Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I started my growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My parents were Baptist and church was a big part of life. Out doors was a bigger part. We lived in many different places around Halifax and there were usually woods and fields to play in and adventures to have. I loved visiting my grandfather in the house he built across from the pond and Uncle Victor and Aunt Marion down at Haring Cove. There was a wooden dock out on the water and what I really loved was the feel of the house. It was a little like going to heaven where everyone was nice to me. And the wooden floors were so off kilter that I could roll things down the floor.
We moved to London when I was almost 7. Dad rented a house among the Italians and my sister and I went to another new school. I changed from being a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Boston Bruins. It was the perfect team for kids. And we played road hockey most every day and I started playing ice hockey and my dad bought me a bicycle. I started piano lessons and was quick to learn.
When I was 11, my dad bought my mom, and us too, a house that was to be ours. It was out in that strange land called Suburbia. A fish and games resort was almost beside us with woods all around for miles and miles so dad got a canoe and we chopped dead trees down in the winter for our wood stove.
I was also a member of a boys group at the church. Though I was already not convinced about God and the wild stories in his book, I really enjoyed the camping trips and canoe trips. They really did have an influence on me.
In fact, it was the outdoors that made it clear that I would write. I was in college studying Architecture after deciding not to further my music studies, and a friend and I were taking time out to hike some Rocky Mountains. At the top of one of these mountains I stood and looked over the great expanse and realized. Clear as the day was.
I went back to where I found my friend exploring the surroundings and said to him: "I'm going to be a writer."
He said, "It will take you 20 years."
When did you first start writing?
In school I wrote a few things. Projects. My first attempt at a story was in grade nine in high school. My teacher was so dumb he didn't understand why the plane had suddenly landed where it did after the strange things that happened. And I wasn't going to explain it to him. It was a good lesson, however, for eventually I learned that readers don't know what is happening in your head if it is not written for them to read it. They aren't going to guess things unless they are pointed in the right direction.
But really writing because I had an idea started when I was 19. I wrote little poems. Sometime just some thoughts. And I finally started to read. I was years behind in English up to the end of high school. My Canadian English teacher, after grading me with a 39%, only because she was very impressed with my final presentation, told me I would do well, she thought I was clever and talented. But whatever you do, she really did say this, don't do anything with writing.
Now I did not start writing to spite her. I liked her. She was very cool. I started with my first story quite by accident one night about a year later while practicing my printing at home. That was back before computers so an Architectural student had to practice and make very clear, his printing of letters. With a pencil. Our hockey coach was our teacher. And he said, he used a typical Italian name, the Italians built North America in case anyone wonders, and was it racist, no, Italian is not a race, but we stray far too wide. The point is, make your instructions and lettering clear because someone has to build the thing you draw and write. Do not let them guess.
So after doing A B C D ... X Y Z about 6 times, I got very board. And without deliberation I wrote a sentence. That sentence was then followed with a somewhat more hurried printing. About a third of a page down, a couple friends were let in by my dad, they came down into the basement, that's where I usually was because my room was there, and interrupted me and I never wrote again.
At least not till later that night when I got home and wrote a story that I would use for my Science Fiction course that I took the second year and literally blow my teacher away. He couldn't believe a student of Architecture had a mind of his own. He gave me an A++ on the year. When the grades where hung out afterward people were saying, wow, Steve, no one ever gets A++.
I couldn't top it, obviously, but instead of not being able to read or write all the way to the end of high school, I was the top in English from then on. I made all my English teachers thereafter remember me. And some will still remember me. And best of all, love me.
And to top off this self patting on back answer to question 2, I moved to Toronto after college so didn't make it back to the 5 year reunion. But my sister, who had been in the Canadian English course with me, did. She did study French and English, eventually becoming a professor or something. She met this said teacher, who does have a name, Mrs. Ferguson, and Mrs. Ferguson asked her in the course of their conversation: and what is Steve doing.
"Writing."
"Oh, that doesn't surprise me."
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