writer's fest: Atwoo'ed
Kim Brown, The Peak
"People always ask me, 'How do you write?' I tell them, 'With a pencil.' 'Well, why do you write?' I respond, 'Why does the sun shine? Would you ask a dentist why they chose to fool around in peoples' mouths?'"
- Margaret Atwood
I wanted to open this article with some sort of inspirational quote by Margaret Atwood. It seems that when reviewing a literary figure, this is the thing to do. And this one feels like a proper tribute - insightful yet simple, absurd yet extremely logical.
Last Thursday, I wandered into that vast alien territory of UBC to see Margaret Atwood give the Bill Duthie Memorial Lecture. The annual event, held in the Chan Center for Performing Arts, kicks off the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival.
Although the venue's beauty was something to marvel at, it was a little too formal and not as intimate and interactive as I would have liked. To my dismay, I found Atwood re-using snippets of material from her previous lectures. Nonetheless, the lecture was well-written, witty, and extremely well-received by everyone in the audience. Atwood fed the crowd many inspirational tips and anecdotes.
Including follow up questions, the event lasted a little over an hour and was an extremely satisfying way to spend my Thursday night. Thanks to the 18th annual Vancouver International Readers & Writers Festival (www.writersfest.bc.ca) - running at various Granville Island venues from Tuesday, October 18 to Sunday, October 23 - you can also benefit from this type of educational entertainment.
I walked into the Chan Center that night expecting to hear a young, strong, vivacious feminist speak passionately about her writing. I sat in my chair waiting - for what seemed like a lifetime - clutching my copy of A Handmaid's Tale to be autographed after the lecture. She finally came onto the stage, this elderly little woman, with full grey afro-type hair, and glasses resting on the tip of her nose.
Don't get me wrong, for someone about to turn 66 years old, Atwood looked damn good. But my expectations had to be somewhat reformatted. Her lecture was stylishly titled "Five visits to the word 'hoard.'" Hoard: a collection of something secretly stored; a treasure; a collection of words to be treasured; a personal creation; a well of inspiration. I saw heads in the crowd nodding in awe and agreement. Her lecture touched on her writing process, her earlier failures and successes, and humorous stories of her days as a student - living a minimalist life in a rooming house for $70 a month, where the bathroom doubled as the kitchen, and "furniture" was something that parents had.
"Being a writer is not easy. Don't do it," she said. "Schools today are encouraging young writers, I think this is taking it way too far. Be a swimmer, or a speed skater . . . don't become a writer."
This advice is to be taken with a grain of salt, of course. Coming from the creator of Life Before Man, Alias Grace, and Oryx & Crake, it's hard to convince me that this is an unfulfilling life.
Atwood wasn't always welcomed into the literary world with open arms. In her younger years, she suffered many rejections from publishers. After writing since the age of seven, her first novel - Edible Woman - was finally published in 1969, at the peak of the women's movement. It was after this that she really found fame and recognition and attended her first book signing - in the men's underwear department at the Hudson's Bay Co. in Edmonton. It was a place, she commented, "that had never even heard of the women's movement."
Between her metaphors and comical accounts of the past, she passed along some serious advice for aspiring writers, including: "Anyone can cook a good meal . . . once"; "The choice of starting is not in a writer's control. If you keep waiting for the right circumstances to begin, you probably will never start"; and "If you have a really bad headache, go to sleep. Seriously." She also admitted, "Talent, hard work, and passion; you need all three, but you also need luck."
Atwood concluded her lecture with one last encouraging comment: "A number of people have criticised my work - a lot of them are dead." As she left the stage, I had the almost uncontrollable urge to jump up and yell, "Encore!"