WRITING TIP: Play Can Result in Progress

ByLee Ann

My theme for Chapter 5 is “Don’t Work So Hard.” That’s the theme for my process, not Chapter 5’s contents. Chapter 5 is about a 10 year period that marked two key turning points for the Muskoka Road:

  1. It extended north out of Muskoka and into the Parry Sound District; and
  2. It met its biggest challenge: the railway.

My biggest challenge to date has been the tendency to work really hard and worry about the imperative of getting the first draft done. It’s a pressure-cooker of my own making; one I’ve decided to get out of. Whew! Too hot in there.

So I will write Chapter 5 in a different way, having as much fun as I can. I started by reviewing the outline – yes, that wonderful document! – and reminding myself of the stories I get to tell in this chapter: New road-building technologies.  Another harrowing description of a stagecoach ride up the road.  “Manitoba fever.”

I’ve paused to savour the richly named cast of characters:

  • Thomas Nepean Molesworth, engineer.
  • James Hankinson Jackson, storekeeper, census-taker, community-builder.
  • Anson Greene Phelps Dodge, lumber baron and railway promoter – who was known as “Alphabet” Dodge because of his habit of signing his name with all three of his initials.

And I’ve been reading late-1800s newspapers from Pennsylvania. Muskoka was heavily marketed there, to “sportsmen” looking for adventure and escape from the coal-fueled city. The personal columns carry tales of several fishing clubs and a group of judges and “other prominent jurists of the State” camping on Lake Muskoka. Not all trips were idyllic. One man was emotionally scarred by the sounds made by a bullfrog he was trying to kill for dinner. Another sustained a serious cut on his knee in an unfortunate flag-raising incident. But one fisherman vowed he had found the definitive protection against Muskoka’s black flies: forget the mix of pennyroyal and almond oil, what you really want is equal parts tar and pork fat.

Hey, cottage opening weekend is coming up. You gotta be ready!

I’m not sure any of these stories will make it into Muskoka’s Main Street. But they’ve given me a sense of the district during a certain brief time in its history. That’s fun. That’s also progress.

WRITING FROM AN OUTLINE, PART 2: The Quilt Approach

ByLee Ann

I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of writers: planners and seat-of-the-pantsers. Planners work with outlines, index cards and detailed notes to plot out their storyline to the nth degree, then sit down and write it all up. Pantsers just start to write and find out what happens next by writing – it’s all quite organic.

I like to do a bit of both. In my last post I talked about how writing from an outline keeps me anchored in my story and focussed on what I want to say. That’s true – but I also like to dive into a topic and see where it takes me. I’d chafe against too much pre-defined structure, but just jumping into a book without any idea of how I plan to tell the story? Nope – too scary for me.

Here again is the Outline for Chapter 4 of Muskoka’s Main Street. Chapter 4 outline The outline is my high-level structure; I’ve defined the entire book to this level of detail. The elements within the outline might change a little, but basically this is the book I am going to write – and also, by the way, the book the publisher agreed to buy.

Each bullet point is a topic I want to cover in the chapter. I’m not sure yet which order these will appear in the final version, but that doesn’t matter. I will write each topic separately, using the “quilt approach.” I love this approach. It works like a making a quilt: you make separate, individual “squares” first; you sew them together later.

With this approach to writing, each bullet point in the outline – each topic – is a “square.” I don’t have to start writing in any particular order. I can write the “square” I am interested in writing that day. Pick a topic, write it. Then write the next topic that grabs my attention. Writing is more fun this way, and I think when you write what appeals to you, your enthusiasm gets onto the page.

After I’ve written a few “squares”, I figure out what order they go in. Since Main Street is a chronological story, it’s pretty easy for me to arrange the topics by the date they occurred. But I don’t necessarily write them in that order. In fact, as of this week, I’ve drafted all of Chapter 4 except the Sidebar about the Free Grants and Homestead Act and the part about Captain Hunt arriving on the scene.

I feel like writing about the Free Grants Act next. More on that soon!

