People have been asking how things are going with The 29th Day since I have not mentioned it in a while. I’ll start from the beginning for those of you who have recently started following my blog (thank you!).

Everything started when I met Terry Fallis back in late March 2009 at his book reading at the Beaches Public Library. I had the idea of writing a novel back in 2004 and had thought out the concept but did nothing further. When my second baby was born in the summer of 2008, I started writing for an hour a day when he napped and my older son was in school. I approached my writing the same as I did my other amateur artistic hobbies - painting, knitting, pottery, dress-design - with sporadic enthusiasm, no grand plan and modest expectations about the outcome. In short, I was writing but not dedicated enough to write a whole novel. By the time I met Terry, I had accepted that I would not get my manuscript done during my maternity leave (I was returning to work in September after an extended vacation over the summer). I had decided that I would get to it when I retire – I had a busy life, a fun life and did not necessarily need to write a novel to be happy.

Meeting Terry changed everything. I loved hearing him read from The Best Laid Plans, how he engaged with the audience and answered questions. When he signed my copy of The Best Laid Plans, I asked him to write something that would inspire a writer. He got a gleam in his eye and asked if I was talking about myself. I backed off, and said, “Well, my dad wants to write a memoir and my four year old son likes to write.” As an afterthought, I added, “I write too. ” So, Terry signed my book, “To a family of writers: keep the words flowing.” But then, Terry went one step further and asked what I was writing. I stood to the side, waiting while Terry signed books and talked with everyone else in line. Then we talked about writing – my book and his. Remarkably, Terry was interested in the writing of an unpublished writer and gave me some tips based on his own process in writing an award-winning book, The Best Laid Plans. It was as if my writing counted for something, even though it was not published and even though it was not finished. I was thrilled. Terry blogged about our meeting when he posted my interview with him.

Then, I went home and read The Best Laid Plans. I could do nothing else once I started. I shirked my motherly duties, lay in my bed on a Saturday afternoon reading (hadn’t done that since elementary school!). Then when it got dark, I called down and said that I could not come for dinner, could not do the children’s baths, they had to go on for the bed-time routine without me … and so on, until I finished the book. Luckily, it was a very well-written book, with clever hooks throughout so it did not take long. When I finished, I was even more excited.  It was an intelligent, funny book. This was the kind of novel I wanted to write, that I had to write, that I was trying to write.  

Because of the interest Terry had expressed in my writing, I sent my first chapter to him by email. Terry saw potential in it, though he noted it was “overwritten” (it was – I had been revising it for 5 years and never moved beyond it!). Because of Terry’s encouragement, I wrote the next chapter and the next chapter. In addition to my baby’s morning nap time, I wrote every night from 7:30 pm until 1 am  (my lovely partner accommodated my newfound obsession with writing). I could not stop thinking about my novel - I wrote it with the same feeling as I have when I read a good book: I needed to know what happened next, I chuckled as I wrote various scenes. I emailed Terry my manuscript chapter by chapter and Terry read each one and made constructive comments. This happened for about the first seven chapters, but then he was really into writing the sequel to The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, and could not keep up. Lucky for me, Terry did not mind that I continued to send him my chapters as I completed them. I relied on that email to Terry to stop me from my usual pattern of compulsive revising. Without that support, I never would have moved beyond chapter 1!

By chapter 14, I had developed the ability to write a chapter and move on, so I stopped sending them to Terry. Later in the spring, I went to hear Terry read at the North York Library with my parents. Terry very kindly referred to me as, “My friend, Evadne, who is a writer.” So then I said, well if that’s what he called me that’s what I am. About 2.5 months after having met Terry, I finished version 1 of my manuscript, The 29th Day Hypothesis (as I called it before Margaret Atwood’s advice). I printed it up and had a number of people review it over the summer.

I started my blog after the Word on the Street Festival in September 2009, when I heard Cynthia Good recommend that as a way of developing an audience. [I know that it is controversial, but I refer to myself as "author" and "writer" on this blog even though my novel is not yet published. I do this because I often deal with the public for work and I have written various documents for publication by my employer. I want to make it clear that this is my personal writing blog and not linked to what I do as a Senior Policy Analyst (my other identity). This is especially important for the author interviews as I sometimes interview people for work purposes and there is obviously an overlap in the topics that interest me in my personal writing and my professional work].

In the fall of 2009, I continued to revise my novel. Version 2 was reviewed by Anna (who I met at Margaret Atwood’s book launch), and others.  In December 2009, I made a further round of revisions based on the feedback I got on version 2. Towards the end of December, I gave version 3 to one friend and my two novel-hating sisters to read.

Then, I took a break over the Christmas holidays. I really needed that – my work is intense and I stay up late to write in the evening after my kids sleep. I never have “writer’s block” - I have so little time to write that every minute of my writing time feels like a real treat. But, it can be hard to sustain this pace because, like Terry Fallis and Thomas Trofimuk, I compromise on sleep to be able to do this. So I rested and had fun with my friends and family. If I did any writing, it was in relation to my interview series, which I was starting in a sort of haphazard way. I enjoy talking to writers about how they write and find that preparing for the interviews is not quite as taxing on the brain as finalizing my novel (with all the associated angst over what will happen when I submit it).

Once I got back to work in Jan 2010, I got into the routine of working on my novel again. I continued with my evenings of compulsive revisions. The manuscript had expanded to 114,000 words and I worked hard to cut it back to 100,000 words. Finally, Terry Fallis gently prompted me by asking what I was still doing fiddling with my manuscript as it had looked pretty good when he first read it in the spring of 2009 (thinking about it now, I realize that I had previously asked him to do if this if it got to January and I hadn’t submitted it to any agents yet!). Terry had just sent his manuscript for The High Road off to McLelland and Stewart and indicated that he would have time to read the final version of the manuscript of The 29th Day.

Again, just knowing that I had one more eager reader made all the difference. I worked hard and finished version 4, emailed it to Terry and am now waiting to see what final things I should fix before it goes to an agent. In the meantime, I have been reviewing guides on how to write, reading a ton of books and interviewing fantastic Canadian authors. This has been the most exciting process and I love living in books, the way I did when I was a child. This is already a dream come true.

So once again, I thank Terry Fallis. He is a very talented writer and the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. Seriously. Check out his blog – www.terryfallis.com – listen to his podcasts, go to Newfoundland in April to hear him speak (or any of his book readings), buy The Best Laid Plans and The High Road (podcasts coming soon, book release September 7, 2010), tattoo Terry’s name on one or more body parts of your choosing, sign up for Terry’s course at U of T. Whatever you do, know that Terry totally deserves to have a very, very loyal following that includes you … and your friends … and their friends … and well, every Canadian should get to know Terry Fallis and his writing! Actually, I don’t see why only Canadians should be interested in brilliant satires about politics. Everyone in the whole world should read The Best Laid Plans. It is funny. Period. And Terry Fallis is nice. Really nice.

Anyway, so that’s the update. Now I am waiting to hear back from people reading version 3 and 4. There are even a couple who want to go back and read version 1 and tell me if I have sufficiently improved the parts they thought were weak. Wow. I am very lucky to have so many people interested in my writing and I can honestly say that without this, I would not have come this far – there would be no book, no blog and no author interviews!  Thank you to all of you (especially Terry!).