina to get to the end. And once you do, you must then push on with the nerve-wracking but necessary effort to get it published. That will most likely include several rejections. All of this will tax your stores of resilience and determination.

Yin & Yang

However, like so much in our world, there's a yin & yang principle at play: Big risk, big reward. The rewards of writing a novel are substantial. Let me enumerate them:

1. Seeing your first book published and on book store shelves

2. Seeing all your following books published

3. The money. There's no joy like signing a contract for a nice juicy advance. Revise that:
there's no joy like seeing the royalty cheques that follow

4. You get to do work that you love

5. You get to tell the world what bugs you about the human condition, what breaks your
heart about it, and what's thrilling about it

6. An office at home: Your morning commute is a half-minute stroll down the hall, coffee
mug in hand

7. When they ask at parties, "Would I have read any of your books?" you get to say with
a smile, "If not, go check them out at any Indigo."

Think Big

So far, I've referred to negative risks. But there's one major risk I would advise you to consider, and it's a positive one. It's this: Think big. Specifically, take the risk of submitting your work in New York.

New York City is the center of the English-speaking book publishing universe. The market the U.S. publishing industry reaches is colossal. The market the Canadian industry reaches is very small. There is no "mass market" in Canada. Therefore, there's no successful body of popular fiction published here. Instead, Canadian publishers focus on literary fiction. But literary fiction doesn't sell well. A handful of authors like Atwood and Ondaatje and Yann Martel notwithstanding, literary fiction does not sell well. Popular fiction sells hugely – that's why it's called popular – but it's published only by U.S. companies. So, if you're going to invest all your time and heart in writing a novel, do you want to sell five thousand copies in Canada, or fifty thousand copies in the U.S. and Canada. (American publishers consider Canada as virtually part of their domestic market.) The author gets only about 10% of retail: for a $30 book you get $3. So, using the above sales numbers, it's a choice between $15,000 and $150,000. Which is why my advice is: start at the top – submit you work in New York.

Unfortunately, many beginning Canadian writers never think beyond Toronto. Some feel intimidated by the U.S. Some, I suspect, are punishing American markets for George Bush, by staying out. (A tactic that may have limited effect.) Some believe it's simply impossible to break into the U.S. This isn't so. American publishers are looking for good, marketable books, and they don't care if the author lives in Timmins or Timbuktu or on the moon. All that matters to them is what's on the page.

There's a second positive risk about writing a novel that I'd advise. It's the risk of taking your work seriously. By that I don't mean thinking of your writing as brilliant. It probably isn't. Yet. The point is, it can be made to be brilliant, but only if you take the job seriously and don't underestimate the work involved. That requires a major commitment. Ironically, your loved ones, over time, will eventually come to respect this. People do, in general, respect commitment. (Though I still recommend that you don't go around moaning about your "art.")

Let's Be Realistic

I believe it helps to put the risk in perspective – that is, in the context of a "real world" situation. Don't think of what you're doing as an "artistic" endeavour. Rather, think like an entrepreneur who's starting a business. A restaurant, say. Very risky. And it's obvious that a major capital expenditure is necessary. But once the risks are laid out, understood, and accepted, then one goes about creating the best damn restaurant in town.

The best way to look risk in the eye and live with it is this: Keep your expectations low and your standards high. The key is to look at the risk realistically. Know you goal and ask yourself: Is writing a novel worth it? Is it worth the hardships I've listed: the huge investment of time, and the concurrent loss of income; the strain on loved ones; the elevation of your hopes that may never be fulfilled?

If the answer is yes, then go out and write the best damn novel in town.

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