Reason for Writing a Novel

In 1990, just as my career as an Abstract painter was really beginning to take off, I became bedridden with polymyalgia, an auto immune disease. As I lay abed day after day for months, too puff-headed to read, fantasy and reality mixing together, I spent my time reliving my past. A lot. Particularly one year of my life. And bit by bit, the structure of a book took form in my head.

I, too, just like Betty Wheatley, had attended Vancouver Normal School in 1951. And I, too, had misspent my time there, having a social whirlwind of a time. The punishment? Instead of a teaching job in Vancouver–my aim-I was offered a job in isolated Needles B.C. , where a wider variety of people than I had met in any city, taught me a myriad of Life’s lessons. And imprinted them indelibly.
It’s a town long gone; an era long vanished; a set of social mores now irrelevant. The setting for a poignant story, I concluded.
Maybe it was the codeine and prednisone — maybe not— but that unpredictable year in Needles soon turned into a comedy instead of a tragedy, once I began putting the story on to paper.

The first draft had just flowed out of my head — a straight forward memoir. Really, just a frame work, I quickly realized, because a memoir was not what I wanted. I edited, I tweaked and the story evolved into what I crave as a reader: sly humour and a storyline with many levels.

The Canadian publishing world was in disarray as I finished the book and the country was in recession. I eventually turned away from writing and put my story in the back of a cupboard. It was the influence of computer experts Jock and Dave McKay that recently coaxed me to try self-publication in this new day and age of digital technology.

Denise McKay

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Publisher (Trafford Publishing)

Early Efforts at Writing

When I first figured out, at some preschool stage, my mind was totally blown away that letters form words. A miracle! I couldn’t stop marvelling at the genius who had invented such a way to portray imagery and display thoughts. I was hooked on both reading and writing. I soon started to try the writing process myself, when I could tear myself away from reading. I was an addicted to both.
First, copycat stories, then poems, then stage plays. By the time I was in grade six I was writing, in a lined scribbler, a novel about a family of six loveable children. I read part of a play I wrote to my class line-up about a kindly grandmother who was dying and two of my friends began to cry. What a feeling of power! I wrote all the way through high school, too. Passionate poetry about the injustices that existed everywhere…especially about the injustices I saw in the small city of Trail B.C. And plays too for the Drama Club.Where did all this material end up? Dumped in the garbage, I guess. It obviously didn’t impress my parents. And I lived so much in an imaginary place that I never thought to save them myself.
During my early married years, as I raised five children, I took great comfort in writing long weekly letters to my parents and in-laws, filled with anecdotes and sketches. For more than ten years these were my creative outlets. Again they ended up as garbage. Only the occasional painting I managed to create would get me any family attention.
But as my children grew and started flying the coop, despite attaining some small fame as a ceramist and painter, I returned to writing: Writing to help me cope with depression. Which it did.


Here’s an example:

White Birds
Written 0ctober 1988


I planted a garden of white birds,
Placed smooth eggs so straight in a row.
In pale-colour eiderdown soil
I laid them so gently below.

I covered them with layers of blankets
As soft and as clean as white snow,
And I shone my bright spotlights upon them
And sang words to help make them grow.

Soon they grew bigger and swelled forth;
I bathed them with sweet water flow,
And one day they all sprouted so wondrously
I marveled to see them all so.

They stretched and they leaved and they blossomed
Put on a most rewarding show,
And my heart ached as I clipped all their rootlets
And watched one by one fly up and go.

Class Photo 1952 (Needles, BC)

This one and only photo I have of my portentous year there (1951-52) is all I have as proof that my sojourn there existed!
I am in the middle of the photo, at the back, amongst the grade six boys. Note to our left, the rope to put up and take down the school flag (Union Jack, of course) and above our heads the school bell. When I look at those young faces, I am transported back to that year. I remember each and every one of them as if I had just said good-bye to them yesterday. Some of the characters in my book resemble some of those dear, earnest, hard-working kids slightly, but I took much creative license, believe me! Blame it on the novelist’s penchant for exaggeration.