Wildlife Rescue Series!

I won the lottery … I’m a workshop leader at this year’s Canadian Book Camp at the Vancouver Public Library! Running from August 11 through August 15, all day every day, young aspiring writers and avid readers will gather ‘below the books’ to hear authors speak, to participate in interactive workshops, and, of course, to write. By the end of the week, campers will have completed at least one piece that will be published in the camp’s annual anthology.

My workshop is entitled INSPIRATION STUDIO: Tap into your own powerhouse of inspiration! It runs every afternoon in the Alice MacKay room from 1pm-2:45pm. Participants will be amazed to discover what they can use as sources of inspiration for some of their best writing ever!

Watch here for more information leading up to the start of the Canadian Book Camp 2008. See you there!

When I got back from presenting at the Williams Lake Young Writers’ Conference in May, I promised to post writing produced by the students in my workshops. I received three submissions. Here is the third, a story by Keaton, written in my “Animal Writes!” workshop (scroll down for more student writing!):

If I Was A Professional Skateboarder

If I was a professional skateboarder I would be famous and rich. I would own my own skateboard park and could land any trick I wanted to on my skateboard.

I would have sponsors because I am so good and get free stuff from my sponsors. I would be rich and could get anything I wanted. I would win every competition I would be in and become a better skateboarder than Tony Hawk.

I could travel to every place and continent I wanted to and get V.I.P. passes into any concert. I’d be friends with every famous person.

When I got back from presenting at the Williams Lake Young Writers’ Conference, I promised to post writing produced by the students in my workshops. So far I have received three submissions. Here is the first, a “news column” by Austin, written in my “Animal Writes!” workshop (stay tuned here for more student writing!):

The Dream Machine

There was a man who got the Dream Machine. So far we don’t have his name, where he lives or anything about him. If you see him around, catch him and bring him to Creatures.Inc.

The Dream Machine copies anything you want and you can get a complete replica of it. It doesn’t matter whose it is. He will copy it and get his own. It is not good if only one person has it. Everyone should have it.

Authors Diane Haynes and James McCann

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

The email arrived out of the blue, some time last winter: Would I be interested in being one of the authors to present workshops at the annual Williams Lake Young Writers’ Conference?

Would I?!?

After months of waiting and preparing, scads of emails and much excitement on the part of the Vancouver-based authors who would be going up together, the day finally came — May 4 — we were off to Williams Lake!

Organizer Amar Sull had thought of everything. She booked us flights with Central Mountain Air on their 18-seater prop plane. We flew direct from Vancouver to Williams Lake, swinging out over the Pacific coast and then rounding east across the snow-covered Central Mountain Range and into the interior of British Columbia. Williams Lake is 6 hours northeast by car, and situated exactly half way between the coast and the BC-Alberta border. It’s a mill town and a resort town, with a population of about 36,000 and great outdoor amenities summer and winter. Our only regret was that we couldn’t stay longer.

As soon as we saw a photo of the plane we’d be taking, author James McCann and I decided we needed to dress the parts. He went all out as Indiana Jones, complete with fedora, and I aimed for a Casablanca look. We turned a few heads at YVR, but hey, that’s what we were aiming for.

We met fellow authors Kari-Lynn Winters and Max Tell in the waiting lounge, and proceeded to throw our own little party, complete with food and drink and loud, obnoxious laughter. Missing the boarding announcement completely, we held up the plane’s departure … and then held it up a little further when we asked one of the CMA staff to take our picture on the tarmac. However the result, above, was worth it.

The plane had a row of seats on each side, separated by a very narrow aisle. In all, the plane wasn’t as wide as many cars I’ve been in. We could see the cockpit and the instrument panels from our seats, and were astonished when, after completing the pre-take-off cabin prep, the flight attendant took her place in the co-pilot’s seat and proceeded to help fly the plane.

The trip was gorgeous, and surprisingly short (55 minutes), and before we knew it, we’d arrived. Amar and her husband Jas met us at the little airport, introduced us to three more authors (who’d flown up with us, unbeknownst to us) and drove us to the Sandman Inn, where Amar had arranged all our rooms.

After settling in, James, Kari and I took a walk through Boitano Park and into downtown. Because it was Sunday, everything was closed, but again, we thought this was somewhere we’d like to return to, and spend more time.

We all met up at the Laughing Loon Pub for dinner that night, and shared some unrepeatable stories and unforgettable songs. Then it was back to the Sandman and to bed.

The conference the next day was incredible and again I have to say that Amar had thought of everything. Each author had his or her own room, and we shared an authors’ lounge for breaks and lunch. In each of our rooms was a basket of goodies — pencils, pens, chalk, kleenex and even candies! — all the emergency supplies any touring author would ever need.

