Blog

Sometimes you go looking for art. Sometimes art finds you.

Last week, my wife and I strolled down to Oak Bay here in Greater Victoria. It was a brisk 30 minute walk, actually, from home to Oak Bay Avenue, followed by a stroll along the brightly lit street with stops in pleasantly crowded and cozy galleries.

We weren't shopping for art, having recently moved to a much smaller home - there's simply nowhere to put it. But looking at art is always (okay, usually) pleasant and there's something about seeing throngs of people in galleries that is uplifting.

What are the risks of writing non-fiction about real people, real family heartbreaks, real relationship challenges? Does writing about life’s difficulties produce any catharsis and relief? Why would a writer want to revisit tragedies in his or her past?

Those were just a few of the questions addressed last week by authors Barbara Stewart, Lynne Van Luven and Jane Johnston. In an engaging evening panel discussion at Cadboro Bay Book Co., the three shared their experiences and insights as writers and, in Van Luven’s case, as an editor of many others’ memoirs.

‘You can’t go home again,’ Thomas Wolfe wrote in his famous 1940 novel that carried the phrase as its title. But for writers the greater truth may be that you can never leave home. Or that home never leaves you.

It was fun to pull some highly influential books from my shelves and revisit writers’ perspectives on writing about place. I quickly accumulated quite a stack of sources – more than I could even touch on in the afternoon workshop.

A stack of journals sits on my desk. Hilroy notebooks, perfect-bound journals with elastic ties, a big black drawing book with many blank white pages, a couple notebooks with section tabs, and one with a hard cover.

Some have pages torn out. Most have empty sections. Some have logs of my attempts at healthy living and other habits that seemed a good idea at a particular point in my life.