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B10 Terrace Review — Wednesday, May 8, 1991

YOUNG WRITERS’ “WEEK

Stories and photo by Harriett Fjaagesund

Author Watts mixes
theatre with writing

Visiting children's author Irene
Watts has a unique way of running
a workshop. With crayons, pup-
pets, masks and a few simple
items like belis and elastic bands
to create sound effects, she helps
people rediscover the kid inside
themselves, and that magical far
away land of wizards and dragons
and princesses and what-if.

Watts, who says she’s always
been writing, actually began her
career as an actress. She became
more and more involved with
acting, then in 1970, while touring
with an acting company in Alberta,
she was offered the directorship.
She wanted fresh material so she
began writing her own. Since then
she has written more than 12 plays
and two books.

Because her first love is theatre,
Watts spends a lot of her time
working with children and theatre.
She says there are very few plays
that are actually written for
children; most children’s plays are
written from the adult perspective.

She also does a variety of writing
workshops with children, teachers
who want to leam how to put on a
workshop, people hoping to learn
the craft of writing childsen’s
stories, and sometimes even pat-
ents of young children who just
want to learn how to encourage
their children’s creativity. Watts
also plans to write a book about
workshopping.

But Watts says the very best
workshops are the ones she does
with children.

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"As we create.

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stories the children sometimes take
over completely, and something

very special happens."

She also occasionally encounters
a student with that special spark of
creativity that tells her he or she
will someday make a name for
themselves. "I go into a class and

after an hour J can tell which ones

~ Writing | isa very lonely life... eo a

will be successful. I watch for @ |

those names; if you stay in this
business long enough you'll hear
of them eventually."

One of her best sources of in-
spiration comes from her own
children, who are now all grown,
and from her grandchildren. She
adds that not only does she get a
lot of good ideas from her children
and grandchildren, but that her

grandchildren are her best audience °

for trying out new material. If they
don’t like the material, then she
knows she-has to rework it.
Watts was in Terrace doing
workshops until April 26, when
she retumed to her home in White-
rock to work on a multi-cultural
project with the schools there.
After that she plans to work on
summer theatre. And of Terrace
youth, Watts remarked, "I’ve been
working with eight- to 12-year-
olds, and what a nice bunch of
kids. They are very disciplined and
very creative."

Watts’ latest book, a children’s
story entitled The Great Detective
Party (published by Penbroke), can
be ordered through Misty River
Books. «

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CANADIAN AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER Lyn Hancock: "I try
to turn kids onto writing, but you can't teach writing. You have to

have a passion for it."

"You need three things to be a
writer,” says well-known Canadian
author and photographer Lyn
Hancock during a recent lecture at
the Terrace Public Library for

Young Writers’ 91. "You must

have something to say; you must
have the passion, the need to write
it down; and you must be slightly
crazy. Writing is a very lonely
life."

Bom in Freemantle, Western
Australia, Hancock is the author of
12 books, including There’s a Seal
in My Sleeping Bag, Love Affair
with a Cougar, An Ape Came Out
of My Hatbox, and Northwest
Territories: Canada’s Last Frontier.
She has also written thousands of
articles published internationally in
newspapers and magazines such as
Nature Canada, Canadian Geo-
graphic, Toronto Star, the Globe
and Mail, Readers’ Digest and
Northwest Explorer.

Hancock spends most of her time
in the Northwest Territories rafting
rivers and climbing mountains. She
says she inherited her sense of
adventure from an adventurous
grandmother. Sne has travelled
around the world, gaining diplomas
and degrees along the way, includ-

_ ing a teacher’s certificate.

She says editors and librarians
alike often have trouble classifying

her books as fiction or non-fiction, -

juvenile or adult: The problem,
Hancock explains, is that she
writes books about the wild ani-
mals she has known (she has
raised several wild orphans, includ-

ing cougar kittens), and the ani-

mals often get into hilarious situa-
tions, such as s¢a lions ending up
in jail and cougars getting lost on
Grey Cup Day, and people have
trouble believing that she doesn’t

fictionalize her stories to make

them read better.