We met all of the workshop participants in the gym first thing, then began our workshops at 9:45 am. I taught three one-hour workshops to grade 6 and 7 students from various schools around District 27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin). With the first group, I led a Shamanic journey for the students to discover their medicine animals. With the second two groups, I told the story of how by rescuing a drowning seabird, I joined my passion to my writing, and then I led them through a series of exercises designed to tap into what they care about most.

All the students wrote, and I invited every participant to send me their finished pieces for posting on this site. So stay tuned here for some awesome student writing!

After closing ceremonies in the gym, we all headed back to the cafeteria, where the 8 authors set up tables with their books. Students, teachers and parents had the opportunity to buy any books they were interested in, and have them signed by the author.

With our workday done, we headed downtown to check out Open Books, the little store we had spotted the day before. Staffer Annette took the arrival of 8 authors in stride, and welcomed us to the store. We hope Open Books will be involved in the conference next year!

There was just time for a snack and another short visit together, and then it was time to head to the airport, and home. We all felt as though we’d packed a week’s worth of adventures into 24 hours, and yet stiil, it felt too short. We vowed that if ever we had the opportunity to go back, we’d stay longer.

One of the best things about it, I think, for all of us, was the chance to spend time with our colleagues in a fun, no-pressure, non-competitive environment. Writing is such a solitary pursuit, and yet we’re social beings with a need to connect and to learn from one another about this crazy business we’re in. The Williams Lake Young Writers’ Conference gave us that, and we definitely made the most of it.

Good luck to Max, who’s presenting and performing today as well (lucky duck!) and congratulations and thanks again to Amar, Organizer Extraordinaire.

Watch here for posts written by my workshop participants at the Williams Lake Young Writers’ Conference!

On Tuesday evening of this week, I was the guest of a Vancouver chapter of the organization known as Delta Kappa Gamma (DKG). DKG is an international group of women educators, some retired and some still working, all of whom are committed to education and to providing education opportunities for disadvantaged children all over the world.

Chapters raise money to support international education initiatives. They also meet each month to discuss business and plan activities, and each month they host a guest presenter. Last night, that was yours truly!

My mom is a DKG member in a Burnaby chapter — she taught primary students for 40 years! — so that was my initial contact with the group. But when I arrived last night, I discovered a few other familiar faces. I spoke at the Northwest Regional Conference for DKG last summer, and recognized a few members from that event. Also in the crowd was Mizue Mori, the woman who conducted the marriage ceremonies for my sister and for one of my best friends! So I felt like I was among friends.

I told stories about how I became a writer, and how I came to write about animals, and showed some slides and a DVD. I also sent members home with hawk silhouette stencils for their windows, and instructions on how to make their own animal rescue kits. Several members bought books for children and grandchildren and classrooms, and one is planning to invite me to her school!

My thanks to DKG for the warm reception, and for all your support!

P.S. Special thanks to Claude for making sure I didn’t have any “technical difficulties!”

Diane Haynes

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

The CWILL Writing for Children panel happens tonight, Monday February 18, at the Vancouver Public Library from 7-9 pm. Be there … I will!

CWILL stands for the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of BC, and a panel of us will be speaking to an audience of about 100 people (one of them could be you!) about how we got started as authors and illustrators, how our careers progressed, what quirky little ins and outs helped us and might help you. There will be time for questions and to speak with individual authors and illustrators afterward.

That’s the Vancouver Public Library, downtown branch, from 7pm to 9pm, likely downstairs (but watch for signs).

** The VPL will also be announcing a new teen book program!

Hope to see you there!

Attention all teachers, librarians and educators: I’m taking bookings now for presentations and workshops throughout the 2007-2008 school year!

Click here for a detailed description of presentations and workshops, as well as information on how to book me for your event.

I look forward to hearing from you, and to visiting your classroom, library or conference!

Diane

Note: Ten percent (10%) of all speaking fees will be donated to the University of British Columbia’s Haynes Scholarship for the Advancement of Animal Welfare.

The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (DKG) is a group of several thousand key women educators from all over Canada, the United States and Europe. This weekend, the Northwest Region held its annual conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, with about 400 women in attendance.

After presenting to a couple of the local chapters back in February, I was encouraged to create a workshop for the conference. I applied and was accepted (see workshop outline below, or click on Educators in the right nav bar) and since then have been stuffing ideas into a file. I pulled the file out two weeks ago, and spent a good thirty to forty hours crafting my presentation, keen to make a powerful impression on these women who have so much influence with so many other educators and students all over the continent.

Five women attended my workshop.

Five. Six, if you count my mom.
As I stood in the hallway outside the conference room, checking my watch and wondering if maybe the rest of my participants were just in line for the washroom and would be arriving any minute now, I steeled myself for the truth by thinking of Anton Chekhov.

