Diaspora Dialogues

Supporting new fiction, poetry, and drama

Donate

Social Links Widget

December 2012

It’s All in the Details

by

When I was a journalism student at Carleton University, the big media outlets would come around once a year to conduct job interviews. A famous interviewer tactic was to ask the interviewee to look out the window and name five ideas for news stories. One student made a study of the view outside the building before his interview and went in with five weighty, hot-button ideas all prepared. Sure enough, the interviewing editor asked him to look out the window, but when the student turned away from him to look, the editor asked “What am I wearing?“ The student had been too busy rehearsing the story ideas inside his head to notice what the editor was wearing and had no answer.

Writing isn’t about what you’re feeling or even what you’re thinking. It’s about what you see (and smell, and taste, and hear). If you’re just starting out, or are between story ideas, make a point of writing one descriptive paragraph a day: describe a house or a garden that fascinates you, describe a fabulous (or a terrible) meal, or a bar-by-bar description of a piece of music. Forget about why you think the subject is interesting, or how it makes you feel; let the details do the talking and keep your description concrete. Keep your paragraphs in a notebook. You never know when they’ll come in handy.

From By the Bath House

by

The whitecaps rolled and curled to crash skywards off the breakwater. Looking up the shore in the other direction, you could see the Castrol GTX sign flashing green, white, red, 6:30, 15 degrees Cº, just as it had always done. When you came for mood walks on fall afternoons and summer evenings, when you made love in those pungent alcoves, the taste of beer, someone vomiting off the lifeguard tower and now with Eddy, the sign kept flashing. Underneath it, the streetcars rolled past the Edgewater Hotel. You could hear the hollow metallic rush of their wheels, the day’s first factory workers impaled on their seats.

Castrol GTX . . . green . . . white . . . red . . . it is seven o’clock . . . it’s 14.7 degrees Cº.

“Eddy? ”

“Hunh? ”

“They say that every seven years things change. Do you think that’s true? ”

“Maybe.” Eddy sunk his head deeper into the blanket and ran his hand up her thigh.

Janice looked back out at the lake. Whitecaps rolled and curled against the breakwater, shattering into foamy globules. Seagulls leapt upwards to bob and hover, bob and hover. Shadows slipped out of the Edgewater Hotel to be absorbed by rolling wheels while, above, Castrol GTX time clicked to degrees centigrade. Every seven years. She ran her hand up from the bronzed base of Eddy’s back, between the broad blades of shoulders and beneath gilded curls to the band of his neck. She squeezed, thumb and forefinger over a pulsating jugular.

But then thumb and forefinger sprang away and her hand hung lifeless over the prone figure. Eddy stirred, moaned, and fell asleep again. Janice turned away, drawing her knees to her chin. There was an empty bottle on the blanket next to her. An involuntary spasm sent hand to bottle and girl to feet. And then she was whirling in the sand with a spinning weight of glass in orbit. The bottle, shining and clear, grew weightless and took flight. It smashed against one of the bath house columns and tinkled onto the urine-y sand at its base.

Jan stood motionless, letting the wind send wisps of her hair askew and listening to the seagulls crying, the foam globules crashing. After a few moments, she sat down on the blanket again and put Eddy’s hand back on her thigh. She sat like that for a very long time.

Author of the Month: Andrew K. Borkowski

by

Tell us about yourself.

I was born and raised in Toronto’s Polish community on Roncesvalles Avenue, studied Journalism and English at Carleton University, spent eight or nine years after that working odd jobs, doing bits of theatre and freelance journalism. I spent two years in England learning how not to write a novel, then came back to Toronto where I settled into making a living as a freelance journalist and editor. I kept writing fiction throughout this time—short stories which began appearing in quarterlies in the late 1990s and eventually evolved into Copernicus Avenue, a collection of linked stories about Roncesvalles which was published by Cormorant Books in 2011 and won the Toronto Book Award in 2012. I’ve pursued music as a sideline, serving as vocalist, keyboard player and occasional song writer for a local blues/jazz ensemble The Grayceful Daddies.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

