<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Chapter</title> <link href="../stylesheet.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href="../page-template.xpgt" /> </head> <body><h3 id="heading_id_43">42</h3> <p class="first"> <span class="dropcap">I</span> rented a bachelor apartment in the Osborne Village and started all over again. My old friend Paul Craft was a contractor, and he charitably hired me to work as a carpenter, a job for which I couldn’t have been less qualified. We hammered nails all day, and in the evenings I worked on the latest novel. Writing seemed to be the string of yarn that kept my life intact. My apartment was below ground level, and from my desk I could see bicycle wheels and legs going by. Living in the city made me feel like I’d been exiled from my own country, and all those memories of working as a guide and living in the wilderness lent poignancy to the writing process. I was working on a story that never happened but very well could have. It felt like important work, like recording the lives of people who had never lived. I’d written almost three novels now and amused myself by thinking that I’d eventually become a lesser Kilgore Trout, the unpublished oddball of the Vonnegut novels. </p> <p> Stillj I missed my ducks. On hot early mornings in high summer, when it was already broad daylight at five o’clock in the morning, the wild ducks from the neighbourhood would swim back and forth in the lily pads outside my bedroom, rapping at the wall to request breakfast. </p> <p> When you’re living in the city, it seems like there’s time for only a bit of work, a few meetings, and then the day is over. But the island occupied its own time zone. If it was my day off, I’d write in the morning, then do some work outside. There was always decking to be repaired or boat seats that needed varnishing, and it was so silent, on those hot afternoons with no one around, that each single day seemed to go on forever. I often went up on the roof to fiddle with my antennae, trying new configurations to clarify my radio reception, and I liked working up there with my shirt off, feeling the heat pouring up off the asphalt roof, sweating in the afternoon heat, and then walking over to the south side of the roof and stepping off, dropping twelve feet straight down into the water. </p> <p> Dusk too stretched on. The sun entered the northwesterly horizon at such a shallow angle that it was still twilight at ten-thirty. My bed was like a captain’s bunk with an open screen window through which the night air breathed. The antennae on the roof was for maintaining contact with CBC radio, my lifeline to the outside world, and I always listened to <i>Book Time</i>, a show that featured readings of great novels, and later on, Big Al McFee, who with his pet mouse finished off the night with music and poetry. During one of those late-night broadcasts I heard someone interviewing the writer Alice Munro. She said that a short story should provide a kind of illumination at its ending, which ideally is one we hadn’t expected. </p> <p> I finally reached a kind of illumination too. Ever since I was a kid, exploring the forests north of Laclu, I’d fantasized about living permanently in the woods. The whole time I lived in Minaki, all I really wanted was a relationship with the wild lakes and forests of the Canadian Shield. I thought it would be like having a summer vacation that never ended. I finally found that relationship, more or less, but it took a few years, and I found it in the last place I would have looked: in the city. </p> <p> One Saturday morning, I called Larry Krotz and asked him if he wanted to have lunch. Larry was a freelance writer, the only person I’d ever met who actually made a living from writing, and I was so impressed by this that I’d resolved to make him a friend. Larry told me that he couldn’t have lunch because he had another commitment, with a woman named Lynn Cunningham. He told me that she was from Toronto, and that she edited a general-interest magazine called <i>Quest</i>. Apparently she was travelling across the country, taking the pulse of the nation, and looking for fresh new writers. He said, “Why don’t you join us?” </p> <p> Riding the elevator up to the restaurant, I tried to think up some story ideas. We had a very pleasant lunch. She seemed interested in the fact that I’d worked as a fishing guide. She wanted to hear some stories. I told her about the many characters I’d met, both the good and bad ones. Afterwards, she asked me to write an article about it. “Have some fun with it,” she suggested. </p> <p> I went home. Be careful what you wish for. I’d never written a magazine article before, and now I had to actually do it. But I got busy, and by midnight, I’d completed the piece. I mailed it off in the morning and awaited her reply. There was no reply. A week passed, then a month. Fearing the worst, I phoned her in Toronto and asked if she’d had a chance to look at it. “Of course!” she said. “I loved it. Your cheque should be on its way. Is a thousand dollars all right?” </p> <p> Apart from publishing my story, she was offering to pay me one-fifth of my annual salary, so yes, it was all right. A few weeks later, I managed to get another piece of short fiction accepted. And that same week, a local publisher phoned me up and told me she wanted to publish my novel. I felt lucky, ridiculously lucky, but I had to remind myself that I’d been working at this for a long time. When my cheque arrived from <i>Quest</i> magazine, I told my contractor buddy Paul Craft that I was going to conduct an experiment. I was going to deposit the $1,000 in a separate bank account and for the next three months do nothing else but write. I’d write every morning and every night, and send stories off in every direction. I’d conduct my life as a business. I’d get a bunch of fresh white paper, some new typewriter ribbons, and even a swivel chair. </p> <p> Three months later, I’d made some withdrawals from the bank account, but I’d also made some deposits, and the principal amount was still hovering around a thousand bucks. At tax time that year, I put ‘writer’ on my tax form and haven’t had a job since. </p> </body></html>