Or rather, of a play of his called The Three Sisters in which I played the role of Olga back in 1996. It was an execrable, two-hour-long amateur production, but the theatre company itself had a strong following, so we blamed the weather that one night when, by curtain time, only 10 kind souls had purchased tickets. The show must go on, we decided, and buoyed, I think, by the faith of our teeny tiny audience, we gave our best performance. As the curtain came down, we received a 10-person standing ovation.

My five stalwart DKG-ers — six, if you count my mom — took chairs along the center aisle, and we began. I was speaking of the heroism of children and the burden they all carry knowingly now, of the need to save the world. Children don’t have the same freedom we did, to play at being SuperHeroes. This generation is all too aware that the planet really needs them, needs all they have to give, as soon as they can give it. I spoke of the myth of the hero — elucidated so clearly by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces — and how this myth is born inside all of us to tell, and to live. And I showed the participants some simple ways to help children get in touch with the heroic part of themselves; to bring their unique gifts into awareness; and to use those gifts to take meaningful action.

If you’re a DKG member reading this, and you’re wishing you’d made it to workshop, write me at janeraybooks@gmail.com. I’d love to give this presentation again; it’s got lots more mileage in it!

And if you’re one of the five who did attend, thank you … for choosing to spend your time with me Friday afternoon, for having the courage to experiment with some new ideas, and for your support of my books.

Special thanks to Oregon for your enthusiasm to bring me down to tour; I hope we can work that out! And to Ohio, a writer herself who is teaching others to write: may your daughter’s delivery be safe, swift and joyful.
Oh, and thank you, Anton.

THE PEN OR THE SWORD?

The Student Writer As SuperHero

For the Delta Kappa Gamma International Educators’ Conference, July 18-22 at the University of British Columbia (Call 512.478.5748 for more information.)

“I wake up each morning determined both to save the world and have one hell of a good time. This sometimes makes planning the day quite difficult.” (E.B. White)

The ability to write is power–when you know how to wield a pen! This workshop will provide educators with the skills and tools to transform classroom writers into SuperHeroes. From the old-fashioned Letter to the Editor to the modern-day blog, there are myriad ways for students to make their voices heard about the issues that matter to them most.

Young people have a “leverage” today that they have never had before in history–just ask the marketers who are angling for their attention, or the retailers who are competing for their dollar. They can use this leverage, if they want, to boost sales for La Senza Girl or iPod. But they have other choices as well. As an educator, be prepared to say, “It’s SuperHero time … will you use your powers for good or evil?”

Every young person will have to choose for him- or herself. But you can make that choice a little easier, by providing the phone booth and the cape, and showing them how to fly.

Hear author and animal activist Diane Haynes talk about the writer as SuperHero, writing as a tool for change, and the power of the pen as an instrument of self-expression, communication, community-building, and transformation.

Workshop take-aways:

• hand-out exercises to get students writing, talking and collaborating
• discussion/improv scenarios that pit the pen against the sword–which choice leads to the result a student is looking for?
• “Class Actions” — group activities that involve writing and have the potential to make changes, in class, at school, in your community
• reading list: books and other written materials that have led to positive social, legal or humanitarian change in a range of areas

For more information on in-school workshops offered by the author, click on EDUCATORS in the navigation bar at the top of the screen, or email janeraybooks@gmail.com

I’m not really sure what happened yesterday.

I was the last speaker at the Vancouver Public Library’s Canadian Book Camp for Kids, 3:30 to 4:15 time slot, right after they tore down the tents they’d been camping in all week, and right before pizza and cake and the big gala. A magical time slot, if ever there was one.

I’d spent over a week preparing my workshop, and had assembled what I felt was the ideal combination of high-energy physical movement with quieter, reflective work that involved using the body, the right side of the brain, tapping into the subconscious, and channeling the inner guidance that would help carry the campers forward as writers after they exited the structured environment that had made them into full-time writers for a week.

For the first 30 minutes, I bombed. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Gord was there with his conga and 5 or 6 other cool percussion instruments, we brought the 86 kids into the huge room with high energy and excitement, I had everybody (or almost everybody) clapping and the kids at the front dancing … until they turned around and noticed the big kids at the back weren’t participating, and they stopped. At that point, my plans for making connections between mind and body, between the two hemispheres of the brain, and between writing and movement were lost; it became an aerobics class for one: me.

Writers, permit me a moment to soapbox: your stories do not come from your head (any more than money comes out of a machine in the wall, if you need a comparison). Stories are energy, and that energy is shaped and crafted and moulded into logical sequence by your brain, yes. But your stories are held in your body.

You live your experiences with your whole self, body, mind and spirit. Your mind is the instrument that helps you make sense of those experiences, but it is not the repository of them. If you have fought with your best friend, you have felt the burning knot in your stomach; you have felt your heart pound; you have felt your shoulders hunch; if you’re a guy, you may even have felt the pain and the shame of a blow to your body by your friend’s hand, or the simultaneously satisfying connection and sad shame of having punched your friend’s solar plexus with your own fist. You’ve felt the hot squeeze of tears behind your eyes.