WRITING A BOOK FROM AN OUTLINE, PART 1

ByLee Ann

My outline is my anchor and my roadmap. Written back during the earliest discussions with the publisher, it provides a high-level, chapter by chapter blueprint of how I intend to tell this story. Here’s what the outline for Chapter 4 looks like. Chapter 4 outline I’m drafting Chapter 4 now and it’s big! Lots was going on in Muskoka between 1865 and 1870: logging moved into the district, the first steamship was launched on Lake Muskoka, townships were starting to have enough people in them that they were able to incorporate and govern themselves, settlers organized an association and published a guide for new pioneers – and new pioneers flooded in after the new Free Grant Lands and Homestead Act passed.

Every single one of these events had a direct impact on the Muskoka Road. True! If the road wasn’t being ripped up by the stagecoaches hauling loggers and equipment, it was being bypassed by ever-so-grateful travellers who could take a nice boat ride for at least part of their journey. As the townships formalized their existence, one of the first by-laws they passed was invariably one to deal with road maintenance. And the settler’s guide had a few choice words for how the road had been laid out in the district – like hello, we can’t go in a straight line, every straight line leads to a lake, or a ravine, or a cliff here!

It all makes for fun storytelling. But I get easily side-tracked – there are so many fabulous Muskoka stories. Little boys who left home to join a “shanty gang” in the bush. Individual settler families and how they hacked a farm out of a boreal forest. The wheeling and dealing of the community leaders. Without my outline I’d fall right off the rails of the main storyline.

It’s all about the road. It’s not enough that a particular fact is fascinating, funny or stranger than fiction. Any person, any event, any new law or innovation I write about has to have a direct bearing on the road. Of course, I have to give a certain amount of context so the reader gets the significance of the road and its role in the broader history of the district – but I have to walk a fine line. Too much context and we lose the point of the story. Too little and the story becomes dry and boring.

When I find myself deep in a side story, I come up for air and ask, where was I going with this? The outline brings me back to my story.

MUSKOKA: Then and Now

ByLee Ann

This week I slammed up against some contrasts and realizations about Muskoka. Funny how that happened.

I was revising Chapter 3, which means I was deep in the 1860s of Muskoka and its first white settlers. The gruelling business of hacking out a place to live in a boreal forest. Scratching in seed around massive tree stumps that would take seven years to rot before they could be dug out of the ground.  Creating through strength of will and muscle some fledgling communities.

Then one evening, I turned to my latest issue of Muskoka Magazine to relax. This monthly periodical shares updates on what’s happening in the region, plus profiles on “Muskoka lifestyles.” Full-page colour ads for contractors who build exquisite lakeside getaways.  Villas available for fractional ownership. Festivals, cottage décor trends, and recreation options in communities mature enough to have a Heritage Foundation.

Slam.

Is this even the same place? Well, of course it is. But at the same time, a different world.

In the 1860s and 70s, people were trying to make Muskoka into something it is not. From a raw wilderness of forest, lakes and rock, white settlers came and tried to tame it into farmland, neatly organized into 100 acre lots. And for a while it seemed to work. In the early 1860s the farmers along the Muskoka Road produced an astonishing amount of crops, even in the worst soil Morrison Township had to offer. But once the forest’s thin layer of humus had been depleted, the farmers were left staring at the impenetrable granite of the Canadian Shield.

Thankfully, today, we aren’t doing that any more. We found out the hard way that only about 10% of the district is suitable for farming. The rest is Precambrian rock, lakes, rivers, and – once again – forest. These very elements are what we treasure about the region. Instead of trying to hack this wild district into farms, we go there to enjoy nature. And through the efforts of such organizations as the Muskoka Heritage Foundation, we try to preserve nature as much as possible.

My happiest realization is that Muskoka is a district known and loved for recreation rather than back-breaking struggle. The district’s residents have all its splendour in their back yards. People come here to play, to escape the city, to rest and enjoy seasonal family havens. For plenty of families, this has been a multi-generational joy. In fact, at exactly the same time the early settlers were trudging up the Muskoka Road, so were the first tourists. And of course, long before they arrived, the first nation people also enjoyed the area for its abundant natural gifts: game, fish and breathtaking beauty.

