Not even a writer yet and I'm already bitter.

Today I write about being a writer.

Is it me, or is there NO money to be made in creative writing anymore? Through seminars and book readings that I’ve attended over the past few months, interaction with published writers has painted a pretty dismal picture: that it’s pretty hard to make it as a writer.

Today for example, Julie Wilson visited our class (bookmadam.com, seenreading.com), and it seemed to me that although she’s involved in a variety of writing projects she enjoys, it was only recently that any of them have rendered any profit.

So in response to the question- how would I want to do be published, I’m hoping that whatever I’m hypothetically writing is great and attractive enough to warrant a traditional publisher. To me it seems like that’s the way to make enough money to get by; Wilson, for example, is making money now that she’s writing True Blood fan materials. Although Matt Duggan, another author who visited us, spent two years working on a project that was basically scrapped, maybe this is an example of a publisher doing what’s best to make money. Not every writing is good, so perhaps using a traditional editor and publisher system is the best for finding out if your work is any good before you release it to the world. 

If that doesn’t work out, it’s back to the drawing board while I post my work online for free. What’s the alternative, making $12.95 a week self-publishing or hawking it on Amazon? Come on. Isn’t writing professionally all about the money? Otherwise I’d have a job and just own a notebook for weekends.

Kerry Ryan, the Warrior Poet

Today I interviewed a writer.

Kerry Ryan is a Winnipeg poet who just released her second collection, Vs. Her work has also appeared in a number of literary journals, but this latest collection heads in a completely different direction than you might expect. It’s the story of her journey into the world of amateur boxing, as she trained and competed in a white-collar boxing match last year.

I attended Kerry’s book launch at McNally Robinson last week and was fascinated by this young woman who went out punching people in the face and came back to write beautiful poems about it. She was definitely someone I wanted to talk to more, but I thought it would be best to keep a safe distance from her right hook. So we sent each other some emails, and here’s how it all went down.

AP- Hey Mrs. Ryan. I really enjoyed your reading last night; the whole poet-boxer thing fascinates me. How do you decide what to write about?

KR- OK, first off- please call me Kerry. (Otherwise, I feel like you're talking to my mom. :) ).

I'm a pretty lazy writer, so I usually write about things that are close at hand: if it's winter, I write poems about being cold; if I'm traveling, I write about landscape; if I'm spending a lot of time at the boxing club, well, I end up writing about boxing.

AP- You said during your reading that competing in boxing was one of your accomplishments that you're most proud of. Is this what made it a subject important enough to devote an entire collection to?

KR- I didn't set out to write an entire collection about boxing. I started writing the poems as I was training, as a way to process mentally what I was learning in the ring, and also as a way to rationalize my decision to fight. I thought they might one day be a chapbook or a section of a collection. But the more poems I wrote, the more it seemed like a cohesive story and suddenly I had a full length manuscript.

AP- Writing poems while training… isn't that distracting? Do you mean these poems are coming together in your head as you're physically training? You didn't write anything during an actual fight did you? That just sounds dangerous.

KR- Sparring required total focus, so poems were the last thing on my mind when I was in the ring. I started working on the collection during the same time frame I was training for my fight and I came to see writing as part of the process. First, the training was completely consuming, mentally. I really couldn't think about anything else for a couple of months, so it seeped in to my writing life. But I also used the writing to try to get my body and brain on the same page. I've always learned best by writing a concept out in my own words. So, I approached learning to box in the same way.

Check out the rest of the interview with more of my hard-hitting questions by clicking on this post!

Books and Jazz- Yes they both still exist.

Yesterday I went to a book launch.

The McNally audience 

June “Pepper” Harris, a musician and playwright from Chicago was at McNally Robinson last night to launch her new autobiography, I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! Between live jazz music songs, Harris read from her book and told of her experiences.

The evening started at 7PM with quiet jazz music; two guys on upright bass and piano soloed together as Harris walked around and met everyone, welcoming old friends and even shaking my hand. Harris then told a couple stories, and her friend read from the new book.

I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! tells the story of Harris’ life so far: her early days of performing in the Chicago nightclub scene in 1962, the racial difficulties she faced, and the world travels her music has sent her on. Harris also read excerpts from her book about these topics, expressively and laughing, engaging the crowd as she shared her memories.

Harris reads from her new book

 She read of her time performing in Qatar and how through her music she was able to connect with the women there, even though they were so culturally different. She was in Qatar on September 11, 2001, and told of the reaction to 9/11 she experienced from both American and Muslim peoples. She also shared her dreams of peace, laughing, “Maybe jazz musicians should be heads of state. There would be no wars- we musicians like to sleep in.”

She read of her blind date in Norway; asked to a classical concert that promised to be too incredible to pass up, but with a man she worried would look like “nine miles of muddy Mississippi back road sludge on a rainy day.” He turned out to be a dreamboat.

She closed her speaking with thoughts on her book’s title. Being one of the first black entertainers in her scene, Harris faced racial prejudice but has clearly risen above it. Her title represents the changing socially acceptable titles for her, but Harris says it hasn’t changed her a bit.

“As a kid they called us Negros. Then they decided that was bad, so they said coloured. Then I was a Black-American, then a Black-Canadian, then an Afro-American, well guess what folks- I’m a woman.”

She wrapped up the event by singing a few songs: a silly, fun song she had written recently called It Ain’t All That Hot Out, a spoken word number about her reactions to finding a giant black snake in her house as a child, and another poem she read while the band continued to back her up. She slipped between her roles of musician and author smoothly, and seemed as comfortable swaying and scatting as she did reading her stories.

Harris sings too!

Harris has clearly been through and seen many things in her life, all the while never taking herself too seriously. She was an interesting and fun person in her book reading, and I Used to Be Coloured But Now, I’m Black! seems like a perfect extension of her personality. 

Listen to Harris kick it on her Myspace page.

Check out McNally's upcoming events here.