Hey everyone!<\/p>\n
Last time I posted<\/a><\/span>, I mentioned a lifestyle change. The good news is that, despite being a late-nighter most of my adult life, the transition to waking up early hasn’t been the worst – my way of saying “I kind of hate it, but it’s working.” At this point I am only getting about 45 minutes each morning, but that’s 45 minutes more than I was getting two weeks ago. If you think you could never wake up early and be creative, well, that’s what I thought, too.<\/p>\n It’s not all coffee and roses, though. The writing itself is difficult. I’m working on a new novel. I\u00a0have both recently-written material and material written twelve years ago. I try combining it in different ways, but it’s almost always to no avail. Basically, I’m swimming in 200 pages that I want to keep and, simultaneously, I want to delete, then delete again, and then I want to tie a cinderblock\u00a0around the computer and drop it into the Hamilton Harbour, and then dive down after it and delete it all again.<\/p>\n What do\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>do when you reach this point?<\/strong> This point where you can’t find the point anymore?\u00a0I’ve never really been here before. My idea was to take stock and remind myself why I want to tell this story. I’ve drafted a document entitled – you guessed it – WHY I WANT TO TELL THIS STORY. \u00a0I’m going to outline the reasons this story needs to be told. If I don’t find any reasons, then perhaps I’ll see it’s not worth the pursuit. Wish me luck!<\/p>\n This week’s episode of GET LIT features Rebecca Rosenblum<\/span><\/a>, author of So Much Love<\/span><\/a>. The book is fantastic, and critics seem to agree. Rosenblum even had some flattering things to say about me on her webpage<\/span><\/a>, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy-like. Turns out she was a fan of my Hamilton Spectator column from the 1990s. In fact, it’s one of those ridiculously small-world stories: I met poet and author Mark Sampson<\/a><\/span>\u00a0at an event in Toronto. He later messaged me to say that he had seen my final Generation X column – at his in-laws’ home, taped up in his wife’s childhood bedroom. That alone would have surprised me, but then I discovered that said individual was Rebecca, whose novel I had just started to read.<\/p>\n Life’s weird sometimes.<\/p>\n We’ll also talk briefly with Jennifer Villamere<\/a><\/span>, about the\u00a0launch party for her book Is Canada Even Real? How A Nation Built On Hobos, \u00a0Beavers, Weirdos, and Hip-Hop Convinced the World to Beliebe. And that’s not a typo!<\/p>\n Hope you enjoy this installment.<\/p>\n