If you show me yours, I'll show you mine.

What a treat, last night, the kind of joyful event only a writer would appreciate: a mutual editing session. Mr. Choy brought over 25 pages of the manuscript of his new novel, and I printed 25 pages of the latest incarnation of my memoir. We sat in different rooms with pencils scribbling and scratching, inspecting each other's hearts, brains and guts.

As usual, he is able to see, in my work, exactly what is wrong. In this instance, that I was starting in the wrong place. Start before the big change, he said, so we know what the change means. The irony is that the last draft started where he thought this one should, before the big change - and when he read that draft, he found the beginning flat and tedious and said I should cut it because there was no tension.

But he is right. I do understand exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. It just means beginning again. I went through my Documents files last night, to find at least a dozen different versions of the same story, different titles, voices, trajectories, going back to 1999. Ah well - the last book took me 25 years to finish and get published. This one has only taken eleven, so far.

And as for his work - his writing is so crystalline and gorgeous, it's hard to look beneath and see what doesn't work, but there were a few things, which he was happy to acknowledge. So we parted, with fresh insight and new resolve.

Once, just once, all writers would like an editor to read a manuscript and say, "It's the most brilliant writing ever. Don't touch a word." I wonder if this has ever, in the history of the world, happened.

More snow out there. A lot of snow. A vast landscape of snow. Inside, the furnace rumbles, the cat snores, the fingers patter on the keys.

still learning, after all these years

Just learned the first big lesson of 2011, which I'm happy to share with you - a victory over my silly self.

The other day, I was on the phone, talking to someone with whom I've had a difficult relationship, and my interlocutor took the opportunity to raise an issue I thought was an unfair and petty accusation of me. I'd heard it before, and before, I had taken it badly, feeling insulted, misunderstood, outraged.

This time, as I heard the voice through the phone accusing me again, something wonderful happened. I did not get tense and defensive, furious and hurt. My belly relaxed. I relaxed. I sat listening until the barrage had run its course, and we proceeded to discuss other things. I thought, this person is wrong. I don't have to accept that view of me. I can refuse it. I refuse it.

Afterwards, I marvelled - what happened? Why had I been able to just let go what I'd considered not long before to be deeply offensive? And I remembered stage fighting class. At my prestigious London theatre school, LAMDA, in 1971, I took classes in voice, movement, Shakespearean speech. The hardest class for me was stage fighting. In the first class, our lively teacher, B. H. Barry, had us all jump from the top of the piano into the waiting arms of our classmates. He wanted us to learn trust and confidence. In those days, I had neither of those things. Jumping from the piano, and every stage fighting class after, as we learned to kick and stab and fence, to fall and die, I was so tense and awkward that I got hurt.

"Relax into the blow," repeated Barry. "Breathe!" and showed us how, when you're rigid with tension, you are easily hurt. Whereas when you're loose and relaxed and breathing, you go with the blow and avoid the jarring crunch.

I realized that as the voice came through the receiver, I had relaxed into the blow. I had let my belly soften, kept my breath alive, let the accusation waft over me, and moved on. When we left theatre school, they warned us that it would be at least seven years until the lessons sank in. But for me, it took forty years until B.H. Barry's lesson finally hit home.

Thank you, sir.

Now to see if I can do it again. And again.

***********************************

A few years before LAMDA, as I finished a B.A. at Carleton University in 1968, my friend Lynn and I rented a small apartment near Carleton and sublet the dining room to two young men, one of them a kind, good-natured Australian called David. David married Elizabeth from Ottawa, moved back to Australia and vanished. Last week, after more than four decades, there in my email inbox was a message from Elizabeth, saying hello from their home near Sydney. The three of us chatted via email. They are vibrant and funny and have had very interesting lives.

I can't wait to make a jaunt to Sydney, to get caught up.

**************************

Back at work, as the snow falls: teaching is as absorbing and rewarding as ever. My Ryerson class is the most geographically diverse group yet, and I now have many private coaching/editing clients and two home classes. The irony is that I make my living helping other people write honestly and well, while I myself make the mistakes I point out so readily in their work.

But that's okay, because Wayson points out MY mistakes, and then makes them in HIS work. The Joy, the Blessing of Editors.

teaching update

Last chance alert: my Ryerson evening course True to Life: telling your own story starts Monday evening at 6.30, and I think there's still room.

For those who've already taken a class with me and would like, for some masochistic reason, to continue, my advanced day class Life Stories II starts at U of T next Monday, January 17, at 12.30.

And for those of you who have gone to bed for the winter and don't want to get out, my private editing and coaching work is on-going, though I'm pretty booked up for now.

More information on this website.

niceness re: "Yours truly, a book of the blog."

I'm happy to say that I've been getting wonderful feedback for "Yours truly, a book of the blog." The first just came in from a friend of my mother's and mine, the second forwarded by my New York cousin Ted, a note from his yoga teacher.

"Yours Truly" was a joy for me to read. I know nothing about art or the parts of Europe you were describing. But I do know about good friends, children, mothers and brothers, good wine, heavenly bread and exotic cheeses.

Your excitement and passion for making a difference in this world by writing is so darn admirable.

Hi Ted:

Just want to repeat how grateful I am for the copy of your cousin Beth's book "Yours Truly" that I'm halfway through now. I'm leisurely enjoying it as she has such an intimate and personable and cozy voice that I feel like it's a pleasant visit every time I read her.

More especially, her book is reawakening my love affair with my first Canadian home, Toronto. And it is reviving my lifelong love of writing, which gets shoved to the wayside by the noisy traffic of theater, and of Yoga, my current form of theater. I especially enjoy the references to Toronto locales - Kensington Market, U. of T. campus - and to New York locations - the 92nd Y! - and New York cousins too!

**********************************************************

And while we're in boasting mode, this is an article in today's "Toronto Star" about the new Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and the multi-talented man who pulled the renovation together and is running the theatre: Edgar Dobie, the father of two gorgeous, multi-talented children who are also genetically connected to me.

http://www.thestar.com/article/918387--canadians-creation-the-talk-of-u-s-theatre

my week

Tuesday January 4, 2011.

A chilly day in Florida.

Saturday January 8, 2011.

A chilly day in Toronto.