Nor do her stories always have a |

happy ending. Hancock feels obli-
gated to tell the truth when writ-
ing, even when it involves an
animal’s death, but editors and
parents disagree; they want a
happy ending. She says more
people buy her books when she
has a happy ending, "People now
think all of nature is like Disney,
they have a sugary view." Hancock
has even received hate literature

from people who. reacted strongly
to her realistic approach. Remark-
ably enough, it’s her primary audi-
ence, the children, who seem to
better understand this need for the
truth. "It’s a mistake to hide from
death. If we try to hide from it
then we won’t be strong enough to
face it when it happens. We all
experience loss."

Because she has very little con-
trol over the content of her books,
Hancock now spends most of her
time writing articles which she
says offer the writer a much
greater degree of control. she
began writing her own articles
years ago after being interviewed
by a newspaper reporter whose
resultant story was pure sensation-
alism and had little to do with the
actual interview.

Sometime in the future she plans
on re-writing some of her animal
books that are now out of print for
a younger audience because they
are still enormously popular. One
of her most popular books, There’s
a Seal in My Sleeping Bag, which
has been in print for 21 years, is
being reprinted this summer in
paperback.

She also wants to write a book
about Canada’s north, but says
publishers aren’t interested. "It's
very frustrating. Publishers don’t

want a book on the Northwest

Territories because they feel Cana-
dians. don’t know (or care) where
the north ‘is. But the Northwest
Territories, which is one-third of
Canada’s land mass, is Canada’s
distinctiveness."

Hancock travels around to a lot
of different schools, talking to kids
about nature and writing. "I try to

tum kids onto writing, but you

can’t teach writing, you have to
have a passion for it. You leam by
writing. I always tell people to
write about what’s in their own
backyard. Stories aren’t just about
the outdoors and animals."

She is big on conservation, and
tries to make people understand the
need to preserve our wilderness,
but says you also have to be realis-
tic about the wild, that you can’t
really interfere.

She describes an incident in
which she helplessly watched as 8
seal pup fell down into a fissure.
Criticized for doing nothing to help
the pup, she explains that there
really wasn’t anything she or any-
one else could do to save the ani-
mal. "What are you going to do in
a herd of hundreds and hundreds
of seals? In nature you can’t do
much. It’s not like Disney." .

Hancock comically describes a
curse common to all writers — the
habit of always thinking in terms
of story ideas, While being chased
across the tundra by a rather
grumpy grizzly last summer, she
says she was so busy thinking
about what a great story it would
make that she more or less forgot
about the actual bear itself. Luck-
ily, she adds, the grizzly finally
gave up the chase.

There isn’t much money in writ-
ing, but there are rewards, she
says. People often phone her, even
on Christmas Day, to tell her how
much they enjoy her books and
articles. She recently received a
pair of beautiful polar bear earrings
from a lady who has been reading
Hancock’s works for 10 years
now.

"She said she wanted to give me
something back in return," Han-
cock explains. "I like to get peo-
ple’s reactions because then I’m
not writing in a vacuum. You
really need all the help you can
get." -

NOTICE

Bell

POLES
SINCE 1908

OF 5 YEAR |
‘DEVELOPMENT

PLAN

The Bell Pole Co. Ltd. wishes to make avail-
able for public viewing the 5 Year Develop-
ment Plan No. 6 under Forest Licence A-16832

T.S.A.

for proposed operations within the Kisplox

The plan may be viewed at the Bell Pole Co.
Office, 5630 Highway 16 West, Terrace, B.C.
until June 28, 1991, during regular working

hours.

Comments are invited and to ensure con-
sideration they should be in writing and

directed to ‘Forestry Supervisor’,

Bell Pole

Co. Ltd. P.O. Box 280, Terrace, B.C. V8G 4A6,

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