211212x At the end of 2011 I came up with the idea of making some income from writing poetry. I wrote my first poem of my own behest in the second half of Grade 12 in 1966 when I was asked to write a descriptive essay. I thought, that was too boring and chose instead to write a descriptive poem about a big house covered in vines, using the Empress Hotel in Victoria BC as my inspiration. The teacher gave me an A-minus — because it wasn’t an essay. In the Spring of 1972 I wrote a letter to the editor of The Province newspaper in Vancouver and they published it. I also wrote a vignette. And then wrote another version. The first version was idealistic and the second “commercial.”
In June 1976 I started writing what I called songs. Only a couple of them had tunes, but they all started slow and came to a climax at the end. From 1976 to 1980, I wrote maybe 500 of those. Over the years I have had the habit of purging from time to time. I did that early 1976. Throughout high school and years after I would have projects, like designing a house and trying to build it out of balsa wood. I was going to weave a scarf for my Mom but after a short while I stopped. And some time later I threw it away because I didn’t like the colours I chose.
I imagined buying a 100 square mile / 10 miles by 10 miles lot of land somewhere in Manitoba some day and designing my own country. I designed sextuplets, all the same with an interior courtyard. Elementary and high schools. A stadium dug into the ground so it would be easier, almost like ancient Greek theatres. In each corner of the lot, one square mile each would be for forestry, mining, farming and factories, and alternate. I designed a system of government with legislature, executive, courts, and boss (president). Moving sidewalks.
I stopped writing in 1980 but, in 1987 I think, a drop-in centre I attended decided to put out a quarterly newsletter. We had to decide on a name and I thought of Writer’s Cramp, and got one of us, a girl, to like it and it was accepted. In the Fall of 1986 I took a course in Borland Pascal computer programming, as coding was called at the time. But writing, I tried to get one or more piece I wrote put in each newsletter. We worked on it together. Cut and paste. Photocopying. Or printing I think it was at first. We went to a printer. Writing for that newsletter in its various guises went on until about 2005. After that the staff at the drop-in centre reserved putting out the newsletter for themselves. We could submit and have pieces “approved.” Never having it done that way before, at my first rejection I withdrew.
But as I mentioned above, I got the idea of writing for pay; writing books of poetry and vignettes which was my oeuvre. Sometimes I got a piece or two accepted by NSWA and RCLAS. And on September 20, 2012 I read in a café for the first time. I tried to continue doing that but my essays and poems were not seen as maybe good enough to read in front of everyone like that. For example, I had never done that before and I wasn’t good at it. I was by then in my 60s and had no like practice in school all those years ago. And my better subjects were math, physics and chemistry — so that is what I studied at UBC.
It was the Fall of 1966. You needed English 100 but the three books we had to read with assignments pertaining to them, well, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, was so dry and boring. When I finished reading it the instructor said to us it was about religion. I didn’t notice that when I read it. I had no idea what she was talking about. I know that Ireland is Catholic, at least I think it is. And I was not the most religious person. I failed English 100 but passed the supplemental exam at the start of July 1967.
That did not stop my writing in the future. Early 1972 I thought to myself, I’m smart. I should be able to write, too. My marks in Math and Physics were 92 percent in Grade 12. I won the Math award for Grade 10 in our high school, algebra. I got 93 percent in Mathematics 100 at UBC. But that is what made me start writing. 1991 and 1992 I wrote my autobiography to that point. I got my first desktop in 1991. In 1994 I culled the self-indulgent parts and began to flesh it out. Only Chapter 3 about the period when I worked from 1968 to 1972 did I not cull. I thought, if I changed anything I would ruin it.
So, to date I a still writing extensively but nothing I can think of as publishable. But it is all there, so I can’t say I haven’t had any practice cum experience. Just not so much publishable it seems to others. I write endlessly almost every day. And my computer is full of the stuff. Ideas? I seem to have made a multitude of acquaintances. And I hope you enjoyed my little story herein. Thank you….. — And sincerely, George Chris Michas
200117w Dear My Case Manager:
Purple Is the Sky 