Draft is done! Long live the draft!

Finished the first, very messy, draft of the new short story this week. I already kind of hate it, even after writing the last scene like the previous one didn’t happen. Both those scenes, I think, are going to see heavy edits in the next draft.

For now, though, I’m simply typing it up. Yes, typing: I wrote the first draft longhand, in a little notebook, after reading the advice in Chavez’s book on anti-racist workshopping. Her take was that making her students write out the first draft by hand made them more willing to experiment, to scratch things out and rewrite on the fly, without their inner editor getting in the way. And for the most part, I’ve found that to be true; I’ve got scenes that are out of order on the page, with squiggly lines connecting the pieces to each other in the right sequence. And knowing that I would type it all later — and “fix it in post” — made it easier to finish writing the scenes that I knew, even while writing them, that I was going to have to change.

(she also said that writing longhand got her students more in tune with their bodies, but being over-40 myself, I mostly got in tune with how quickly my hand starts to cramp up)

I am making changes as I type. Fixing a phrase here, adding some blocking (e.g., “she sat back and crossed her arms”) there. Discovering I wrote an entire scene in the wrong tense (!), or used the wrong character’s name in places.

But I’m holding off from making any big changes till I’ve finished typing it. I want to go through the whole thing once more, reading and typing, getting a better feel for how it might all fit together. I’m taking notes as I go, on things I want to change (or simply try differently, to see how it reads), so I can come back after this and do a second draft.

My intent — my hope — is to have the characters and basic plot nailed down during the second draft. (oh, you thought I’d have that set by the time I started the first draft? welcome to pantsing) From there, it’ll be much easier to iterate on revisions, including at least one pass where I’ll print it out and then go through it.

Given my current pace, I might have something to show beta readers by the end of the month? Fingers crossed.

So this week it’ll be five months since I moved to Victoria.

Five months! It’s hard to believe. Most days it feels like I’ve only been here a few weeks.

I attribute that — mostly — to the fact that I’m still exploring. I’ve my routines, sure. Groceries every Sunday from the nearest Save-On Foods, weekend pizza from Panago, tacos from Café Mexico when I need that taste of home.

But I’m still learning about all the holidays, and the politics, and even the weather, out here. And deliberately pushing myself to go out of my normal loops, discovering parts of the island I wouldn’t normally see. Like this past weekend, when I went hiking around Elk Lake (absolutely gorgeous, go if you get a chance, the photo at the top of this post is from Beaver Lake, just south of Elk).

Thankfully, to do all this exploring, I’ve not (yet) needed something that would have been critical back in the States: A car.

True, I’ve got my BC Drivers License. And my apartment allots one parking space (for an extra fee). But I came up without a car, partly as an experiment (nothing pushes you to learn public transport like being vehicleless) and partly out of expedience: The Bolt EV I drove back in San Diego is currently under recall, and you can’t import a recalled car to Canada.

Hence the need for an apartment in downtown Victoria, where I knew I could at least get the essentials on foot. What I didn’t know was how long I could go without getting a car, especially if I wanted to take advantage of being close to so much natural beauty (which I definitely do). Or do normal things like, say, head to the mall, or get to the airport, etc.

Back home in San Diego, for example, there’s only one bus that goes to the airport, and it’s on a very short route with an infrequent schedule. So unless you happen to live basically on Harbor Drive (the road to the airport), it’s useless. And the city has a trolley, but it’s designed mainly for bringing tourists from their hotels north of downtown to the downtown district, and nothing else. My wife and I tried living in San Diego without a car when we first moved there, but it was miserable, and we gave up after a few months.

In contrast, here in Victoria — a city about one-third the size of San Diego — I’ve been getting along just fine. It helps that the city itself is rather compact, so I can reach most parts of it by foot.

Now, “by foot” has expanded in scope a bit since my move. Back in San Diego the twenty-minute walk I take to my local Indigo bookstore would be a non-starter. Getting to any mall like Mayfair in San Diego would involve trying to cross a freeway or two, which is not something you really want to do on foot (and that’s assuming there’s even sidewalks to take you there). But here, the walk’s a twenty-minute stroll along a tree-lined street past smaller shopping centres, apartment buildings, and parks. It’s not a chore. It’s pleasant.

But what about reaching the airport? I’ve had to do this twice since moving here, and there’s multiple options. One is to fly out of Vancouver, which means taking a bus (there’s two routes that go from Victoria to the ferry terminal, running every fifteen minutes or so most days) to the ferry (which is awesome) and then connecting to YVR.

The second is to fly out of Victoria’s own airport, which means taking a bus (again, pick one of several routes) and then walking past some fields to the airport. No car required. (and if you don’t want to bother with changing buses, etc, there’s a reasonably-priced BC Ferries Connector that can take you all the way from downtown Victoria to Vancouver airport).

Getting to Elk Lake, which is a good 13km north of me, was again a matter of just hopping on a bus (there are five routes, at last count, that can get me up there) for a short ride north. I’m looking to hike Mount Doug next, and that’ll again be a direct bus ride out to the park.

Granted, I don’t have children; needing to ferry them around to school and activities might push me to get a car. And I live in the city itself, not one of the suburbs, like Langford.

But still. In the States, no city this small would have even a fraction of this kind of public transportation. No city this small would be this walkable, either. They wouldn’t bother building the sidewalks, to start with, and they wouldn’t be as safe (cities in the States actually get more dangerous, statistically, as they shrink in size).

So I’m happy to be car-free. We’ll see if I can make it the full year, though (because winter is coming).

Ever write a scene, and immediately regret it?

This week I’ve been focusing on finishing one, just one, of the story first draft I’m in the middle of. I carefully plotted out what scenes were left at the start of the week, and spent each day’s writing session chugging along, setting them down.

Only when I got to the second-to-last scene, I made it halfway through before coming to a screeching halt. Despite all my well-laid plans, I was suddenly out of track, for two reasons.

One, I’d decided to have the main character expose her boss as a fake, by flipping open the many file boxes her boss has strewn around and showing them all to be empty. Very dramatic, fun scene, in my head. Only I forgot to come up with a reason why the boxes were empty.

So when I got to the part where she opened them up, and I needed to show her boss’ reaction, I had nothing. No idea. Nothing to see here folks, the muse has gone home for the day.

Two, even once I’d spent some time brainstorming ideas for the boxes, and started back in on the scene, I realized the tone was completely wrong. I’d started the story off as a meditation on memory and purpose, with a protagonist gradually realizing she wants to do something else with her life.

Emphasis on gradually. Not big-d Dramatically, or in some blaze of glory, but over time, like the tide receding from a beach. And here I had this high-volume scene right towards the end of the story. It doesn’t wok, and I knew it wouldn’t work as I was writing it.

But I finished the scene anyway. I’ve been told too many times, by too many authors more experienced and skilled than me, that stopping to edit in the middle of a draft is an excellent way to never get anything finished.

And once again, they’ve turned out to be right! Because in finishing the scene, and chewing it over once I’d done it, I realized moving the scene earlier in the story — with some tweaks — will give it all the things it was missing before: a ticking clock, a purpose behind the boss’ actions, a push for the protagonist to make her life-altering decision.

I’ve got one more scene left to write in this draft, so I’m going to take another page out of their advice, and write it like I’ve already made the change I’m thinking of doing in the next draft. That way, when I actually write that draft, this final scene won’t need as many edits (and I’ll have a completed draft, which is an accomplishment on its own).

