Chili's on. I'm making my first batch since the failed venture just after I moved into Riverside. So far so good, but we'll see how it simmers.

Andrea and I had lunch/breakfast at Eggspectations today. Afterwards I went grocery shopping for chili ingredients. When I got home I worked on a song. It's now almost ready for a bass track. I'm also working on a cover but it's sounding kind of bare. Need to put some pepper on it. I'm hungry.

I started reading Ann-Marie MacDonald's 800-page opus The Way the Crow Flies. Last night I polished off Wayson Choy's lovely All That Matters, which completes my most recent collection of the novels by writers who were giving workshops at Humber in July. I emailed Joe last night to ask for a employment reference and to tell him that I should have the first chapter of my novel drafted for next week. I've effectively set a deadline for myself.

I watched Singles before going to bed last night simply because I wanted to hear Kyra Sedgwick's character talk about how great it felt to have her own place.

Last night a zombie menstruated on me, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Joe's group met for the final time yesterday. We went over the final revisions and exercises. There was a kid in the group named Dan who has cerebral palsy and who received some bad news during the class about his friend, who apparently had a serious accident on a construction site. It prompted some discussion about how great Dan is to be doing what he's doing in the condition that he's in. The guy is really decent, a big fan of music, and he writes columns for a local Toronto indie mag called Tambourine (including a rather scathing one about Econoline Crush reforming. Yikes.). My group was solid on the whole. Nice people. And it's been a pleasure to talk with some older people this past week. I don't have a lot of them in my life and their advice has been well taken. I told this woman Sharon yesterday that I worry sometimes about the way I keep starting things over, and she told me to look at it as a continuation instead of a series of brand new decisions. That sounds simple, but it's a pretty damn good point.

I was awarded a photo of Joe and I for my service as an assistant. It looks really nice and I'm going to hang it up in the new place as a reminder of what I've learned and felt this past week. I also found the bravery to make the rounds and had all of my books signed. The authors, of course, were all gracious and encouraging, especially Wayson, who asked me how long I'd been a writer and wrote me some words of encouragement in my copy of All That Matters: "To David, whose words will matter. Love has no rules. Write on!" Very nice. Back at the office I helped out with some agenda packaging and Antanas Sileika, author and artistic director of the Humber writers program, lent me a copy of an expensive book about writing that he swears by and told me I could hang on to it for a couple of months. It's been a solid week and I think I've formed some relationships that will be very beneficial to me as both a writer and a person.

Okay. Menstruating zombies. Kim and I met Matt after work and we went for burritos at Burrito Boyz, a tiny, cramped order-and-go place near Peter and Richmond. It felt nice standing in that restaurant, I Mother Earth and Our Lady Peace playing on the sound system, where all I had was time and the impression that a new memory was forming. We scarfed down our burritos and then changed clothes in a Tim Hortons. For over a week Matt had been hinting at some Friday night activity that I needed old pants for. It turned out that he had purchased tickets to Evil Dead: The Musical, right in the "splatter zone," aka the second of three rows towards the front of the stage that are bathed in fake blood over the course of the production. He picked up cheap, white undershirts for us to wear. The production was a RIOT, especially since we were both so familiar with the films. The second act started up without any real kind of mess, but sure enough things turned into an all-out gore fest once Ash started slaughtering Candarian demons. One of the demons started bleeding out of her vagina in a picture perfect arc onto the crowd, and it hit me for a good five seconds. Blood rained out of the ceiling, it was spit in people's faces and squeezed out of beating hearts and shot out of pulsating neck wounds. Kim took some pictures afterwards and I'll try and get one or two up. We took transit home and I looked like I had a pretty bad head wound with trickles of blood running down my face. It was messy and awesome and must be experienced.

After we got back to the apartment we sat on the balcony and had a couple of beers before bed. I finally have a day off. I'm going to get some writing and reading done and hopefully take a nostalgic stroll up Keele Street.

I'm tired this morning. As fulfilling as the days are, they're pretty long. I find myself having to edit a couple of stories each night while also working on stuff of my own. Last night I had to write a pitch for my novel and came up just shy of 300 words, which is probably too short, but I've never really had to write anything of the sort before.

Yesterday was the first workshop class, and it went pretty much as expected. One of the writers handed out maple syrup. Joe talked about writing and made some great points. We got into the pieces and kicked some ideas around. I thought I might have offended one of the writers by making a general point about the importance of grammar and punctuation. After I said it she went on the defensive a bit, saying she's been an editor for 15 years and that it's just a first draft. But really. Come on. If you're an editor, write like one. Put the periods and commas in the right place. It's important. I get that people make typos, and I know that a few will pop up in mine, but the mistakes were pretty damned rampant, and if you're bringing a piece to a writer's workshop it should probably look a hell of a lot better. Rant over.

I had lunch with this woman named Susan from our group, who is in her early 70's and is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Really interesting lady. She gave me some sage advice about life, stuff I don't usually get a lot of. After lunch I saw talks given by Canadian agent Anne McDermid, and writers Janice Kulyk Keefer and Wayson Choy. Wayson told a story about how a girl in his class one year wrote a story about a young girl who was a victim of sexual abuse from the victim's perspective. He suggested she try writing it from the perpetrator's viewpoint, and once she did, she was no longer that interested in writing because the act had cleansed the baggage she was carrying with her. Kim confirmed later that a lot of people who enter the workshop are people looking for therapy rather than to be published. I think that's one of the most important things I've heard about writing so far. To be published is one thing, but some people really have a strong NEED to do it, even if it means they won't be doing it forever. Another piece of advice: writer's block occurs when the same old tool isn't able to handle the job of moving forward - if you use only a hammer for the rest of your life, you'll treat every problem like a nail.

Matt came home with Thai food and we watched Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. My leg has been bothering me a bit more than my back lately. No time to worry about that now.

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.