It's seven p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month and we gather in the kitchen of June's East Vancouver apartment, talking all at once. A cork pops and sparkling wine is poured. Things are already jumping. We clink glasses to toast the newest book deal for the SPiN group. Mary has just sold her second novel, Muse, which is set in 14th-century Avignon.
"All right!" we cheer, and drink to her good fortune, which is our good fortune, too. Every piece of good news is a pick-me-up, like a rising tide that raises all our boats.
As the three of us know all too well, there are many obstacles between the first, raw ideas for a story and the final, bound copy of the novel. Jobs and family jostle for time and attention. Writing challenges lurk at every new turn. And if the novel is a first novel, the hurdles can seem insurmountable. But when you're in a writing group, giving up isn't an option.
Katie, the dog, is sniffing at Jen's bag. Jen pulls out a treat for her and we settle into chairs. June slides a plate of crackers and dip onto the table. We're dying to hear about Canada Reads. Jen is on the panel, and while her lips are sealed as to the results until the week it airs, March 2-6, she can tell us about her speed-changes into five different outfits on the marathon taping day in Toronto.
"We have to look like we've been taping for a week, not just one day. I had to change super quickly in the middle of someone's office before other people came in looking for paper clips."
Mary laughs because she has just returned from a book tour of the Maritimes where the key items in her wardrobe were a down coat, snow boots, and thick gloves.
June's idea of a dressy outfit is the spit and polish on the black shoes she wears with her jeans. Jen has even offered to take her shopping, but June still has proofreading to do before her novel Underground is finished.
The light is bright over the kitchen table, but it's intentionally dark elsewhere. We take turns meeting in each other's homes, which means each home gets a good cleaning once every three months. And when that fails, we dim the lights.
It's time to get down to business and June hands out the agenda. Although we also chat on an on-line forum, there's still much to cover. Upcoming events, tips about income tax, updates to the group website, www.spinwrites.com books and articles to swap, and a party to plan.
Over the years, we have encouraged, praised, and shored one another up. We have gone through deaths in each of our families. Births, too - nieces, nephews, and a grandson for Mary. We grieve and celebrate together, sometimes at the same meeting. Usually one of us is down. Every so often, all three of us are depressed and ready to give up. This happened more frequently in the early days when we weren't sure if our novels would ever be published.
But we always kept going. Dropping out would be letting the group down. We remind ourselves that we wanted to write more than anything else. Still do. That's what brought us together.
We formed our group in 2002 after meeting at a writing workshop. When the workshop was over, we stuck together, determined to get our debut novels across the finish line. During those first years, we did a lot of critiquing. Our different backgrounds, ages, and writing styles made for broad-ranging, lively discussions. The last thing we expected was that it would take five years for the first of our novels to be published.
We were like moms taking their babies to parties and diagnosing their ailments, although really we wanted pats on the head for raising such gems. We quickly learned that blunt criticism was going too far. No mom likes to hear that. We came up with a name for it: the avalanche effect, when you're too buried to dig yourself out. But shallow compliments weren't helpful either. The solution was to ask questions. "Did you really want your child to pull a tantrum on page 36?" Usually, we got the hint.
Eventually, we found agents and editors to govern our unmannerly prose. Interestingly enough, they often questioned the very same behaviours, the ones we had been pig-headedly ignoring for years when we heard them from each other. Although it's been tempting, we have never said, "I told you so."
Jen reads out the next agenda item, "How to make a living at this." Something we're getting more desperate to figure out now that we're writing second novels.
We brainstorm. Festivals, grants we hope we'll get, workshops that we no longer attend, but lead. Mary is the writer-in-residence this year for the North Shore Writers Festival. Jen is a regular on CBC Vancouver's On the Coast. June is looking for work related to writing. Soon her novel will no longer need her, and nothing is more exciting than a publication day.
The last item on our agenda is the launch for Underground. Over the years, we've used the excuse of checking out venues to get in some extra socializing. We launched Jen's The End of East at a tasting bar in the Downtown Eastside where the novel is set, and Mary's Conceit in a North Shore café with a violinist.
June describes plates of tapas. Lots of bubbly. A hot, sizzling party with Spanish music. We've been waiting seven years for this celebration. And right now, the long haul seems worth it.
Writers, it is said, need to be gregarious to find their material, but solitary to write. Tomorrow will find us at our individual desks, trying to pound out a new page on the keyboard, or staring at a printout of a troublesome scene, struggling, yet again, to get the words just right.
June Hutton's debut novel Underground - about a Canadian man's journey from the Somme to the Spanish Civil War - is being released by Cormorant Books next month. June (www.junehutton.com) will be appearing in reading series and festivals in the weeks ahead.
Jen Sookfong Lee (www.sookfong.com) is a panelist for Canada Reads (CBC Radio One, March 2-6). She was the Knopf New Face of Fiction in 2007 for her first novel, The End of East, which follows three generations of a Chinese-Canadian family.
Mary Novik's new novel Muse (www.marynovik.com) will be published by Doubleday in fall 2010. Her debut novel Conceit (Doubleday 2007), about Pegge, John Donne's most unruly daughter, was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller prize and won the Ethel Wilson, BC's top fiction prize.