Latest news with #WhereIWrite
CBC
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The first time author Samantha M. Bailey walked into her backyard studio, she cried with relief
Social Sharing Leading up to Canada Reads, CBC Arts is bringing you daily essays about where this year's authors write for our series Where I Write. This edition features Watch Out For Her author Samantha M. Bailey. I'm easily satisfied by simple pleasures: escaping into a great book, singing in a private karaoke room where only my friends can hear me, playing board games I never win with my family. My dreams are about passion, not possession. But from the cramped apartments where I resided in my 20s and 30s to, finally, a small house in my 40s, I always envisioned a space where I could close the door, shut out the responsibilities of adulting and tap away at my computer to my heart's content. It felt totally out of reach, a luxury I could never give myself. So I carved out places within the walls of my homes, learning to work with constant noise. I adapted, though I still longed for a room of my own. But during the pandemic, things changed. I changed. As I wrote Watch Out for Her — that pressure-laden sophomore novel all authors fear — while virtually promoting my debut, Woman on the Edge, at a desk shoved up against my kitchen wall, I was stressed and burned out. My family, including my dog, already isolated enough, were confined upstairs during my many online events and interviews, while I hoped no one called out "Mom" or barked. I was lucky to have all of these opportunities to promote my work, but I was about to crack. Torn between my two loves — my children, who I wanted to be completely present for, and writing — just as I was finally seeing my decades-long goal of becoming a published author come to fruition, I knew something had to give. My kids are always my main priority, but I needed to find a way to put my oxygen mask on first. I'm uncomfortable spending large sums of money on myself, so it was two years into the pandemic before I took action. I researched she-sheds and tiny homes relentlessly. For a hot second, I even debated DIYing it, without any building experience or actual time to attempt it. Then I found the solution: a sustainable Toronto-based company that, in six weeks, could build a tailor-made office pod in my backyard for a somewhat affordable price (of course, it wasn't going to be cheap). Though I grappled with guilt over what felt like a selfish decision, I invested in myself. And as I watched with unbridled glee as the crew erected, frame by frame, the walls of my studio, then painted, laid the flooring and installed the windows and doors — all in styles and shades I'd selected — my stress levels immediately dropped. It was like magic. The first time I entered my finished, sun-dappled studio, I sat on the floor, deeply exhaled and cried with relieved happiness. When I decorated with a little pink couch and a white bookshelf, then carried in the desk that used to be pushed against my kitchen wall, I fully breathed in a way I hadn't in years. Now, I can blast my alternative '90s music, do yoga, take a nap, post sticky notes all over the walls and cover the floors with the puzzle pieces of my plots. I do virtual events without bracing for interruptions and create my fictional worlds without distractions. It's an enormous privilege to give myself this gift. The value is priceless. I'm a more patient mother and a more focused author. I've written two more books, A Friend in the Dark and Hello, Juliet, within the solitude I desperately needed. I never take for granted how lucky I am to have a space I can call my own.
CBC
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Jamie Chai Yun Liew writes while she waits — at the soccer field, the passport office, wherever
Social Sharing Leading up to Canada Reads, CBC Arts is bringing you daily essays about where this year's authors write for our series Where I Write. This edition features Dandelion author Jamie Chai Yun Liew. As I am writing this piece, I am in a classroom where my son's strings ensemble is rehearsing. The music, when they are in sync, is stunning, and I find myself pausing to take in the harmony. I write in predictable places like my office, coffee shops, libraries, archives and at vacation cottages. I have written in transit, in hotel rooms, airports, on ferries, planes and trains. My laptop and notebooks come with me to beaches, ski lodges, on the sidelines of a soccer pitch, on the sidewalk waiting to get into a Passport Canada office and in hospital waiting rooms. My favourite places to write have been in kopitiams and open-air hawker markets, on the balcony of a chilli crab restaurant on stilts in the water, at a picnic table in Kapi'olani Park in Honolulu where a bird landed next to my laptop, and my mother's dining room table. My least favourite places are the air-conditioned malls in Southeast Asia, freezing without a sweater. I write wherever I find myself. I didn't always write like this and longed for a desk with a nice ambience. My research, however, takes me on the road. Even when I am home, I have a family with a busy schedule, and the opportunity to write does not always present itself when I am in an ideal location. My day job jealously covets my time at my desk and pulls me from it to teach, into meetings, and sparingly, to court. The desk is not always a creative space. Increasingly, I find myself writing where I am waiting, in between the places my family and I need to be. I like immersing my writing in places. Certain spaces — with their aesthetics, smells and temperature — find themselves into my narratives. I write with bowls of curry laksa next to me, listening to the sound of gossiping aunties, complaining uncles and the sirens of cicadas. When I was writing Dandelion, I didn't know my early reflections would become a novel. It started as a journal to creatively document how I felt about the research I was conducting about statelessness. I wanted to collect and store the emotional aspects of the stories I heard from stateless people, their families and advocates because I could not neatly fit them into my legal or academic writing. Their sentiments felt familiar and echoed what I thought was an unusual story my father told me about why he immigrated to Canada. I was grappling with questions of why statelessness is pervasive, common and largely unknown. I began to write with the hope of bringing the varied felt experiences migrants as well as stateless and racialized people endure — both the joys when risks taken work out and the grief when something lost is longed for. In Dandelion, I was attuned to the traditional Indigenous territories the story was situated in and I was sojourning in. Within the pages, I tried to pay homage to these Indigenous communities in small ways. Wherever I was writing, I revisited in my mind some favourite locales from my childhood and the places where I have found community, especially those I frequented on maternity leave. As I connected the vignettes and rewrote my drafts, I found myself wanting to steal time to jot down a thread or connection. When I was in Ottawa, I grew tired of writing in one place, agitated and restless, and would move to different establishments west on Somerset Street in Chinatown, then I would keep going as it became Wellington Street. I met friends in their writing spots in Old Ottawa South. I rotated among the local haunts that tolerated me. When I was in Southeast Asia, I succumbed to sunset views, sitting on patios and balconies, while my spouse put the kids to bed. While my children were in daycare or school there, I frequented outdoor establishments during the slow peaks of their day, sometimes slapping my ankles where mosquitos found me. I have written in the dark while my children were sleeping in the same hotel room, tucking a knitted shawl under my arms, with the light from my laptop as my only guide. I have also written while sweating, drinking a piping hot, extra sweet teh tarik in a café that only had ceiling fans, getting angry at a pen that leaked across my notebook. Writing is a lonely experience and I seek accompaniment: leaves rustling in the trees, people laughing next to me, the strange playlists in coffee shops and the shuffling of snow pants. I am grateful for the times I can steal a moment in between writing, when I like to pause and take in light passing through different windows, appreciate a good conclusion to a piece of music being played and sip my tea.
