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Emails, ski-trails and book deals
By Lisa McGonigle
You know how it goes, come to British Columbia for one winter,
stay for four…
In November 2005 I left my native Ireland to spend a ski-season
in Fernie BC. I worked the usual panoply of seasonal jobs--server,
receptionist, cashier--and snowboarded as much as I could. But
you know how when you’re heading off on your travels, people hug
you goodbye and say keep in touch? In snatches of time after
earning minimum wage, I wrote lengthy mass emails to my friends,
2,000 to 3,000 words each, about Fernie Alpine Resort, about the
town of Fernie itself, about smashing myself repeatedly in the
terrain park, about duct-taping over the holes in my ski-gear,
about the mind-blowing quality and volume of powder snow.
I never got around to leaving town. I kept writing emails through
all the adventures that ensued, including the brouhaha when I
dropped out of a PhD at Oxford and came back to Canada to
snowboard some more. Several visa dances with Immigration later,
I still rattled around BC in spring 2009 when I saw a poster for
the Fernie Writers Conference. It occurred to me that my sheaf of
emails might just add up to something more than a fond souvenir of
the past few years. Indeed, when I did a quick word count they
totaled 80,000 words. Whaddya know. Maybe I’d written a book
without realising it.
Still penniless, I applied for and was granted a scholarship to
the Non-Fiction group of the conference. Thrilled as I was, having
never been to any sort of writers’ event, I was wary turning up
the first day, afraid there’d be a sea of “writerly” types trying
to connect with their inner-child or reciting reams of
sub-Dylanesque prose-“Rage! Rage!”-while staring moodily into the
distance.
Luckily my fears were unfounded. Our group was led by the
reassuringly down-to-earth Sid Marty, and writers became ordinary
people. The group included Carolyn, an ex-airline captain writing
her memoirs, Jeanette, torn between writing up her family lore in
fictional or non-fictional format, and Kyle who, like me, had
chosen the way of the snow over a more structured path (in his case,
law school) and wrote about his travels.
Every morning we’d workshop up at Fernie Alpine Resort, sitting
outside in the dry summer warmth that the Kootenays are blessed
with, sharing feedback on our work. In the afternoon we either
did our own thing or attended panels given by established authors
and figures from the publishing industry. For the uninitiated like
me, learning about editors’ selection criteria and what happens
between book deal and bookshelf felt like gaining insight into the
workings of the Freemasons. I was enrapt.
Encouraged, on the Friday night of the conference I read my work
aloud at an event in the Fernie Arts Station and the following
afternoon met with a sales rep and editor from Oolichan Books. We
went for a coffee, I gave them a brief outline of my story to date,
and they asked me to send them my manuscript, such as it was.
This was-and remains-the most exciting thing that had ever happened
to me in my life. (To add to the surreality of events, at the time
I was training for a marathon and that morning I’d been up at
5:30 AM to run sixteen kilometres before the heat of the day,
shouting “woo hoo!” every couple of hundred metres to alert any
lurking bears to my presence along forest trails.) I was dizzy
with tiredness and elation.
Oolichan emailed me back a few months later saying they’d be happy
to publish the book (simply known as “the book” for an alarmingly
long time before acquiring the title of Snowdrift). Man, the real
adventures were about to start...
BIO
Lisa McGonigle grew up in North County Dublin, Ireland. She
attended Trinity College Dublin and the University of Aberdeen,
Scotland before coming to British Columbia in 2005. Having spent
several years skiing, snowboarding and hiking in the Kootenays,
she is currently studying for a PhD in Irish Studies at the
University of Otago, New Zealand. Snowdrift is published by
Oolichan Books (ISBN 9780889822719). Find Snowdrift at
http://www.amazon.ca/Snowdrift-Lisa-McGonigle/dp/0889822719/
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