It has always been paper for me...

the truth of my writing and reading obsession

It has always been about paper for me (and maybe to a lesser degree, ink too.)  

I was raised around the smell of ink, perennial and ubiquitous paper cuts, and thinking that paper originated from a Domtar truck and only came in 36-inch sheets.

From my father’s printshop my passion for print was born of the multi-sensory experience of mixing inks on a one-inch thick piece of glass with a spotless stainless steel spatula. I studied Pantone colour card decks like other kids read comics, and my school binders showed off my access to unlimited 20-pound bond paper in every shade that was made – the pink, lemon, goldenrod, sky blue, green and the coveted orange. Purple wasn’t born yet.

My father had a print shop that did more than small jobs like business cards and pamphlets, in the time when graphic arts meant someone at a light table cutting and pasting film and paper to create the images that would transfer to aluminum press plates. He worked on maps for a local college cartography program, printed and crafted complex collated course material for a nearby university, and the highlight for me – he published historical books. As a little girl I remember my father’s pride in putting a railroad historian’s book on the shelves of the town’s bookstore. It was a mammoth undertaking in the late 70s and 80s, when computer tech was coming but hadn’t arrive in the industry.

Dad oversaw the placement of every image, the text caption centred under each figure, and of course the copy formatting. Most of this was “set” by hand, scissored blocks of paragraphs from large glossy printed sheets of text which had been entered on a very large, very rudimentary computer (eventually). At the time I thought Dad’s tech rivalled the Starship Enterprise (yeh, I’ve already dated myself with the 80s comment, so what the hell.) How I wish he could see me publishing books now.

In all my interviews and podcasts I’ve been invited to do, thirty alone for my memoir Loving Large, only one person has dug deeply into my why for doing this book coaching and memoir writing work. There I was being recorded by Tony Martignetti on his Virtual Campfire podcast and I had an online epiphany (thanks to Tony)– I’d been headed here all along. What I’d thought was a convoluted path to authorship and writing coach thought leaders and transformational and executive coaches, via a couple of degrees, stay at home momming two kids, a handknits and a jewellery business, practicing as an urban planner and policy writer…my parents skills and interests set the stage for the writer and publishing manager I am. My printer/publisher father who I spent the bulk of my time with by my choice (and my mother’s), and my medically-inclined mother who was quite comfortable with terminal illness, advocacy and death … landed me here.

Why I do this began with a passion for paper, leaked into self-soothing with books and evolved into my belief that helping people find their voice is the most powerful mission I have in the world.

(but it’s really about the paper!!)

I wonder if we really have any influence on our path at all…don’t you?!