I have the opportunity to lead another creativing writing workshop at Sidekick Brewing as part of the Chilliwack Arts Council’s Sunday School of Art.
When: Sunday, Mar. 23 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: $25 (includes a drink, including non-alcoholic)
How to Register: Go to the Zeffy page
The last session I led was awesome. The space is great, just perfect for writing.
In about six weeks or so my first novel will be published. It’s called The Very Good Best Friend and it’s a punchy literary thriller about a woman who sets out on a journey to rescue her best friend from an abandoned, desolate mall in the countryside of British Columbia. At the heart of this story is a friend who will stop at nothing to help her best friend from being used for her labour and talents by a narcissistic billionaire. Along the way she uncovers haunting secrets about her own family traumas that will change her life forever. It’s set in a spooky abandoned mall in a dying ghost town.
It’s my first novel to be published, but it’s not my first attempt at writing one. In fact, there were multiple attempts before The Very Good Best Friend. Some I may come back to in different ways, but most will be left in drafts forever.
And that’s okay. Time practicing my craft is not wasted time.
Sometimes I’ll think of all the words, all the thoughts, all the creativity that went into those pages, and I’m blown away. Writing is a solitary act, at least for me. It’s one I do early in the morning while the rest of the house is asleep. It’s quiet and I feel happy to have devoted this time to my work once everyone wakes up and it’s time to get ready for the day.
There was something about The Very Good Best Friend that I couldn’t put to the side, even after many, many drafts. The gothic elements, the supernatural–that came after a few drafts were finished and once I learned to refine and focus the story I wanted to tell. What didn’t change from draft to draft was the friendship. Well, the friendship and the abandoned mall, which I’ll write more about later.
As I wrote, I reflected on friendship throughout our lives. It’s a gift to have close friends especially as we get older and deal with the daily needs of working, caring, and everything else. As the title suggests, The Very Good Best Friend is about one friend in a friendship. It’s about Carolyn, our protagonist, who isn’t ready to let her friend go. She knows something’s off about the commune-style mall she’s moving to, maybe even something sinister, but it’s more than that. She wants to stay connected even if it means she’s in physical and psychological danger. She is driven by something that scarred her long ago, something that needs redemption. I don’t want to reveal too much, so I’ll leave the specifics of the story there!
Writing about long-term friendship made me thinks about my friendships throughout life, both long and short, and about how much it can hurt to see a good friend go or how we often simply fade away from each other’s lives over time. There are ghosts in this book, but also the idea of being ghosted. It’s the poet in me, I can’t help it.
If we’re lucky, a bond between friends can run deep and parting can be bittersweet, but it’s the very best kind.
I have the privilege of leading a writing workshop in my community in mid-February.
Sunday, February 16, from 3-5 pm
Introduction to creative writing with author and poet Taryn Hubbard
$25 with 10 seats available
Let your creativity loose in an interactive workshop on the joys of writing. In a fun and supportive environment, we’ll explore a variety of techniques and prompts that can be applied to journaling, poetry, fiction, memoir, and other forms of writing. Perfect for people interested in beginning a writing practice or writers looking to connect in person.
The Sunday School of Art series, presented in partnership with the Chilliwack Arts Council and Sidekick Brewing, celebrates the joy of hand-making and crafting with the community. We have three engaging workshops, each featuring its unique focus, instructor, and supplies. Gather your friends or family and sign up for an afternoon filled with creativity, laughter, and the chance to meet new people! People under 19 must register and be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Over the holidays, I had the chance to spend quality time with my family. We played games, put together puzzles, baked, cooked, watched movies, read, hiked, and so much more. It was lovely and it felt like the perfect refresh to a busy year.
2025 is looking like another busy year, and I’m here for it completely. My debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend, will be published around April and later in the year I’ll likely get to work more on my second poetry collection that will be published next year. It’s an exciting time, one filled with words and stories.
I’ve also been spending more time reading, which is the absolute best. I’m back into digital books and that has been wonderful as well. Libby, the app through the library, is fantastic and has encouraged me to read in genres I haven’t spent too much time in, like romance or non-fiction. I like it!
As I start to plan the next few months, I’m both excited and nervous for my novel to publish. It will no doubt be thrilling to see a physical copy, but it’s also nervewracking to share something I’ve created. The book is available for pre-order now.
My next project brings me back to a domestic space during a catasrophic, yet mysterious, weather event. It’s a story that started off as a novella, but over the last half of 2024, I developed into a first draft of a novel. It’s a rough first draft, but it’s a start. I’m looking forward to working on the second draft and third and so on and so on.
Writing is labour intensive and it’s reward to mainly personal at this point, but telling a story, sharing an idea, exploring a feeling, it’s how I enjoy spending my time.
