NOT LONG AGO, I was asked the question in the headline. Oddly, perhaps, I’d never really considered it. I’m not sure it’s answerable in a meaningful way that isn’t glib or fanciful (“I was never much good at anything else”), but I’ll give it a shot here.
First things first. The internet has made most people writers in the broadest sense, so what do we even mean by “writer”? If you have a blog for sharing your recipes, or souping up truck engines, are you a writer? If you keep a journal or a diary, are you a writer? Does attending courses and workshops on writing make you a writer? Does writing the first three pages of a novel or memoir?
I’d define a writer as someone who maintains a consistent writing practice. Who brings a certain passion to the exercise. Who has goals for their writing. Who completes projects. Who reads other writers carefully, seeking to learn, alert to the technical aspects of writing—grammar, syntax, pacing, storytelling techniques, and the other elements of craft.
I’m a writer and editor who grew up in a house full of books. I largely ignored them, but even as a rebellious teenager I understood that a certain air of sanctity enveloped a father reading by lamplight and drinking vodka when I got home from shooting pool at 2 a.m.— whether it was a book about Napoleon, the aerodynamics of jet aircraft, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, or the classification of butterflies.
My father had little money, but much of it went to the purchase of books and magazine subscriptions. When my mother pointed out that he didn’t need “more bloody books,” he explained, “They’re not for me, dear, they’re for the boys.” When, in his late fifties, he announced that he was having an affair and intended to leave, she was remarkably sanguine. “He’s not going to leave,” she said dismissively, as if he’d announced plans to become an astronaut. “She lives in a shitty little condo. What’s he going to do with all his books?” As it turned out, mother knew best.
I never really bonded with my father. He was absent a lot for work, and when he was home he was far more attuned to my older brother than to me (and less attuned still to our sisters). If our father was the sun, my brother, a couple of years older, was planet Earth. I was in a more distant orbit, let’s say Saturn, and our two sisters, both younger, were out there beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt.
I’m not sure how many thousand books were in the house when Dad died, but enough to give to anyone who wanted some, and to replenish libraries at Simon Fraser University and Kwantlen College (which hands out the Walter Ross Memorial Award each year), with many to spare. When I visited my mother thereafter, the long rows of empty bookshelves downstairs spoke as eloquently of his absence as the shoe trees in Dad’s closet or the sign by his phone that said A TIDY DESK IS THE SIGN OF A FRIGHTENED MIND.
AT AGE 17, I started first year at the University of Toronto. I had chosen courses so as to not to have to get up in the morning. One course that fit all my criteria was Philosophy 101, and the afternoon a pompous little prof said disdainfully to me, “You surely realize, don’t you, that saying ‘The sky is blue’ is simply another way of saying ‘I believe the sky is blue,’” I figured it was time to shut it down. I’d been kicked out of private school, I’d crashed my motorcycle, and I wanted to get the hell out of my life.
From Toronto I took the train to Vancouver, got a room in a rooming house, rented a big Royal typewriter, and started writing—poems, stories, songs. For the first time in my life, I began reading for pleasure. I also got seriously into alcohol (using my brother’s ID) and drugs (courtesy of my local pool hall). I started running with a sketchy crowd, the days became a blur, one thing led to another, and one Monday morning I found myself standing before a judge.
A psychologist tasked with producing a pre-sentence report interviewed me for an hour and concluded that I’d been subconsciously trying to get my father’s attention. If so, I certainly succeeded. Thanks to Dad’s diligence in gathering a binder full of character references, and exerting whatever influence he had, my sentence was suspended. In what I thought was an act of duty, he saved me. Only much later did I realize it was an act of love.
THE STORY of my being a writer comes down, as so many things do, to love: our need of it, its absence or abundance, the things we do in seeking or avoiding it, the ways it can bolster or hamstring a person. I don’t believe I ever once heard the word spoken aloud in our home, or felt its warm embrace. “Love Mum” on presents under the Christmas tree, or “Love Dad” in my mother’s handwriting, was as close as we ever got.
When my sisters were young, my father would pay them a quarter to kiss him on the cheek. Once my mother became a widow, she practically begged her children for hugs, so long had she been starved of affection. Only in recent years, well past the half-way mark of my life, with my father gone and a daughter of my own, have I been able to allow myself to feel and express love, hug people, and tell those I love that I love them.
And what has all this to do with how I became a writer? My father loved good books and admired those who wrote them. “Listen to this,” he’d say, and read a stirring sentence from Graham Greene, a hilarious passage in Lucky Jim, or a striking insight in Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. Every few weeks be could be found at the diningroom table, checking off choices from the Book of the Month club.
Perhaps I believed that if I did something my father admired, he might admire me for doing it. Might love me, even. Maybe I could gain access to his heart through his brain. Writing is an emotional medium. Perhaps I hoped that, if I wrote and edited and published books, my father might welcome me into the cone of lamplight that illuminated him and his book in a silent house at 2 o’clock in the morning.
As an afterthought (likely a mistake), my parents were old, having a fourth child. My siblings were off getting married. Thus I was alone a lot as a child. We didn’t have a television so books were my escape while listening to the orchestra tunes of ‘CFRB 1010 on your dial’. I was lost in books. And when the library in the basement of the local united church burned out, I pedalled my bike to the bookmobile that parked in the local school parking lot Tuesdays and Thursdays. It didn’t take long before I’d read all the books in my age group and found myself reaching for more adult literature. Sometimes the librarian would take one or two out of my stack. “A little too informative,” she’d admonish. … My parents were both avid readers. Although English came to them in middle age. My dad read The Globe & Mail every morning while eating breakfast with the cat at his feet. Mom craved Harlequin romances to help improve her English skills. …I love to read anything and everything. One day I’ll likely need to reinforce the foundation of the house below my bookshelves. I still like to hold a book as opposed to a kindle.
Gary that was beautiful and rich and familiar in that we grew up in a house of books too! newspapers, magazines and books were everywhere including the laundry basket!