muskoka colonization road

One of my favourite Christmas gifts this year was a CD of music by Yo-Yo Ma called Songs of Joy and Peace. It’s a collaborative effort with Yo-Yo and other music masters including Diana Krall, Dave Brubek, James Taylor and Natalie Macmaster. When I watched a documentary about the process of recording the songs, I found myself feeling quite wistful about the collaboration. All these talented people got to work together to make something beautiful!

As a writer, of course, I don’t do much collaboration. It’s really all me: I pick the topic, decide on the slant, do the research, write the words, edit the words. There’s no equivalent of an arranger or producer, like there is with an orchestra. Nobody smiling across from me and keeping the beat. I don’t provide the harmony to anyone else’s melody. I’m more like a trumpet solo in an empty room.

And yet.

This week, I had a call from a woman in Toronto who, along with her aunt, has opened her family’s letters and photos to me for inclusion in my book. Mr. Busy listened patiently to my rant about the grant application process I’m currently slogging through. Two new people subscribed to my blog. My friend Lynn lent her HTML skills to update the blog – check out the cool new process tracker! – and also my website. And Lynn, my friend Jen and Mr. Busy all said of course they’d read 20 pages of manuscript on a tight deadline so I can complete the grant application.

Hmmm. Trumpet solo in an empty room? More like an orchestra after all.

It’s the day before Christmas and all through my house

Not a keyboard is clicking, at rest is my mouse.

The manuscript’s tucked in a file coloured tan

Awaiting new word counts and edits come Jan.

I’ve turned my attention to seasonal  matters

The kitchen’s a mess – look, I’ve splattered the batter!

Cookies and squares now should claim me – instead

I find visions of road building dance in my head.

I need to wrap presents, make plans with my friends

But I think of a detail to which I attend:

I remember that one of the surveyors stayed

In Muskoka on site on one cold Christmas day.

Was it Wadsworth? Or Bridgland? I cannot recall.

But think of this lonely work in winter’s pall!

The story’s worth telling – I’ll just make a note

Along with the dozen or more that I wrote

So that when I return to the project I’ll find

All the details are right there still fresh in my mind.

So Gibson, and Rankin and Dennis and Spry

Now dash away, dash away, please let me try

To turn my attention to good times and fun.

 I’m postponing writing ‘til the holidays are done.

To all of my readers, my best and good cheer

Merry Christmas to all, see you in the new year!

Last Friday (December 10) I sent the first 20 pages of manuscript to some “friendly readers:” my writer friends Jen and Lynn, and Mr. Busy. These three offer concrete, honest feedback and some great suggestions for improvement. I want to thank each of them for helping me to become a better writer!

While they were busy reading, I switched gears. I wrote an article for a magazine deadline of January 30 and wrote some advertising copy for my upcoming workshops. I also did some reading and analysis to help me figure out how to make the improvements in the book manuscript that I already know are needed.

First, I re-read two of my reference books:

1. Read Like A Writer by Francine Prose and
2. On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Prose advocates “close reading” of the masterpieces of literature, which, she says, “involves reading for sheer pleasure but also with an eye and a memory for which author happens to do which thing particularly well.”

Zinsser’s book is a primer for anyone who strives to write spare, clear, powerful words. “Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next,” he says, by “using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.”

I immersed myself in the lessons of these two teachers and then turned my attention to two books that I consider masterpieces of social history, which can instruct me in creating Muskoka’s Main Street:

• A Private Capital by Sandra Gwyn and
• Gold Diggers by Charlotte Gray.

I read the first chapter of each book “like a writer,” with an eye to structure and language. What information is actually in the first chapter? How does the author draw me into the story? How does she orient me to the times and issues she is writing about? How much background history and geography does she introduce? What is the style and tone of the language – the actual words she uses?

One thing I’ve learned so far is Gwyn and Gray use much smaller direct quotes from their reference material than I have. They take what’s in a diary, say, and turn it into modern language to get the story moving. The direct quotes they use are short and catchy. They don’t include any archaic 19th century words that could confuse a reader.

Archaic? I meant, “no longer in ordinary use.” Sorry, Mr. Zinsser.