I’m happy to share my book trailer for my debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend. Hope you enjoy.
The book is available for pre-order now at your favourite bookstore!
Being a writer in the Fraser Valley informs my creativity, but that’s not because I have a large writerly community here or, really, any community at all. While there are opportunities for writers to meet and discuss work where I live, I have a hard time participating because of everything else I do, including working, taking care of kids, keeping my home clean, grocery shopping, and the list goes on.
It makes me wonder. What does it mean to be a writer in the Fraser Valley? When I was younger and lived in Metro Vancouver, I met up with lots of writers, attended readings, and felt generally quite connected. Since those days, my life has changed very much. The changes occurred slowly, but now as I look back I see all those changes amounted in a substantial shift in who I am. Moving, children, living through a pandemic, and a general change in how my free time is being spent—it has all contributed to my current existence and understanding of being a writer in this moment of my life.
After many years living in the Fraser Valley, I’ve noticed that elements of the lifestyle and environment have crept into my work.
This is most true with my current work-in-progress, a novel about a woman who survives something catastrophic in her rural home. I won’t get into more details than that as I am deep into the initial drafting stage.
When the initial seeds of an idea rooted in my mind, it was clear that the setting of this work would most resemble in some ways the Fraser Valley. While the actual setting of the book is not the Fraser Valley, I find myself describing elements of the natural environment here as element of setting in this new work. I’ve enjoyed taking the time to add descriptive details to my work that is fresh, relevant and personal to my own life.
I’m excited to see how the first draft will go. There is a lot to go, as I’m only half way through. More to come on this…
The term “indie” author means different things to different people. In this post, I’m thinking of indie author as someone who publishes with smaller, independent presses, otherwise known as indie presses.
Last week I prepared a few graphics for social media to share the cover of my debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend. It was an exciting moment to post this cover, which I adore, and to share a few words about the premise of the book with my followers, who are mostly friends, family, and people who know me personally.
The experience got me reflecting about my journey as a writer who has had the opportunity and good fortune to publish with independent presses in Canada.
Here is what I’ve learned so far about writing as an indie author:
My first poetry collection, Desire Path, took many years to write. By the time it was published, I felt like I had been working on those poems for close to a decade. I’m not sure if it was quite that long, but the poems felt like they were a part of me. This is to say that I spent a lot of time with that work. Poems from this collection were with me during different seasons of my life and, yet, I still felt energized by them as I crafted and refined them into a collection. I wasn’t writing what I thought someone should write, I was writing what I wanted to write. In Desire Path, I wrote about my specific experience in a specific community in British Columbia. When I read the poems now, I can still remember parts of my old neighbourhood and my old life, the things I saw, the places I visited, and how I interpreted the environment. As a reader, I like learning about other people’s neighbourhoods in this way. In fact when I travel I will seek out a very local or regional literary book, just to know what the poets are saying about the place (because it’s always much more interesting than any generic tourist pamphlet).
I was lucky to connect with a publisher that regularly publishes local perspectives on place and experience called Talon Books. Independent publishers are vital for their work bringing local and regional culture to a broader audience.
So write the weird thing. Pursue the project that excites and fuels you as a writer and a thinker, as a storyteller, because you will be spending more with those words, in that world time than you realize.
DIY Publicist? It’s not the first hat you think you’ll need to wear when you become an author, but it doesn’t hurt to start framing your writing through a publicity and marketing lens. In fact, once you have your manuscript in a solid place (don’t rush this and share it with beta readers if you can for feedback), the process of explaining and positioning your work begins and, honestly, it never really ends.
There are several key aspects of publishing with indie presses that will require you to start thinking like your own publicist. The first being your query letter. This is a one-page document that serves as your pitch to the editor where the intention is to pique their interest so they will read your sample pages and ask to see your full manuscript. A key component of the query letter is sharing your book’s hook. A hook grabs a reader’s attention, compelling them to flip page after page. Maybe you have known what your hook is from the moment you hit the keyboard or maybe you need time to really hone in on what it is. Think it through, as the essence of this hook will serve you as you develop and refine your publicity strategy.
Below is an example from my debut novel:
Carolyn sets out on a harrowing journey to rescue her best friend from an abandoned, desolate mall in the countryside, only to uncover deeper and darker secrets hidden within its decaying walls.
One-line description of The Very Good Best Friend
Once you have a signed contract with an indie press, one of the first things they will often send you is an “author questionnaire.” This questionnaire is your opportunity to share details about your biography, your platforms, and your book with your publisher. The content you share in this questionnaire is important and serves as the basis for many aspects of your book like cover copy, descriptions, marketing approach, etc. Take the time to fill it out as best you can, but don’t feel bad about not having a huge platform or many industry connections. We all have to start somewhere!
