Writing Companions by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

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My Writing Companions

I first began my writing career with a short story about an injured hawk my son and I found beside the highway. We took him home to our acreage and named him Highway. We nursed him for a few days then set him free. He decided he liked us and moved into the bushes around our acreage.

       This story lead to the publication of historical and travel articles and finally seven travel books. To research these books over the years I travelled and camped throughout British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon and Alaska. My travelling companion was a cockapoo dog named Chevy. He inspected attractions with me, hikes trails with me, and waited patiently in my vehicle when I had to go into a building. We would be on the road for a month or more at a time taking pictures, learning history, and meeting people.

       At the end of each trip I’d be glad to get home and begin to unload my vehicle. Chevy would jump out and check the house and yard. I thought he was happy to be home also until I would go into my vehicle and find him lying in his place on the seat. I’d tell him we were home to stay and put him on the ground. I’d gather up more stuff to carry into the house and when I came out for my next load he was once again on the seat. I guess he wasn’t taking a chance that I would leave him. That little guy lived to be seventeen and was a great companion.

       I have had as many as five cats at a time over the years—I’m now down to three. When I am writing, one’s favourite spot is on my lap, another likes to sit on the desk between me and my computer screen, and the third one sits on the floor and talks to me trying to distract my thoughts. But I don’t mind. They are a joy to have.

New Years Writing Resolutions by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

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A New Year’s Resolution could be described as promise made by a person to change themselves or something in their lives for the better. It could be being nicer to their neighbour, reading more, or having more fun. This change begins on New Year’s Day and is supposed to last for the year.

Making a New Year's Pledge is a custom observed mainly in the Western Hemisphere but is sometimes found in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Eight of the top ten resolutions are: spending more time with loved ones; getting in shape through exercise; losing weight; quit smoking; stop drinking; enjoy life more; pay off bills; learn something new.

How do these resolutions relate to my writing?

1.)    Spending more time with loved ones.

Writing is a solitary undertaking. I sit in a room alone with my computer (some writers use pen and paper.) I don’t like to be disturbed because that disturbance usually comes when I am right in the middle of a scene and I want to get it all down the way I am visualizing it. In order to spend more time with loved ones, I have to cut back on my writing. I read an article about one best-selling writer. Her son asked her if she would go to his baseball game. She said she couldn’t because she had to work on her next great book.

2.)    Getting in shape through exercise.

I spend my writing time sitting in a chair. If the story line is going well, I want to keep at it to the detriment of other activities.

3.)    Losing weight.

Hunger distracts me. I find that I write better if I have a full stomach, usually full of chocolates, but anything works.

4&5.) Quit smoking and drinking.

I have never smoked so that is easy. I only have an occasional drink so I am fine with that, also.

6.)    Enjoy life more.

Again, doing anything outside that room takes time away from my writing. And since I enjoy writing my books and planning more stories, I guess I am enjoying life.

7.)    Pay off bills.

Many writers write in order to pay off their bills. Some write hoping that they will have the next great best seller and earn lots of money. Most write because they love to write. Learn something new.

8.)    Learning something new.

Most beginner writers take writing courses to learn their craft. For others writing comes naturally. Many writers take a course in something they are writing about so the reader feels that the writer knows what they are putting in their books. When I write my historical novels I do a lot of research—reading books, visiting the places I am including in the book, and checking sites on the Internet. I have learned so much about Canadian history that I didn’t know before. I like to live by the saying: keep learning because it doesn’t cost anything to store the information.

So how do my New Year’s pledge(s) relate to those resolutions? I am going to continue doing my exercises in the morning before I begin writing so that I stay in shape. In spite of liking to write with a full stomach I work at maintaining my normal weight and will make sure that I continue to do so. Luckily at this time in my life, I don’t have any large debts and can write because I love to. I am not going to take up smoking nor will I drink more. But I think the most important one is I am going to continue enjoying life by writing more but also by spending more time with family and friends.
       In the past I have set aside my writing so that I could do things with my family and friends. They laugh with me, go places with me, are happy for me when I do something new and different. Writing is words on paper.

Ghosts and Haunted Houses by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

As far as I know, I have never seen a ghost. However, I did live in a haunted house, although without my knowledge. When my husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law first moved to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island we bought a house that had been converted into a duplex. My sister-in-law told me that she was continually seeing a man coming and going from their side. I saw no one on our side.

I returned to Alberta to visit family and friends and was describing where our place was to a friend. She began asking questions about it and said that a friend of hers had lived in that house years earlier. She also asked me if I had seen the ghost who occasionally wandered through the house there. I said no, but my sister-in-law had.

She said that a man had died in that house and her friend had seen his ghost often while living there.

I’m not sure if the reason I did not encountered that ghost nor any others in my life is because I don’t believe in them or because I’ve been lucky. However, if a ghost is reading this, this is not an invitation to come to me and prove you are real.

