Monthly Archives: June 2012

Freelancing

Rattled: When the Home Office Becomes a Construction Zone

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Until recently, I’ve always loved working at home because it’s so blissfully quiet here. Our apartment backs onto a ravine, so we don’t hear much more than the birds singing and the wind gently rustling the leaves. (It’s a far cry from living next to a nightclub and enduring the rants of belligerent drunks, which we did for a couple of years.) My office window looks out on the rest of our building, a beige-brick low-rise built in 1956. It’s the kind of building a friend calls “a granny building” since the residents stay for decades. The only excitement to be had is the occasional neighbour coming out to water the plants on a balcony, or birds flying back and forth to feeders. It’s an ideal set-up for happy productivity–at least it was until balcony reconstruction began the other day.

I don’t particularly mind strange men on the balcony, and I can tolerate the sounds of sawing through metal railings. But I cannot bear the jackhammers. The men started drilling through the concrete last Thursday, and as soon as they began, I thought I would fragment right then and there. It was not just the noise, but also the vibrations, which were enough to send a glass bottle flying out of a cabinet (I have since moved my glass and pottery collection to safer realms). The noise and vibrations combined threatened to reduce me to a useless, incoherent, quivering mass of jelly. And our rescue dog Trinka, who has always greeted disturbing noises such as fireworks and thunderstorms with equanimity, was whimpering in distress. I grabbed her leash and whisked her away to the safety of the nearest dog park.

Now, I certainly don’t mind whiling away an hour or so in the dog park on a nice summer day, but not in the middle of an extreme heat alert. Temperatures were soaring to 34 degrees C with a “real feel” of about ten degrees more. Fortunately, we found refuge in that rarest of establishments, a Toronto cafe that allows you to take your dog indoors, Williams at PawsWay. From there we visited family in a nursing home. Mercifully, the following day was cooler, so I spent more time honing my lady-of-leisure skills by lounging at both the park and on the patio at Starbucks, where in a fit of nervous tension, Miss Trinka chewed through her harness. I could hardly blame her, as I felt like gnawing on something myself.

What I really should have been doing instead of drinking lots of green tea was working, but the construction nixed any chance of being productive. Unfortunately, I’m incapable of working in cafes or even libraries, since I get distracted by just about anything; as my concentration suffers, my frustration level rises accordingly. Since I am already at the mercy of the strange men on the balcony, I have decided to work around their Monday-to-Friday, roughly nine-to-five schedule. I start work at 7 a.m. so that I have a solid two hours before they begin their daily assault on my senses (although today they began early, which made me want to bark at them, just as Trinka did). When they finish sometime between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., I can work again. It’s possible to get in about four to five hours of editing each day by following this schedule. And then I work on the weekends to make up for additional lost time.

As I write, the men are working late, and there are chunks of concrete literally raining down from the third floor onto what remains of our balcony. I keep imagining one of the chunks whizzing right through the window, and although the jackhammering is now further away than it was last week, my ears are buzzing and my nerves feel not just frayed, but shredded. It’s definitely going to be a long, hot, most aggravating summer.

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Virginia's Ghost, Writing and Editing

The Fine Art of Reading Your Work in Public

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Recently, I signed on to read an excerpt from the novel I’m writing, Virginia’s Ghost, at the July 21st meeting of the Writers and Editors Network (WEN). It’s been eons since I’ve read anything before an audience. I’ve often thought that apart from dealing with the inevitable frayed nerves, reading in public seems straightforward enough. You don’t have to memorize anything, so mostly what you need to do is just get up there and read as expressively as you can, right? Is that really so hard?

I learned how woefully ignorant I was about public-speaking techniques this past weekend when I attended a workshop given by Heather Dick of the Sirius Theatrical Company called Speak! Capture! Empower! The day-long workshop is specifically designed for authors and other speakers who read in public. The goal is to discover how you can best grab and hold the attention of your listeners. When Heather first told me about the workshop, I was eager to sign up and learn how I could “lift the words off the page” (as she likes to say) and successfully avoid prompting my listeners to catch up on their sleep.

Heather Dick of Sirius Theatrical Company

I instinctively knew that Heather’s workshop would be well worth my while. She is a vibrant woman who sparkles with energy, humour, and confidence, and if anyone could transmit public-speaking smarts to me, it would be her. I also knew that she seriously (or siriusly, if you’ll pardon the pun) knows her stuff. After all, Heather has acted in, directed, or produced more than seventy shows across Canada, has numerous film and TV roles to her credit, and has been teaching acting for twenty-five years. And in 1989, she started the Sirius Theatrical Company.

One of the things we talked about in Heather’s workshop was freeing our voices. Stress and other factors that have accumulated throughout our lives limit our voices, so it’s no wonder they often sound weak and strained. What to do? We learned a series of exercises designed to free our muscles so that we can in turn free our voices and realize their full potential. We also learned how to breathe naturally and to balance ourselves properly to support our voices. We practised our diction by reading Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics, and learned how to interpret text by reading poetry, employing many tools that would increase the power and expressive quality of our words. As well, we reviewed the texts we’d brought to read, marking them up in ways that would aid our reading.

Then the time came to take the stage and practise our text before a small audience of workshop participants. But first, we learned how to cope with both a microphone and our pages of text, which was not as easy as it sounds. Next, Heather reviewed how to best make the sort of entrance that would immediately engage an audience, which was something I’d never given any thought to before. As well, we learned how to make a gracious exit.

When I got up to do my reading, I felt the tension tightening in my chest and the butterflies fluttering in my stomach, but I remembered Heather’s instructions about what to do before starting, and gradually the stress dissipated. I know that my voice faltered here and there, and that I read some passages too slowly and didn’t always manage to convey the depth of feeling I was after, but I certainly did much better than I would have without Heather’s instruction. And what’s more, once I got rolling and fell into the rhythm of my words, I was having a blast. Even better, I now have an array of wonderful, shiny new public-speaking tools at my disposal that I can use when practising my text for the big day. When July 21st rolls around and I’m called upon to take the stage, I’ll definitely be ready.

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