“By the Bath House” is the first story I ever wrote and revised to a finished state. It’s set on Sunnyside Beach in the shadow of the bathing pavilion which, in those days, was in a pretty decrepit state. “Bath House” was never published, but I read a bit of it to a CBC reporter covering an event for would-be authors at the Harbourfront. The clip, and a short interview, was broadcast on CBC Radio’s Morningside. The host at the time was Don Harron, who said “He sounds honest, he sounds dedicated, I think he’ll make it.” The reporter commented that she thought I used too many adjectives.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

Very early. At age six I was filling notebooks with half-invented accounts of “My Adventures.” The first time I ever thought I’d like to make a career of writing was on a family visit to the Leacock Home in Orillia when I was about twelve. I remember standing in the room where Stephen Leacock did his writing, in a boat house overlooking Lake Couchiching, and thinking, “This would be a cool way to spend your life—sitting in a place like this, just dreaming things up.” Not long after that, I started writing little science fiction stories which my Grade 8 teacher Mr. Davis would read aloud to the class every Friday afternoon. It made me quite the popular guy.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

D.H. Lawrence was the first “serious” writer I remember having an impact on me. Older people still thought of him as a writer of “dirty books,” but I was turned on by his descriptions of nature and the sheer force and passion of his writing. My high school had a superb English department whose teachers had a knack for turning writers such as J.D. Salinger, Hemingway, and James Joyce into cult figures that rivalled rock stars. Joyce’s Dubliners was a model for Copernicus Avenue. In recent years, I’ve been most influenced by the disciplined style of Raymond Carver, and by the early work of Italo Calvino, which has the whimsical quality of folk tales. I keep going back to Virginia Woolf, and Salman Rushdie, perhaps as an antidote to my minimalist bent. I don’t write anything like them, but I keep hoping they’ll rub off on me.

How and when do you find time to write?

I’ve freelanced for a living my whole career, so I’ve had to fit creative writing into periods between assignments. I like to have periods of at least a week—preferably more, as long as my bank balance will permit—to get up ahead of steam on a creative project. Ideally, I like to have two writing blocks in a day: 2-3 hours in the late morning and 2-3 hours in the late afternoon, with exercise, errands, and occasional lunch meetings in between. The best work usually gets done in the second block, but I need the first one to get the wheels turning. I’m a night owl but not so much for writing. Evenings are for events, reading, correspondence and the little stuff that goes with the business of being a writer.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

The biggest challenge is how to keep body and soul together and still find time to write. There’s no easy solution: writing literary fiction doesn’t pay much. For the first decade of my career, I survived on what, today, we’d call “McJobs,” but after a while those menial occupations become mind-numbing. Freelancing as a journalist and editor was my solution; it gives you flexibility, though it requires a lot of your time and energy and it’s not getting easier to earn a living that way. There’s no perfect solution. If I were starting out today, I’d be looking for a career that gave me some stability and bought me an hour’s writing time for every hour on the job. It doesn’t have to be literary or intellectual in nature: carpentry or a private physiotherapy practice might do it—anything that gives you control of your schedule and pays decently.

The next big challenge is keeping faith in oneself and in one’s work. You learn to read rejection letters very subtextually for any encouragement you can find in them. You also learn to dismiss the “overnight success” stories the media are so fond of peddling and look for inspiration in writers like Carol Shields, who didn’t see success until she was in her forties. Overnight success is a great story, but it never happens in the arts.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

I don’t think of it as “changing as a writer” so much as it’s a process of discovering who you really are as a writer. The Copernicus Avenue stories are a case in point. Some people are lucky and they know right away—very often these are writers not-so-lucky people who’ve experienced some early trauma that’s forced them to grow up in a hurry. That wasn’t me. I spent the early part of my career trying to write like the writers I admired coming out of university—wildly experimental twentieth century writers like Burroughs, Beckett, and Woolf—until the writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library (M.T. Kelly) told me that the aspects of my work he liked had nothing to do with the writers I said I admired. Kelly put me on a strict diet of American minimalists and realists like Carver. Stylistically, that’s when I began to find the voice that would animate Copernicus. By the time I started to write those stories, my motto had become “Don’t be clever, don’t be cool, just tell the f***ing story.”

