Gillian Wigmore has a nationally renowned way of arranging words, and that has now caused her some challenges in arranging her schedule. She starts that process tonight at CNC's Stan Shaffer Theatre at 7 p.m.
The reputed Prince George writer has just released her first novella - Grayling - to critical reviews, and she also has a book of poetry - her literary centre of mass - coming out later this year.
And she is scrabbling away at her master's degree.
Oh yeah, and she is a devoted wife and mother.
It happened because her last volume of poems, Dirt of Ages published in 2012, ran her brain dry, but she's recharged more quickly than she anticipated.
"The [Grayling] story itself flowed fast, but it was after Dirt of Ages came out and I felt I didn't have anything else to say in poetry for awhile," she said. "For a long time I had been wanting to work on fiction, and in 2009 I started. I wrote every night for about three months, only for about an hour each time because I have the kids and life, but it was wonderful. I never knew what was coming next; it was totally unplanned."
Before she fully grasped the load she had stacked up, the short novel's plot and character, and occasional flares of poetry, began to pop. Her editors and publishing companies liked it all, so the two projects grew and she was locked into a pair of simultaneous literary projects.
For scheduling purposes, she is putting her emphasis on the novella now, hitting the media with a poetry blitz later this fall, she is a guest at writers festivals in Ottawa and Victoria, then picking up Grayling again for a national tour in spring starting in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Meeting a fiction audience for the first time is a thrill for the usual poet. It was a thrill to shake hands with that writing process itself, with its characters to discover and reveal and its plotlines to weave with setting.
When she had finished with Grayling, BC Bookworld Magazine called it "a deceptively slim book that packs a mighty wallop."
So what is she trying to wallop?
"Northern B.C.," she gladly retorted. "This place is so extraordinary. My family and I and another family and another couple did a canoe trip in the Dease River and it was such a treat that I wanted to go back to that landscape in my writing. I figured if I put a character on the river, I would have to get him off eventually. It is mainly human versus human with some nature versus nature as well. Some of it is surviving the landscape and some is surviving your own brain."
She said the story itself came in a brisk, steady flow but then came the real work: editing. She and printing company MotherTongue Publishing managed to acquire the sought-after red pen skills of famed B.C. writer Jack Hodgins. Among his many award-winning short stories and novels, he also literally wrote the book on how to write books (A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction).
Hodgins was Wigmore's professor at the University of Victoria and came on board as her project mentor for Grayling.
"It was wonderful and terrifying because he is just so good and so generous," she said. "He'd give me pages and pages of notes. Even though it was such a small work [novellas are shorter than novels but longer than short stories], he was willing to devote himself. I was so lucky. I agreed a lot with his suggestions, and if we did have a difference of opinion he was very accommodating, but also I often came around to his thoughts after awhile."
She said the act of public readings is much different between long-form literature and poetry. When she was reading to an audience from her previous books "I was used to being able to break up the event into small parts, so you can reengage the audience or get a sense of what they like and move towards that" whereas readings from this new work need to have longer periods pulling from the page and less ability to shift mood gears.
Tonight's CNC reading is free, and all are encouraged to attend.
If you miss this event, Wigmore and her husband Travis Sillence will be in the spotlight at the Nechako Branch of the Prince George Public Library (Hart Shopping Centre location) on Friday at 7 p.m. to give a discussion and slide show of the source material for Grayling. They will give a public presentation on that Dease River trip and many others they have taken as a family. They are talking about canoe tripping with children (theirs are now 13 and 11 with almost 10 years of outdoors experience already). It is the first in a series of Nechako Branch public programs called Everyday Experts.
