by Olyn Ozbick
Stepping up to the door of my house, my legs could barely heave my slight body up those three small steps. It was 4 pm. I was home from work so early.
Inside, lights glowed already in the gathering dusk of that northern day, in which the sun still set so terribly early. My daughter was home, ahead of me as usual, and had lit up the house. I smiled. Then stopped. Oh, the electricity bill.
I slid my hand into the mailbox, a habit. This time an actual letter touched my fingers. It felt rich and tactile – I appreciate good paper.
The letterhead read, CBC.
I whooped and slammed the door behind me so that my daughter’s head popped briefly up over the back of the couch. Waving the letter, I hopped—yes there in the hall with my daughter watching askance I jumped up and down like a kid at a birthday party. I was a finalist. The CBC Short Story Prize. Canada’s premiere short story awards. I whooped again, then sat down and cried.
Just hours earlier my entire staff had listened in bruised dismay while I told them I was closing business. In a brutal farewell to all our hard work, I sent the small group of dedicated artists and professionals at my very small publishing business stumbling home to tell their families.
Leaving the geranium-filled planters that I had so carefully placed on each side of the office entry, I staggered away too.
After fifteen years as a journalist and magazine editor. Fifteen successful years filled with ridiculously hard work, but rewarded with success and celebration, international awards and travel, speaking engagements and camaraderie. That day it was all over.
Magazines were folding across the country as advertisers migrated to ever expanding social media opportunities. Ad sales plummeted. Revenues no longer sustained the expensive publishing processes. Magazines were done. I was done.
At that point in my life, deciding to close my business and taking off my publishing hat was the hardest thing I had ever done. But already—and the day wasn’t even over, I hadn’t even made supper—I had something new. I knew what to do. I would refuse to look back.
The next morning, I got up and started to write. Fiction. Pure, clean, clear, head-cleansing fiction.
And that’s it. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
The novel I started that morning, ANGELA DRIVEN, is complete and looking for a home. My next novel, BEAUTY IN FRACTURE, is in edits. My short stories are now published in literary magazines, anthologies, digitally, in audio and around the world. I teach creative writing. I talk fiction writing.
