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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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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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