“The Writer” magazine 125th anniversary issue names AllysonLatta.ca one of its 16 favourite writing sites
If a certain someone doesn’t take me out to celebrate tonight, there’s going to be trouble.
And I don’t care if Valentine’s Day was just three days ago.
The Writer magazine — the oldest magazine for writers currently being published, and one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States — named my website one of “The Writer List: 16 of Our Favorite Writing Blogs and Websites.”
Four veteran contributors were asked to recommend their faves in a cover feature for the magazine’s 125th anniversary issue (March 2012). The article is titled “Websites & Blogs Worth a Writer’s Time.” The Writer contributing editor Stephanie Dickison — a Toronto freelance journalist — wrote:
“Allyson Latta was the first guest on my radio show about writing. She teaches memoir writing and edits award-winning books. Her website, Memoir Writing & More, and blog are rich with resources and inspiration for writers of every age and level. And her extensive one-on-one interviews with authors are not only original and stimulating, but should be compiled into a book. If you want to learn more about writing, I can’t think of a better place.”
I’m crazy-honoured to be sharing space in the list with 15 other dedicated writer- and editor-bloggers. For the rest of the listees, check out the March issue of The Writer, now available by digital subscription.
Thank you, Stephanie Dickison and The Writer.
Now, back to my happy dance!
Children’s Authors: Enid Blyton on writing from life
A guest post I wrote recently (Dutch Boys and Fast Boats) for the amazing Blog of Green Gables: a mother–daughter reading journal by Kristen den Hartog and “N,” got me thinking about the books that made an impression on me as a child. Not long after the post appeared, I was sad to learn that John Christopher (real name Christopher Youd, and he wrote under many pen names), an author I’d loved as a girl, passed away on February 3, 2012. I’ll remember John Christopher especially for The White Mountains fantasy trilogy, which an elementary school teacher read to our class — captivating me completely — and which I later read to my sons.
LifeTimes, the game: “It’s all about storytelling and conversations”
Carol and Mary Jane McPhee, creators of LifeTimes
Sisters Carol and Mary Jane McPhee had no idea a year and a half ago that something big would develop out of a technique they stumbled on to communicate with — and bring some light to the days of — their aging mother.
“It’s all about storytelling and conversations,” Carol says of the game the entrepreneurial siblings from Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood created and now market as LifeTimes: The Game of Reminiscence.
The seed for LifeTimes was planted in the summer of 2010, when Carol and Mary Jane found themselves struggling to find a way to relate to their mother. Shirley McPhee, 86, was living alone in an assisted-living facility and facing short-term memory loss. She was often frustrated, anxious and grumpy, making family visits stressful.
Yet when a family member planned to visit North Bay, where Shirley grew up, she was able to recall exact directions to her childhood home — someplace she hadn’t been in seventy years.
“Cross the railway tracks,” she said. “Go for two blocks. Turn left up the laneway. Look for the little red brick house tucked in among the lilac bushes.”
BC author, 94, publishes 2nd novel based on memoirs
Announcement by Arleigh Fanning
Kory Shillam
Kory Shillam has always been a writer. Daughter of William Albert Tutte, the front page editor of the Vancouver Sun during the Second World War, she came by her love of the written word honestly. As one of her six daughters, I have many memories of my mum taking courses and sitting at her desk writing stories.
In addition to crafting wonderful tales for children, and poetry and articles for magazines, she wrote two books on our family history based on twenty years of research. People Like Us Are We, a history of my father’s family, goes all the way back to the 1600s. I remember searching for her one day while she was at work on one of these histories, calling to her and hearing from the depths of the basement, “I’m down here with the dead!” — followed by laughter. Our family has been blessed with the legacy of these two books. I hug myself every time I pick one of them up to read a date, a name or an event about which I wouldn’t otherwise have known.
On the Air: Voicing My Memoir for CBC Radio’s “The Sunday Edition”
Guest post by Tilya Gallay Helfield
“I kept thinking of the movie The King’s Speech and worried I might develop a stutter. . . .”
I was thrilled when I received the first e-mail from Karen Levine, editor of CBC Radio One’s The Sunday Edition, on November 21st, telling me that there was a lot she liked about the short memoir I had sent her five days earlier.
It wasn’t quite ready to be broadcast yet, though. Acceptance was contingent on my making certain revisions. She wanted the piece to be more than a straight story, a mere recounting of memory. She needed to know why the experience mattered to me and how it had changed my understanding of the world. Was there a lesson here for me? A new perspective?
She indicated two paragraphs in particular that she felt needed work and told me that if I was willing to incorporate her suggestions, she’d be happy to take another look. Of course I agreed.
I had written the first draft of “Sweet Adeline,” for Allyson Latta’s writing course at Koffler Centre of the Arts last year. The story about my beloved Aunt Adeline was originally about 500 words. I made some revisions based on reactions from Allyson and others in the class and later expanded it to over 1,000 words, then cut and rewrote it two or three times more. It was this third (or perhaps fourth) version that I had submitted to The Sunday Edition.
Three days after our initial e-mail exchange, I sent Karen a revised version of the story. Soon after that, she sent me a second edit. I was moving in the right direction, she said, but she questioned one premise in the story and pointed out that there was too much dialogue, which would make it a difficult piece to read on the radio. She suggested I call her to discuss it, which I did that afternoon.
10 Writing Tips from Author William Deverell (on a Costa Rica Morning)
Award-winning Canadian novelist William Deverell was a featured speaker at my Namaste Gardens Writing & Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica last month. Against a backdrop of lush foliage, cascading flowers and startling blue pool, and with the occasional curious tropical bird or butterfly pausing to watch, he shared with retreat participants and visiting writers from the capital city of San Jose his thoughts on “A Writer’s Life.” Here are 10 tips gleaned from his presentation.
1. Write what you dream of writing — not what others want you to write.
Though he aspired to be a writer even as a teen — he read us a few angst-ridden journal entries to prove it — and worked for many years as a journalist and later a lawyer, he was thirty-nine years old before he finally took a sabbatical plunge into novel writing. He describes the writer’s block he suffered, even during the early days of his sabbatical, as “pathological.”
He eventually recognized that he’d been hampered by his father’s high literary standards, fearing he’d disappoint if he didn’t write a “serious novel.” His father was a journalist and a reader of classics who suffered from unfulfilled literary aspirations. Bill says his own fear of failure began in his teens, prevented him from writing for decades, and even “drove him” to the law. (“I never wanted to be a lawyer,” he says.)