What about you? Have you ever had a scene (or a story) that you thought you’d need to throw away, and instead it became the spark that set off something even better?

Finally.

After waiting sixty days for my Personal Health Number to arrive (and be valid), then sitting on the BC family physician waitlist for ninety days (and counting), then trying to get into a walk-in clinic (you have to call in for an appointment these days) and failing, I finally, finally, saw a doctor.

Granted, I only saw them virtually. I'm still on the GP waitlist, and I've yet to set foot inside a walk-in clinic. But I spoke with a real, BC-licensed doctor, got a real prescription, and had it filled at a local pharmacy.

Thank goodness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in general good health (post-Covid). I've managed to dodge the family diabetes so far (touch wood), I don't have any mobility issues, and my asthma has actually gotten better since moving to BC (cleaner air than the States). But I've had an issue for the last few months that I wanted to get checked out, because it didn't seem to be getting better on its own.

Luckily, one of my friends at work (that also lives in BC), recommended I checkout Maple, a tele-health company operating in Canada. I was skeptical, but out of options, so I signed up, and was pleasantly surprised to find out they had BC-licensed doctors, which meant my consultation (their word) would be covered by my provincial health insurance.

Not everything is covered, mind you. They have dermatologists and other specialists available, but those are not covered by provincial health insurance (yet), so they charge for those. And you have to select BC GP (not the normal GP button!) in order to get covered care.

Which is only available certain times of day, of course. And while their estimated wait time is an hour, I spent close to two hours keeping tabs on my laptop's screen, waiting for a GP to pop in.

But they did, eventually, show up! And one look at the pictures I uploaded (ahead of time, while waiting for the GP) was all they needed to diagnose exactly what was wrong, soothe my worries about it being serious, and issue a prescription to fix it.

I was expecting a video call, but it was just chat at first (I guess that's simpler to implement, and is why they have you upload pictures). They surprised me by calling me at the end of the text chat, just to see if I had any other questions about the diagnosis or the medicine.

They surprised me again by being...well...very Canadian! That is, professional but not rushed, willing to chat a bit and earnestly interested in my well-being. I know: "They're a doctor, they're all interested in your well-being," but that has not been my experience in the States. So it was nice to once again have the experience of encountering not bureaucracy, but people, in this Canadian system.

After the call, Maple sent my Rx direct to the pharmacy I chose, after a few button clicks online. And that was that!

I know this wasn't a life-threatening condition, but it was such a relief to finally get access to healthcare after being in limbo for so long. To know that it can be there when I need it, and free.

Hope wherever you are, that you can get the help you need, when you need it, whatever form of help that might be.

Earlier this week I decided to take a survey of what stage my various stories are, since I lost track of them over the course of Covid July.

Here's what I came up with:

• Flash pieces needing final revision before submittal: 2
• Short stories needing significant drafting: 2
• Stories needing a complete first draft: 3

That's seven stories in various stages, none of which are ready to go out to beta readers or submitted to markets! My original list only had five stories; I woke up the next morning and realized I'd left two off the list entirely.

I seem to be replicating a pattern from my day-job, where I commonly work on multiple projects at once, pushing each forward until I hit a blocker (or a stopping point) and then switching to the next. I've apparently started doing the same thing with my writing, starting a story and then switching to another if I feel any resistance to working on the first one.

So now I've got four months of story work, and basically nothing to show for it (to anyone else, anyway). At this point, my inner Paul McCartney is going "We need a system!"

But is that the case? Is it wrong of me to borrow this working pattern from my day job?

I'm not sure. I don't have any deadlines to meet. No editors or publishers waiting for my words (those these are problems I'd like to have, someday!). I've only got myself, and so long as I'm happy working on several things at once, who's to say I need to stop?

Except. The danger -- as I found in July -- is that I lose the thread of the story, or many stories, in trying to work on too many at once. Or end up repeating and re-using elements across them, instead of letting each story grow into its own unique self.

Maybe the answer is compromise: Don't start another first draft until the current one is finished. Always come back and edit the previous story's draft before doing the next one. And so on. So I can still work on multiple pieces at once, so long as I only have one or two in the revision queue at the same time.

What about you? Do you work on one story at a time, all the way through from draft to final edit? Or do you bounce between multiple pieces at the same time, working on whichever one strikes your Muse as the one for the day?

After spending just one week in the States, it's good to be back in Canada.

I literally felt the muscles in my shoulders and neck relax as I passed through the Passport Check in Vancouver. It'd been a smooth border crossing, starting with the ability to fill out my Customs Declaration completely online, before I even got on the flight. So when I landed in YVR, I only had to go to one of the (many, open) kiosks, have my photo taken, and bring the printed receipt plus my passport and work permit over to the nearest Border Services Officer (no line, no waiting this time). Said Officer chatted me up as she checked over my documents, and sent me on my way with a "Good luck!" (in my work).

Contrast the experience of flying into the US, where I had to go through security twice, then fill out a customs declaration on the spot, then get interviewed by a border guard who growled at me while eyeing me suspiciously. Brrr.

I was supposed to catch a connecting flight from Vancouver to Victoria, which left me with three hours to kill in the airport. But when I reached my gate, I noticed an earlier flight (which I didn't think I'd make, and thus didn't book) hadn't boarded yet, and was leaving in half an hour. On a whim, I walked up to the desk and asked if they could get me on that flight. Without rolling her eyes, or sighing, or telling me there'd be fees involved, the agent just said "Sure," found me a seat, and printed out a new boarding pass right there!

From the Victoria airport, I decided against waiting for the first bus, and instead walked for about 15 minutes through forested parkland and farm-lined roads before coming to the main exchange, where a five minute wait had me on a bus heading directly downtown. The view from the bus stop was so good I had to take a few pictures; the shot at the top of this post is one of them. Forty minutes later, I was back at the apartment, safe and sound.

I've spent a lot of time knocking the Canadian Healthcare system here, and it has been the most surprising and frustrating part of the move. But so many things are better here than in San Diego: The roads are better maintained, the buses are cleaner, bigger (they have double-deckers here), and run more frequently. People are friendlier, as the cliché goes, but more than that, they seem genuinely interested in helping. Whether that's the ICBC clerk giving you your driving exam, or the passenger next to you on the plane whom you solicit advice on local hikes from. That attitude extends into infrastructure -- the roads, yes, but also even the water fountains are better designed, having spigots at the top now for easily refilling water bottles -- and the way events are run, like the ASL interpreter at the Canada Day celebrations.

In short, I can relax in Canada because I feel I don't need to do everything on my own, here. There's help available (for the most part, see healthcare) if I need it. And that makes all the difference.

*Not a political comment, just a play on The Beatles' "Back in the USSR"

Yesterday was my first time fiction writing since I got sick.

That's three weeks of not making any progress. Of not being able to make progress, because even once the fever and the chills and the wracking cough subsided, I couldn't focus long enough to read a story, let alone create a new one.

I confess I worried I might not be able to, even now. I've heard so much about a lingering "brain fog" after getting Covid to make me anxious that I would try to write again and fail, that I wouldn't be able to pick up the stories I'd been working on, or find myself writing only in clichés and bad dialog.

