Q. Where and when did you begin writing.

Q. You wrote poems as a child, bits of poetry as an adult. Do you still write poetry?

Q.You wrote extensively for yachting magazines in the eighties. How did you get started?

Q. Considering a return to a "real job"?

Q. Storytelling

Q. About your Icelandic heritage and your involvement with social issues?

Q. What about payment for writing?

Q. What, for you, means success?

Joan grew up in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan, lived in eastern Canada for most of 35 years and moved back to Foam Lake in 1992. She is the author of Red Right Returning (Shoreline, 1998) and co-author of Bent but not Broken, (Shoreline, 1992). She has been included in the anthology Barbed Lyres and in Morningside Papers. She wrote and voiced a CBC column, Prairie Snapshots for three years and has many periodical credits. She is national president of Canadian Authors Association, a member of Saskatchewan Writers Guild and a member of Storytellers of Canada.

Q Where and when did you begin writing?

A The first thing I can remember writing for public use was a Christmas play when I was eight or nine. I was a student in a small country school. There were only eight of us, ranging from grade one to eight. The little kids had to have little lines, or non-speaking parts, the older kids had to carry the dialogue and the plot. Oddly, I can't even remember thinking that would be a challenge. Ahh, for the innocence of youth.

I wrote poetry as a child and read everything I could get my hands on. When my well-intentioned parents decided I would make a fine English teacher and set about getting me into college, I rebelled and threatened to join the Air Force. Eventually, we reached a compromise. I went to Toronto and enrolled in the journalism program at Ryerson Institute of Technology.

Q So, after Ryerson you immediately landed a writing job?

A No, I went to work as a Junior Editor at the United Church Publishing House in Toronto. At that point and for quite a few years actually, I really felt that writing wasn't something girls from Small Town Saskatchewan could do. They could become teachers or nurses, secretaries or house maids. But not writers. Writers had to come from Toronto or New York. I worked at UCPH until I married a Catholic, converted, and figured that I no longer qualified for the job. I was 19. I didn't ask. I just quit.

Looking back I see myself as a closet writer. So far into the closet I never actually wrote anything on my own. But I was always the one people called on to write "thank you letters," and for a time I wrote the newsletter - gratis, of course - for my then-husband's company.

Q What brought you out of the closet?

A boat. And a man named Jack Cadham. I was 40 when I met Jack and we had both been bruised in previous marriages. Jack owned a wonderful old wooden sailboat called the Hirondelle. I was working with emotionally disturbed kids, a fairly stressful job. After work I would head down to the wharf to sand, varnish and putter around on the boat. I took to carrying a notebook with me. In it I would record observations, bits of poetry, play with images.

Q You wrote poems as a child, bits of poetry as an adult. Do you still write poetry?

A No. I decided if I was going to work that hard it wasn't going to be for three free copies. I was going to make money. I bought every writing book I could get my hands on. I studied market guides like a zealot. I taught myself photography. I figured out that in order to survive as a writer I was going to have to write good, practical stuff.

I made my first sale to Our Family magazine. It was a personal essay on being a single mom. A year went by before the next sale, this one to Western People, another personal essay, roughed out the night before my mother's funeral, taken out, polished and submitted two months later.

Q You wrote extensively for yachting magazines in the eighties. How did you get started?

A I had queried Canadian Geographic on a piece on the Rideau Canal which Jack and I often cruised. They seemed interested. I wrote the piece, got the pictures and they said……"Ummmm….no thanks." In a fit of pique I immediately sent it off to the one place where I knew it would never be accepted - Canadian Yachting.

They published fairly technical cruise guides predicated around setting compass courses and touring local bars. Mine was focussed on wandering around cosy little anchorages, and old cemeteries and churches.

To my surprise they took the story. Soon after, other yachting magazines began buying my cruise guides and for the next few years I couldn't write them fast enough. During that time, I had written a recipe book designed for cooking in a small, ill-equipped sailboat and I'd been flogging it around to various publishers. I'd had quite a few nibbles but no bites. Then one day I was talking to one of the boating mag editors and I mentioned that I found the recipes in the yachting magazines - which invariably involved the igniting of exotic ingredients - somewhat superfluous if not downright dangerous, certainly not something I'd attempt in my galley.

To my great surprise he agreed and said, "Why don't you write us a column?" So for the next couple of years I parlayed my still unsold recipes into a nice, little monthly cheque.

The boating magazines paid very well, about $900. for a 1200 word cruise guide with pictures. It was glorious. But then free trade came along and boat manufacturing collapsed in Canada as did the ad base for the magazine and it all went south.

Q That must have meant a significant reduction in your writing income. Did you go back to your day job?

A No, although when I looked at what I could make in childcare it was tempting. But about that time Jack and I moved to Foam Lake, That move in itself was serendipitous. Jack was ill and we knew we wanted to get out of Montreal, move somewhere that we could make a living from my freelancing. But we ruled out Foam Lake, my home town. You can never go home again and all that kind of thing. Anyway, we answered an ad for an 80 year old house in western Canada which turned out to be perfect for us. It also turned out to be in Foam Lake. What are the odds? We figured Somebody was definitely trying to tell us something.

