February 1–28, 2004 — Bicycle accidents

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve been trying for a long time to talk as little about writing as possible in my journal entries. I figured that since I don’t do much other writing, it might be a bit pointless for all of my journal entries to be about writing journal entries.

But I guess I’ve been writing other things more often lately. I wouldn’t write journal entries about that, either, except that towards the end of February I did a reading in Ottawa, and maybe that needs to be explained.

Actually, cancel that. It doesn’t need to be explained. But it was something I never really thought I’d be able to do, so I ought to write about it. It’s sensible. And I guess I want to.

There. And I promise never again to waste three paragraphs trying to justify a self-serving journal entry.

So to start, I have a zine. Of sorts, anyway. Since last fall, I’ve been writing a lot of things that I haven’t been posting online, a series of three short stories among them. I’ve been releasing those three short stories one at a time in little booklets and sending them mostly to friends, my friend Shawn among them.

Shawn runs punkottawa.com, a web site that I do some work on. He was helping with some of the details of setting up a zine reading in Ottawa, and he suggested me to Sara, who was organizing the reading. She emailed me, I sent her a copy of the first story, and my name got added to the poster. It was all very exciting.

(The lesson for aspiring writers is to begin volunteering on community web sites a few years before you’d like to do your first reading; then, make a somewhat spontaneous decision to print out 100 copies of a story you wrote on a whim and send the booklets to more people than are really interested in receiving it. Then hope to be added as a favour to a reading with several writers much more legitimate than you.)

I took the bus to Ottawa the Friday of the reading, arranging a weekend around it and justifying bus fare by telling myself I’d get to visit my parents, too, and how often do I really get to do that anymore?

There were four other zine writers there, and we each read for awhile to a very crowded room. The turnout was amazing, and I was very nervous.

I was the first to read. The story I chose was the second of my three short stories, all of which are written in the first-person. I’ve not really decided if all three narrators are the same person, but I think the one in the second story is the one I’d least want to be confused with. I forgot to mention that it wasn’t a true story, though, and after I finished reading, Shawn came to me and said, “It was good, but everyone might think you’re a bit of a creep.” I realized what I’d done and felt embarrassed for the rest of the night.

Still, more people than I expected bought booklets from me. One person bought a t-shirt. After having spent so many nights behind a table selling t-shirts and CDs for bands, I liked having a bit more of an investment in what I was selling.

For the next week, I promised to write more, and to learn to be a better writer. Of course it didn’t last, but I still remember the way it felt to read to so many people, and I’d like to do it again one day.

All that’s left is learning to write.