Indie authors need to bet on themselves. What this looks like is different for everyone. To me, it means finding time to write even though every part of my life is drastically pulling me in the opposite direction. By giving myself the consistency and space for my writing practice, by prioritizing writing, I am betting on myself. Over the last few years, I’ve had a mind shift in how I think about writing. It’s not a hobby. It’s my business. No, I don’t make much money from this business, but I have come to treat it like my business because it’s how I keep myself accountable. I invest in my business by giving it time. I research my business by reading books and following what’s being published. I plan my business by giving myself reasonable deadlines to get my writing projects finished and sticking to them as much as I can. I define my goals to keep my practice on track. No one can do this, but me.
Betting on yourself is more than just believing in yourself, it’s about understanding that no one can do it for you. It’s about understanding that going from initial idea to finished manuscript is not easy, but you will see it through because you need to.
Writing is solitary work. It can take a long time to draft and re-draft and draft and re-draft a work. Taking the time to celebrate a milestone is a good habit. It doesn’t have to be a big celebrationg, maybe it’s a walk in your favourite space or a coffee at your local.
Buy and read books from fellow indie authors to support them and the presses that publish them. Beautiful stores and fantastic stories, it’s a wonderful combination.
Summer is for catching up on reading. There is something about reading outside in the sun or under a tree that is so lovely.
I finished Heather Dixon’s Burlington recently. It explored a mother’s social pressures to fit in. After just finishing a year full of pick ups and drop offs, I enjoyed this one.
Another book I’m reading also explores motherhood. Adrienne Gruber’s debut collection of essays, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a fasinating read about parenting and caring, and living and surviving. I’m almost halfway though and have found Gruber’s writing has resonated with me. I’m looking forward to finishing this one soon.
There are so many reasons why writers love public libraries. For as long as I can remember, I’ve regularly visited a local library once or twice a week, and one of the reasons why is because I’ve always lived within close walking distance to one. That wasn’t intentional, but it’s the lucky way it turned out.
As a writer, I read a lot. I buy books to support writers, publishers, and booksellers, but I also borrow many titles across multiple genres and formats (hello audiobooks!) from the library. When I was starting down the path of writing my own book of poetry, one of the first things I did was borrow stacks and stacks of poetry books from the library to see how what those poets did. I studied many things when I read such as:
My first book, Desire Path, was a book that centred around my life through my experiences of suburban space. In a way, it was a bildungsroman because it started with a poem reflecting on where I was born and ended with a long poem about my first pregancy.
While I did not write a poem about libraries in this book, I very well could have and I like to think that my experiences as a regular library user are quietly working in the background of the poems. All the times I borrowed a book, learning from those poets, this is somehow reflected in my work.
When my book was published and I found my own slender title among the poetry stack in the library, well, it was good feeling and a special moment.
I love spring and fall, but there is something about summer and, even, winter that urges me to dive into a writing project with earnestness. Maybe it has something to do with the extreme weather common to both these seasons now and July is looking like it will shape up to be a hot month in the Fraser Valley.
In June I submitted edited versions of manuscripts to the publishers of both my upcoming books. It felt good. Both projects took years to write and edit, and both projects were started in the summer. It could be the heat of the summer that inspires me or maybe it’s the fact that the year is half-way through that fills me with the urgency needed to commit to a project consistently.
This summer I am working through the first revision of a new novel project. I started writing the first draft the summer of 2022 thinking that I could have it finished by December 2022, but it ended up taking me until December 2023 with everything going on in my life.
And here I am in the summer of 2024 starting down the path of the first major revision. Instead of being disappointed by how long it has taken me, I’m choosing to see the time away from the work as being helpful. And while I have probably forgotten a few of the aspects I had planned to address in the first revision while I was writing it, that’s probably okay.
There is something both gratifying and overwhelming about approaching a second draft. I have one novel project that I didn’t pursue past the initial messy draft. When I look at the file on my computer, I marvel that I even completed a full draft of that story. I wrote it during my first maternity leave. And while it holds a special place in my heart, there is only so much time I can give to my writing so I need to be working on projects that I truly love. I liked the old book, but didn’t feel I had the energy to give it all the work it needed. It was good practice.
This new revision project, on the other hand, I hope I can get through it this summer. My first novel took eight drafts to get to the shape I was happy with. And there is always more to do on a project, but there comes a time when I need to let it go to make space for a new one.
In the first big revision, i.e. my second draft, I approach it the following way:
Then take another break and maybe start on something else, like an outline for my next project.
I’m curious to see how many edits it will take me this time…
