Robert J Wiersema

Victoria – Monday, October 3, 2011

robert — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:08:25 +0000

This is it, folks. I’ve been roadtesting the material, honing my chops, and at last: the Victoria launch of my new book, Walk Like a Man: Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen. Where else? Bolen Books.

The details:
Monday, October 3, 7 pm at Bolen Books in Hillside Centre. For more information, please call (250) 595-4232.

Vancouver – Saturday October 1, 2011

robert — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:05:03 +0000

The Walk Like a Man tour continues tomorrow night at Red Cat Records in Vancouver, with a night of music, beverages, books, frivolity… oh, and me. I hope you’ll join us.

The details:

Walk Like a Man at Red Cat Records (4332 Main Street, Vancouver) on Saturday, October 1 at 8:00 p.m. Everyone is invited to a launch party for Robert Wiersema

Toronto, Tuesday September 13

robert — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:04:24 +0000

I know, I’ve been AWOL.

My apologies. There are a variety of reasons, including (but not restricted to) technical difficulties, stress, chaos, writing a new book, stress, time, publishing a new book, stress…

But enough about that. I’ll do my best to do better. #famouslastwords

In the meantime, though, there IS a new book: Walk Like a Man: Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen. I’ll be writing more about this anon, but right now I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be doing a bit of touring for it this fall.

First stop? Toronto, Tuesday September 13 at 7 pm at Ben McNally Books.

I hope to see you there.

Bestseller!

robert — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:59:41 +0000

There’s a longer post coming soon, with links to all sorts of neat on-line stuff I’ve been doing (and have had done to me), as well as one talking about touring and Toronto and general surreality.

They’re coming. I swear.

For the moment, though, there’s this:

I got word this morning that, next week, Bedtime Story is going to debut on the Macleans’ bestseller list at #7!

#7!

In the midst of award season! In the flurry of the big fall books!

#7!!!

I’m going to sleep well tonight.

CBC Radio, Monday November 1

robert — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:13:41 +0000

Just a quick heads-up: at 4 pm (PDT), Monday November 1, I’ll be on CBC Radio’s All Points West, talking with Jo-Ann Roberts about Bedtime Story on the eve of its publication.

If you’re not within transponder reach, you can listen on-line. I promise I’ll be scintillating. Well, coherent. Well, maybe.

On pageants and popularity

robert — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:36:33 +0000

I did something last week that I felt… dirty and a little ashamed of, even as I was doing it. I didn’t let the vague sense of shame stop me, naturally. But I had a realization today.

Last week (okay, over the last couple of weeks) I campaigned, lightly, for people on Twitter and Facebook (aka, tweeps and friends) to put Before I Wake forward as a possible choice for Canada Reads 2011.

(A very little bit of background: Canada Reads has been, since its inception, the Survivor of literary contests. Five judges each champion a book through a week worth of debates, with one book being voted “off the island” each episode. This year, they’ve gone a bit American Idol, first in soliciting, via Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets, readers’ picks for essential novels of the last decade. From those picks, a long-long list, a Top 40, was compiled. That list was released this morning. Now, folks can vote for ONE book off that list, which will be reduced to a Top Ten as a result of the public vote. From that Top Ten list, the judges will each pick a title to champion. Ca va?)

So, I urged people to suggest Before I Wake as a contender. And people did. And I really appreciate that. Thank you.

And you know what?

I’ll never ask again.

The Top 40 list was released this morning, and Before I Wake isn’t on it. Surprisingly? I’m actually pretty happy about that.

I’m not going to say anything about the changes to the Canada Reads system, or the merits of using a broad-based public poll to determine “most essential” books. I’m not going to comment on the list. I know a lot of the books on that list, and a lot of the authors, and I’m very happy for them.

This is about me, and why I’m bowing out.

What it comes down to? I survived high school one time already, and I don’t recall it all that fondly (that’s a Craig Finn/Hold Steady line, that is).

And the way I survived it was by reading, and by writing.

