Out of My Mind for Ten Years

In September of 2010, the Portage Daily Graphic/Central Plains Herald Leader advertised for freelance writers. What I really wanted was a regular column. I even had a name: “Out of My Mind.”

In one of my boldest acts of reckless abandon, I called and requested an appointment with then-editor, Elisha Dacey. Seated in her office and trying not to reveal my nerves, I told her I wanted to write a weekly “slice of life” column. Some humour, some faith. Hopefully a little of both sprinkled into each. I gave her three samples.

She hired me.

I’ve lost track of how many editors have come and gone in these ten years, but readers have remained loyal. One of the funniest stories occurred about a year into my column-writing, when I went to vote on Election day. I gave the poll clerk my name.

“Are you the Terrie Todd who writes for the Graphic?” She peered at me over her glasses.

“Yes.”

She frowned a bit. “Huh. I thought you’d be shorter.”

I assured her I would try to sound taller from then on.

Over the years, several (well, okay, maybe two) readers have asked when I was going to put my columns into a book. I figured a ten-year anniversary would be a good time. Trouble is, ten years’ worth of columns would be as thick as a phone book (for those of you old enough to remember phone books.)

Good old Microsoft to the rescue. I created a table in MS Word and listed every column by title, the date it ran, and its theme. Then I gave each a score from zero to five. If a column promoted a local event long past, it received an automatic zero. My personal favourites, and the ones that generated emails or won awards, scored fives.

When all 460 columns were entered, I instructed my computer to pull all the fives to the top and voila! 145 columns, the perfect length for a book. My first column made the cut, as did my farewell column when “Out of My Mind” got cancelled in 2016…as well as the return column when I was invited back fourteen months later. (If you’ve already calculated that ten years of weekly columns would total 520, not 460, the cancellation explains that.)

Once I eliminated the also-rans scoring less than five, I told my computer to sort the winning columns by theme. Then it was a matter of copying and pasting each column into its category and creating a table of contents. Now, readers can easily find stories under a given topic or season.

This book signing will look different.

Then the pandemic complicated things. The book had a bit of a false launch. Now that September is here, the official month of the tenth anniversary, it’s party time. Since Covid-19 is preventing us from serving food, I’ll be giving away a $40 gift certificate from The Cheeky Baker and the winner can place their own order. If you are a local reader, I hope you’ll come celebrate with me, purchase the book for $20—or one for each person on your Christmas list. Or just say hello and enter the draw. Saturday, September 12, between 10:00 and 1:00 at the Portage Regional Library.

I deeply appreciate your kindness and tolerance. A column should offer value to readers and I’ve often fallen short. But if I’ve managed to make you smile or even laugh out loud, if you’ve discovered a tear on your cheek or have thought a new thought, I’m happy.

You’re teaching me the discipline of deadlines, the wonder of word counts, and the extraordinary grace and humour of hometown folk.

Happy Anniversary to us!

 

Woman Gives Birth at Fifty-Eight

We take a break from our regularly-unscheduled 40^th anniversary shenanigans to hold a birthday party. For a book.

It’s 5:30 a.m. and I can’t sleep because it’s launch day for my third novel, Bleak Landing. It’s the day I get to have my hair and nails done, the day I'll party with friends and place copies in their hands, a day of celebration and nerves and running around and checking Amazon to see that online sales already began in Australia before I went to sleep last night. It’s all very exciting.

But it’s not the real “birthing day.” 

Releasing a book has been compared by many to birthing a baby. You labor and you sweat. Things get ugly and painful. Time drags. You endure a lot of indignities. Then finally, your baby is born and you think it’s beautiful and you hope others will, too, as you present him or her to your family and friends. 

But although today might be launch day, the labor for Bleak Landing was finished months ago and I’m now laboring over another work in progress.

At least for this author, the real labor comes in those wee hours of the morning, when I drag myself out of bed at 5:00 or 5:30, hoping to hammer out a few words on my novel before I need to leave for my day job. For most of the year, it’s still dark at that time of day. I don’t bother turning on the overhead light in my home office, though—just the desk lamp. I light the scented candle I keep on my desk. The fragrance and the light remind me that God is present in the room and has in fact invited me here. The candle has three wicks, representing my triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit. He’s teaching me what it means to write not for him, but with him. And it can be a wonderful journey, but it can be agonizingly laborious too. The words fight me. They don’t always want to come out, and when they do, they’re often ugly and wrinkly and slimy and howling with the injustice of it all. So for me, that first draft is the real labor. The editing process is when you finally get to push the baby out and see that your efforts are accomplishing something.

Which makes Launch Day much less like the birth day and more like the dedication ceremony at the front of the church, where parents and child are all cleaned up and respectable. Where family and friends stand with you to present the child before the Lord. Where you say, “God, thank you for this little one. Please help her to grow strong, to make an impact in this world, to serve your purposes, to bless hearts, to help people know how much you love them.” 

It’s the day you say something like Samuel’s mother did as she laid her baby before God: “For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.”

And you shed a tear. And you wave goodbye, knowing your baby is in the very best of hands.

(Local friends, please join me from 6:30 - 8:00 this evening as we launch Bleak Landing from the Portage Library. There will be pie.)