Almost 24 years of blogging was the best training for launching my podcast from scratch in February. I am well versed at creating something from something, learning by doing, making things up as I go along, and being unpolished in public. Having never been the type to use “perfection” as a benchmark, I was okay with starting rough, having audio that would make a purist cringe, having no strong feelings about my guests’ microphone set-ups. The one thing that was difficult for me was that I went into the project during a stage of almost paralyzing self-consciousness, which really wasn’t aided by having to listen to recordings of my own stupid voice—but I got to edit myself, and that was pretty great, and pretty soon listening to myself didn’t make me want to die, partly because I got used to it, but also because I was also getting better at interviewing, and sounding much less stupid all the time.
I learned a lot from this experience, which I’ll be repeating again with BOOKSPO Season Two, which I’m recording now, and will begin delivering to the world in September. It seems extra fun to be going into it with a vague sense that I might even know what I’m doing.
Here’s what I’ve learned in the meantime:
In publishing, excellence is EVERYWHERE: In Canadian publishing, especially, we do love our siloes. Big press versus small press; commerical versus literary; fiction versus nonfiction; short stories versus novels; etc. But these binaries certainly don’t reflect my reading life, in which I can fall in love with anything and everything. I’m so happy that this kind of diversity is reflected in the books that were part of BOOKSPO this time. They represent a terrific cross-section of the excellence happening in Canadian books right now.
Writers are kind and generous with their time: Over the past fifteen years, in my professional life, learning ask for things has been one of my hardest lessons. I HATE IT. And for good reason—this stuff is complicated, and I’ve struggled on both ends. Part of what makes it so hard (and easy to take advantage of) is that most authors really are programmed to give, and this project was a testament to that. Every author I approached responded with such generous enthusiasm, which is no small thing when you’re making up a podcast from scratch. My gratitude knows no bounds.
Asking questions is really scary: This is one of those things I learned from listening back to my interviews, when I noticed that every time I asked a question, I’d leap headlong into the space in which the person I was talking to was supposed to answer, and just start rambling out of anxiety that my question was wrong, or my question was dumb, or that for some reason it might be difficult to answer. I think I mostly stopped doing that, and my only trick around it was a determination to be a little bit braver (and come prepared with really awesome questions).
People learning things is more interesting to listen to than people knowing things: At first, I was determined to read all the books that my guests were speaking about, in addition to reading the guests’ own books. Of course, reading the guests’ OWN books is simply common courtesy, seeing as they donated their time to my project, but I soon realized that our conversations were far more interesting when guests were telling me about books I didn’t know instead of the books I did know, where I felt compelled to demonstrate my knowledge, that I’d done my homework, to have them know that I’d made smart connections, blah blah blah. SHUT UP, KERRY! Conversation flowed way more naturally and interestingly when I had nothing to prove, and everything to learn.
A conversation about books can be a conversation about everything: I kind of knew this already, but am pleased about the way that BOOKSPO Season One just proves it! We talked about WW1 Fighter planes (made of sitka spruce trees), how to create a still life, desert island real estate, #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, grief, colonialism, death, pandemic pregnancies, Alice Munro, Jerry Orbach’s facial expressions, and so much more. It was amazing.
Making stuff is a ticket out of the doldrums: I began the year at a low-point, and it was learning new skills, engaging with others’ work, and creating something new that helped me feel better again. And even though my podcast was the smallest of small potatoes, there were people listening, and that was icing on the cake. (Thanks so much, if this was you!)
Message From the Middle
In December 2017, under the influence of Vicki Ziegler, and after much fretting and deliberating (was it really necessary to track my reads? Couldn’t I just read books like a normal person?), I finally started tracking the books I read in a notebook, which turned out to be the very best thing, and this week I reached the milestone of getting to the centre of my book of books. (Read the rest…)
My May essay for paid subscribers was all about Toni Morrison’s friendship novel, Sula. Have you read it yet?
