Author Shelley Leedahl was at the Reid-Thompson Public Library on March 31 for a reading of her new book of essays and a surprise musical performance. The event was part of the region’s Pelican Bay Arts Collective Festival.
Leedahl has lived all around Saskatchewan (including Middle Lake) but now resides in B.C.
Leedahl always knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age.
“One of my earliest memories is of picking up a pencil and taking a paper and trying to make letters, but I was too young to do it so they were backwards and upside down … but I showed my mom and said ‘Does this make a word? Does this make a word?” For me, it’s been a long time love affair with poetry and fiction,” Leedahl said.
Unlike a lot of authors, Leedahl has dabbled in pretty much every genre out there.
“It’s easier to tell you which ones I haven’t written in. I haven’t written a play or a screenplay,” Leedahl said. Though she would love to write a play, she doesn’t have any plans to currently. However, she says that every time she sees an empty table and chairs, “I think about the dinner party conversation that could be going on and think how that could be the beginning of a play.”
Though she writes in many different genres, there are some common threads in her work.
“I’m very much interested in the sometimes bizarre things that can happen to ordinary people … (as well as) exploring relationships,” she said.
When Leedahl graduated high school, she knew she wanted to be a creative writer but had no role models and didn’t know how to go about making her dream a reality. She thought that she had to be a reporter first, and when she had a few years’ worth of experience there, she could write books. She went to journalism school, but after a year she realized she didn’t want to be a reporter. But she says life doesn’t always go how you planned, so she became a young mother and eventually started running a daycare out of her home.
“My life got extremely busy, and I heard this voice in my head that said, ‘Girl, if you are ever going to become a writer, you have got to start now’,” she said.
So she buckled down and started seriously trying to kick start her writing career. She joined the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, she started attending workshops and sending work out. She got a few things published and won some competitions. Her first book was published in 1990, and she’s been writing ever since.
“I like the freedom of being a full time writer,” she said. “I can write wherever I am; I don’t have to get up and comb my hair and go to a job.”
Her newest book, I Wasn’t Always Like This, is her first foray into writing essays. Since they’re very personal, she was a bit afraid of the reactions she would get from people she knew. To circumvent this, she made up new names or identifies people only by their first initial.
“With this being creative nonfiction, I can weave a lot of poetry into the stories. You can even bend the truth a little sometimes,” she said.
Despite that nervousness, she said that essay writing may be her new favourite genre.
“I like how immediate the voice is with essays,” she said. “It’s easier. It feels more natural to me than writing fiction … I have experiences now and I don’t think ‘Hmm, this would make a good poem or short story’ I think ‘This would be a good essay. It’s top of mind for me now.”
Since she bounced around Saskatchewan prior to moving to B.C., the geography still affects her writing in some ways.
“Place is extremely important to me. Often, ideas come from where I’m at and then I diverge into different storylines. Place never fails to inspire me,” she said.
She’s been writing for a long time, so naturally there’s been some evolution in her writing. Though she said she doesn’t regret any of her earlier books, that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t change anything.
“My novel Tell Me Everything that came out in 2000 and is out of print, I’ve often thought I should revise that and send it out to a publisher,” she said. “I thought the writing was a bit overwritten, a bit too pedantic at some points. I think you learn how to pull back. Readers should be able to experience emotion without being told how they should feel.”
Coming up for Leedahl is more stops on her tour (where she will hit Watrous, Moose Jaw, then go to Alberta) and a children’s book which is set to come out next year.
“The best part about writing is when the story takes off on its own,” she said. “You’re very aware at the beginning that you’re the writer sitting there … facing a blank screen or blank page. But at some point, something magical happens. I don’t know what it is or how it happens and I never want to know, but the story takes off on its own. The characters lead you.”