Well. I won't speak to the quality of the draft I worked on yesterday, but I did work on it, and I did make progress. In fact, the rest of the story is coalescing in my head now, and I can see the path to finishing it.

This draft, anyway. There'll be edits to do afterward, of course.

But at least I know I can keep working. I still get fatigued more easily than I used to; back-to-back meetings at work leave me not just mentally but physically drained now. And when I tried walking last weekend, I made it just a few kilometers out before turning back for home, where I promptly fell into a nap.

And yet. My brain keeps on ticking, and I can work around the fatigue till it passes. So that's one worry resolved, for now, at least.

Hope you're able to write through your own worries, and find ways to make progress no matter what stands in your way.

Haven't posted in the last two weeks, because I finally caught Covid-19 (or it finally caught up with me).

Went to a small D&D session on the 10th. There were just five of us, and we'd all been triple vaccinated (one person had already gotten their second booster, in fact), and we all were homebodies who masked up in public.

And yet we all got sick.

I seem to have gotten hit the earliest and the hardest, which is good because two of the other folks have other medical issues that would make anything more than a mild case potentially life-threatening. We all seem to be pulling through, however, which is about as good as we could hope for.

I learned a few more things about living in Canada, along the way, that I'd like to share:

No Testing

Trying to be a good citizen, I went to the BC CDC site to see about getting an official test. I know that case counts are inaccurate because not as many folks are getting tested in a way that's reported back to the government, so I wanted to have my infection, at least (if it was Covid), count.

Unfortunately, the official advice for someone like me -- triple vaccinated, relatively mild symptoms -- is not to get tested.

I didn't have any home tests, either, so a friend volunteered to look around at local pharmacies and see if any of them would deliver to me. The answer was a resounding: Nope.

So, technically, I don't know for certain that I had Covid-19. Everyone at the gathering that tested (using a home rapid test) did come back positive, which is fairly compelling. But I wasn't able to get tested.

No Contact

The BC CDC does recommend self-isolating, even if you don't get tested. They say five days is all you need, but I've also heard ten days, so I decided to wait two weeks, to be safe. That meant not leaving the apartment to check my mail, etc (which meant I had a package stolen from the mailroom downstairs, but that's a different story). And it meant I needed to find another way to get groceries.

Not just groceries. I was totally unprepared for being sick, it turned out. I didn't have any Nyquil, no Advil or Tylenol, no cough drops, no extra tissues, nothing. I had some soup, but not nearly enough for two weeks. So I needed food and sick supplies.

Thankfully, there's a couple of Save On Foods near me, and their delivery program is simply fantastic. Everything I worried about turned out to be easy. I picked out my groceries, set a delivery time, left instructions for the callbox, and that was it. No texting me in the middle of me trying to get some sleep to ask if a substitution was okay (they had me indicate in advance if subs were okay or not, and I said "no" to most of them). No multiple notices about shopping starting, stopping, checking out, etc. Just an emailed final receipt and a single phone call to let me know they were ten minutes out.

My one big worry, though, was the callbox. I've had many a Skip delivery go awry because they can't figure out how to use the callbox so I can buzz them in. If the grocery delivery had the same issue, I wasn't sure what I'd do. Even if I could physically make it downstairs, how many people would I infect along the way?

Turns out I needn't have worried. The delivery driver -- who I gather works directly for Save-On -- had no problem using the callbox, and brought everything up to the apartment door using a little delivery cart. No contact, no issues, just the food and medical supplies I needed.

No Doctors

I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again, because it was the scariest part of being sick: What if I needed to see a doctor? How would I get in to a clinic in time to be of use? If I had to call 911, would anyone answer? Would there be anywhere in the hospital for me to go?

Thankfully it didn't come to that. Though I monitored by Blood Oxygen levels using my Apple Watch (for however accurate it is), it never fell below 90%, so despite being miserable for most of a week and a lingering cough, I've been ok.

Going Forward

So one of the first things I did this weekend -- my first time outside the apartment since the 10th -- is go pick up a home testing kit.

I was already masking up indoors, which I'm going to continue doing. And I'm going to start testing on a regular basis, before doing things like meeting friends for dinner or getting a haircut (for which I'm also masked).

I know I was lucky enough to get a mild case, but having Covid was miserable. I don't want to catch it again. I don't want to give it to anyone else. And I hope wherever you are, that you're staying as safe as possible.

This week I've mostly been focused on typing up the mix of notes, scenes, and outline from my notebook for the now expanded, gender-flipped, sidekick-to-protagonist science fiction story (whew!).

I'm having to do a bit of expansion and interweaving as I go. I didn't write the scenes in order, to begin with, and then I've also been blending it with what I wrote in the second (typed straight to laptop) draft, so that hopefully the whole thing is coherent.

I'm nearing the ending, which I haven't written yet, but I've got such a strong image for that I think I can just type it out when I get there. Also I've got to lay the path for it, so to speak, by weaving in elements in these earlier scenes so the final one feels like a proper payoff, rather than an abrupt turn (though there is a turn, I just don't want it to jolt a reader out of the story).

One thing I want to pay particular attention to, and change if I can't get it right, is the (now) main character's ethnicity. In my mental storyboards, she's a second-generation Asian-American, and that's how I've presented her in terms of name, etc. But in reading books like Craft in the Real World and The Girl at the Baggage Claim, and novels like Earthlings and The Woman in the Purple Skirt, I'm starting to doubt whether I can properly portray such a character. I've been thinking I can use my experience as an internal (and now international) immigrant as a bridge to their worldview, but I think now that that's not enough. There's the pervasive racism experienced by minorities in the States, and on top of that the misogyny that uniquely harms Asian-American women (I say harms, not harmed, because it keeps happening: witness the one character in "The Boys" who is introduced as completely feral and whose voice is silenced is the one Asian woman in the cast). And that's before we get into differing family relationships, unique cultural touchstones, etc.

So I'm not sure if I should change the POV character's ethnicity or not. I think that during these handwritten drafts I've found an approach that can be both representative and respectful. And I don't want to be the kind of white writer that only writes white people (any more than I want to be the kind of male writer that only writes men). The world is diverse, and I want to represent that in my fiction. But I want to do it well, which means more than just changing a character's name or skin color.

We'll see how the draft comes out. And what my sensitivity readers say when they review it.

As someone who grew up in the States, I'm used to celebrating July 4th, but I'm not used to really enjoying it. The fireworks are often cool, but the sheer volume of jingoism and military parades rub me the wrong way. They always made me feel out of place, like anything less than my-country-or-else patriotism wasn't welcome. Not to mention the holiday itself is set on the absolute wrong day; the Declaration of Independence has absolutely no legal standing, and nothing to do whatsoever with the way the US is governed or the rights of its citizens (bringing this up at the Fourth, of course, is an easy way to get glared at).

So I was unsure what to expect for Canada Day. I'm also by myself, so no family or friends to go hang with. Thankfully, the City of Victoria threw a celebration downtown, right on the harbor, which turned out to be just about perfect.

Here's three things I liked about this year's celebration:

The Community

The first thing was having a community celebration at all. San Diego's a city three times the size of Victoria, but if you look for their events for the Fourth, they've got the fireworks show at night, and a pub crawl, and...that's it. No concerts, no closing off streets and setting up street vendors, nothing. The Fourth is meant to be celebrated at home, with family, and that's it.

