Michael Winter
Michael Winter
filtering gets horrible okay safe
I didn't like filtering the story through me, saying, 'Reader, you'll be safe with me. While it gets a little dangerous, it'll be okay because, after all, you're with me, because I'm a warm convivial voice. But let's be entertained by this horrible stuff.' I didn't like that.
behind crooked deeply frozen invented large limbs merely organizing ourselves personal pluck skate sleeps stick
Hockey wasn't invented but discovered. The game, and the large organizing idea behind Stephen Smith's deeply personal 'Puckstruck,' sleeps in ponds and in the crooked limbs of trees overhead; we merely pluck a stick from the sky and skate over the frozen world to find ourselves and each other.
discussed examined figured larry life linda nearly
Linda Svendsen's 'Marine Life' was important. I was nearly 22. Larry Mathews discussed the book in a creative writing class. We examined her stories, figured out how they worked.
time type urban
Wild and urban at the same time - that's the type of woman I'm with.
If you are having trouble with a story, it may not be an issue with the quality of the writing - there may just be too much of it.
acres blanket feeling french imported park thousand trees trenches within
Beaumont-Hamel sits within a thousand acres of French agriculture. The trenches are under this blanket of grass. In the 1920s, a park was established here and trees from Newfoundland imported to encircle the battlefield so you get the feeling of being within a copse of woods.
create disaster family helps house land might nation next ridiculous seems
To me, the idea that any kind of disaster helps create a nation seems a ridiculous one. There was no family in the house on the land next to me, and there might have been.
almost favourite pull reads scenes tend
There are scenes from books I'm happy with. I tend to think my books are all broken. But then my favourite reads are almost always books that don't, in the end, pull off what they set out to do.
alive allow asked both country good healthy join lay life means mentally oath offer possible soldier stay tremendous
When you join the army, you are asked to lay down your life for your country. That is a tremendous oath to take. In return, a good country should offer that soldier every possible means it can to allow that soldier to stay alive and, upon return, healthy - both mentally and physically.
arbitrary arrived brevity good
Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.
bought bringing caribbean found gone house letters lived sailor saying trader
We found letters at the house we bought from a sailor to his wife who lived in the house. He went down to the Caribbean on this trader vessel, bringing down salted fish. There would be handwritten letters, but also telegrams, saying which ports he was in. And he'd be gone for three months. That was just the way it is.
good life warts year
I've never in my life categorized a year of my life as good or bad. I just think I'm living a good life, warts and all.
began brought buy discovered family few gone happened house interest land next owned piece plot trying war
A few years ago, I was trying to buy a piece of land next to a house I had in Newfoundland. I discovered that the plot had been owned by a family, and the son had gone off to World War I and been killed. It began to interest me: What would have happened on that land if the son had lived, had brought up his own family there?
relationship war
I've grown up, luckily, with only a distant relationship to war and soldiering.