Today is the calm day – the thanks are written, the cookies are baked, the passage I want to read is chosen – before the fun of tomorrow’s launch for Yesterday’s Dead at TYPE Books in Toronto, Ontario. I’m excited to have so many people excited for me, and looking forward to bringing together people from many of my pasts to help celebrate.
My career path to writing started out in mathematics, and there’s a problem solving aspect to writing fiction that is often exciting (to the mathematician in me) but just as often is frustrating (to the writer in me groping for how to portray an action, a reaction, an emotion.) Many of the mathematical people I know are excellent at so many creative pursuits like music, art, and writing, and it reminds me that some of the greatest thinkers and creators in the history of the world were also outstanding mathematicians – Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Christopher Wren, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), among others.
I’m going to celebrate my inner mathematician today, and let her help me think and create my way through a plot problem in the book I’m currently working on. Galileo, Leonardo, Christopher and Charles would no doubt approve.
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Pat,
Congratulations on a wonderful accomplishment, a wonderful book launch and a wonderful speech. And it is a credit to the wonderful person you are that so many people were there tonight from so many of your pasts to celebrate with you. While there really is only one first novel, we all hope of course that this marvelous beginning will be followed by a second, third and fourth. Write on my friend!
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Thanks, Siobhan. I’m truly grateful for your friendship and ongoing support. I’m glad you were there.
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Hi Pat! I hope to be able to come to your launch party, but just in case I do not make it I want to wish you every success with the book.
Reading your piece on mathematics and writing reminded me of the person who proposed the first defined benefit pension plan. When asked most people mention the 19th century German chancellor, Bismarck.
In fact the honour belongs to a writer from the early eighteenth century, who is better known by most as the author of “Robinson Crusoe”. Yes, it was none other than Daniel Defoe.
And let us not overlook the actuarial skills of Jane Austen.
Brian.
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Brian, how nice to hear from you! Thanks for your good wishes, and I hope to see you later today.
I’m always intrigued by how accomplished my mathematical friends are. While the image of us as awkward introverts persists, my experience is that many are wonderful entertainers!