writing Archives - Page 13 of 18 - imaginary magnitude

September 9, 2013September 17, 2013

Limits

I don’t typically work from home when I’m writing fiction. Too many distractions which are almost purely mental (as opposed to audible or visual). Reminders of things that need cleaning, fixing, adjustment. Things I’ve put off seemingly forever.

I typically write in coffee shops, sometimes the odd bar. So yes, I am typically more comfortable in a strange place, surrounded by strangers (though to be honest I tend not to seek out locations that are packed), with music that is not my own playing overhead. This may sound odd. After all, what could possibly provide more distraction than that?

I find the hardest variable is music. The last thing I want is to write while music I know is playing. Why? Because if I like a song, then I’ll be focused on it rather than the brittle little fictional world I’m constructing. My foot will inevitably start beating on the floor to the drums. I will anticipate the dynamics, the chorus. Pretty soon lyrics will be passing through my eyes like ticker-tape instead of my characters’ dialogue.

So, though it might seem paradoxical, I prefer the random jukebox that is the playlist of whomever is working at an establishment I’m located in. And you know what? I discovered many years ago that I can write through pretty much any type of music. And the stranger or furthest away from my taste the music is, the easier it is to tune it out. When I’m in a place that isn’t home, with people I don’t know, with music playing that I wouldn’t necessarily choose to listen to, I can more easily fall into that glorious black hole which allows me to sync with the fictional universe on the other side of my consciousness. Continue reading…

August 29, 2013September 3, 2013

New Author Site

Hello all. In order to promote my upcoming book and to (eventually) be a hub for promoting any published works I do between now and then, I thought it best to have a standalone author site created: mattcahill.ca. This task was handily undertaken by Ingrid Paulson, and it looks great.

Eventually I will start adding pages to the site, to flesh it out (so that it is more than just a page, but an actual “site”).

The question currently stands: what will happen to this here blog? I’m not sure. The more I focus on writing gigs, the less time I have for blogging, and yet – paradoxically – I have more things to blog about because potentially I have more gigs. In other words, there is still a need for the blog, so imagitude will stay where it is and perhaps be linked-to from the author site at some point.

July 18, 2013December 13, 2013

Big News

I’ve been sitting on something pretty big for the last while. Rather than tell you in my own words, I will use one of the rare opportunities in my life where a press release does the talking:

Wolsak & Wynn senior editor Paul Vermeersch has acquired North American rights to Matt Cahill’s debut novel, Someone Else and You (working title). The story is about a man whose life changes irrevocably when he volunteers to take part in a secret society’s time-travel experiment. Kelvin Kong of The Rights Factory arranged the deal.

So yes. This. Huge news.

It’s been a very long road, and while it is not yet over (not by many miles more) I’m grateful for the opportunity to have something of mine released into the public. One less writer polishing his stones, wondering whether to keep bothering.

This would not have been possible without representation from The Rights Factory, specifically my agent (extraordinaire) Kelvin Kong. I look forward to working with everyone at Wolsak & Wynn, particularly my editor, Paul Vermeersch.

Onward and upward. Hugely excited.

June 23, 2013November 9, 2013

Kensington Market Essay in BlogTO

For those who don’t live in Toronto, there’s been a lot of discussion about my neighbourhood, Kensington Market, in the news. Much of it is about preservation vs development. I offered to write an op/ed for BlogTO and they published it today. I’m quite pleased that they kept the essay intact (you never know what an editor’s going to do sometimes). You can read it here.

It feels good to work on my non-fiction chops, and even better when something gets published.

May 21, 2013

Away

I’ve been terribly busy for the last three years: work, school, new career, new work. No complaints except that my non-academic writing has suffered considerably. I believe I’ve only squeezed out one, maybe two short stories during this time. Of course, the bevy of my attention was on revising my novel (and whatever energy I had left was spent on the subsequent one).

With respect to this here blog, I’ve been unapologetically negligent. I’ve had no choice. Blogging’s great, but it’s the odd man out when it has to compete for creativity-expenditure with other areas. For one thing, it doesn’t pay. Another drag on its sail is the competition that social media plays. Between posting stuff on Facebook and Twitter (between which I don’t consider myself a fanatic contributor), little is left for blogging and I think there’s a problem with that.

Twitter ends up being a Post-It Note for ideas which never get developed. You tell yourself: if I just jot this idea down I can come back to it later. The problem with this otherwise workable concept is that in Twitter-land what you post takes the form of its own singular effort – it’s a public communication unto itself which fulfills a basic function which makes me, the author, forget about what it was I was hoping to say (or develop the idea of) later.

And Facebook is just a mess of “seen this” and “done that”.

And so I come back to blogging, for now, to say firstly that I’m still here. Secondly, to say that I feel there is room for this format, out-dated and seemingly formal compared to Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Soon (I think) I will be able to get back to saying things of note and interest.

December 26, 2012December 26, 2012

Author Author

I am represented by a literary agency now and, without going into great detail, my novel has undergone some major changes. Mainly structural. The story hasn’t changed, most of the plotting is still intact, no new characters. But some major changes were made and these changes happened very quickly, and as a result I don’t think what I surrendered (because no experienced author would willingly call any work “done”) was the best effort I could have made. And so, when I realized the extent to which the book needed first-aid, I told my agent to hit the brakes – stop distributing the book and ask those publishers who have not yet read it to not, please and thank you.