But experiencing the “Muskoka lifestyle” doesn’t come cheap. We are a long way from the free grant lands offered to settlers in the 1860s; Muskoka is now one of the most expensive addresses in Ontario. So imagine first these families of immigrants, many with nothing more than dreams in their pockets, trudging up the Muskoka Road in creaky wagons dragged by oxen. Then flash forward to glossy pages of designer cottages. This to me is the starkest contrast of all: an area once literally free for the taking is now far beyond the means of most people.

MUCKING ABOUT IN SENTENCES: Editing Chapters

ByLee Ann

On my whiteboard this week is a quote from writer Annie Dillard:

It’s a privilege to muck about in sentences all morning.

So true! I’ve been heads-down editing Chapters 2 and 3, after reading them out loud and finding out what needs to be changed. As part of the process, I’ve also incorporated the recent feedback I’ve received from my “friendly readers”: Jen, Lynn and Mr. Busy.

Most. Fun. Ever.

I mean, really. What a privilege: I’m wallowing around in 1864, a time when the pristine face of Muskoka was being permanently changed by axe blows. I’m reading the memoirs of a Muskoka steamship captain, trying to pull everything I think I will need before I have to return this book to the library. I’m hunting down 19th century population figures for Gravenhurst and Bracebridge, and discovering first-hand stories from several surveyors and settlers. 

Speaking of surveyors and settlers:

  • James Bridgland is still my favourite surveyor – he gets top marks for bluntness; says the Muskoka Road was “never  even tolerably good.”
  • Settler, newspaper publisher and Muskoka promoter Thomas McMurray wins for hyperbole. Everything he writes about Muskoka is suspect – he was just so darn keen about the place.

As part of the editing of these two chapters, I’ve had to do some more research. I’ve had to look hard at the Muskoka district, to understand where the rivers flow, where the rapids and waterfalls are and which direction the granite ridges run. All of these things, of course, affected the surveyors, road-builders and settlers. Luckily I’ve discovered that I like maps and geography almost as much as sentences!

Other random things I’ve learned this week:

  • The “surveyors’ chain” used by all the 19th century Muskoka Road surveyors was invented in 1620 by an English mathematician who was also a clergyman. I think you’d need some divine inspiration to come up with a gadget that synthesized two measuring systems, one based on the number four and one based on the number ten. This story may earn its own sidebar in the book.
  • The famous prize turnip (no, I’m still not sick of talking about it!) was grown in some of the worst land Muskoka had to offer. This success story doesn’t do anything to support the fact that it was desperately hard to farm in the Muskoka district. I’ll have to figure out how to deal with that.

Even with all the changes and additional research, my word count is still creeping up overall. Privilege and progress!

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BABY-BOOMER IN THE BLOGOSPHERE PART 3: Why Writers Should Blog

ByLee Ann

I’ve always admired columnists. You know – the writers of newspaper and magazine columns whose job it is to write reflective and informative pieces on current events or current social issues. People like Joseph Mitchell, a features writer for The New Yorker for 58 years. Or Joe McClelland, reporter and columnist for The London Free Press for 27 years. Or Anna Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times. Treat yourself: look them up and read their work. Here’s what you will find:

  • A theme. Each piece has a purpose and makes a point. It’s not a string of random thoughts.
  • Tight structure. Their articles have a beginning, a middle and an end. Paragraphs link to each other like pearls in a necklace.
  • Luminous, vivid prose. I can pick up any article by any of these columnists and find delicious phrasing that takes me right into the story. 

A good blog post is like a good column. It has all the above attributes. And I think writing a regular blog is fantastic practice for any writer. You can write to a deadline. You try for tight, purposeful prose that has a point to it. You work hard for words that sparkle.

And like a column, your blog has to have relevance to your readers, or they’ll skip over to something else that does. 

If your blog gives good prose and good value, you can build a following, work with your readers to develop an idea, even post excerpts of your book to get feedback before publication.

But above all, you can hone your skills as a writer. It’s not easy to write a good blog post – one that has the attributes of a Mitchell or McClelland or Quindlen piece.

But with this practice, I’ll get better.