I have neglected this website for a long time but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing.
I have been busy polishing up manuscripts and sending them out. Recently, Presence, published a poem called Companion on the Journey and Hay Maker, a short story, appeared in The Dalhousie Review.
Thomas Merton, the great writer and mystic, warns in his book Echoing Silence that we should not write for the gratification of our own ambitions. But what writer doesn’t want to see his or her work in print. Do we write simply to satisfy our own ego? Some of us write because we feel compelled to do so. I took up the pen when I was a child.
My first book was a picaresque novel. Of course, I didn’t know that word then. The story takes place when the first Canadian pioneers settled in the wilderness. The heroine Madeleine searches for her father who has been thrown into prison in a far way town. Wakhan Thanka, the brave and Zonta, his horse, encounter many adventures as they guide their friend through the forest to her destination. I wrote to Ottawa and asked for a language dictionary but the return letter said there was no such thing. I looked in the indexes of the story books I was reading and chose those words. Zonta means trustworthy and actually belongs to the Sioux language. Wakhan Thanka is the Lakota word for the Great Mystery or Great Spirit.
Perhaps I wrote that book because my own father went away for a year to study in England. I missed him sorely. When he came home, he regaled me with stories of his own grandfather who was a missionary to the Ojibwe and translated the Bible into their language. He loved and married a woman of the tribe. I have always been proud and fascinated by that heritage. Sadly, my first novel was lost in a move.
Today I am still writing.