The Pitfalls of Period Writing by Stuart R. West

To read the book that made the rest of my hair fall out, click here!

My first book with Books We Love, Ghosts of Gannaway, was a sprawling pseudo-historical thriller, romance, and ghost story set during the depression in a small Kansas mining town. Never before had I tackled such an undertaking. I spent two months alone researching. Whew.

I swore I’d never do it again.

Yet here I am currently tackling another period piece for Books We Love. This time when I jumped into the Stuart R. West time machine, I only ventured as far back as 1965. It wasn’t nearly as tough to research as Ghosts, but this book, too, had its pitfalls and traps.

Again (repeat after me): Never again!

Why’d I set my current book in 1965? The story’s a nostalgic, small town mystery and ghost story. (I ain’t nothing’ if not ambitious). By definition, nostalgia always takes place in the past or is at least a remembrance of days gone by. And, personally, my favorite ghost stories always take place in the past. Much more resonance than, say, a haunted Smart Phone.

But there I go again, breaking my vow to myself by going all old timey.

Here are the biggest problems I have while writing period pieces:

Getting the lingo right is tough. In my 1965 set book, I have a character--a real hep cat--spouting such slang as, “Whoa, daddy-o, you’re out of your tree! Your old man’s squaresville, absolutely nowhere. Let’s percolate, beat feet, get to the nitty-gritty!” I know, right? It’s really easy to overkill once I dig into the slang of the time. Granted, the character in question is a mop-topped, dangerous, cool kid, but sometimes I need to rein it in. Just a smidge, daddy-o!

Speaking of overkill, sometimes research threatens to eat my tales alive. While investigating all kinds of topics for Ghosts of Gannaway, I learned more than I could ever possibly need to know about the depression, the way men and women spoke in the ‘30’s, what happened to the Midwest Native American tribes, what folks ate, ore mining, and lots more. Anyone wanna know about the hazards of brass carbide mining lamps? No? Me neither. (But I do.)

You should’ve seen the first draft of Ghosts of Gannaway. Be thankful you didn’t. I tried to shoehorn every bit of research (and I had pages and pages of teeny-tiny, hand-written notes) into the book. There was a twelve page dissertation in the middle of the narrative about how the white colonialists drove the Native-Americans out of their lands (thank God I came to my senses, and pretty much chucked the entire sequence).

I suppose my thoughts at the time were, “Hey, we’re talking history! And I spent a heckuva long time researching this stuff to the point of having mining nightmares, so everyone’s gonna enjoy the fruits of my labors!” But I saved you a dull history lesson.

Another blockade I’ve banged my head into is racial and sexual issues. Face it, our world’s attitudes have changed a lot regarding racial equality and sexual activity. We’ve all heard the derogatory and racist terms. Yet in these sensitive and politically correct times, you’re still gonna find a reader who’ll take umbrage over the racist epithets, even if they’re historically accurate.  In Ghosts of Gannaway, I constantly questioned whether I should use accurate, yet highly insensitive name calling.  I steered away from the Big No-No Word, but everything else was game. And even though I live in Kansas, no one’s been by to lynch me yet.

Finally…sex! The big taboo! Back in the day, of course, sex between consenting, loving adults only happened between spouses. But you know what? Hollywood would have us believe differently, so what’s good enough for Hollywood is good enough for me! Let the sex begin!

There you have it, daddy-o, my bag of hang-ups regarding gone, baby, gone period writing. (I need to put this hep 60’s lingo to use somewhere.)

My Writing--sometmes

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Romancing the Klondike is available this month in bookstores and on line.

 

I had worked off and on at various jobs for many years while raising my children and when I began taking writing courses I still had teenage children at home. I wrote some historical and travel articles and had them published in Canadian magazines. My children had left home when I got my first contract for a non-fiction travel book, which morphed into seven travel books about the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon and Alaska. Researching and writing each one of those took up my days, evenings, and nights for a year. When I finished the last one, I decided to try fiction writing.

     I also decided to get a job since writing can be very lonely. I took training to be a nursing attendant also known as residential care aide and began working in a long-term facility. I also started writing my first mystery novel. Then my husband and I moved to a small acreage Vancouver Island and I got a job in a group home looking after disabled adults.

     I do not like getting up to an alarm clock so I took a position in the afternoons from 4-9 pm. This gives me time during the day to work in my yard, hike, dragonboat, pick and can or freeze fruit from my trees, and of course, write. I am thinking about retiring so I could have more time to write, but I have a feeling that I would also travel more, sit and enjoy the sunsets more, visit family more.

     I try to write something every day, even if it is just some ideas for a scene or someone the main character of my WIP will meet. Usually these ideas occur in the middle of the night so I always keep paper and pen by my bed to write this down.

     And I must be doing something right because I have had seventeen print and e-books published since I began my writing career.