Meeting writers!

“You’re doing it anyway. Why not get a credit for it?”

This was my friend’s encouragement to go ahead and take the university’s sole Creative Writing class. The professor was Al Reimer.

1986, pretty much the way I remember him.

I had to submit an application. Our first meeting in his blue-carpeted office, Al quickly dispensed with how we were related (distantly, but definitively) then tucked into the pieces I’d dropped off. I was in.

The class took up an entire afternoon, one day a week — the longest class duration I’d experienced to that point. We needed the time, because that man was born to expound. If I approached him in his office for some between-class advice, the rest of the afternoon or morning disappeared. He’d ask a few questions about my larger family, then explain where they fit in with our village’s history. History was just a lofty name for gossip, he assured me. And boy, did he know history.

I recall the office visits with more clarity than I do his classes, to be honest. But he was adamant on one bit of instruction: introduce yourself to the Writer in Residence. Attend their readings, submit something you’re working on and book an appointment to discuss it. This wasn’t a course requirement, mind you. Just the best piece of advice we were likely to get that year.

The Writer in Res the first semester was poet Tom Wayman. My mates and I were in awe of the man before he even set foot on campus. Wayman — not merely a published poet, but an accessible one. With a sense of humour! How was this guy not a regular in the New Yorker?, etc etc.

I arrived early to Wayman’s first reading, and took a seat near the wings — close enough to observe him carefully, as if he were some exotic egret in its natural habitat, but also within range of the exit, should any need arise for either of us to flee the scene.

Al walked in a few minutes later. Before he could introduce himself to Wayman, the poet bounded over with outstretched hand, effusively praising Al’s newly published novel, My Harp Is Turned To Mourning. Al stammered a thank-you, then collected himself to return compliments for Wayman’s most recent collection. Exchange completed, Al surveyed the room, then sat beside me. “Well,” he murmured, “I was NOT expecting that!”

My eventual meeting with Wayman was a happy-enough occasion. As is the way with these things, the younger disciple approaches the master, and within a few minutes it becomes evident to both that this will not blossom into a lifelong epistolary friendship. When we settled to discuss the piece I’d dropped off, his opening statement stuck with me. “The first thing I want to say is, when I started this piece, I was in — I wanted to see where you were going, I wanted to finish it. You know what I’m saying? At no time did I ever NOT want to be reading it.”

That struck me then, and still does, as remarkably high praise. This was my second year of university, and I was just beginning to discover a boatload of stuff I did not want to be reading.

When the year was over I bought Al’s novel. And at no point did I ever not want to be reading it. But I puzzled over how a guy like Wayman, a hippie-type from (to my eyes at that time) indeterminate ethno-cultural origins, could muster any interest whatsoever in a patently Mennonite novel. I finally figured, Wayman’s a savvy guy. He’s not just interested in Writing The Thing Itself, he’s keen to keep as many potential publishing doors as wide open as possible.

You never know where the next paycheque might come from, so you read, you compliment, you insinuate yourself as closely as you can to what could potentially be the next paying gig.

I was beginning to get an idea of just how much work was involved in “Being a Writer.”

Next: acknowledging the call, six months later.