I’ve just sent a first draft off to the publisher, which should give me between one and three weeks to celebrate freedom before changes and suggestions begin to arrive.

In the meantime, I’m going to tackle all the little projects from my back burner. I have a proposal to complete, some outlining to do, a few websites to update… and maybe a book or two to finish reading during time when I’m supposed to be writing.

Oh, and lunches and coffee dates, of course.

What good is freelancing if I can’t play hooky every once in a while?

Here’s a tricky question: should we encourage kids to become artists?

I was wondering this after I spoke to a UBC creative writing class a few weeks ago. I ranted for a while about the power of writers’ voices. When we write, we aim to affect and move people, and that can be an influential thing.

So yes, we should encourage kids to to become artists.

But then there was this article, waiting for me on Twitter. And this one. Many writers live off independent wealth, family connections, or the sponsorship of partners with stable jobs. (Mea culpa on the last one.)

This is crushing for two reasons. First, because it cuts from the conversation a lot of brilliant people who give up writing in order to support themselves. Second, because by encouraging our kids to become artists, we might be dooming them to lives of dependence.

All of this makes me thankful for my own parents, who watched me embark on a creative writing degree with not a word of complaint. My dad’s only suggestion, when I considered a journalism trade program, was that a degree from a university rather than a trade school would allow me more options. (I’m sure he didn’t think I was listening, but I was.) Other than that, not a word.

For six years, I wrote in the evenings while working a day job. I lived in a rented East Van attic and used a laundromat. Between salary and freelance income, I made $25,000 to $30,000 a year.

Then I married well.

Having the time and space to write has certainly increased my productivity. But my income from writing is still only $30,000 a year. So, would I be writing even if I were living in an attic and my kids were barefoot and there was plastic wrap on the insides of my windows? I’m a rather tenacious sort. I like to think that no matter how much it sucked, I would have done it. Then again, maybe that’s delusional. My kids kinda like their shoes…

So back to the original question: do we encourage that future for others?

I only know my own answers. I’m grateful, both for my parents’ encouragement and for my husband’s support. I hope my kids make their own choices as confidently as I did, whether they decide to be writers or doctors. I hope they find callings rather than careers.

And I dearly hope they never, ever work in LNG, no matter how much money they’d make.

In my presentations, I often talk about storytelling, and the ways in which techniques are the same, whether you’re entertaining a crowd at a family barbecue or writing an information book. In each case, the best stories involve great characters, complications, and twists.

I’ve been known to repeat one or two of my dad’s stories as an illustration of this point.

Well, check out what arrived in my in-box last week, in response to a Leslie Neilsen video. This is one of my dad’s tales:

I used to work for Leslie Neilsen’s brother, Gordon Neilsen, retired Vancouver police motorcycle division. I set pins in his bowling alley at Skyway Lanes in Richmond. He weighed about 300 pounds and used to come to work and lift his belly onto the counter and breathe a sigh of relief.

I can’t remember why he fired me, but I know we didn’t like each other. I would come and work for the assistant manager when Gordie wasn’t around, and I would go in the back door and visit with boys working when he was. He spotted me once when I was back there, and he took off out the side door to catch me in the back. But I saw him just as he was going out the door, so I took off out in a field.

He never showed up out the back and I found out later he was after me, but he fell through the septic tank when he rounded the corner.

I never went back!!!

Complications. Twists. And I double dog dare you to find a better one-line character description, in fiction or non.