But finding the stories that are yours to tell can take time. I couldn’t possibly have written about my Polish heritage when I was in my twenties. The stories were staring me right in the face, but I didn’t have the maturity or the detachment to write them. At the time, it felt that they didn’t belong to me—they belonged to my parents. Writing the unsuccessful stories is what prepared me to write the ones that I felt I was always meant to tell. And it’s an ongoing thing. Now, I don’t necessarily feel that I’ve “found my voice.” It feels more as though I’ve penetrated the outer layer of what I’m meant to do as a writer, that I’ll keep changing as I go deeper.

A Grandfather’s Monologue

by 

If you’re not careful, too much
pomelo will give you the runs, but
the leaves of the tree make
the sweetest tea.

The day before you want to
drink, cut
leaves from the tree. Dry them
on the roof, under sun.
Next day, steep
them, then
leave the tea
to cool.

My grandmother would make it
for me,
as a child. She lived
alone, I visited
her sometimes,
she really loved me. I was the only
grandson, not like the others,
I was blood for
sure.

Blood, for sure.

Emerging Author of the Month: Yaya Yao

by

Tell us about yourself.

I love to laugh very loud. Crying comes easily too. I love to tell stories, through words, movement, music, theatre, and best of all (and most natural to us as humans I think) through a mix of all that and more. I also love helping other people figure out how to tell their stories.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

I lived in Hong Kong for two and a half years, and while I was there, I would visit my paternal grandparents once a week. One visit, I brought a pomelo. My grandfather was extremely grumpy and stern as a rule, so it was like the clouds parting when he smiled to see the fruit. He started talking about his grandmother, whom he had never mentioned before. The last line of his story opens into so many others, none of which he ever came to tell me, despite the many varieties of fruit I brought over in the weeks to follow.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I always loved a good story. I remember reading Harriet the Spy as a kid and identifying with her—awkward, kind of androgynous, and totally committed to getting her thoughts down on paper as honestly as possible. I remember the relief of writing—of being able to say exactly what I meant on the page, without fear. Here was my true feeling.

Talking was a huge source of stress, especially since I was growing up in five different languages. From a certain age on, my writing facilitated and was often a necessary precursor to my speaking. My hand helped my tongue form the words.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

It’s an interesting question, and one that I’ve been thinking about as I re-read some of the books I loved as a child. In a way, these reads have probably had the greatest impact, since they came in early, and just walked into my heart, which was too naïve or wise to charge a cover.

Lately, I’m inspired by the poetry of Souvankam Thammasongsa and Priscilla Uppal. Makoto Ooka’s What the Kite Thinks is another recent favourite read. The book is a linked poem created by Ooka along with three Hawai’i writers. The form of the linked poem is one that he adapted to nurture creative relationships between poets, to encourage a sense of collaboration in the face of the cloistered nature that the work often takes on.

Other favourite poets are Audre Lorde, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Jim Wong-Chu, Dionne Brand, Langston Hughes and Pat Parker.

Some of my favourite novelists are Octavia Butler, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, and Toni Morrison.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

The kind whose work gets you laughing and crying, ideally at the same time.

How and when do you find time to write?

Writing is something I really have to make time for. There’s always something else to get caught up in—something less lonely or seemingly self-indulgent. Deadlines are essential to me, especially when it involves a performance—as my friend Marjorie says, fear of public humiliation is a great motivator. My friend Lu introduced me to the 30-day challenge, writing for a certain number of minutes a day, which will be rewarded with a lobster dinner. It’s been helping me stay limber. A sense of community and mutual support is really important to my practice.