I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who has just finished, if finished may be used about any art form, a necessary revision. I am relatively new to this – not writing, but revising. There is an art to revision which is as unique as the art of writing itself. This may sound alien to many, but to fellow writers – novelists especially because of the weight of material we are burdened with – this is a necessary conversion: the realization that you cannot know everything, do everything in your first, second, or even seventh revision. And that potentially great ideas not only require blending with the rest of the work, but the time and space to be seen again with fresh eyes and, if need be, changed once again.

When you don’t respect the process – of writing, of revision (because the two are intertwined like the snakes on a caduceus) – you risk damaging your gains. I ended up not happy with what went out under my name and I am not the first nor will I be the last reluctant person to go through this sometimes necessary experience. I have spent the past four months rejigging, reconsidering, reaching deeper, and sometimes just removing clutter. I worked on my laptop, and after that I had the manuscript printed so that I could look at it like a real book, so that I could see what you can’t easily see on a computer screen. I’ve switched and changed, shortened and lengthened, pared-down and elaborated for clarity.

I think it’s ready now. If not “done” then “done enough”. Or, at the very least, I’m done. And, corny and cliché though it may sound, lessons have been learned.

July 19, 2012August 30, 2012

My Psychotherapy Blog

As some of you (now more of you) know, I recently began a practice as a psychotherapist. I have a website, which gets a fair bit of traffic (allowing that summer is a traditionally slow time of the year), but recently I added an adjunctive blog.

The purpose was to get more of me out there, rather than have people rely on their preconceptions of what a psychotherapist is/does just by staring at my business card. I figured it would help both me and potential clients (including curious onlookers) deal up-front with questions that often go unasked yet which people would like answered.

For example: Do I need to know what’s wrong with me in order to see a therapist? Will I lose my creativity if I see one?

These are some of the things people ask, sometimes in passing, sometimes directly to me. I was inspired to address them, if only so that I could clarify the process of therapy.

That said, it’s a challenge. Unlike this space where I can tear away at preconceptions without concern for who I may be offending, I have to alter the timbre of my voice when blogging for the benefit of those who may be potential clients – it’s not always cut and dry. I ran into this recently with a post I wrote about men and how men tend to have preconceptions about psychotherapy (and how some of this may have to do with the language/imagery predominant in the latest barrage of public service announcements). My partner brought to my attention that what I’d wrote (and published) was in fact meant for this blog, not the one I originally thought it was intended for. So…I went back and changed the voice, as if I were revising a short story.

The lesson? Know your audience. People curious about psychotherapy don’t need to read hard-hitting op/ed-style commentary – the challenge was to go back and revise what I’d done so that, rather than focusing on a political critique of the way society isolates men from seeking help and agitating for personal growth, I retreated/reverted/went back to the more digestible core point of therapy is good for men, too.

Perhaps I will post both versions here to demonstrate how I revised it. In any case, feel free to visit the other blog (and tell your friends).

June 26, 2012June 26, 2012

Sales Pitch

Not that I am hoping for this to be the only entry this year, but having a literary agent pitch my novel, invoking a stylistic similarity to Philip K. Dick, is certainly making the top of the highlight reel of 2012.

May 23, 2012May 27, 2012

Narratives & Messages

We live in an atmosphere concentrated with media: we are drenched so deep that we don’t often realize how integral it has become in our lives. In my fiction, which can be speculative and sometimes nodding to “the future”, I don’t mention this much. I was wondering if, by not speaking to this (awesome/scary) fact of life, I was missing out on saying something substantial about our lives; then again, a writer with the intent to say “something substantial about our lives” is often asking for more than they can deliver to begin with. Perhaps I intentionally avoid the subject. Perhaps I want, fictionally, to portray a world where the reader can escape our media fishbowl, not content to stare into our monitors and smartphones – into any one of the many shining screens around us. *

(*This is not to say that, as someone who writes stories to be read, I am exempt from any of what I go on to describe.)

As Madge the manicurist in the Palmolive commercials used to say: “You’re soaking in it.” And we are.

My concern, as far as this post goes, is not the number of screens surrounding us, nor is it the gross subsidization of our environment by advertising (vis à vis self-interested parties). Content is king, after all. And, unlike ads and the proliferation of screens, I feel we don’t look at content very closely.

We are essentially surrounded by narratives.

Continue reading “Narratives & Messages”

April 9, 2012April 9, 2012

Robertson Davies: Elitist

I was once accused by the chaplain of Massey College of being a gnostic. He was very angry with me indeed. But part of being gnostic was using your head if you wanted to achieve salvation or even a tolerable life. That is something that the Christian church tends rather to discourage. Salvation is free for everyone. The greatest idiot and yahoo can be saved, the doctrine goes, because Christ loves him as much as he loves Albert Einstein. I don’t think that is true. I think that civilization—life—has a different place for the intelligent people who try to pull us a little further out of the primal ooze than it has for the boobs who just trot along behind, dragging on the wheels. This sort of opinion has won me the reputation of being an elitist. Behold an elitist.

This is from a wonderful interview with the multifaceted author, Robertson Davies, for the Paris Review. His responses are well-considered, done as they were before everyone felt pressured to distill themselves into soundbites. He provides a wonderful perspective on fiction writing, the role of the writer, what his own background lends to his writer’s toolkit, as well as an assortment of miscellany (including a very interesting reflection on the differences between Freudian and Jungian psychology, no less). He was a true character.