Tag Archives: This Hidden Thing

The launch

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The weather in Winnipeg has been wonderfully fine and everything feels green and alive again, and in the midst of it all, yesterday evening, the occasion of launching “This Hidden Thing.” My longest-time friend Eunice came from Edmonton for the event (and some good conversation, as always) and many other local friends and family came too. I think we all — CMU Press and McNally Robinsons Bookstore and those of us who participated in one way or another — thought it had gone exceedingly well. I feel so grateful and blessed for the support and interest of others.

I can’t say I wasn’t a bit nervous, but once I got into reading the texts I’d selected for my small sampling, I felt completely at home again, and inside those words (using launch as a nautical image, rather than explosion as in sending off a rocket!) the book slipped off into its journey as a book. Felt at home, I say, but it’s curious, and I’m sure other writers know what I mean, there’s a kind of detachment too. The book sails away, and I’m on shore.  It’s where I want to be.

Signing books. (Both photos: Eunice Sloan)

 

News and notes

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1. The launch of my book, This Hidden Thing, is about a week and a half away now. I expect that for a short time, at least, the book will have something of a life of its own, so I’ve given it a separate page, above. I’ll probably say something about the launch event here after it happens on May 19, but I’ll park reviews and other stuff related to it there. Already up, the news release Jonathan Dyck of CMU Press put together, the book flyer, and order information. 

2. I’ve agreed to serve on the advisory council for the Chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg for the next three years. This is a relatively easy and also pleasurable task, involving free lunch twice a year at the university and listening/responding to a report of what Royden Loewen, as well as students and other professors involved with the Chair are up to. They’re up to a lot, actually, including the planning of two conferences this year, one on Mennonites in Siberia which is taking place in Omsk, Siberia in June, and one in Winnipeg, Oct. 14-16, called “Mennonites, Melancholy and Mental Health: Historical Reflections.” I’m under no obligation to “do press” for the Chair, but some of the papers proposed for the latter (examples: “Madness in my Family’s Journey,” “Duke Ferdinand vs Pilgram Marpeck: Lunatics or Preachers of Care,” “Trauma, War and Soviet Mennonite Women Refugees”) sound so interesting I’m keen to offer advance notice. Further information here.

3. Another event that greatly intrigues me, which unfortunately I not be able to attend as we’ll be away on holidays then, is “Celebrating 150 Years!” This has been organized by Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) for June 5-6 in Winnipeg. I’ve mentioned the 150 year celebrations of the Mennonite Brethren in this blog. This conference recognizes that anniversary, but also the 150-year anniversary of the formation of the General Conference Mennonite Church formed in Iowa in 1860. (This body is now Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA.) These two 150-year-old bodies are the  supporting denominational bodies of  CMU — “two compelling stories…brought together in a special way.”

“[I]t is appropriate to reflect on what we have experienced and learned with and from ‘the other’,” states the conference invitation. Presenters of workshops and discussions have been drawn from both bodies and topics include “Exploring Stereotypes,” “Marriage across the MB-GC Divide,” and “Periodicals as Windows.”

The impulse to revise

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Things were a little intense at our house the last week or so, since I was reading proofs, and not just any old proofs, but those of my own upcoming novel (This Hidden Thing). Proofs mean the work that’s been sitting in computer files and doublespaced on 81/2 X 11 sheets of paper, has landed on designed pages for a book. Proofs mean it’s close to ready for press. Just this last chance to check things over. A wee bit of room for changes, but not much. Not much at all. The cover design is close to finished too. It’s all rather exciting and scary.

On the page in its as-good-as-permanent form, the work can look strange and unfamiliar. In spite of all the times one’s gone through the manuscript, one suddenly sees what there’s probably too much of and maybe too little of as well. I’m comforted, however, in reading the letters of Flannery O’Connor, to find that a writer as good as she was had experiences along the same line. In a letter Oct. 6, 1959 she wrote a friend:

The proofs [of The Violent Bear It Away] came… and seeing the thing in print very nearly made me sick. It all seemed awful to me. There seemed too much to correct to make correcting anything feasible. I did what I could or could stand to and sent them back…

Well, I’m not trying to scare anyone off my book by confessing and quoting that — I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t want readers, and I hope it’s not a surprise to hear that even at this stage of a book anxieties and vulnerabilities of all kinds manifest themselves. This is probably true for anyone who has to let go of what they’ve done, into the public. But O’Connor also said she thought the first and last sentence of the book were “mighty fine sentences” and that she had cheered herself “meditating on them.” After awhile I relaxed with the proofing process too and decided I would be okay with what was there — except for those changes I’ve pleaded the forbearance of my editor and the publishing team to make, of course! 

But there’s just something unfailing about the impulse to revise, and to revise again. I had to chuckle over the note Flannery O’Connor sent editor Catharine Carver:

I’ve rewritten the last pages so I’ll enclose them as I think they’re an improvement. When the grim reaper comes to get me, he’ll have to give me a few extra hours to revise my last words. No end to this.

I wouldn’t mind some warning from the Reaper too, for the same reason!

Oh, and this revision after the post went up (it’s the great thing about blogging): please forgive the shameless self-promotion!

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NOTE: The launch date of This Hidden Thing (CMU Press) has been set for May 19 at McNally’s in Winnipeg.