Ruth Anne Latta

Tidying up today, I came upon one of my notebooks where I'd jotted down some things I wanted to remember from "Walking in this World: the practical art of creativity,"  by Julia Cameron.   This book was published in 2002 by Penguin. Its ISBN is 1-58542-183-9) Cameron says that writers, like anyone who tries to create something, must be like the farmer in " Field of Dreams" and must trust enough to build it, whatever "it" is, and trust that "they will come."  She warns against being "miniaturized" by our friends, who know only one small part of us, as in the poem, "The Blind Man and the Elephant."  She writes: "Friends tend to reinforce the you that they see. They want to hold onto a you that doesn't threaten them and that gives them a comfortable sense of their own size and importance." She warns that we may have to "shed" the friends who won't let us grow. She adds: "Nelson Mandela has rem...

                           A writer friend of mine emailed to say that she is presenting my novel, A Girl Should Be , to her book club.                           She added, "I find your books not only informative about parts of our history, but engaging stories.  I like the comfort they offer even when there are situations that are not necessarily comforting. It is your manner of writing."                          This is just what I need to hear as I go over the proofs of my new Canadian historical novel, A Striking Woman .  Thank you, L!

I've been reading Joyce Carol Oates's collection of short stories The (Other) You (Harper-Collins, 2021) and was dazzled again by her story, "The Unexpected."  Every writer should read it, especially those who were not born to educated, supportive parents in a cultural metropolis. The story is written in the second person;  instead of "I" the author uses "you."  The central character is a writer who has been invited to receive an  honourary doctorate of humane letters from a community college near her old home in upstate New York, and to deliver the commencement address.  Is the story autobiographical? I think  Ms. Oates imagined a writer's worst nightmare and used details from her own home town to make it authentic In the story, the commencement ceremony is held outdoors on a breezy day. and the writer/narrator is pleased that her address held the students' interest and resulted in a standing ovation. Then things start to go wrong. When s...

 I learned today that words which are blends of two words that combine the sounds and meanings of the two words are called "portmanteau" words. I already knew that a "portmanteau" is a French word for the kind of suitcase that opens in two halves.  The name comes from "porter" is "to carry" and "manteau" for "coat." Some portmanteau words have become everyday, and no longer have the ability to startle us. Some examples in no particular order:  smog (smoke and fog); Medicare; Brexit; breathalyzer (breath analyzer); brunch; biopic (biographical picture); email (electronic mail), guesstimate; carjack (car hijack); anklet. I still smile at words like "bromance" and "frenemy" (I have some of the latter) and I once met a "labradoodle" who had a golden tightly-curled coat and wanted to jump up on me and lick my face. One memorable portmanteau word from literature is "slithy", which Lewis Carrol...

    In 2015 my  novel, Grace in Love , was published. (See Baico Publishing, info@baico.ca  The central character, Grace, was a real person, who made several false career starts before finding her life's work in politics, where she focused on issues of special importance to women.  She was the daughter of J.S. Woodsworth, the key founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, (CCF), the forerunner of the New Democratic Party (NDP), and married to Angus MacInnis, a long-serving Member of Parliament from British Columbia.         Grace in Love  ias a romantic novel about a young woman searching for love and a life's work, and finding both after some trial and error. Items in the Simon Fraser University Archives and the University of British Columbia Archives were helpful to my research, and the poem, by Grace, which follows, is in the latter archive, under Grace MacInnis Papers, photo collection, 1911/6) At least, that's what it ...

 This excerpt from A Striking Woman has been published as a short story in the anthology, Where the Winds Blow , Polar Expressions, 2022. "Saints"  from A Striking Woman a novel by Ruth Latta      When Jacqueline was eight, her teacher, Sister St. James, assigned each child to prepare a class presentation on a favourite saint. Jacqueline’s first choice was Jeanne d’Arc, who had been canonized in 1920, just seven years earlier. Jeanne, a farm girl in the 1400s, heard voices from heaven telling her to help the crown prince, the dauphin, kick the English occupying army out of France. When she arrived on her farm horse to see the prince, his nobles scoffed at the idea that a young country girl could lead troops into battle. The dauphin, though, was impressed with her and let her lead an army to free the city of Orleans. Jeanne won several victories, so that the dauphin could get to Reims to be anointed king. Then she was captured by traitors who handed her over to t...

 When I told a writer friend that I'd emailed the text of my new novel to the publisher, she remarked, "How exciting. I never tire of the thrill of seeing the final draft go off to be published." For me, the thrill always has a large component of anxiety.  The novel is no longer a personal activity, a relationship with the characters, but is  on its way to a wider audience. I feel like a mother sending a child off to school for the first time, aware that I can't protect my fledgling from everything and hopeful  that he or she does well in the outside world. I am encouraged that two excerpts from A Striking Woman have appeared in print in slightly different form. “His Point of View” appears in Nectar and “Saints” appears in Where the Winds Blow , anthologies published in 2022 by Polar Expressions, Maple Ridge B.C.