What literary character most influenced you when you were young, and why?
I love the classics, so Dickens, Jane Austen, Bronte sisters. Plus I read a lot of fairy tales, and in my teens I read Bruno Bettleheim and historical biographies about the Tudors and Stuarts. But my favourite character was John Trenchard of JM Faulkner’s Moonfleet, a fifteen year old boy in England in the 1700’s who gets involved with pirates.
Can you recall the premise of your earliest work?
I wrote a lot of little poems and stories as a child, but none of them have survived. When I was 14, I invented the heroine of my epic novel, The Legend of the Triple Crown. Aramanda was
everything I was not: bold, strong, powerful, and she didn’t take any crap from anyone. Then I learned to become slowly more like her. The character evolved into an historical fiction novel about a princess who competes with her brother for her father’s throne. It’s epic classic in form, but the theme of a woman struggling for individuality in a man’s world mirrors my rise in business in the eighties and nineties, and focuses on the resulting sense of personal loss. The final draft was written in 2009.
Do you have a favourite writing place? Routine?
I don’t have a lot of time and I travel a lot, so I write everywhere. Planes, trains, in the shower, in the car commuting to work, waiting for a meeting, in the boardroom while the others are arguing over a spreadsheet. I have learned the trick of unfolding a scene in my head and holding it there, sometimes for days until I have time to write it down. When I have time, I go to Starbuck’s with my niece and we write for hours, sometimes all day and all evening too. Those are heavenly days.
Reading is…. Essential
Reveal some themes that often come up in your work… (digestive organs, pavement, Norway…??)
For some reason, I had a recent obsession with raspberries… but usually I don’t have anything particular like that that sticks. My writing is about the interactions of relationships, the passion, the disappointment, the abandonment, of how people fail each other, or rescue those they love.
A Choice (or seven):
Sweet or Savoury? Both
KD Lang or PK Page? Neither
Theatre or Film? Both, most enthusiastically! (Editor’s note: I’m sensing some confusion with the word ‘choice’…)
Lake or Ocean? Both, but only to be near them, I don’t like to go in. (I drowned as a baby, and my parents had to revive me, so I’ve always had a healthy respect for water.) Water is fascinating, powerful, mysterious, comforting and dangerous, and my writing reflects that emotion towards it. My novel, Wings of a Fly, features bodies of water quite prominently in the setting and theme, and, having grown up in Kingston, I am obsessed with Lake Ontario, almost like a touchstone. So maybe I should have listed water in the question about themes.
Short Story or Fat Novel? Novel. Most definitely. I have written four of them.
Canoe or Bicycle? Canoe is work to me, and too slow to keep me amused, plus ‘on’ is a little too close to ‘in’ the water; as for bicycle, mine was stolen about two years ago and I haven’t gotten around to replacing it. Maybe I will get an electric one…. But I attend yoga and aquafit classes which I enjoy.
FB or Twitter? Most vociferously neither! As a marketing executive, I distrust them as a tool of manipulation. and as a person, I resent them as intrusive. My friends all think I’m a little uptight about this…
What advice would you give someone who said: I’m thinking of writing my life story…?
Be sure to make a lot of it up….
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Sally Moore lives in Whitby, Ontario. Articles and essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Ottawa Business Magazine and Word Weaver, and poetry forthcoming in the Ontario Poetry
Society’s Arborealis Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Poetry. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, studying under authors Alistair McLeod, Nino Ricci and Susan Swan, and has recently completed a novel, Wings of a Fly. Sally has served on the Board of Directors of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, and won a Gold Remi Award at the Houston Television and Film Festival as Executive Producer of the environmental documentary, A Sustainable Future. Other writing credits include Lifecycle Guarantors of Sustainability, published in The Sustainable City IV by Wessex Institute; forwards to the Artshow series of design books; and numerous promotional and web-based materials. Sally is serving on the WCDR Board of Directors this year as Workshop Coordinator.
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What literary character most influenced you when you were young, and why?
Jane Eyre — because she had everything against her at the start of her life and, while remaining kind and loving in spite of harsh treatment, she kept hoping against hope and so brought
happiness to herself and others. Note: I was brought up in convent boarding school and have remained an incurable romantic all my life.
Can you recall the premise of your earliest work?
It was a poem. It must have been 1963. It was a poem questioning how Jackie Kennedy was going to bring up her two children without the destructive hatred that their father’s assassination might engender in them.
Do you have a writing “routine”? Or how about themes that tend to come up often in your work? (roses, winegums, Nepal?)
No, unfortunately I do not have a writing “routine”. My first play (and the only full-length play of mine to be fully produced), though not autobiographical, was about a young woman trying to make up her mind about emigrating from Ireland. My second play was about homeless people like those I had got to know at one stage of my life and whom I serve in a lunch kitchen nowadays. My third play came out of nowhere. Two ten-minute plays, which were produced at Trafalgar 24 in Whitby, were based on information contained in a book about the history of Whitby.
Reading is…. my mind’s blood.
Recite a favourite passage from a favourite book. Why is it special?
“In the midst of Winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible Summer.” Albert Camus (I can always call on it when things are not working out at all the way I’d wish. It is short and easy to call to mind.)
A Choice (or seven):
Yeats or Keats? Yeats
Stratford or Shaw? Shaw (This question presumably refers to the Festivals not to
the authors!)
Lake or Mountain? Mountain
Sonnet or Haiku? Sonnet
Chekhov or Moliere? Moliere (A difficult question to answer.)
Canoe or Bicycle? Canoe
Pen or Keyboard? Pen
What is the writer’s role in society?
To help us absorb a multitude of visions.
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Lucy emigrated from Ireland in 1957. Her poetry has been published in Canada, England and
Ireland and her first collection is entitled Migrants All. She has produced a CD of stories and poems, The Tellings and Mad Sweeney. She is happiest when entertaining an audience, whether with stories, poetry or as an actor. Her play, ‘Daughter of the House’, was produced in Toronto in April/May 2008.
Lucy can be reached at lbrennan7109@rogers.com and (coming soon!) at her website www.lucybrennan.ca
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Appearance on Hugh Reilly’s ‘Liquid Lunch’
Suzanne can also be found at: www.writingfromthesoulsuzanne.com
Reading as Writers is YOUR online book club/drop in centre/hang-out spot. We want to know what would make this a place you’d like to spend more of your precious free time!
Let us know what you’re dreaming of.
Our next books and bevvies, where we discuss the upcoming featured book, our own works in progress and other things literary and chocolate-related. We will also allow time for 3-minute readings from those wanting to participate.
Monday, November 29, 6:30-9:30 pm
The Brock House, 918 Brock Street North, Whitby
If you would please fill out the form below to let me know you’re coming that would be great. It’s not essential – if you find out you can come at the last minute, we’ll be thrilled to see you – but it will allow us to reserve the right sized area in the restaurant so everyone can sit at the table.
See you there!
