No Car Day 2011 — Commercial Drive

I have been to every No Car Day on the Drive; but this was the first one in which I manned a booth and was there for the entire six hours. Crowds were good — almost as busy as Italy Day I would guess — even though the weather was grey and sometimes a bit chilly.  There was only one band that came through — more would have been better — and there were far too few “characters” such as the orange stilt lady:

I was volunteering at the Grandview Woodlands Area Council booth and was able to set aside a corner of the table for my book.  I sold quite a lot, perhaps more than I expected, in cash sales, and I also handed out a lot of business cards that refer to The Drive Press blog.  Even more importantly, I got to meet and chat with a lot of people who have memories of the Drive and who are happy to share their stories.  Here is modern capitalism in action:

We had a number of history-related objects other than my book — maps, etc — and that drove a lot of interest. Next year, for No Car Day, I’d like to work with other locals to have a specific Local History booth.  There are a number of local historians and we could pool our books for sale, brochures, displays etc.   Could be fun.

Back To Work

Since I finished the draft of my book and sent it off to the publisher at the end of June, I have done very little in the way of disciplined or directed work.  Back in the middle of July, I wondered aloud what I might do next.  Today that vacancy comes to an end. I have a very clear idea in my mind about the next book I will write, a novel this time, and I am determined to get back to a thousand-words-a-day schedule for the first draft.

It is discipline and it is also like the first day at a new job after a long period of unemployment, finding out about the characters that inhabit the office, discovering what is acceptable and what not. But it is mostly getting used to a starting time and a finishing time and an amount of work that needs to be completed each day.  Again, just like starting a job, I am both excited about what might be achieved and scared about whether I can pull it off.

Oh well, here goes day number one ….

What Next?

Just a few weeks after finishing the draft of my book and sending off the submission, I can say that the exertion of waiting to hear back is already harder than the effort of research and writing!

In the meanwhile, I’ve read a whole bunch of books — mainly by Anosh Irani and Laurence Gough, two very different Vancouver authors — watched a lot of sports (cricket, Le Tour and sumo) and cooked a number of (immodestly) fabulous meals. Each of these activities is a decent time filler, but none is as satisfying as finding out something new and pounding on the keyboard to explain it.

Retirement, or whatever this period is that I’m now in, certainly gives me the space to develop material (and I could not have completed the research on Commercial Drive without the free time). But it also reduces the urgency of getting things done over a weekend, say, or in the few hours available in the evening after a days’ work. Learning and applying self-discipline within a completely open schedule can be a tough slog!

But what to work on? I have an enormous amount of unused research from the Commercial Drive book and I had assumed I would work that up into something different; we’ll see. Perhaps I’ll try to build on some of the unfinished novels and short stories I have stashed away over the years. Maybe I should start by writing more blog posts. Hmmm, now there’s an idea worth pursuing.