Which is fine if you've got a large family, or network of friends, but for a new immigrant like me, I was incredibly grateful to have the city's Canada Day celebration to go to. It was completely free, with a central concert stage, bleachers on the hill facing, flanked by an open-air market and a bevy of food trucks. Oh, and a bouncy-castle style playground for the kids. And yes, there were flags, and people were wearing maple leaf shirts (and umbrella hats), but it was all low-key. No military fly-overs, just folks from all over the city out having a good time. I fit right in, and that felt great.

The Inclusivity

Speaking of fitting in, one of the reasons I wanted to go down to the celebration on Friday was to see all the shows they had lined up. They had Native dancers as part of the opening ceremonies, and Ukrainian dancers, and Chinese lion dancers, and...Just a whole host of people and communities that I'd never seen perform before.

In fact, it struck me that I'd never seen Native performers before, in person. Not in forty-three years of living in the United States. There's never been a Fourth celebration that I've heard of or attended where Native Americans participated; they've probably never even been asked.

Now I know Canada's record here is very far from blameless. The residential schools, the Oka Crisis, the conflicts over land and self-government that continue to this day. But one of the things Thomas King remarked on in his The Inconvenient Indian is how often colonial governments want to make native peoples invisible, to make exploiting them all the easier. And in this case, at least, the Lekwungen Traditional Dancers were making themselves more visible, right there on stage.

I confess it moved me, and as I watched them dance, followed by the Ukrainian dancers, the listened to the Ukrainian choir, then watched Chinese lion dancers jump and gambol in front of the stage, I realized they'd turned Canada Day into a celebration of diversity, instead of a suppression of it.

The Scope

That inclusivity was a reflection of another thing I noticed and liked: the breadth of the celebration.

Again, unlike the US, this wasn't a primarily military holiday. No call-and-response about army figures who "died for our freedom." Not that the military was absent, mind you -- they had a booth in the market where they were recruiting, excuse me, "hiring" (as they put it) -- just that they weren't the focus.

So there was plenty of room for a Ukrainian choir, talking up the deep connections between Ukraine (many Ukrainians settled the Canadian plains) and Canada. And room for a local white blues musician. And for a Guinean-led band. And for a Vancouver-based electronic group. And for every announcement to be interpreted live in ASL by a woman standing prominently on the stage.

And for me.

I think my writing brain is telling me to move on from the short stories.

I've kept up with the notebook writing this week, jotting down scenes and brainstorming directions for the plots of both short stories (the shorter mystery and the longer sci-fi one). But on Monday my fingers refused to write anything for either story, instead choosing to talk about the summer weather (which became my last blog post). And yesterday, when I reached for my notebook, I had a spark of an idea that turned into a plot for an entire rom-com novel.

It's like my subconscious is telling me it's bored of drafting the short stories, and wants to move on, to something different. Before I can do that, though, I need to actually type up what I've written freehand, and try to edit it into a coherent piece.

So that's what I'll be working on this weekend and next week. Typing, editing, and revising both stories, till the ideas in my notebook have been fitted into place. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep my writing brain engaged and happy; it's different work, after all, from drafting, and uses different muscles.

And then...maybe I'll give this rom-com a shot? Or maybe it's a thriller. It really depends on the ending, you see, and...

Well. We'll see.

It's too damn hot to want to do anything, really.

Just when you think you've adjusted, some internal thermostat finally clicking over to "This is Fine," the humidity kicks up another ten percent or the breeze you were depending on just to be able to breathe drops away or the thermometer slides up another degree or two. And then you're right back where you started, standing in front of the floor fan with your shirt raised and the blinds shut tight to keep out the traitorous sun. Waiting. Wondering what'll give up first, you or the heat.

And you think fondly -- yes, fondly, now! -- on early spring, when buds were just starting to poke shyly out from the trees and the sky was still dark and cold. And wet. God, you remember rain pattering against the windows and wind rattling the panes but you were safe inside, weren't you? Not breaking out in a sweat just from crossing the room.

You do not, ever, think of winter. Winter was worse.

I've been reading Craft in the Real World and The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, two books that both approach the issue of how the traditional writing workshop in the US -- silent author, readers and teacher judging the work, comparison to an all-white literary canon -- was constructed less to promote healthy writing communities and more to reinforce white supremacy in the States.

I confess it's been hard reading, sometimes. Being confronted with the way I've been taught -- and taught to teach others -- about writing and being shown its racist underpinnings does not make for comfortable reading. But I'm pushing past that white fragility of mine, and interrogating it, and each time what I find at the root is simply fear. Fear that I'll be the one erased, in the kind of workshop these authors describe. Fear that I'll become the marginalized. Because the one thing all white people know, even when we don't want to admit it, is that being in the minority in the Western caste system sucks.

When I face that fear, and name it, I'm able to move past it, and see the workshops they're presenting as what they really are: places where everyone can take center stage for a time, where each author is empowered with the tools and the confidence to better their craft. Those tools are there for me, too, if I'm willing to listen, and use them.

So I'm testing them out, so to speak. I don't have a formal writing workshop to go to, but I am trying a new approach with the feedback I give to the other writers in my writing circle. I'm aiming my feedback less at "I liked this" or "I don't like this character" and more towards highlighting the choices I see them making. Like asking how scenes might play out differently if X were changed, or querying about the symbolism behind the repetition of a certain element. I don't know if I'm succeeding, just yet, but I'm striving for the kind of centering of the author as an actively participating artist that Salesses and Chavez encourage.

I'm also borrowing some of their practices for my own writing. For this new short story I'm writing, I've taken to writing out the new draft by hand, in a notebook. Chavez says she insists her students write by hand, as a way to silence the inner editor and let the words flow onto the page. And so far, it's working; writing it out has helped me get out of my own way, and make progress on the draft, when staring at the computer screen would feel like too much pressure. Chavez is right: Something about using hand and pen and paper is liberating, making me feel less like every word needs to be perfect and more like the story in my head needs to be written down right now.

As a result, the new draft is taking shape. It's going to be longer and more complicated than I originally thought, with POV shifts and an expanded world. The side character that I had in the first draft and then gender-flipped has now become the protagonist (!) with all the changes that entails. But where I initially approached this new draft with trepidation, now I'm excited to see it come together.

What techniques do you use, to quiet your inner editor and feel free to write the stories you most want to tell?

So I've decided to apply for permanent residence here in Canada.

I know, many people apply for PR first, before they upend their lives and move thousands of miles. But I went for the work permit to start, since a) It was faster, and b) I didn't know if I'd like it here.

After my gushing last week about how much I love living in Victoria, that second reason might sound silly. Canada's safer than the US, with a smaller prison population, more public transit, and (generally) better health outcomes. What's not to like?

And yet I worried. I'm 43, well past the age most folks immigrate. I worried I'd be unable to adjust to a new system, and end up clueless how to take the bus, or rent a car, or handle my finances. I worried I'd encounter a version of the ice-cold reception I got in Seattle, and never get a chance to meet new people. I worried it would be too cold, or too rainy, or cloudy, for me to ever dream of going outside the apartment.

I worried, in short, that Canada would reject me. Spit me out like a bad piece of gristle, sending me back to San Diego on the next plane.

