Tag Archives: emailing myself

My “Hail Mary” Complex

Posted on by

I was genuinely excited to read Andy Weir’s highly-acclaimed Project Hail Mary, hoping for inspiration on improving the writing, structure and marketability of my own speculative work, The Cx Trilogy.

My positive outlook waned after a few pages. It wasn’t just the undeveloped writing nor the caricatured characters – much of which seem at first draft level – but more the lack of an engaging narrative. While the premise was compelling – why is the sun getting dimmer and how can this be stopped? – there was little development of the protagonist and his journey beyond a barrage of scientific details.

I’ll cite examples to mitigate your opinon of me as a bitter unpublished author. Below that is the room I woke up in. The one with my dead friends. I sniffle and wipe a tear away. Initially, I thought this was intended as sarcasm, but I soon realized that this was a genuine expression of Ryland Grace’s emotion.

Each of them kind of look like a beetle. Each beetle has a name up top: “John”, “Paul”, “George” and “Ringo”. I’m on a suicide mission. John, Paul, George and Ringo get to go home, but my long and winding road ends here. This sense of humor permeates the book.

My students didn’t swear at me. Their squabbles were usually resolved within a few minutes, either by a teacher-enforced handshake or detention. And somewhat selfish but here it is: They looked up to me. I missed that respect. Mr. Weir has clearly never spent a day as a teacher in his life.

I could go on, but why bury myself even deeper? Mr. Weir has achieved incredible commercial success and knows how to market his work, while I’m an unpublished failure who teaches high school…which is what makes this difficult to process.

I genuinely cannot understand what it is about Mr. Weir’s work that is compelling to such a large audience. And what it is about my own writing that seems destined to never get beyond the literary agent’s automatic reply: Unfortunately, your project does not sound like a fit for me at this time, and so I will have to pass. Boo hoo. Poor me.

Writing Process: Virtual Junk to Myself

Posted on by

My family had many Christmas traditions. Presents were not put under the tree until Christmas Eve. The living room door was kept closed until after we had a proper breakfast. Christmas cards were used as decorations around the house. And after receiving our gifts, we had to write thank-you notes to everyone. It was an onerous, yet vital task.

Thank-you notes are a thing of the past; now children just call aunts and grandparents, or worse, send texts and posts. A quick word with an emoji or two, and they can go back to their games and chats. The same goes for notes and letters. Indeed when was the last time you received a postcard?

Postcards from camp to my parents in 1973

It’s not as if I’m pining for the days of writing thank-you notes but that, as these artifacts go, so do our memories. The Young Chronicles series detailing my 1983 Cross-Canada hitchhiking trip would not exist if not for my hand-written notes.

Original notes for Young Chronicles

While these sophomoric scribblings are not vital to living my life, they are key to reminding me of where I’ve been.

I wrote a piece twenty years ago on the poor state of sports journalism. I interviewed many sports people including Allen Iverson, Mark Messier, Cito Gaston and the sports editor for The New York Times. It was a solid bit of writing which The Globe and Mail considered publishing but ultimately rejected as being too controversial because I named names – including Stephen Brunt and Gary Mason, godawful writers still working today. The story is gone, lost because it and all of the notes were on a floppy disk that vanished in the years of transition. And so I only have this picture from Gary’s Instagram.

I rarely write on paper anymore. I text myself my notes. I do this so much that my Gmail account has flagged me (the same Gmail account) as junk, junk unto itself. Yes, even my computer is sending the message for me to get back to paper, maybe even print out these posts so that I can reflect and share on whatever platform is to come.