My Grandfather’s Garage

by

My grandfather’s garage smells like him. Like oil and gasoline and cut grass and cologne. No one who wears cologne has been in that garage for ages, years, probably. But it still smells like that to me. The garage is warm, but damp. Grandpa’s old Dodge Ram sits like some great dead beast, slain by time. Its passenger side chair lies on the ground next to it. There are bicycles, covered in dust, hanging from hooks on the wall next to coiled extension cords and hoses. Shelves line one wall, filled with nails and screws and tools and parts. And, way up high, there are packages of toilet paper and Kleenex, kept safe from the water that always seems to be trickling from somewhere or other down the drain in the floor. The garage is like a cave seen through the eyes of a child, filled with enough wonders to occupy countless adventures. Secret. Special. Safe.

My grandfather died in 2007. I was 19. He had a stroke. It was almost Christmas, and I was just getting into winter exams. I never visited him in the hospital.

When I moved to Windsor, I moved into the house he used to live in. My uncle lived there alone after my grandfather died. I told people I was moving in with my uncle. It sounded better than, “I’m moving into the room that my grandfather lived in, until he didn’t anymore.” It was an odd move for me. I had lived on my own before when I went to college in London, but this was different. When I went to school in London, I lived in a house. It was only a place to eat, a place to sleep. I didn’t have any real attachment to it. But now I was living in the house my grandparents had owned for decades, the house that my mother had grown up in, the house that I had visited for spring breaks and summer vacations. I had moved into a home.

The reason why I was in my grandfather’s garage for the first time since he passed away was because I needed a power drill. My towel rack was coming off the wall, and I needed to drill new pilot holes so that I could screw it back in. I’ve never owned my own power tools; I’ve never needed them before. But my grandfather had been an electrician in his day; if there was a power tool, he would have owned it. I would just have to find it first.

I wonder if my grandfather knew how much I appreciated him. Oh, I know he knew I loved him. He was my grandpa, and a good grandpa at that. He would buy me Hawaiian sprinkled donuts and let me jump on his bed, so of course I loved him. But there was more to it than that. I appreciated the little things. The way he would give me the same advice every time he saw me painting models: “Keep those, they might be worth thousands of dollars to the right collector.” The way he would patiently listen to me tell the same joke, time and time again, even though he knew the punch line (he was the one who told it to me in the first place). The way he told me stories about his time in the air force, and then would tell me never to join. The way he would let me listen to his Teach Yourself Spanish tapes with him, even though I never really tried to learn. There were a lot of things I never thanked him for that maybe I should have.

I never visited him in the hospital. I didn’t want to see him sick. Paralyzed and gaunt and wrong. I didn’t want to see my grandfather like that.

Getting that power drill took me ages. Not that it was hard to find; the garage was very well organized. The drill was right where it should be, on a shelf next to the other power tools, in the cardboard box it must have came in. Its cord was coiled, rather than stuffed, in the box. And right on top of it was a box of different sized bits. I saw all that, almost right away, but it still took me a long time to get it. I had to stop along the way, to explore and examine what I could. Over there, a pile of children’s books. Here, a brown safari hat. In that box, a red and white plastic chain. In this drawer, a home-made birthday card. There were dozens of odds and ends. Each one had a story; some I remembered from my childhood, some I had been told by my family, and some I made up, imagining my mother as a child, and my grandpa before her. There were no unhappy memories in my grandfather’s garage.

When I was done with the drill, I put it back exactly where I found it. On the shelf, in its cardboard box, power cord coiled up. I’m not sure what I would have done about my towel rack if I didn’t find that drill. Dead and buried for the better part of a year, and he was still helping me.

I wonder if my grandfather knew how much I appreciated him. Oh, I know he knew I loved him. He was my grandpa, and a good grandpa at that. He would take me to parks, and let me have french fries and a chocolate milkshake for lunch, so of course I loved him. But there was more to it than that. And I hope he knows it.

I turned out the lights, and locked the garage.

“Thanks, grandpa.”

Top