Jack passed away in 1995 but I believe those last 3 years in Foam Lake were among the happiest in his life. I snagged a job writing at the local paper - I write features, columns and editorials. I continue to freelance for other magazines and newspapers and I fit in some storytelling along the way. I'm not rich but I make my living from my writing.

Q Tell us about your storytelling.

A Well, freelancing in Foam Lake was great but I missed being around kids. Then I discovered one thousand year old Icelandic fairytales. What really impressed me was that in these stories there are no hand-wringing blonde bimbos waiting for some male to rescue them from the dragon. In fact they were more likely to go out and rescue the males.

Fairy tales come from the culture. In Iceland the men were dying at sea. The women had to be able to take over. They had to cope.

I tried out the tales a the local school. The asked me back and other schools started asking me and paying me and it was all very nice and it's still going on.

Q Icelanders are defined as a literate people. They are also defined as a people concerned with social issues. Did you Icelandic heritage have anything to do with your getting involved in writers' organizations?

A I grew up in a politically-oriented family where we were expected to read and to think. I went to my first political rally with my dad when I was 12. I went to my first political convention (at the Bessborough in Saskatoon) when I was 16. At Ryerson, even for an introvert in a strange big city, becoming involved in the campus political club of my choice was as normal as breathing and I campaigned in the local riding during the provincial election although I wasn't old enough to vote.

I'm always surprised when I meet people who aren't passionate about issues. I spent my childhood evenings in our big, old farm kitchen in the wood box beside the stove, leafing through the magazines that were kept there for kindling and listening to the adults who had gathered around the kitchen table discussing the issues of the day in an educated and passionate way.

But it wasn't theoretical social justice. Dad couldn't pass by a man on the highway. He'd bring him home for at least a meal and often employ him as hired men. Some worked out. Some were drifters. Having a less than positive experience never stopped Dad from trying again.

Meanwhile, Mum was involved in her Solskin Ladies' Aid and privately she fed the hungry, clothed the needy and never said anything about it.

I always say that I do my politicking with my pen - or with my computer. On the other hand, I am involved with more than one organization, such as the Faith and Justice committee in our church and the Social Justice committee in our diocese. And perhaps it's that background that makes me so passionate about trying to promote a decent deal for writers - not just for me, but for all writers out there who are talented, hard-working , underpaid and under-appreciated. Becoming involved in provincial and national writers and storytellers groups, when I look back, was an obvious choice.

While I am not a joiner - I'm an introvert and I prefer to work alone - I have learned that sometimes work can get done only under the umbrella of an organization. However, I have also learned that many organizations don't work well. Ergo, three leadership courses I have taken over the past four years or so. I credit those with teaching me how an introvert can also be an effective leader.

As writers and leaders, we need to deal with copyright on the internet, media monopolies, and the ongoing issue of being paid for what we, as writers, produce. That doesn't always happen.

Q Let's zero in on the payment issue. There's differing views on this subject in the writing community. Some say a writer should never write for no pay, others maintain that sometimes the "exposure" is valuable, even if there's no monetary remuneration. What do you think?

A The best kind of exposure is my name on a cheque. Preferably a good sized one.

Having said that, I must admit that I have written for no pay. I write free for Logberg-Heimskringla, Canada's national Icelandic newspaper because it's my Icelandic roots. I also edit the Canadian Power Squadron's Porthole magazine but that's not really free because they finance two or more trips back east for me every year.

I have written free for CBC and I've written material for CBC for which I've been well paid. I continue to submit free stuff to that venue because I believe that in this case the exposure has been invaluable. I have landed assignments (Good Times magazine, Our Family magazine) where I would approach an editor and they would say, "I know you from CBC radio."

I do object to magazines which are printed on glossy paper, loaded with pricey ads and employ a large staff but can't afford to pay freelancers. One of them goes so far as to assure would-be-freelancers that they "do not charge for editing."

Q What, for you, means success?

A In my case success is being able to support myself writing. It's winning some awards. It's stuff as nebulous as having the late Peter Gzowski calling me a Morningside regular. Success is knowing I've touched people. It's being able to say what I want to say and having a public forum. Most of all it's being satisfied with what I write. I've worked hard at it, edited it carefully and some days, it comes out right.

My concern with writing organizations in Canada is that they have become so fragmented that it's like Saskatchewan farmers who don't get credit because they don't have one organization that will speak with one voice for them all.

Writers have the same issue. There are organizations that represent only science writers, and those that represent only agricultural writers. Somehow we have to find some away that all groups can work together to find a common voice.

All contents copyright © Joan Eyolfson Cadham

Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Box 1049 Foam Lake Sask S0A 1A0
phone 306-272-4994
fax 306-272-3796
e-mail jcadh@sasktel.net
please note - no hyphen in
Eyolfson Cadham

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