The details of the memory of that experience lie in your body. Your mind can only give them words.

You need your body, I mean access to it, and to the experiences and memories it holds, in order to write. Particularly to write well. So those writers who fancy the bohemian life as a bingeing, smoking heroin addict living the cafe life will discover, probably too late, that they’ve destroyed everything that gave them their writing gift in the first place. Those writers who eschew physical activity with the mantra, “I’m an intellectual” will likewise suffer from a lack of access to their emotional and creative centres.

To put it another (maybe a nicer) way, if you’re stuck / blocked / frustrated / bored with your own words, get up and move. Put on Gwen Stefani or the Black Eyed Peas or Rihanna or whoever makes your shake your booty (and here, I age myself, with the Isley Brothers, Michael Jackson, Queen, Aretha Franklin and, well, Gwen Stefani). Wear yourself out. Then sit down and let your warmed-up, integrated, connected body do the writing for a while.

Or try this: put your pen in your non-dominant hand (if you’re a lefty, that’s your right hand, and vice-versa). Now, write. As fast as you can. Don’t stop to think. Ask yourself a question that needs answering before you can move on with your story, and let the other side of your brain — the one that just sits there most of the time, drumming its little grey fingers wondering when you’re going to try to tap into a little more than the 10% of the brain capacity you normally use — do the talking.

Science says:

• we only use 10% of our enormous brain capacity; even Einstein maybe used 15-18%
• the seat of creativity and the link to the subconscious mind rests in the right hemisphere of the brain
• right-handed people predominantly use the left side of the brain, which governs logic and rationality and reason (not creativity and imagination!)
• even left-handed people fall into predictable, repetitive patterns of thinking, learning and behaving that can be shaken up to interesting results by tapping into the left hemisphere of the brain through writing with their right hand

Psychologists and body-mind therapists say:

• there is something called muscle memory, whereby the body acts as a repository for our experiences and memories
• when we process the emotions associated with these experiences in a healthy way, there is little or no negative impact on the body
• when we shut off the emotional tap, particularly after a hurtful or traumatic experience (and we are all trained in this society to do just that), we create an energetic blockage in the body which, over time, can lead to illness or injury
• by writing / journalling / drawing / painting / talking with an empathic listener / expressing, it is possible to help release the hurt or trauma (or any experience, for that matter) stored in the muscles and tissues, and move back to health

No, I did not get into this level of detail with the campers. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have helped. But I don’t think so. I just wish they’d been more willing to play along — not for my sake, but for theirs. They may have surprised themselves with what they discovered, and they most definitely would have walked away with two very powerful tools to add to their writing toolbox.

In fact, I think some of them did. They were a number of kids in the room who were into what was going on, although there was pressure from the back of the room to stay bored and withheld.

In any case, during the final 15 minutes, in which I told the story of the Shamanic journey that led me to meet my first medicine animal, and in which I led everyone on a similar journey in which they met theirs, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Almost everyone came back with some knowledge of their animal guide, and those who didn’t, I was able to talk to about trying again in a quieter, calmer, less pressured environment. There isn’t anyone on this earth without a guide, so I have every confidence those three I spoke to will find theirs. If they continue to be stymied, I hope they’ll contact me.

And so I learned something, too. Start with a story. One of my stories, something personal. Make a connection first, before I ask workshop participants to move or dance with me. We are so shut down physically, so much of the time, so “in our heads,” as the saying goes, that it has become an intimate request to ask someone to move their body for purposes other than walking, sitting, or Facebooking. And these kids and I, we had just met. We had no relationship. There may not have been distrust, exactly, but neither was there trust of this strange adult who was asking them to move, in front of her, in front of each other.

My next book in Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series, Gaia Wild, is all about what it means to be wild, even as a human being. For one thing, it means being in our bodies, the way all healthy animals are. Sitting, shoulders slumped, back rounded over, torso and pelvis and legs and feet forgotten, eyes staring, mind spinning and fingers typing — that is not “in the body.”

We cannot remember the Earth if we cannot re-member ourselves. Our bodies are made of her body. We treat her as we treat ourselves. If we think we can get along day to day without connection to our torsos and pelvises and legs and feet, then we believe she can get along just fine without her rivers and forests. But we are wrong. About both. We are wrong.

And I was wrong to think I could reverse that for 86 kids in an afternoon. But I’m learning. I’ll do better next time.

One last thing: no matter how off-the-rails any presentation goes, there is always at least one person in the room who gets it all, exactly as you intended. You hope you’re connecting with a majority of the kids, but sometimes, you’re doing what you’re doing for just one person. And that’s okay, too. One person can make all the difference. Yesterday, that person was Maria. Thank you, Maria. :)