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Writer’s Block: Meg Todd
Meg Todd, ReLit Award shortlisted author for her short story collection Exit Strategies (Signature Editions), answers our questions on the book that started her on writing (eventually), how a perfect writing day might not look like there’s any writing at all, and her next book – a novel – in the works.
Meg Todd: Years ago, a close friend gave me Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and I put it on the bookshelf, unopened. Eventually I gave it away. I told my friend she was delusional. What gave her the idea that I wanted to write?
But my friend knew me better than I knew myself. Or perhaps I’d let something slip at some point because when did I not have the dream to be a writer? I remember the thrill of a blank page in elementary school—anything could happen! I remember stepping into the lives of the characters in my first-grade primer. I remember being read to from pages and pages of just words, the accompanying pictures forming unbidden in my head.
My own world was narrow, even paltry. We had no television. We lived in the country. Friends were far away. Books filled our home and those books, whether encyclopedias, Penguin classics, mysteries, or Reader’s Digest condensed books, held vast, wonderful worlds far away from my own. Imagine being the creator of those worlds!But dreams don’t often come true and so I left it alone. If I met someone who was a writer, I’d feel a sharp pain in my chest. Not envy exactly. More like awe. And intense longing. But still, I didn’t act. If I tried and found it impossible, I’d no longer have the dream. Better not to try.Years later, when our son began to paint, my husband and I encouraged him. He had a talent, we said, and he ought to try to develop it. He owed it to himself. He’d be a better person for having tried. I thought about this and remembered my friend and her belief in me. I realized I was being hypocritical. And so, in the spirit of solidarity with my son, I went to the book store. I purchased Writing Down the Bones and I started to write.ALU: What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer?MT: I can’t not do it and this surprises me. The thrill of creating something from nothing, creating people who become intimate friends, people who appear in your dreams and speak to you over the course of your days, creating places you can no longer distinguish from physical spots where you’ve actually been. Having a second life. All of that surprises me less than the compulsion. It feels a bit like an addiction.
Meg’s writing advice.
ALU: What are you working on now?Meg’s workspace.
ALU: Have you experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?MT: When I finally see what the story wants, where it is going and how it will get there, I feel as though I can write anything in any place at any time. But when the story eludes me, when I can’t figure out why this or that is happening or even what the story is about, I sometimes have to put it aside or walk away from it all together. It can be a very discouraging feeling.I am not someone to plot and plan a story. I tend to start with a sentence, a place or a person, and then I follow. Sometimes my characters are difficult. They won’t take shape, they don’t reveal their needs and wants. No matter how long I sit, no matter where I follow the story, no matter the number of words on the page, nothing sticks. Writer’s block. It is discouraging and even depressing and any elation I might have felt when things were going well mere days or weeks before has disappeared from my mind and is replaced by nothing. Nothing at all. I’m stuck. Perhaps I’ll never write again. I cook, I knit, I garden, I read. I go about my business and forget about writing.
Except that I don’t. I can’t.
I go back. I sit and I write. Useless pages, hopeless pages.And then one day, months later, for no discernible reason, I’m carried along. Something happens. And just like that I’m lost again in the words, living someone else’s life, happily.ALU: What’s the toughest part about being a writer?MT: The answer that comes to mind immediately is isolation. You sit and think and you write and re-think and write more, for hours, days. And while you’re doing this, you’re in that fabulous, rich world of your imagination. But then you get up and move into the common space of your home, and you realize that friends and family members have no idea where you’ve been, and even though you try to explain, you never quite get there because it’s your world, yours alone, and, until it’s published, it doesn’t exist outside of you. But the truth is, the isolation is also the best part. It’s as though you’ve tapped into a secret field of endless riches that’s yours alone to explore and do with as you will.* * *
Meg Todd grew up in Calgary and currently lives in Vancouver. She studied Eastern Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and completed her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Her work has been published in Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence, Grain, EVENT, The Humber Literary Review, The Windsor Review and The New Quarterly. She was a finalist for the CBC short story prize, Room Magazine‘s fiction contest, New Letters‘ Robert Day Award and The Puritan‘s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize, and the CRAFT Literary Short Fiction Prize.* * *
Many thanks to Meg for answering our Writer’s Block questionnaire! For more writer interviews, click here.Tagged: