Strategies for Getting to the Page
Writing consistently is critical to finishing our books. Finding the time to write can, however, seem impossible, especially with all the obstacles of everyday life getting in our way.
But Debra Martens, founder of Canadian Writers Abroad, didn’t let her busy life keep her from getting her writing done. As she learned during her years of constantly moving to new countries and dealing with recurring health issues, you just have to make the time, set realistic goals, and be ready to adapt to what life throws your way.
Listen to learn:
- How adaptability applies to your writing life
- Why it’s important to set small goals that you can accomplish
- How to continue writing even while dealing with health issues
- How to deal with the emotional impact of the querying process
Here’s a sneak peek of today’s episode…
[05:14] It's been great for me in that I've had to do the research to find the people, and that research has kept me more up to date than I would be with Canadian literature than otherwise.
[11:52] What happens is when you physically pack something up and put it in a box and then put the box on a ship, and then maybe you see it in six or nine months and then you open the box, the creative connection that you had with that work is dead.
[14:16] Sometimes I'm a little bit resentful of the time it takes, especially the research time and the review time. But on the whole, I think it's great to have that because it's confirmation of your place in the world as a writer.
[18:37] I always thought that a goal was big. I'm going to climb Mount Everest or something. I never thought of goals as small things that you could actually accomplish.
[19:54] It's so nice to do that and to see those check marks the next day as a reminder that this is something that you're doing and that you can do and you can carry on doing
[22:24] But I have also experienced bad writing groups, and it's really important to be careful in the selection of your writing group and to realize that you have to get out.
[23:40] I've had total silence from three publishers so far. And yeah, it's shocking, but not as shocking as the ones who respond within the week with the rejection.
[33:15] That's just part of the thing, adapting to the situation that you're in, even the mental space that you're in.
Links from today’s episode:
The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Strategies for Getting to the Page, with Debra Martens -- Full Episode Transcript
Intro:
Well, hey there, writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas, and this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.
Because—let's face it—the writing life has its ups and downs, and we wanna not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
This podcast is for writers who love books, and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who wanna learn and grow in their craft, and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books, and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them, writers who wanna spend more time in that flow state, writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community in this crazy roller coaster ride we call “the writing life.”
We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives, and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, writer, I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda Douglas:
Well, hey there, writer. Welcome back to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I am here today with my friend Debra Martens, and excited about that. Debra and I have been in a writing group for a long, long time. She is a writer who is currently based in the Ottawa area, but has lived abroad quite a bit. We're going to talk about that. So welcome, Debra. Thanks for being here.
Debra Martens:
Thank you, Rhonda, for having me.
Rhonda:
The first thing I wanted to just ask you about is your Canadian Authors Abroad Project. Can you talk a little bit about how that started and where it all came from?
Debra:
Yes, absolutely. So in 2011, my husband and our daughter moved to London, England, and I had a little dark office in an apartment and needed an excuse to get out of the flat and came up with this project having just recently done a writers union workshop on writers and the digital life, which had said, “you need a digital platform with a niche.” So I thought, “what do I know how to do?” I know how to do book reviews, I need to get out of the flat, I know all about Canadian literature.
So, I started hunting down where people who had lived in London had lived like Mordecai Richler and Margaret Laurence and Sara Jeanette Duncan. I started with the dead people, and after a while I realized, “oh, there's living people here, too.” And started reaching out and contacting people. And then I thought, why not try and find as many people around the world as possible?
The other big incentive for it was that I did my master's thesis on Mavis Gallant, and Mavis Gallant was pretty much unknown in Canada until she published Home Truths, even though she had lived, for her entire writing career, off of New Yorker stories, but she had lived in Paris. I was aware that we have this thing in Canada where if you're out of the country, you're out of sight, out of mind. And so the platform tries to address that, to give people a little bit more attention that they wouldn't normally get.
Rhonda:
So it's a blog. You can go to canadianwritersabroad.com, and you do interviews and articles and posts by Canadian authors who are living somewhere else.
Debra:
That's right. I do reviews or I do interviews, but I also like to get other people to do reviews and, as you say, write guest posts based on The Guardian letter from having a peek into another country.
Rhonda:
I love that. So, many writers get told we've got to have the platform with the niche, and what has that been like for you, building that?
Debra:
So I've been at it now for over 10 years, and at the beginning I thought, great way to meet people and make friends, but that hasn't really turned out to be the case because it's so easy to lose contact with people, especially people like us who are peripatetic, who are always on the move, changing addresses, et cetera.
But it's been great. I mean, the main thing that it did is that it kept me in touch with Canadian literature. When you're abroad, it's really, really easy to get out of touch, especially for someone like me. I always deliberately read the literature of the location that I'm in, and as a result, when you do a deep dive into the place that you're in, it's very easy to lose contact with home base.
It's been great for me in that sense that I've had to do the research to find the people, and that research has kept me more up to date than I would be with Canadian literature than otherwise.
Rhonda:
Cool. And did you already have the skills that you needed to get a blog up and running and promote it, or were those skills you had to develop? Because I think it's very intimidating sometimes to think about.
Debra:
It is intimidating. I wasn't thinking of a blog. I was definitely thinking of a website, but then I met a woman through an organization of Canadian people doing stuff abroad who was very comfortable with the WordPress platform. She taught me how to use the WordPress platform, and it really is very easy to use. I'm a little bit tech savvy.
We joke that I'm the tech support in this house, but I did find it fairly easy to learn and to start doing WordPress. They keep updating the software, which means another little learning curve happens, and it really depends, also, on which package you buy, how much help you get, and all of that stuff.
Rhonda:
But you basically started from scratch, not knowing anything, and then created it.
Debra:
That's right. I started from scratch not knowing anything, and I chose only the free option at the beginning.
Rhonda:
Was at a different URL when you started?
Debra:
No, it's always been the same URL, but it had a different look, it was a very grey and urban look before, and it's evolved to be more…
Rhonda:
Clean.
Debra:
Yeah, cleaner.
Rhonda:
Yeah, I like it. And, you've spent a lot of your time writing overseas, right? Because you're living overseas, you moved a lot with your partner and your daughter, different places. Can you talk about what it's like?
I mean, I think of it as being uprooted. You're yanked out of your home life and plopped down somewhere else, and you have to just build a life there now and learn everything. You know, do we dial 9-1-1 for emergencies here, or do we dial something else? And yet try to still have a writing life. And how did you build up a writing life when you were first in the new places, like when you were in London?
Debra:
You've taken the words right out of my mouth. You really do feel uprooted. And whereas my partner would have a life set up for him—he would go to an office, he would have appointments, he would meet people. I'd be there completely on my own, having left all friends and contacts behind, and I'd have to find a doctor, and find where to buy milk and find everything, find my way around.
Ironically, I'm terrible with maps and directions, so I get lost really easily. Just all of these things, it is a lot. And it is hard to remember that the thing that matters to you is writing. The very first posting was Nairobi, and that was, in a way, the easiest, because that was pre-internet.
I used to do book reviews for publication for pay. I lost all of those contacts because after you're away three years, writing letters that take six months to arrive, I lost all of that. But I was working on a novel and we had help in the house, so I didn't have to worry about meals. It was like a super long writing retreat. I did write a novel. It was terrible. I abandoned it when I got back to Canada, but that was that.
I learned early on that I could do it, that even though things were taking me away from the writing life—Nairobi, I mean, come on, safari and museum lectures about flora and fauna, and I met some local artists. There's a lot to stop you from writing. And of course, trips while you're there, you go to Tanzania and Uganda and then you go off to Paris because, why not?
And yet I managed to make it a fair routine where I wasn't interrupted by the staff and did write a novel, and then New Delhi was a little bit more difficult because I had a newborn, but again, I had help. And I'm very firm about separating things out in my life. Like, this part of my brain and hours is for writing, and this part is for being the wife of a diplomat, and this part is for being a mother.
It's very separated out. So, in New Delhi, I wrote in our bedroom and someone was taking care of the baby every morning for an hour or two. And again, I was working on a novel that I never finished, but it was a good experience. New Delhi was harder, though, because of being a mom, and that's when I started to get sick, really sick. And so it was just harder in that sense. And then Vienna, I don't remember.
I don't remember when or where or how I wrote in Vienna, so we'll just skip that. And then London, it was great. I had a little office and I wrote every morning, and I would go out every afternoon. That's when I started the collection of stories, well, started trying to finish them. And then in Jerusalem, still working on the stories.
Rhonda:
You switched away from the novel to the short story. Why?
Debra:
Yes. In India and Vienna, I was also writing short stories. And I just found, what happened to the novels that I wrote in Nairobi and New Delhi is that they were abandoned. What happens is when you physically pack something up and put it in a box and then put the box on a ship, and then maybe you see it in six or nine months and then you open the box, the creative connection that you had with that work is dead.
There's really no other way of putting it. And then also, with personal computers and the internet, all that stuff, I just found it easier to carry short stories around with me and to continue working on them and to continue sending them out. That's why I stopped working on novels.
Rhonda:
And were you physically carrying, like, would you print out the short story or your notebook or whatever?
Debra:
The novels I did, because that was pre-internet, really. We did have internet in New Delhi, but it was through the phone line, and every time a truck drove down our alley, it would take the phone line down because all the wires were strung like this, you know—
Rhonda:
That sounds very New Delhi.
Debra:
So, intermittent internet is how I would describe it. All these things are quite new, right? It's hard to remember, but everything was done by post. All the work I did from Kenya—I did some work. I had things published in Paragraph Magazine. I had a travel article published in The Star—it was all done by post.
Rhonda:
Wow, with a typewriter?
Debra:
In New Delhi, I had a computer. Nairobi was a typewriter, yep, it was a typewriter. Electric typewriter, yeah.
Rhonda:
Oh, fun.
Debra:
That's right. It's hard for us to remember that. And then once we got internet, in Vienna, I was working, actually, I was doing freelance editing. I had a client in Montreal, it worked out really well for us, anyway, as well as trying to write. But by the time we got to London, she retired from that.
Rhonda:
And so that's when you started Canadian Writers abroad then?
Debra:
That's right, yeah.
Rhonda:
Do you find it helpful to have something to do, whether it's editing or the canadianwritersabroad.com site, do you find it helpful to have something that's writing-adjacent to focus on while you're also writing?
Debra:
Yes. Sometimes I'm a little bit resentful of the time it takes, especially the research time and the review time. But on the whole, I think it's great to have that because it's confirmation of your place in the world as a writer. So when I get a rejection, I don't like getting research. Nobody likes getting rejections, what can I say? I find it a bit hard to dive right back into creative writing work at that moment.
And so then, I can go to create Canadian Writers Abroad. I also work on Canadian writers abroad. When I'm sick, when I'm tired or when I'm travel-tired, it's just easier. It's a different kind of work. It still keeps me connected to the writing world, but because it's a different kind of work than the more energy-draining creative work, it's good to have. It is a good balance.
Rhonda:
That's interesting. I thought you were going to say it's how you procrastinate, but that's not it at all. You're using it as when your energy isn't there for the creative work, you are diving into something that sustains your motivation and passion. That's really interesting, Debra.
Can we talk a little bit about writing while sick? Because a lot of the writers that I work with are challenged by chronic illness in one way or another, and they're working with me on finishing a book, and they finish the draft, but getting into the revision, they have a flare up, whether it's rheumatoid arthritis. or anxiety and depression, or chronic fatigue or anything at all that just, yeah, saps your energy. How do you manage it? How do you manage your writing routine and your writing practice in the face of that?
Debra:
That's a good question. When I get really sick, like pneumonia or pleurisy, I have to say it's an emotional crash. It gets very depressing because it is recurring. I get pneumonia practically every year, it feels like. And it's really hard when you're in that place to see that things will get better. So I do a lot of journaling when I'm that sick.
When I'm just a little bit sick, like I was this summer, it was really hard to breathe, but I didn't have an infection. I have to scale back. You just scale back. So that's where the 15 minutes comes from. If I can get in 15 minutes a day, it's enough to make me feel good about the fact that I'm keeping at it.
Rhonda:
So when you're in a space where you're sick and you're just not a hundred percent yourself, you just tell yourself, “look, 15 minutes.” And you find that sustaining for yourself?
Debra:
Oh, very much. Very much. Because even if that 15 minutes isn't, say, on the novel that I'm working on now, even if it's just free writing—I love free writing—and often the free writing will turn into the novel. I just find it keeps that part of my brain going so that when I do get some energy back and do get some time back, I can do it.
And I think I mentioned this to you before. So last winter, I had something called pulmonary rehab, and I love to refer to my rehab after rehab. It was an eight week session, and at the end of the eight weeks, they said, “so what we want you to do now is to set goals.”
And I said, “goals? My goal is to not get sick.” And they said, “no, no, no, no, no. That's not a goal, that's a motivation. We want you to pick smaller goals. Will you walk three times a week? Will you do your upper body twice a week and your lower body twice a week? All we want you to do is set goals. Just write them down.”
And for me, this was a revelation. I always thought that a goal was big. I'm going to climb Mount Everest or something. I never thought of goals as small things that you could actually accomplish. And I immediately thought, “oh my goodness, that applies to writing.”
Rhonda:
Right. Small goals.
Debra:
I totally see the parallels because, yes, if I can set myself small writing goals—so, I'm working on a novel. I know that today I'm not going to finish the novel. If I can write a scene of the novel, that's fantastic. If I can do some research on the novel, that's even better. So during this roadworks, I've amped up the research in order to get away from the house. And as a result, the writing has diminished somewhat, but all of which is to say, that you just keep shifting.
Rhonda:
Yeah. It's something that often I forget, that you can have small goals on the way to a bigger goal. I get so focused on the bigger goal, but small goals are so much more motivating.
Debra:
They're really motivating. I check off the day in my agenda. I put a check mark that I have done my 15 minutes. It's so nice to do that and to see those check marks the next day as a reminder that this is something that you're doing and that you can do and you can carry on doing yourself.
Rhonda:
Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about the writing group? You and I have had the great good fortune to be in a writing group together for a long time, and it's a great group of people, amazing writers. Can you talk a little bit about the writing group as part of your process as a writer?
Debra:
Yes, I certainly can. I can also talk about how much I missed the writing group when I was in London and Jerusalem. It was a huge one.
Rhonda:
Before we realized we could do everything on Zoom, right?
Debra:
Yes, I know. I was anxious to get back into the writing group because for me, the monthly check-in is, perhaps, the most important part. I mean, I appreciate very much the amazing reading skills of everyone in the writing group and the critiques that they give to my work.
But as well, the motivation that I get from being in the writing group is amazing. It's the obligation to check in and to think about what you've done in the past month is really important.
Rhonda:
Yeah, that's true. That's interesting. I'm always blown away by the feedback that people give. We submit work and people read it and comment on it, and it's always like, “how did you see that?” It's amazing to see, to have a group of really good writers dive so deeply into your project. It's such a privilege. It's really amazing.
Debra:
It really is. And I know that my work has benefited from their close readings, and I find it astonishing how different their readings are. Their approach to critique is very different. And I love it. I think it's great. I think being with a group of other writers who can read your work positively is a very good thing.
But I have also experienced bad writing groups, and it's really important to be careful in the selection of your writing group and to realize that you have to get out if it’s… I've been in groups where it's all about ego, right? “I am the only important person, and everyone else is going to be trashed”, kind of thing. So yeah, we're extremely fortunate that we're with such a good group of considerate readers and writers.
Rhonda:
We are lucky that way. But I think it gets built as well. It gets built on every interaction.
So, you've got a finished collection of short stories that you've been querying. Can we talk about the querying process? Because it's so painful, at times. It has its moments, but oh my God, the querying process. How do you handle sending something out and then either getting the email that says, “no, it's not for us. Best of luck placing it elsewhere,” or, total silence.
Debra:
Oh my goodness.
Rhonda:
I feel like you just get ghosted by publishers and literary magazines so often.
Debra:
It's horrible. That's right. I've had total silence from three publishers so far. And yeah, it's shocking, but not as shocking as the ones who respond within the week with the rejection. That was the worst.
Rhonda:
And you're like, “did you read it? I don’t know.”
Debra:
I hate doing submissions. Every time I have to do a submission, I think, “why aren't I a rich lady who can hire someone to do this for me?” But I'm not, and I really, really hate it.
Rhonda:
Even if someone could do it, you'd still have to deal with the emotional implication.
Debra:
The rejection, yes. So, I dealt it with it several ways. The first thing that I did was I separated my email. So, I have an email account that I only use for submissions.
Rhonda:
I love that I'm doing that. That's great.
Debra:
And that way I don't have to see it until I'm ready to see it. That is one thing. The other thing is, I block out my week. So, Monday is finances, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is writing, and Friday is submissions. I just think I figured Friday I'm probably running out of energy, et cetera, et cetera. And there are many Fridays.
Rhonda:
You've got the weekend to recover. You've got the weekend to lick the wound.
Debra:
That’s right, yeah. And I really, really hate it, and I will do anything to get out of it. I'd rather go for a CT scan than do submissions. But, yeah.
Rhonda:
It's a necessary evil, isn't it? I mean, I love the separate email idea because I often feel that the thing about submissions is you're forced to kind of face the marketplace. And the marketplace is this crazy, unknowable thing you think you can know.
Some of the things we talk about in our writing group is, “oh, this publisher is now looking for this.” Or, “so-and-so is open for submissions, or “that editor has moved here,” and we share that information, but it's really hard to keep up on it all. And then it often feels, for me, it feels whimsical. Like, the market's doing this today, the market's doing that today. It's like, the market's completely changed its mind.
Debra:
Yes.
Rhonda:
How do you manage that? Are you just head down doing it anyway? You just don't think about it?
Debra:
Well, I'm researching Canadian Writers Abroad. That forces me to look at sites like Quill and Quire, and the Literary Review of Canada, and CBC Books and so on. That's often when I pick up something that's happening in the industry that would apply to where I submit my collection, and I just file it away.
I have a chart for submissions, and I just immediately put that information into the chart, and then I deal with it on the Friday. It is hard to keep up. And the writing group also makes fantastic recommendations and updates on what's happening with some publishers. That's really it. I try not to think about what's trending because then I wouldn't write a word.
Rhonda:
Right, exactly. If you did write with what's trending in the back of your head, how authentic and creative would that be?
Debra:
That's right.
Rhonda:
What a strange little world we live in as well. You were saying…
Debra:
It's very strange. The novel that I'm working on, I first thought it would be a short story. The origins of this novel were in 2007 in The Globe and Mail. So, where was I even, in 2007? On my way out of Vienna, so I didn't have time to deal with it at that time. No, just back from Vienna, sorry. Anyway, I saw this thing: Today in History, in 2007, that said a hundred years ago, this woman in Toronto was charged with witchcraft.
And I tore out that thing, or I made a note on a piece of paper, and I kept it all those years, it was always in the back of my mind. I thought it would be a short story, and I had a very specific short story in mind, but because I was working on other things and that whole thing of packing away that life and starting this life, and I didn't really have the time to come back to it until moving back to Ottawa, and I went to Toronto a year ago to do a bit of research on it.
I thought, “that's pretty strange.” How can that be, in 1907 in Toronto? Yeah. Very, very bizarre. I quickly found out that, of course, surprise, surprise, the press had taken the headline that they wanted, and, in fact, she wasn't actually charged with witchcraft. But I've forgotten why I started telling you this.
Rhonda:
That feels like me today, post-covid and flu shots, my brain. But we were talking originally about the market, right?
Debra:
Oh, the market. That's right. And so while I was in Toronto, of course, Toronto bookstores, et cetera, I started noticing people were writing about witches all over the place.
Rhonda:
Yes. It became a thing all of a sudden.
Debra:
It's really popular right now to write novels about witches or just to write about witch trials. I was astonished, but I had to sort of step back from all of that and sort of say, “well, no.” I mean, that's not really what my novel is going to be about anyway. It's about class and court, and how does a single woman in her thirties make a living, and et cetera, et cetera.
Rhonda:
Wow. Fascinating. October is when I read witches. It's my spooky season thing, like, what are the new books about witches this year? So I've got a stack in my bedroom that were about witches, so if you need witch reading, I'm your girl.
Debra:
Oh, okay. I'll keep that in mind.
Rhonda:
So, one of the things I've started doing this season in the podcast is asking the writers that come and talk to me what it means to them if I say, “we're resilient writers.” What does it mean to you to be a resilient writer?
Debra:
I have thought about that, especially when listening to your podcast and hearing the answers of other people. And yes, perseverance is important, but I think in my case, it's adaptability. To be a resilient writer is to be adaptable to whatever is thrown at you. I don't think I could have kept writing if I didn't have that adaptability to suddenly be in a place where there's power outages every day, or water shortages every day, or where someone's going to come to where you're trying to write and ask you, “excuse me madam, what do I do about so and such?”
Or, having to evacuate so that the room can be fumigated because there's an infestation, or finding rats in your bathroom, or just so many things and moving and removing and setting up your life over and over again. If I only had one way of doing my work, I wouldn't get any work done.
To be adaptable in that sense, to maybe as well, over the years, the time of day even has changed for me. I now take a medicine that is cumulative so that I feel my best in the afternoon. I used to be a morning writer, and now I've become an afternoon writer, and it's just to be aware of how things are pressing on you and how you can adapt to that situation in order to persevere, in order to keep writing.
Rhonda:
I love that. And also, I guess when you've been sick, just needing to figure out how to, as you say, adapt. There's something about, to me, what you're saying is there's something about not being precious about it. “I need to get this done. This thing's come up, so how do I get this done?”
Debra:
That's right. The other thing I do when I'm sick or having that kind of down-thing is I read about writing. I try to keep my toe in. So, journaling and reading about writing if I'm really not capable of working on whatever it is I'm working on at the time.
But that's also why, you asked me earlier, why did you switch from novels to short stories, and now from short story back to novel. That's just part of the thing, adapting to the situation that you're in, even the mental space that you're in.
Rhonda:
Yeah. Great. Thanks so much for doing this, Debra. It's been really nice to talk to you. I don't think we've had this kind of conversation before, so it's really been great. Thanks.
Debra:
No, it has. Thank you.
Outro:
Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.
Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that “yes, this is a great show. Definitely recommend it to other writers.” And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it, and I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.