Writers live and die by word counts. Everything is measured by number of words: how big is this book? What is the magazine’s preferred article length? How many words to I need to write per day to get me to the 20-30 pages (5,000 to 7,500 words) required by City of Ottawa Arts Funding Program by January 15?

Since returning from the Ontario Archives I’ve held myself to a target of 4 hours or 500 words(whichever comes first), 5 days a week. Sometimes this schedule feels a bit relentless, but overall I have to admit that it is quite comfortable. And the words add up, even though some days I don’t produce the quota because I spend all 4 hours researching.

I’m sitting at about 6,490 words now. That’s 20 double-spaced pages. This is what my process looks like:

1. I read over everything I have about a topic, then I write about it. I stuff my head full of information, say on Dennis’ 1860 survey, then I wander around the house thinking, what am I going to say about this? For awhile the answer is, “I don’t have a clue,” but then I take my own advice from the workshops I teach and pretend I’m telling the story out loud to my best friend: “Have I got a story for you!”

2. I write what I feel like writing. From my outline, I know the overall shape of this book: a chronological narrative of the road, from the first surveys to its current existence as part of Highway 11. Eventually I’ll write the whole story. But I started with the surveyors, because I was most interested in them, and I have great primary source material – their diaries and field notes – and because the 19th century is my favourite historical time period. But I’m already feeling the need to pull up from the detail and write an overview of the district. I’m also getting keen to focus on the settlers: who were they, how did they get here and how did the free grant lands work? If I write what I’m keen to write, the writing should be lively because my enthusiasm should show up on the page.

3. I create little “quilt pieces” of text that I sew together in a separate step. I tend to pick a topic and write a self-contained piece about that and worry about how it’s going to fit into the narrative later. This is something my writer friend Joan taught me years ago: writing is like quilting, where you first make these little squares, then you sew them all together later. So I have a number of quilt pieces so far, like: profiles of the surveyors and how they were connected, first-hand accounts of what the road was like in 1860-61, and a description of early Washago, where the road begins. (They kept some of the rattlesnakes in cages. Really.)

I did set out wanting to take more of a tortoise than a hare approach to this book. So far so good! Nothing yet has flipped me on my back and left me with my feet waving in the air.

I started to write the book last week. Yes, I’m out of the archives and onto the page! Starting with the surveyors’ stories, because that’s where I feel like starting.

You should see my office: piles of open books, propped up maps and pages from surveyor diaries cover my desk and the floor. I sit in the middle of it in front of my laptop, typing, then looking something up (where is Eldon?), typing then checking the Thesaurus (what’s another word for explore?), typing then googling (where is the mouth of the Muskoka river?) 

I worked for four hours today and I have almost the same word count as I had on Friday. 1,626 very rough words. That’s because I did a lot of rewriting, trying for the right blend of storytelling and data, and trying for the right pace. I want this book to be more story than data. By that I mean that I want to offer the facts in such a way that the reader almost doesn’t notice that she’s learning something. That’s how I like to learn – and write – about history.

I could tell you that Charles Unwin surveyed the 25 miles from Lake Couchiching to the Great Falls on the South Branch of the Muskoka River in 1856-57 and you’d learn something. But wouldn’t you rather know that nobody wanted to hire on with his survey team because he was paying less than anyone else in town and there was plenty of other construction work in Orillia for guys to do? So he had to write to his boss and, in beautiful 19th century style, “respectfully beg” to be able to pay his guys the going rate.

So now you’ve learned a little more about the management issues faced by the surveyors, the competitive labour market in Orillia in 1856, the tight rein the government had on the surveyors’ expenses, and also – I hope –  about business correspondence as it compares to today. (Fun idea: send your boss an email and sign off with, “I have the honour to be, Sir, your most humble servant.”)

This is how I like to learn about history: though story. This is how I like to write about history, even though it might take me half a day to find Unwin’s accounts and field notes on microfilm and then photocopy and type the relevant bits so I have a colourful paragraph or two to include in the book.

How about you? Don’t you wish your history teacher taught more in story style than with data?