I loved books, and I loved the act of telling stories.

When times got shitty — and they got shitty indeed — I had my books, and I had my stories. I clung to them. I retreated to them and I built a life in them. Picked last for every single team in phys-ed? Regularly beat up? Ritually humiliated?

The books I read and the stories I wrote were my “screw you” to my oppressors, and my situation. No matter how unpopular I was, I wasn’t alone. I had books.

I have no problem with literary prizes. The Giller? The GG? I admire them, and despite their problems, I respect them. With a handful of judges, with inevitable prejudices and biasses and compromises, sure, sometimes I don’t like the results. But I know that all the books were read, side by side, and that decisions were made based, at least in part, on the quality of the work itself. Yes, this is a much longer topic, but it’s germane here, as it’s precisely what happens at the Final Five stage of Canada Reads. Five readers, having read all five books, discuss them on their merits. That’s a wonderful thing.

I’m bowing out of the popularity contests, though. Canada Reads. The Prix Aurora. The Hugos.

Of course I would be thrilled to be on any of those lists – who wouldn’t be? But I won’t campaign. I won’t play ‘my social network is bigger than your social network’.

I can’t. I won’t.

I won’t let a popularity contest take from me the joy and safety of the books of others, and of my own work. Putting my book up against books I love? Having quality, “essentialness”, be determined by actuaries? That takes the joy right out of it.

It puts me right back in high school. Only this time, rather than finding joy and safety in my work, I’ve offered it up, blindly hoping for for acceptance, hoping that this time it will be different. Whether it is or not doesn’t matter — it’s the act of offering that robs me, fundamentally.

So I won’t do it anymore.

I love books, my own and others. I won’t let anyone rob me of that.

And I won’t throw that away.

It’s not semantics

robert — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:02:28 +0000

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seattle, on a grey and stormy morning. The first mainstream review of Bedtime Story just popped into my google alerts, from the Victoria Times Colonist. Overall, I’m very pleased.
What pleases me most, though? (Well, not “most”, I suppose. What’s most germane to this blog, perhaps?) The word “coma” appears nowhere in the piece.
Ever since Xander heard about what Bedtime Story was about, he’s been giving me a hard time. “Aren’t you worried about people thinking you only know how to write about kids in comas?”
“Well, no. I wrote that book about the boy who disappears into the woods. And the next book…”
“Yes, but, your two novels are both about kids in comas.”
(By the way, I’m not making this dialogue up for effect. I’ve had this precise conversation with Xander dozens of times in the last year-and-a-half. When he decides to mock, however lovingly, he doesn’t tend to let it go. A bit like father, like son, that. It’s this next part, however, that sends him into paroxysms of mocking delight.)
“Well, no,” I would say. “In Before I Wake, Sherry was in a coma. In Bedtime Story, David is–”
He cuts me off at this point. “Catatonic,” he says unmercifully, in a slightly vicious sing-song voice that stretches the four syllables out to about nine. And he uses air-quotes for emphasis, as if he needed them.
The kid, in full mocking mode, isn’t much given to subtle distinctions.
Despite the good-natured ribbing, the point has been a concern of mine since I had the inspiration that would become Bedtime Story six or seven years ago. I didn’t want to get typecast as the “kids in coma” guy. I’m fine with the whole “children in peril” label — there’s some validity to that, and some great storytelling potential (and it got me on a great panel at the Writer’s Festival this week, about which more later). “Kids in coma”, though, is a shade more restrictive.
And not true.
It’s not just semantics.
I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that, partway into Bedtime Story, David, an 11-year-old boy, suffers from a seizure and is rushed to the hospital. That’s all right on the jacket flap, so no spoilers there. As the jacket flap says, “a mysterious seizure leaves him unconscious”.
Not a coma.
(And if you hit page 126, you get confirmation of the whole “not a coma” thing. From a medical professional, no less.)
This might be coming across as defensiveness (and God knows, I get defensive), but it’s actually pretty significant to the book, and to my books overall. Not because of strict medical definitions, but because of the stories I’m telling.
In Before I Wake, Sherry is in a coma. Full stop. And we know how she got there: she got hit by a truck. Her state of consciousness, her medical diagnosis, is medically verifiable, and supportable.
In Bedtime Story, David is not in a coma. He’s not even really catatonic, though that’s the term bounced around as doctors and his family try to explain, medically and scientifically, something that cannot be explained.
That’s one crucial difference: Before I Wake was rooted, deliberately, in the verifiable. I was writing about miracles, and I wanted there to be a strong scientific clarity to the events of the novel to support the later ventures into the Mystery. Capital M. Bedtime Story is rooted in something…other. Inexplicable seizures and undefinable states of consciousness? They’re just the tip of the iceberg.
In storytelling terms, though, the distinction is even more crucial, though not as readily apparent.
In Before I Wake, Sherry, in her comatose state, is the absent center of the novel. All of the book’s events revolve around her, but she is completely passive, utterly without agency. The coma, in a way, serves as an encapsulation of that role: silent, still, but with a presence that dominates everything around her.
The same cannot be said for David. In Bedtime Story, David is one of two main characters. His actions, his decisions, dominate half of the book, and, in many ways, set the terms for the remainder. His mysterious state of consciousness, again, serves as an encapsulation of his role in the book: beset by mysterious forces, active, but… And that’s about all I can say, without giving away more than you might want me to.
Like I said, it’s not just semantics. It actually goes to the heart of two novels, and to my approach to storytelling.

