2AM Traffic

Yesterday I had lunch with Wayson Choy. He introduced himself and I shook his hand. It was a very high school cafeteria-esque setting for the lunch break on the first day of the week. I've never read any of Choy's books, so I didn't have much to say to him, but he seemed nice and thought the chicken was too salty.

Other writers popping up this week: Paul Quarrington, Lisa Moore, Alistair MacLeod. Yesterday I saw M.G. Vassanji give a talk on being a writer as well as some other folks that have come out of the program and had their works published. There was also a joint talk between the writer I'm assisting, Joseph Kertes, and his agent. I'm going to be grateful for these insights. I've missed hearing people talk about the craft. Shari Lapena divulged that she writes on a schedule of 1000 words a day, while Anthony De Sa bluffed his way into getting a manuscript written and accepted in three weeks. Ian Colford said that he was only successful in getting a novel published once he wrote the one he wanted to write, rather than the one he thought editors might want to see. The message I'm constantly receiving is that the quality of any writing is entirely subjective. As a result, writers fail pretty consistently at getting their work out. And successes can take one by complete surprise.

I had a conversation with a teacher of philosophy at Humber about reading and writing. She asked me what I did. I told her I was in between figuring things out.

Kim and I are going to be on pretty similar schedules, and I think I'll probably end up seeing more of her than Matt. Last night I went grocery shopping for junk. Adam came over and we played Gears of War for the XBox while Kim and Matt attended a dinner for the authors and staff at Humber.