So, this just happened
The long-shot has happened: Girl Runner is a finalist for the 2014 Rogers Writers’ Trust Award for fiction. It feels like a lightning strike, which is what I was thinking about prize lists this morning, before hearing the news. And when I heard the news, via a tweet that my cellphone casually blinked across the top of my screen, it felt like a zap, an electrical shock. I guess that’s where the phrase “feeling shocked” comes from. Somewhere real.
This is what the jury said about Girl Runner in its citation:
Carrie Snyder’s Girl Runner delivers us one of the most memorable characters in decades. In 1928, Aganetha Smart won Olympic gold for Canada in track. But at 104, she is confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home, forgotten. In plumbing the depths of Aganetha’s story, Snyder has this incredible woman whisked away on one more adventure, during which she brilliantly explores the twin natures of memory and loss. Girl Runner is a witty, poignant, and finely plotted novel that offers us a character possessed of the wisdom that arises only from a life well-lived.
To which I have nothing to add. I’m speechless. This could all be very bad for my ego and my super-ego and whatever other subconscious unconsciouses are floating around inside a person, but then again, maybe it’s just all good, today, right now. I’m going to go with that. Gratitude for right now.
xo, Carrie
P.S. To celebrate, I’m considering splurging on a celebratory ukulele! That way I can join my girls, who’ve both taken up the ukulele recently, and have been singing and playing together in the evening (there is literally nothing more heart-warming than hearing them sing and play together, and I do mean literally) … look out for a red-haired sisterly folk duo in about a decade or so ….
Dear Reader* *A practical guide to helping support a book
Dear Reader,
Say you’ve read Girl Runner. Say you’ve liked it. Or even, like this reviewer, say you’ve loved it. You think others should read it too. And you can’t wait to read the next book by this writer. Dear Reader, if this is you, please consider. There is much you can do to help. Small things. Practical things. Things that could make a huge difference in the life of this book.
Here are some ideas:
* Review and rate Girl Runner at the big online bookstores. You know the ones. (Visit here and here.) Positive reviews and ratings help move the book higher up in the rankings and bring it greater visability. (Negative reviews don’t help; if these exist, rate the review itself as unhelpful.)
* Ask for Girl Runner at your local bookstore. If they don’t have it, tell the owner/manager/book-loving-employee why they must.
* If Girl Runner is already at your local bookstore, hurray! Tell the owner/manager/book-loving-employee how happy you are to see the book, and how much you like/love it. Make sure the book’s cover is visible, facing forward on the shelf.
* Buy the book. Sounds obvious, and you already have, right? It may surprise you how often this practical step is overlooked.
* Tell your friends about the book. We choose books for lots of reasons, and a personal recommendation might just be the most compelling reason of all.
* If you have a book club, suggest Girl Runner for an upcoming pick. (Sometimes I even visit book clubs; visit my contact page for more info.)
* If you have a blog, write about Girl Runner. If you’re on Goodreads or Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or Instagram or whatever the kids are using these days, post about Girl Runner. (And please tell me what the kids are using these days! I need to keep up with my teenager.) Tell people why they’d enjoy the book. “Like” my author page on Facebook.
Dear Reader, Virtually all of this holds true for any book you love. And virtually all writers are just like me: hoping their offering gets found and read. Spread the love, pass it on.
xo, Carrie
P.S. This post has been shamelessly plagiarized from this other post, which I wrote two and a half years ago, immediately after the publication of The Juliet Stories.
In Alice Munro country
in Alice Munro country
This has been a good weekend, and so I must write about it, especially after my tired post last night. And I am tired, there’s no doubt, but this is also the season of gratitude and harvest, and I want to tell you that, on occasion, the “glamorous writer’s life” can actually feel, well, kinda glamorous.
On Friday evening, Kevin and I drove northwest out of the city in separate vehicles, heading for Huron County, otherwise known as Alice Munro country. The kind organizers of the Alice Munro writers and readers festival had invited me to speak at their event, and offered to put us up overnight in an Inn called The Benmiller. We drove through rolling hills, down huge valleys, taking a circuitous route recommended by Google maps that must have been recommended for the views. Yellow cornfields, stands of trees with changing leaves, wending rivers. (Is that the right word? I want it to be.)
We arrived in time for dinner. When we clinked glasses, I said, in tones utterly heartfelt: “Here’s to the perks of being a writer!” We haven’t been away overnight, just the two of us together, since mumble mumble mumble. A really long time. Yeah. I was pregnant with our now-nine-year-old on our last overnight getaway. So this was a real treat. It was a treat I wasn’t sure we’d manage to pull off, given our busyness (Kevin drove back early the next morning to soccer tryouts, while I went to Blythe on my own for the presentation.) Accept all treats! That is going to be an addendum to my motto: I don’t procrastinate. Actually, those fit together well. It’s a reminder that it’s just as important not to procrastinate when it comes to the good, pleasurable, sweet things that life has to offer. My naturally ascetic personality needs to be reminded.
So, thank you to the organizers of the Alice Munro festival, in beautiful Huron County. (Mark your calendars for next year’s festival.) And thank you to my mom for staying overnight with the kids.