(Cori just pointed out, “You’ve just spent a whole blog entry justifying yourself to your eleven-year-old son.”
Well… yes. But, dammit, it’s my blog. So there.)

Words of advice from a questionable source

robert — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:04:23 +0000

I leave tomorrow morning for Vancouver. For the first time ever, I’m going to be appearing at one of Canada’s major writer’s festivals, the Vancouver International Writer’s Festival. I’m appearing at an event entitled Suffer the Little Children on Wednesday, October 20, and another entitled Thrills and Chills on Thursday, October 21.

To say that I’m psyched would be an understatement.

There are a lot of reasons to be psyched. First, this is a HUGE deal. The VIWF is one of Canada’s big three fests, and I’m honoured to be invited.

Second, this is the unveiling of Bedtime Story. It’s two weeks before the official publication date (though copies will be available at the festival), and these events will mark the first time I’ve ever spoken about the book in public. No, I have no idea what I’m going to say. Yes, I’m freaking out a little.

The third thing I’m psyched about, though, is the fact that these events are likely to be attended by a number of students. The VIWF has a tremendous outreach in Vancouver schools, and word is that there are some groups planning to be in attendance.

Which warms my heart, frankly. (The curmudgeonly thing? It’s just a facade. No, really.) I remember very well how important it was to me, in my formative years, to go to readings at the local town hall, or at the Harrison Festival of the Arts. They were my first exposure to the culture of the book, and the lessons I learned there have stuck with me in the many, many years since.

So I got to wondering: if I were asked, what advice would I give, not to a random student, but to, say… me. What would almost-40-year old me say to 14-year old me?

I don’t know if this is applicable to anyone else, but here are some things that I wish someone had told me. Tough love, I guess. Emphasis on the love. Words of advice from a questionable source.

Don’t do this.
If you can do anything else, and do it well, you probably want to reconsider this whole “being a writer” thing. Because it’s hard. Damn hard. Sure, it looks glamourous, what with the on-stage discussions and the cool clothes and the newspaper articles and the readers (and you haven’t even heard of the wonder that is the Hospitality Suite yet), but what you don’t see are the hours… days… weeks… months… years of work just to get those few minutes in the spotlight. And there’s no guarantee you’ll ever see a spotlight. And it’s not even that bright a spotlight. Not bright enough to make up for the months of solitary darkness. Writing is the only job that has borderline clinical depression as a requirement. If you can do anything else, you should.