But -- so far, at least -- that hasn't happened. I have had to depend entirely on the kindness of strangers in order to navigate the various bureaucracies here, but so far, that help has been forthcoming. From the ICBC clerk who told me exactly how and where to send over my driving record to lower my insurance premiums, to the librarian who quietly reminded me that my "password" for using the self-checkout was probably the final part of my phone number.

It's only been two months, and already, I want to stay.

So I'm assembling the pieces I'll need to apply for Express Entry. The first part was an assessment of my college degree, to see if it meets Canada's standards for university credit. That's done (and my degree passed!), so now it's on to the next piece: Taking an internationally-recognized test of English skills to verify my fluency. I'm not too worried about the test, but I'm going to take some practice exams anyway, just in case.

Once that's done, all I'll need is a letter from my current employer that they intend to keep me on for at least a year after I get PR status. I certainly hope they'll be okay providing such a letter!

At that point, I'll be able to apply. But I'm going to take one more step: Take an exam for French proficiency.

I studied French for two years in college, and I've brushed it up every now and then. It's been good enough when I've needed it, on trips to France, so that I could get by without English. I've never kept up with it enough to get fully fluent, though. That's going to change.

I found out that in 2020 they changed the rules in Canada. If your main language is English, and you test well in French (thus proving you can communicate in both official languages), they'll give you an extra 50 points on your application. To put that in perspective, the current cutoff for getting invited to apply for permanent residency is just 66 points. So if I do well on this test, I can boost my application up and really increase my chances of getting through.

So that's what I'm going to do. Submit my initial application as soon as possible, and then study, study, study, for the French exam. I'm hoping to be ready to take it sometime in October, which means I'd be able to update my application with the results before the end of the year.

Wish me luck!

Gender-flipping one of the characters in my new short story turns out to be the best decision I could have made. Whole new story possibilities have opened up, and I'm following through on them as best I can.

Which is to say, I haven't made any progress on the horror story I started last week.

I'm basically back to draft zero on the sci-fi piece (now gender-flipped). The story's going to need to get longer, much longer, in order to capture these new ideas. Somehow I'm going to need to pull off switching POVs inside the short story form, which is usually a no-no.

And it might still be! But I won't know for sure until I try it out. Maybe switching POV between scenes will be a disaster. Maybe I'll read the new draft through and find it's a horrible mess. But then again, maybe I won't.

So I'm trying to give myself the freedom to explore. I'm still forcing myself to sit down at least 15 minutes a day and work on a story, any story. But I'm not judging the output of those fifteen minutes. If it's character sketches, great! If it's brainstorming possible plot twists, also fine. Just so long as it's effort spent on the story, in whatever form that takes.

This weekend I'm hoping to carve out some time to do some drafting based on the notes I've put together over the week. It'd be nice to have a finished draft together, however messy, that I can start editing next week.

Hope your own writing is going well, and that you're avoiding the trap of judging your work by anyone else's standards.

When I made the move from San Diego up to Victoria, BC, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd never been to British Columbia before, hadn't even been to Canada except for a brief trip to Toronto in 2019 (which was great, despite it being November and thus cold as hell). I'd heard good things from people who'd vacationed on Vancouver Island, but stopping by in the place for a night or two is one thing, living there is altogether different.

So two months in, I'm happy to report that I love it here. I feel like I really lucked out with my choice of apartment and city; if anything, I'm kicking myself for not moving out here sooner.

Here's three of the many reasons I've fallen in love with Victoria:

The Size

Even though it's the largest city on Vancouver Island, Victoria is incredibly walkable. From my apartment (which is on the edge of Chinatown and Harris Green, near North Park, aka nowhere particularly interesting in and of itself, and outside the core) it's a ten minute walk to the Save-On Foods, there are two coffeeshops within two blocks, and the Parliament Buildings (where the BC provincial government meets) are just twenty minutes hike south.

It's not just the distance that make it walkable, of course. There's gotta be sidewalks (check), bike lanes to keep the walkways free for pedestrians (check, there's so many people biking around town), and cross-walks clearly marked plus lights so getting across the street is safe (check!). One of the main bridges between Victoria and West Victoria/Esquimalt has about one-third of its width dedicated just to pedestrians and bike traffic.

So far, I've only found one place in the entire city (and I've been walking 10-20 km every weekend, exploring) where the sidewalks end, and that was in a super-ritzy neighborhood on a one-way street heading down to the beach. I'll forgive it. All this infrastructure and density add up to a city where you not only can walk everywhere, you kind of want to, because...

The Outdoors

It's gorgeous out there!

Seriously, I swear there's a park every few blocks. And most of the streets are lined with trees as tall or taller than the buildings. And they've lined most of the coast with public parks, so you're never far from being able to see, hear, and smell (not always pleasant, I'll grant) the ocean.

I grew up in West Texas, where the deserts of the Southwest meet the central prairies. Trees were few and far between; you were more likely to see briars and thorns growing in a yard than grass. Forests were things I'd read about, but never seen.

So to be dropped onto Vancouver Island, a temperate rainforest, is like a kid's dream come true.

In one of my first weekends here, I grabbed a locally-written book about walking/hiking trails in the area (from one of the five (!) bookstores within walking distance) and I've been working my way through it. Granted, these are all managed parklands -- no wilderness trails for me, yet -- but hiking through them, I feel like a little kid again, exploring the fields around my house with a backpack and a compass.

There was a point last weekend when I was hiking through Highrock Park where, towards the top, I came to a stop in a little clearing. No one else was up there. It was just me, and the trees, and the rain. I couldn't hear the city. No traffic, not even a dog bark. Simply glorious.

Not that I mind my fellow Victorians, though, because...

The People

They really are nicer!

One of the many things I worried about, moving up here, was that it would be like Seattle. I found Seattle to be absolutely dreadful; unlike Portland, no one at Seattle seemed to want to acknowledge my existence, let alone my humanity. I visited the library, and in that hall of cold glass and stone I made the mistake of trying to take the elevator between floors. When the doors opened, there were a handful of people in it, all spread out to occupy the whole space. When I asked if they could scooch in so I could get inside, they just stared at me, vacantly, like they could not even contemplate making way for someone else.

Brrr.

Thankfully, my experience in Victoria has been the exact opposite. Everyone's been welcoming, and they don't seem to mind that I'm from Southern California (another thing I worried they'd be cagey about). The folks at the bank actually seem to want to be helpful, which is a revelation after decades interacting with US banks. Even the people at ICBC -- the equivalent of the DMV here -- went above and beyond to help me out, giving me advice on how to get my complete driver's record transferred so I don't have to overpay for car insurance (!). And after just a single meeting of the Victoria Creative Writing Group I found a writing circle to join.

Conclusion

I've only been here two months, true, but so far I'm very, very, glad I made the move. If you're thinking of making the change to Canada, have a look beyond the big cities of Vancouver, Montreal, etc. Maybe you'll find your own perfect spot to explore.

Started the first draft of the new horror story this week, but just barely. Managed to bang out a single scene before my brain came to a screeching halt.

At first I was scared, thinking my writer's block had come back. But after a day to calm down, I figured it out: I still needed to edit the flash pieces I banged out last month. My writing brain -- who commutes between my subconscious and Tír na nÓg, I call them Fred -- wasn't ready to move on to a new story just yet. Outline, sure, but draft? No way. Edits first.

