{"id":45545,"date":"2018-10-14T12:21:35","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T18:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=45545"},"modified":"2018-10-14T12:21:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T18:21:35","slug":"craig-davidson-flexes-brains-and-literary-brawn-at-wordfest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2018\/10\/14\/craig-davidson-flexes-brains-and-literary-brawn-at-wordfest\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Davidson flexes brains and literary brawn at WordFest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Telling Tales: <\/strong>Author Craig Davidson, left, answers audience questions at Memorial Park Library in Calgary on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. The event was part of a preview for WordFest 2018. (Photo by Emilie Charette\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

T<\/span>oronto-born author Craig Davidson<\/a> shared his insights into memory, individuality and the writing process during a talk at the Memorial Park Library on Sept. 11.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>he event, one of the previews leading up to WordFest 2018, also featured Davidson reading an excerpt from his most recent book, The Saturday Night Ghost Club<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The book focusses on a neurosurgeon, Jake Baker, as an adult and during the events from the summer when he was 12 years old and joined his eccentric Uncle Calvin in creating the titular club and investigating urban legends and ghost stories.<\/p>\n

Over the course of that summer, amid exploring Niagara Falls, Ont., first love and \u201cthe zone between adulthood and childhood,\u201d Jake realizes that his uncle\u2019s interest in the supernatural stems from some long-repressed event from Calvin\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

In creating Jake, Davidson drew on his experiences interacting with children during his stint as a bus driver in Calgary, an experience he later wrote about in his 2016 memoir Precious Cargo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 12-year-old sees the world in a different way than an adult does,\u201d said Davidson, explaining his process for creating the voice and personality of young Jake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t have gerrymandered the thoughts or expressions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course of writing this latest book, Davidson also read a lot of \u201ccrunchy\u201d scientific theory on the ways brains and, in particular, memory function.<\/p>\n

This was partly because he wrote the book as a PhD dissertation on the value of memory and the way other writers have used it as a theme.<\/p>\n

He also listed some of his influences as Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence and Ann-Marie MacDonald.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really fascinated with the way all three of those authors dealt with memory,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n

He was especially interested in memory traces, or engrams, changes in the brain that represent things such as experiences \u201cstored\u201d as memories.<\/p>\n

A large part of the book\u2019s plot relies on the tendency of brains to be tricked by false memories and to repress memories of bad experiences. Two people who experience the same event can end up with drastically different memories of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery author has their own thing they fetishize,\u201d said Davidson.<\/p>\n

For him, that thing is brains.<\/p>\n

He described repressed, painful memories as \u201ca poisoned honeypot.\u201d The driving idea behind The Saturday Night Ghost Club was the effort the brain will make to uncover those memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like Bluebeard\u2019s castle,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cA locked door in the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another element of the book is the shift from childhood to adulthood and the changes that do and do not occur in a person because of that.<\/p>\n

The character of Uncle Calvin is described as a harmless eccentric, an \u201codd duck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davidson commented that the person who retains that spark of eccentricity and individuality in the face of societal pressure is something of a rarity.<\/p>\n

Davidson also shared some of his writing process and his own growth as an author.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy writing, in a very clear, fundamental way, reflects the way that I\u2019ve changed as I\u2019ve aged.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has written under two pen names, Patrick Lestewka and Nick Cutter, and described his early books as being \u201cangry young man books.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t give readers the same thing over and over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Davidson, who has also written for newspapers, described writing as a muscle. If used daily, it will respond daily.<\/p>\n

\u201cWriters don\u2019t always have the luxury of writer\u2019s block.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also described his experiences of writing to fill column inches, writing to a deadline and writing in order to eat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best antidote to writer\u2019s block is the landlord knocking,\u201d said Davidson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was interesting to learn his process,\u201d said Mike Kerr, a teacher of illustration and comic book art at ACAD, who attended the event.<\/p>\n

\"\"
From the Heart: <\/strong>Craig Davidson reads an excerpt from his latest book at Memorial Park Library in Calgary on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. The event was a preview for WordFest 2018. (Photo by Emilie Charette\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto-born author Craig Davidson shared his insights into memory, individuality and the writing process during a talk at the Memorial Park Library on Sept. 11. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":45598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S1 Craig Davidson","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45545"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45921,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45545\/revisions\/45921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}