::
I haven’t been reading reviews of Girl Runner closely, mostly because I’m a wimp. No, mostly because the book feels too newborn and my feelings about it too raw to read anything that in any way could be taken as critique. I avoid Goodreads, for example (although I encourage you to go there and enter: they’re drawing for a giveaway of Girl Runner tomorrow). My publicist is sending notification of reviews to Kevin, who summarizes them for me. The reviews he’s told me about have been good, even great, but I still know that, early on, even the smallest critique feels like a stabbing, so I steer clear. (And I have to add that as time goes by, I will be able and willing to engage with a variety of opinions in a reasoned and thoughtful way; it doesn’t hurt me to read reviews of any kind of The Juliet Stories now, because I know what I love about it, and trust its value and worth. I also fully accept and understand that readers have very different opinions, takes, likes and dislikes—and I also accept and understand that I’m not ready to confront those quite yet, with Girl Runner.) That was a long lead-in. The point being, Kevin insisted I read in full, for myself, the review that came out in this weekend’s National Post. So I did. It left me breathless. The reviewer read the book just exactly like I hoped it would be read. Click here for the link. (They used the running photo again.)
Perhaps what I appreciated most about the review is that it was written by someone who doesn’t love running; yet she got it.
“I don’t understand Aganetha Smart’s relationship to running in particular, but I do connect with her deep love, her profound physicality. And her desire to pursue the thing she is meant to do above all other things, in the face of resistance that borders on impossibility. This is where I connected with her: there is no better way to raise a demon in her brain than to tell her a thing cannot be done. There is no wrench in the gears, no threat or heartbreak that succeeds in turning her away from the thing she loves, nor can it be taken from her.”
Goosebumps, I tell you.
This morning, I received notice of another review, on the 4Mothers blog, which Kevin also insisted I read. Click here for the link. Again, the reviewer connected with Aganetha’s competitive spirit:
“What I most loved about the book is the description of Aganetha’s ambition. I don’t think there are enough stories about female ambition. Snyder describes ambition not as something hard or calculating, but as if it is something organic, born and not made by the goal-setting cheers of the chorus of life coaches that seem so loud in the 21st century.”
I want to pour us all a cup of coffee and sit down for a long chat on this subject.
So, thank you reviewers for your generous reviews.
(And thank you to all reviewers, even if I haven’t had the courage to read you all the way through, yet. I will, I promise! When the newborn gets to the toddler stage and starts climbing the stairs by herself in 10 seconds flat, I’ll teach her how to come back down safely, and then we’ll both be ready to engage with a range of opinions, takes, likes and dislikes.)
xo, Carrie
Why so tired?
Why am I so tired? I asked as I arrived at the top of the stairs at 8:45 this evening, a bit breathless, carrying a full, folded basket of clean laundry. And then my day ran through my mind: supper from scratch (polenta with tomato sauce and goat cheese); baked a batch of bread; made the week’s schedule; three loads of laundry; sheets changed; errands run on foot uptown; 12.5km run; kid to soccer tryout. That’s enough for one day, right?
Am I supposed to be this tired, or am I abnormally tired? Honestly, I can’t tell. The run today was hard, even though I took it easy for the first half. But I struggled toward the end, which has me fearing the Toad next Saturday–twice the length, and a much more challenging course. I didn’t feel like myself.
How can I not be so tired? I ask. And then look at my upcoming schedule and can’t figure out how. That’s all for tonight’s post. I still need to read a bedtime story to my wee ones, one of whom is standing right beside me, clutching his chosen books, and wondering … “When will you read to me?”
How about now?
xo, Carrie
I am doing a writing exercise I’ve assigned to my students
Insects buzz. Insects with a vibrating hum and insects chirping at regular quick intervals, like a racing pulse. Cars pass. Engines roar, mildly, louder when accelerating, heavily whirring before changing gears, puttering, brakes squeaking, a rushing sound like wind that is not wind, that is mechanical, a hush of white noise.
Shadows on yellow brick, moving as the wind moves the trees, patterned, like lace.
The dogs begin to bark. What have they seen or heard? The first to begin is DJ, loudest, the leader of this pack of two. Suzi joins, confused, eager, uncertain. DJ stops, stiffens behind the raspberry patch, behind the cluster of dead flowers, and sniffs the air. Whatever she has seen is gone. The yard is safe, again.
On the clothesline a few items hang, shirts upside-down, athletic gear airing in the breeze and sunshine. The leaves are turning colour. The sky is steady opaque blue, not quite dark, not quite light, clear behind the flame orange leaves, like an artificial backdrop for a photograph I took last year, and the year before, but not yet this year.
photo of the changing leaves, last year
I have not taken any photos of changing leaves this year. This is not because the leaves have not changed. I don’t know why I haven’t brought my camera outside to catch the season on its cusp of coming.
I am sitting in a green plastic fake Adirondack chair, bought uptown at the hardware store for cheap. The floorboards beneath my feet are painted a rich blue, the paint also bought uptown at the same hardware store.
I turn to examine the pile of sandals by the open back door, and see instead a large spider, suspended in its web, very near me. It hangs upside down. It is alive, its legs twitch, each leg thin and ringed with a pattern of pale tan, dark brown, and a shade in between the two colours that looks mottled. Its body is fat, and also patterned in shades of brown. I would fear it, but it has lived on our porch for much of the summer, moving its web higher or lower when disturbed by one of us. I have watched it through the kitchen window suck clean the body of a large fly, a bee, draining each to a dried husk of its former self.
I am writing this because I’ve given the students in my creative writing class the same exercise. I want to feel what they feel while forced to sit and focus for 15 consecutive minutes, uninterrupted except by what they observe, their objective to seek out the details, no matter how small, and place them on the page, without judgement, without critique, simply observing and noting and describing.
It is an exercise I’ve given myself at times throughout this past year. It asks not: is this interesting; but rather: what is here to be found?
The timer rings. I don’t want to finish yet. The dogs have gone inside, and are working themselves into a sudden frenzy of emotion, howling and yipping at something they’ve seen through a window. Gradually, the noise diminishes, then stops abruptly. Here is Suzi, come to find me, her little body quivering.
Here am I, glad for the excuse to sit still and think of nothing but what is, right now.
xo, Carrie