So I've mostly been editing. Two of the flash pieces I wrote are ready to go. A third is on its second draft, but I think it needs a third major one before any fine-tuning passes. I had an idea for gender-flipping one of the characters that I think will make the dialog more interesting (because it'll bring out more of each character's personality) and easier to follow (because the dialog tags will be different).

I've also been (kind of) editing my prison break novel. As I mentioned before, I've joined a writing group, so I'm using it as my submission -- 2,500 words at a time -- for each session. We're using Google Docs for sharing, which I thought would be annoying (ok, it is annoying) but has given me a chance to edit each section before I copy/paste it into the shared doc. It's mostly cleanup edits: Fixing a typo here, reworking a bit of dialog there. But it's making the draft stronger, and they're giving me some very useful feedback on it (like catching that a character didn't bother to put on a pressure suit before heading out an airlock!).

It'll take us (as a group) a while to get through it all, but I'm hoping at the end of it I'll have a firm sense of what needs to be updated in one more editing pass before I can start sending it out to agents. Then maybe I'll start (finally) editing the novel previous to that one, and so on and so forth, till they're all edited and all out on sub. Meanwhile, I can keep churning out short stories, and work to find each of them a publishing home.

Wish me luck!

Getting to Canada -- securing my work permit, opening a bank account, finding an apartment -- turned out to be just the start of the things I needed to do in order to settle in here. Besides learning the ins and outs of my new apartment building and trying to find -- emphasis on find, supply chain problems are everywhere -- furniture so I didn't have to sleep on the floor, there were a few more bureaucratic hurdles I needed to jump through.

I've picked out the biggest three below, in the hopes that someone else might be able to plan for them better than I did.

Change your health care

I talked about this one before, in that you should not expect to have health care coverage when you first arrive. That said, one of the very first things you should do on arrival (you can't do it before you're here and have secured a Social Insurance Number) is sign up for health care in your province.

I say province, because Canadian health care is administered differently by each province. There's no one-stop federal service to sign up with, and they don't auto-enroll you when you get a SIN. Depending on the province, you'll be able to sign up online; the website for BC is here.

Note that there's normally a wait period before your covered, which could be 60-90 days. Which is why you should sign up as soon as you possibly can. This is the first thing I signed up for when I got here, and it was the last card to arrive.

Change your driver's license

Even if you don't plan to drive in your province (like me), if you have a driver's license, you should swap it out. For one thing, Canadians use their driver's licenses a lot as their primary means of ID, so getting one means you can stop carrying around your passport everywhere. In addition, it's often illegal for you to keep your old out-of-Canada license past a certain point (in BC it's 90 days), so the sooner you take care of it, the better.

Unlike the California DMV, I found going to ICBC to actually be delightful. I made an appointment online, got seen immediately, got my eyes tested (they're stricter here, and won't let me drive without my glasses, which made me feel oddly safer), and took an oral "test" where they asked me what I'd do in certain situations, and then corrected my answers as I gave them. That is, instead of the test being a way to filter me out, it became a way of bringing me in, of letting me know some of the key differences in driving in BC versus the US.

The picture was still terrible. I think that's just a law of the universe, though.

Change your phone number

This one seems trivial, but don't ignore it. Not only did I rapidly get tired of having to give my country code out everywhere, my cell service was terrible for any local call, and I hit my roaming data cap really fast.

Your cell number affects your credit, as well. Remember how you won't have a credit history when you move here? Well, without a local phone number, you can't even apply for some of the credit cards you could use to build that credit history. You'll be stuck going to your bank, hat in hand, begging them to take pity on you and "give" you a credit card.

Since I plan on going back and forth to the States for the next year or so, I got a separate phone for my Canadian number, and I'm thankful I did. Calls don't sound like staticky garbage anymore, and I have a local, properly Victorian number I can hand out. I even went the extra step of setting up a localized (Canadian) Apple Id for the phone, which has also helped clear up some issues I'd been having with using my debit card (but that's a whole other post).

Conclusion

So: phone number, driver's license, local health services plan. Get 'em switched over as soon as you can after moving, so you can actually start to relax, explore, and enjoy your new home.

This week I finally started submitting stories to markets again.

I've been holding off, because of the writer's block, and all the work that went into the move, but also because I was afraid. I'm afraid not just of rejection, but of being judged for what I've written. Afraid that even if a story does make it to an editor's desk for reading, they'll be put off by it, and never want to see anything by me again.

Intellectually, I know, no one thinks about me that much. My stories go in, and they get rejected, and the editors and first readers never think about me again. They've got lives of their own, after all.

And yet. Fear of judgement has kept me holding my stories back, worried not about how the story will be received, but how I'll be seen for having written it. At one point, I even tried to convince myself that I didn't want to get published, that the writing was enough for me, that making money at it didn't matter. That delusion lasted perhaps a week before my normal ambition re-asserted itself.

All of it -- the fear of judgement, the lying to myself -- is a silly thing, and I know it's silly, but it's taken me a few months to get past it.

Thank goodness for The Submission Grinder, which (for free!) not only keeps track of what pieces I have ready to go and which markets I've already been rejected from, but can run a search across markets that are open to subs for each piece. That is, it knows the word count and genre, and so narrows its results down to markets that accept stories of that length and subject. It's help me discover markets I'd never have heard of otherwise, and contests that would have closed before I had a chance to submit.

So, by the numbers:

• 3 pieces went out last week.
• 1 has already been rejected, and needs to go back out this weekend
• 1 new flash piece (from last month) is ready to go
• 3 older pieces need to be sent to new markets
• 1 new short story needs a final editing pass (it's currently on its second draft) before being sent out
• 2 new flash pieces need first editing passes this weekend

...and I want to start the first draft of the new horror story. Whew!

Hope your own writing is going well, and you're hitting your goals, whatever they may be.

So last week I tried to pay a bill from a US company using my Canadian accounts.

Big mistake. Huge.

And it’s a legitimate bill! One I want to pay. The company that helped me get my work permit has finally charged me for their services. I want to pay them as soon as possible. They deserve it!

And yet.

I went into the bank, spent about half an hour there, and in the end still wasn’t able to send the money. Why not? Well, let me share some of the things I discovered...

Nothing is Free

Back in the States, I was used to — spoiled by — all the free banking services available. Free checks! Free accounts! Free credit cards!

Not so in Canada. Canadian banks are apparently unable to tap into Wall Street’s billions to make them solvent, and so they actually charge for things.

There’s a monthly charge just to have an account. Any account. For each account.

You want checks? Yeah, those will set you back $50CAD just for basics.

Pulling money from an ATM? That’ll cost you, if you’ve gone over your transaction limit.

Yes, transaction limit. There’s a limit to how many times you can use your account, before they start charging you more fees.

So when I went down to the bank naively thinking I was going to wire the money, they sat me down and explained that each wire transfer (I needed to send three) would cost $50 to send. Not $10. Not $20. $50. A piece.

Needless to say, I did not end up sending the money by wire!

Nothing is Simple

My bank in the US was entirely online. Need to send a wire transfer? Fill out this web form, submit it, done. Need to pay a bill? Add the bill’s account info to this list of payees, choose how much to send, done. Everything, and I mean everything, was done via the online interface.

In Canada? Not so much.

At first, I thought it was much the same. I was able to open an account entirely online. Even managed to put money in it, once I’d figured out how to send an international wire (again, without having to go into a bank anywhere).

