Paper Fetish, Autobiography

I think I have a paper fetish. I freak out over fancy paper, I really do. It might seem ridiculous but a visit to The Paper Place (formerly known as The Japanese Paper Place) is a thrilling event for me. Check out some of the gorgeous tidbits I got on Thursday:

I like to buy the bags of assorted leftover papers – I never know what treasures will be buried in the masses of scraps, and the small sizes are perfect to use for the collage covers of dig. Mmmmm.

I’m really enjoying making the covers for the upcoming issue: a combination of acetate overlays, sentence fragments from a 1961 Canadian Woman’s Guide to Hygiene, astronomical and anatomical diagrams, and various colourful Japanese papers. Here are some samples:

The contents of the eleventh issue are strong and I'm pleased with how it's going. Poems by Kevin Connolly, Gary Barwin, Sandra Alland, Jon Paul Fiorentino, David McGimpsey, derek beaulieu, among others, and fiction by Salvatore Difalco. I'm just sorting out the launch details (who, when, where) and should finalize that over the next week or so.

Last night I attended Marnie Woodrow’s “StoryTalk” at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. This one was about the concept of “event” in fiction - action as narrative drive. I got some ideas and some tips, and most importantly, got writing again, after a bit of a lull. I am looking forward to her second instalment of the three-part series, called “You’re boring!”, presumably about why one shouldn’t necessarily write autobiographically in fiction. For a poet – for me, anyway – I think this will be useful.

Not that the fiction I’m working on is autobiographical; it’s not. While I’m familiar with the context in which my story is set (small town, Jehovah’s Witnesses), the events are not autobiographical and the characters are not based on people I know or have ever known. The exception is a high school conversation about The Misfits. Though by writing it into a scene, I changed the ending, to make the character triumph in a way that, just maybe, I didn’t. But isn’t that what fiction is for?

Meanwhile, we won our league hockey game on Monday night, despite having many of our better players join the other team, since most of their players didn't show up. I left feeling crappy though, as I was the only forward on my line who didn't score a goal. Since the other team was short, I don't think the game "counted" anyway, but that did not make me feel better about my skills. Not that I'm a competitive sort...! Hopefully tonight's co-ed game will be better. At least I know there will be pints afterward.

I recently bought M.I.A.’s cd, which is a lot of fun. I read somewhere that her father was a leader in the Tamil Tigers – I wonder how much of that is truth and how much is music-industry hype?

Today's song is
HOMBRE - M.I.A.

Cheers.