Infinity Mirror
A few weeks ago, I googled the phrase, “moral clarity,” because I’d been hearing it a lot lately in the context of protesters for standing up for a ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian statehood, and I realized I actually didn’t know what “moral clarity” meant. (Read the rest)
Part of the Fabric of Everything
At this time of year, in the celebration of the ten day span between my children’s birthdays, and with my own birthday on the horizon (which reminds me of turning 23 when I was pregnant by accident but didn’t know it yet, and then also of turning 43 on the day that Roe vs. Wade was overturned, ending 50 years of federally-mandated abortion access for American women), obviously I am thinking about my own reproductive choices, especially the abortion 22 years ago that I was lucky/naive enough at the time to even take for granted, to suppose that decisions about my body—to choose when I did or did not want to be pregnant—were mine to make—as opposed to some evangelical MP from Saskatchewan, an activist judge in Florida, Dr. Seuss-quoting members of provincial parliament who went straight from their home-schools to the legislature, or any other random dude on Twitter. (Read the rest)
12 Lessons for Writers from BOOKSPO
Bookspo Season 1 is complete, and I’m now at work on Season 2, coming this fall, but in the meantime, I want to sum up some of the wisdom shared by writers in this first round of interviews, lots of great tips and insight from writers across a ride range of genres. This is writing advice worth listening again for!
“I know it doesn’t seem glamorous or interesting to you right now… But that’s because no one realizes they’re living history every minute of every day. Sure, there are big moments, like the first Black president or the first trip to Mars and Jupiter, or the first STM. But the truth is, we’re making history at this very moment, sitting on this couch together… Every breath we take, we’re contributing to history.”
Books I’ve Loved Lately
Naturally, every time I think of this book, the Taylor Swift song of the same name starts playing in my head, which I’m not sorry about. And I don’t know if Shashi Bhat is a Swiftie, but her literary preoccupations are not different from those in Taylor’s tortured poetry—her stories are about seeking and not finding, about the tedium of dating, about longing and wanting and disappointment, but there’s also a brutality to them too, a sting. (Let the wasp on the cover of the book be a warning.)
“Enthusiasm is actually the most important gift,” is a line I underlined in THESE SONGS I KNOW BY HEART, the debut fiction by multidisciplinary artist Erin Brubacher, which I think is true, and also might be why this book shone for me in a way that other autofiction usually doesn’t—though how would I know, really, considering that I almost never read it?
I read YOU ARE HERE this weekend, and adored it, and was also put through an emotional wringer, laughed out like a lunatic, and temporarily through that walking England coast-to-coast might be something that I want to do (and then I changed my mind).
If you think you know Newfoundland writing, then you need to know Susie Taylor, who has followed EVEN WEIRDER THAN BEFORE, her sparkling queer coming-of-age debut, with VIGIL, a book that’s even better, though it doesn’t sparkle so much as tremble, quake, and explode.
What a fascinating, sly, and tricky novel is Connie Gault’s THE RASMUSSEN PAPERS, Alissa York’s blurb conjuring the image of a fox with a quicksilver tip to its tail, and that’s it exactly. An urban fox, of course, out of place, slipping along the sidewalk and disappearing down into a ravine leaving no trace, as though it had ever been there.
Are Irish writers having a moment, beyond Sally Rooney and Tana French, even? (And Claire Keegan, and Louise Kennedy, and Caroline O’Donoghue.) Here’s another, Megan Nolan, whose second book is Ordinary Human Failings, a novel that’s agonizing exquisite…
Two Truths and a Lie:
It was a stumper! Nobody got it. Here it is.
I once got in a fight with an elephant, and did not emerge the victor. TRUE! I spent three days in a Thai jungle in 2004 falling in love with elephant called JoJo. One morning, very early, I woke up and went out from our camp to fetch JoJo where she’d been spendng the night. I’d brought her a stalk of sugar cane. On the way, I met ANOTHER elephant who wanted JoJo’s sugar cane. I didn’t want to give it up. I tried to resist. The elephant chased me around in circles. Eventually I relented, because it was an elephant, and you can’t argue with an elephant (though I tried!).
The actor who played Natalie on “The Facts of Life” has me blocked in Instagram for being a white supremacist. This is also TRUE and a deep regret, obviously! I’ve been obsessed with The Facts of Life since 1982. In 2016, I was following Mindy Cohn (Natalie) on Instagram, where she was posting about American politics. Because THE INTERNET, and 2016, trolls piled on, and this was back when I argued with people on the internet, albeit not always with great intelligence. It all went wrong when some loathesome person posted something loathesome and I responded with, “Oh, THAT sounds like a great idea.” Forgetting that sarcasm doesn’t internet well. MINDY BLOCKED US BOTH (and I mean, no wonder). It was mortifying, and I had people go into Mindy’s posts and plead for her to unblock me, that it had all be a misunderstanding…to no avail.
There have been long periods of time in my life when I’ve found it hard to read. THE LIE! On a technicality, however, because the word “long” is essential. For about a week in March 2020, I couldn’t read, and it was such a deeply upsetting loss that I wrote an essay about it. I am sort of dramatic. Thankfully, that was the longest period of my life in which I was unable to read, and things are much better now.