But then I got a notice that my account(s) would be closed if I didn’t present myself, in person, to a bank in Canada by X date. Said date was a full month before I was planning on being finished packing and moving up from California.

So I had a bit of a scramble to get everything packed and shipped from the US so I could get up here in time to walk into a bank and prove that yes, I am a real boy.

That turned out to be just the start of the things I needed to do in person.

Opening a credit card? Go in to the bank, because you don’t have any Canadian credit.

Sending a wire transfer? Go into the bank, we don’t trust you to do that online.

Need a debit card? Go into the bank and have them print one for you, because we’re not going to send you the one we promised.

Need that debit card to actually work? Hahaha, oh my sweet summer child.

Granted, every one I’ve interacted with at the bank has been lovely. Not rushed, genuinely interested in helping, just great people. But the fact that anything beyond giving my account information to other companies so they can auto-deduct money from my account requires at least three steps, one of which is always going into a branch, really slows me down. Speaking of which...

Nothing is Fast

Okay, I take that back. If another company has your debit info, they can take money out of your account very quickly.

But anything else takes lots and lots of time.

My credit card application took six weeks, seven tries, and an hour-long visit to the bank to be completed and approved.

The checks I ordered to pay the US bill will take two to three weeks to get here.

The debit card I was supposed to get when I opened the account never came.

Sending money back home to my wife takes a week (not the promised 48 hours).

Conclusion

In short, banking in Canada requires a lot more patience and time than I’m used to. Not that I can’t get used to it, mind you, and I know I should be grateful that — so far — everything has worked out, just not in a timely fashion. Things could definitely be worse.

But again, something I wish I’d known before moving here, so I could have better prepared myself for it.

Steady progress this week. I’ve set a reminder to write, every day, and I force myself to do it. Even when I’m exhausted after a day like Wednesday, where I had a solid block of meetings from 7am till 1pm. I grab my notebook, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and don’t let myself do anything else till the buzzer sounds.

I’m not always drafting during that time. Sometimes, like this week, I’m brainstorming, looking for ways to punch up the current draft of the new story. Sometimes I’m outlining, like I’ve been doing for a new story that’s brewing in my head. But no matter what, I’m working for those fifteen minutes.

As a result, I’m about ready to do a second draft of the piece that started out as flash, and has grown into a short story. I’m also ready to do a first draft of a new piece, a horror story that first unlocked for me last year during a Clarion West online class, but sat on the shelf while I worked through my writer’s block. (Oddly enough, the current approach I’m taking to the story came to me during another Clarion West class, on Sunday)

Oh! And I wrote two more flash pieces last night, based on some prompts given out at the Victoria Creative Writing Group meeting. One of them is a fun little thing I might polish a touch and then send out. The other is yet another story I’ve been carrying around without knowing how to approach, and the second writing prompt of the night gave me exactly the right angle. I think this one might be a longer piece when I’m done, but at least I’ve got a first draft now, something I can edit into shape.

How about you? What do you do to keep yourself motivated (I take classes, apparently, and join writing groups)? Are you making good progress in your current projects, or does your writing process need a shake-up?

I have a love-hate relationship with Fedex.

On the love side, when I was searching for the best way to send books and clothes up to Canada, they quoted me an incredibly cheap price — less than $300USD — sold me boxes, and helped me re-pack some items. My first five boxes spent a week going through Customs, but they made it here safe and sound.

On the hate side is...well, everything else.

After moving into the apartment in Victoria, I went back to San Diego for a couple weeks, to pack up my remaining books and personal items (ok, I’ll admit it: toys). I ended up with seven boxes this time, which barely fit into our little EV. But I managed to get them downstairs, into the car, and then into the Fedex store — the same one I’d used before — to ship out.

The total was quite a bit higher this time — $800USD — but I paid it, confident that these boxes, too, would be treated well and arrive soon. Got on my flight the next day, feeling proud of getting that big thing done before I left.

So I was shocked and dismayed when my wife sent me a photo— as I was crossing from Vancouver on the ferry — showing those same seven boxes, stacked neatly outside of our house in SD, with no explanation from Fedex as to why.

I checked the tracking info for the shipment, and sure enough, it said they had been delivered (!) to San Diego, having been rejected by Fedex as soon as they picked them up from the store. The reason? “Improper Shipment.”

I confess I may at this point have uttered several curses which are not appropriate to type. With one stroke, Fedex had turned my accomplishment — getting my office cleaning out to make room for my wife’s family — into one more burden placed on my wife, who now had to deal with seven very heavy boxes.

This is the part of the story that, were this a movie, would be told in montage. Scenes of me on the phone with Fedex, alternating between tapping my foot as I wait on hold and raising my voice in frustration to the poor customer service agent on the other side. Scenes of me tapping away at my computer, hunting for information online that Fedex itself did not seem to possess (the one explanation they came up with — “your shipment was missing its commercial invoice” — was easily disproven when my wife found the commercial invoice taped to one of the boxes).

Finally, finally, we would get to the good part. I found an employee at the local (SD) Fedex who dug around enough to find out what really happened: It turns out you can’t ship your stuff from the US to Canada via normal Ground shipping. You have to use Express.

This is mind-boggling, to put it mildly. How does it help Canada to make me pay more to ship there? They’re going to hold onto it anyway, to inspect it at Customs, and I’m fine with that. Please, open my boxes and gaze upon my reading selection! Just...don’t make me pay $300 a box to ship it, huh?

But! This Fedex employee said as a way to apologize for the hassle, he could re-ship the boxes for me, Express, without charging me anything extra. The one condition was that he couldn’t have someone pick them up, my wife would have to bring them in. On a weekday. Before 6pm, so he could be there to process it.

And my wife came through! She had a Friday off, so she scheduled a contractor to come to give us a project quote, and had him load the boxes for her. Then she spoke with the Fedex employee about what to do, drove them to the Fedex store, and dropped them off! She sent me a photo of the receipt with one word: Done!

...Only it wasn’t done.

Because the very next day, I’m Facetiming with her, and what do we see? A Fedex truck pulls up to the driveway. Starts unloading seven very familiar looking boxes.

Confused, I had another look at the receipt she’d sent me. And sure enough: They’d shipped them Ground again.

At this point, our little movie would be no dialog, just a series of bleeps.

Somehow, my wife convinced the Fedex driver not to leave the boxes with us. Somehow, he said he’ll take them back to the warehouse and they’ll ship them Express this time.

So my books and speakers and keepsakes are...somewhere, right now, in a kind of shipping purgatory.

The moral of the story? If you’re moving to Canada, and you want to take more stuff than you can pack on a plane, just get a moving pod. It’ll be cheaper, and a lot less hassle.

Writing slowed this week, but didn’t stop. I got through “Draft 1.5” of the new short story, which brought it to a healthy 2k words, inching out of flash territory.

I already have three areas I want to touch up next. The ending, in particular, I think needs to pack more punch. But these will be smaller changes, so I’m letting the story cool on the shelf, so to speak, before coming back to make them.

Meanwhile, I joined a critique group! After a meeting of the Victoria Creative Writing Group, one of the other new members put out a call for folks to join in critiquing each other’s writing on a regular basis. We had our first meeting last night, and I think it went really well :) It’s a small group (there’s just four of us total) but that means we each get plenty of time to give and get feedback. At the end of this first session, we even had time to do a 15 minute writing exercise, and I got another flash piece out of it!