Accept it.
Of course, you and I both know that you can’t do anything else. You can’t draw, you suck at math, you can’t talk to girls, and you’d rather stick a fork in your eye than participate in sports. Not that you could, anyway. There’s a reason, and a damn good one, that you’re always picked last for teams. You know what? I get it. All you’ve got is writing. And you’re pretty good at it, and you know you can get better. You’re doomed. You have to know that, right off the top. Your life is going to be shaped by this realization: you’re a writer. Don’t say it boldly. Just accept it, and all that comes with it (the questionable jobs, the fragile mental state, the strain on your relationships, the on-going blows to your self-esteem). Accept it like it’s a terminal disease with a life expectancy of 75 years.

Do it.
You know what separates writers from non-writers, the vast divided between the unwashed masses and your mystical self?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the sooner you learn that, the better.
Writers write. That’s what makes them different (and as you’ll find out as your teenage years continue, “different” is NOT a good thing). So write. This is the life you’ve chosen; now do it. Write on your lunch break. Write after school. Write instead of doing your homework. Write in English class. Fall in love not with the results, but with the action of putting words to paper. Believe me, there will be a lot of hours, when you’re 50, 60, 70 thousand words from The End, that you’ll need something to keep you going, and it’s best that it’s the flow of ink onto paper. If your only pleasure is in finishing something, or getting published, your road is going to be very long indeed. Write instead of watching tv. Write instead of “hangin” with your friends. Eke out every moment you can, and write. Don’t want to write? Too bad. According to you, yourself, you have no choice. Man up, crack open the notebook, and write.

Okay, not all the time.
That entry above? That was a bit of hyperbole. (But just a bit.) Don’t neglect your life for your writing. You need something to write about. (I would discourage you, however, from blowing things up just to get material. Well, I should discourage you from that…) You also need to read. As much as you can. And read as widely as you can: classic, modern, contemporary, across genres and forms. I’ve written books inspired by a poem: you NEED to read as widely as you can.
So, that’s pretty straightforward, right? Write, read, live. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Savour
It’s not a bad life at all. Writing is hard, but then, what isn’t? It beats plumbing, right? Grave-digging? There’s a certain pleasure in the hours at the desk, even when it’s going badly. When the writing is going well? It’s almost as good as sex. (Yes, really. No, I know you’re 14 so you don’t believe me, but trust me, it is.) Savour the life you’ve chosen. Keep your eyes open for those moments where you nod to yourself and say “Yes. This is my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Your first newspaper piece? “Yes.”
Your first published story? “Yes.”
Landing an agent? “Yes.”
Holding a copy of your book for the first time? “Yes.”
Nominated for an award? “Yes.”
Appearing at a big-deal literary festival? “Yes.”

It’s a hard life, in a lot of ways, but there are moments that make it all worthwhile. Work hard, and cling to those moments, and you’ll do just fine.

New website!

robert — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:39:59 +0000

Now with fresh blog posts!

Seeing as you’re looking at this page, what I’m about to say won’t come as a surprise: I’ve got a kick-ass new website!

Thanks to Gregory and Lisa Thomas-Tench, and their team at Redwerks, the site has received a lovely facelift (and she’s had some work done on the back-end too, but a gentleman doesn’t notice that sort of thing). I can’t nearly express my gratitude to these fine folks…

While I’m trying to figure that out, though, poke around a little. This is just the beginning. Lisa and Gregory designed this site to be both user-friendly AND easy to update (even for me!). Expect big things in the next while: new blogs, tour stories, photos and video, maybe even a little new fiction!

If you’ve been before, welcome back — it’s a whole new world. And if you’re new to robertjwiersema.com, well, I’m pleased to meet you.

The universe, she is funny

robert — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:37:39 +0000

So, Friday’s mail brought ARCs of Bedtime Story. And today’s mailbag brought this:

What, Rob? A new book deal? How is it we haven’t heard anything about this?

Well, you will. Soon.