I feel so lucky to have been accepted into the group. Many thanks to the organizer, and to the VCWG for bringing us all together.

Written with: Ulysses

Under the influence of: “Never Let Me Go,” Placebo

Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal...These are the big, bustling, Canadian cities that most folks have heard of, the ones that most new immigrants head for.

So why did I choose to move to Vancouver Island, instead of Vancouver?

To be honest, after living here full-time for just a few weeks, my reasoning is already shifting. As the Oracle says in the Matrix:

...you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it.

But! I’d like to set down my original reasons for picking Victoria, in the hopes that my research can benefit others who might be contemplating a move to Canada.

Our Requirements

My work is remote, so in theory we had the whole of Canada to pick from. In practice, though, we had several constraints on where we could live.

No-go Ontario

Our first, oddly enough, was our dogs. We have two of them, one a German Shepherd/Lab mix, the other our “pocket pitty,” a 45-lb pit bull mix.

It’s the latter that gave us the constraint. You see, the province of Ontario has banned pit bulls, full stop. You can’t breed them, you can’t bring them into the province, you can’t keep one as a pet. If they think you’ve got a pit bull, they can seize it, and make you go to court to prove it’s not a pit bull. If you fail, they kill it.

This is a ridiculous law, and I hope it gets repealed soon. Most dog bites are from small dogs, who (obviously) are more likely to feel threatened by people and thus lash out. Pit bulls themselves were originally bred as “nanny dogs,” to watch over children. Children.

Anyway, since we’re looking for somewhere to live long-term, even if we weren’t going to bring the pups up immediately, there’s no way we could settle in Ontario. So Toronto, Ottawa, all those communities were out.

Non, merci, Quebec

Ok, so what about Montreal? Or Quebec City? The home of poutine, what’s not to like?

Here we had two more constraints, both related to my wife.

The first is that she’s got Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD). Basically, the words you say aren’t the ones she hears. It’s like she has an autocorrect constantly running in her head, and it’s just as inaccurate as the one on your phone. So the prospect of having to brush off (and perfect!) her high school French was daunting. I speak French, so could help her out, but who wants to live in a city where you have to depend on someone else all the time to get basic things done?

The second constraint was simply the weather. I know, everyone knows it’s cold in Canada, and my wife’s no wimp. But she had major jaw surgery twenty years ago, and still has metal screws in her face (under the skin, goodness). In cold weather, those screws hurt.

So Quebec was out.

The Rent is Too High

That left British Columbia. I know I’m skipping over the Maritime Provinces — see the problems with Quebec, above — and Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba — ditto, with a side of “I’m from Texas, I don’t need to live in Canada’s version.”

We looked at a couple of different cities. There’s Vancouver itself, obviously. Further east you’ve got Kelowna and the Okanagan, and Kamloops north of them, both regions that are supposed to get less rain than the coast without the severe winters of the eastern provinces.

All three were enticing, but here again, we had constraints that narrowed our options for us.

For one, the plan shifted from both of us going up at the same time to just me, so my wife could stay behind and move her mother up to San Diego (that’s a whole other blog post). Naturally, she would keep the car, not only so she could get around San Diego, but also because our vehicle — a 2021 Chevy EV — is currently under recall for battery issues. And you can’t bring a car into Canada if it’s under recall.

No vehicle ruled out anything that’s not sufficiently urban to have a walkable downtown core. So Kelowna and Kamloops were both out, as being too car-dependent.

That left Vancouver, and though I’d heard good things about the city, I soon discovered one thing everyone said was completely true: The rents are absurd.

Not so absurd that there are a lot of places available, mind you. I started checking rental sites — a half dozen or so — multiple times a day, looking for units in areas where we thought we’d want to live. If anything came up at a reasonable price, it was usually gone by the time I contacted the building manager. Anything that lingered was out of our price range.

We had an extra set of constraints there, because we wanted to keep the house in San Diego (so my wife’s mother could live there). So we had to be able to afford both the place in Canada and the house in SD. Our already tight budget got tighter.

I was starting to despair of finding a place in time, when I got the idea to look at Victoria.

The Obvious Choice

And I’m glad I did. Victoria ticked all the boxes: Walkable downtown core, where I could get all my chores done on foot. Reasonable rental prices in modern buildings, so we wouldn’t break the bank. Available units, so we could move in when we wanted. Close to Vancouver, so in a pinch I could commute to network up there. And far enough south that it’s the only weather station in Canada to record a winter without going below freezing.

So Vancouver was out. Victoria, and Vancouver Island, were in.

Better All the Time

In hindsight, the choice was obvious, but at the time we fretted. We’d never been to any part of British Columbia, so we were judging everything from other people’s reports, scouring Google Maps, and watching video walk-throughs sent to us by building managers.

Since coming here, though, I’m glad we picked Victoria. Vancouver is gorgeous, but so big and expensive. Everything feels so accessible here; I can walk out my door and fifteen minutes later be in a park with bright flowers and tall trees, where the sounds of the city vanish. Or go down to the coast and gaze across the Strait at the Olympic Mountains. Or pop into one of dozens of coffee shops for a warming cup.

So if you’re looking to make the move to Canada, I urge you to do your research. Have a look at the laws of the province, to see if any are going to rankle. Set a strict budget for renting, and stick to it. And have a look at cities outside the big ones; you might find something smaller fits you better.

I’ve written a new short story!

Last Saturday I turned a corner, mood-wise. After not being able to write for six months, I sat down and hammered out the first draft of a new flash piece. The story is something I’d been mulling over for a while; I had the genre (noir/crime) and a line of dialog, but that’s it.

But Saturday morning I sat down and told myself to write something, anything, even if it was crap. And the whole story came tumbling out of me.

It’s a huge relief, to know that I can still do it. Even if the draft is terrible, it exists, it’s mine, and that means I’m not hopeless as a writer just yet.

I’ve spent the week since working on a “Draft 1.5”, as I’m thinking of it. I’m still too close to the story to properly edit it into a second draft, but as soon as I was done with the first draft I started seeing areas where I needed to go back, add depth or look for a more creative angle.

In particular, the motive for the crime bothered me. The one in the first draft felt too pat, too cliché. Not real enough.

So one morning I took out my little notebook and went through the characters in the story, one by one, and wrote a description — personality, circumstances, and appearance — for each. I had only vague ideas of the characters when I started, but by the end of the exercise I had them firmly fixed in my mind, along with a better motive, and plot changes to reflect that.

Thus I’ve begun another draft to incorporate those changes. I know there’ll be more drafts after this one, including a proper second once I’ve let the story sit for a couple weeks. But for now I want to make this first draft a little stronger.

If you’re struggling with writing, and not sure you can hack it anymore, let me reassure you: You can! You might just need a break, or to try a different genre, or a different format. Me, I needed all three, including permission from a writing instructor to drop my current project altogether. It’s scary to contemplate, but liberating in the end.

Go forth and write messy drafts, write bad dialog, and create some one-dimensional characters. Whatever it takes to get the words out, to get your mind working on the story. You can always, always, clean it up later, but you can’t do anything without that first draft. So get to it :)

Written with: Ulysses

Under the influence of: “Model Citizen,” Meet Me @ the Altar