AUTHOR INTERVIEW: DEE ROBERTSON

Today I am pleased to share an interview with a dear woman who has been a personal friend of mine for more than 25 years. Dee Robertson has been an educator most of her adult life. She grew up in and travelled to many exotic places in her life, and has written several non-fiction books, a children’s three-book series, and many magazine articles. She continually amazes me with her knowledge, wisdom and opinion on many and varied subjects. Take a read of our interview…

Janice: How long have you been writing and how did you come to it?

Dee: In 1962, I travelled with my young son to Venezuela to visit my parents who lived there, only to arrive in Caracas in the middle of a revolution. We were first held in detention, and then shipped out of the country to a small Dutch-owned island. It was all very traumatic. I wrote the story, and The Calgary Herald bought it for twenty dollars—a lot of money for me at the time.

When my second husband and I settled onto an isolated Native reserve on B.C.’s north coast I started writing regularly for several well-known west-coast monthly magazines. I continued to write for those magazines until we moved to Saskatchewan in 1995. Since then I have written and published three adult books and a trilogy of children’s books.

Janice: Who are some of the people who most influenced your decision to write?

Dee: Both of my husbands were very supportive of my writing efforts. In fact, my first husband had to copy out all my early writings on an old Underwood typewriter. I was totally inept at typing! My second husband had the advantage of having a more user-friendly typewriter to help me out. It wasn’t until I got my first computer in 1995 that I did my own typing.

Janice: What is your preferred genre?

Dee: Whether as adventure articles or as memoir, my work has been almost exclusively non-fiction. I tried my hand at a tiny three-volume set of books for children, but since they were about my pets, to me they too were non-fiction. My favorite genre though, is the essay, and it is, I think, in creating essays that I do my best writing.

Janice: Why do you write?

Dee: I suppose it’s a compulsion to put thoughts, ideas, and dreams down on paper. Now, in retirement, I am almost constantly jotting down the whirlings of my brain. At first, they often seem wondrously prescient, but over time, they do seem less so.

Janice: How and where do you write? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Dee: I write at my table in my little “office/computer” room where I can sit and watch hundreds of feeding birds, and be still and peaceful. I jot down random thoughts and ideas that sometimes get developed—or not.

I guess you would say I am a pantser – writing about what moves me or obsesses me at that moment.

Janice: Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you?

Dee: My ideas, my inspirations come from my reactions to what I read, what I hear and what I see. A good TED talk can have me madly jotting in reaction to the message—positively or negatively. A well-done documentary film can provide hours of scribbled response. Mostly the notes will go nowhere nor serve any further purpose, but somehow I find pleasure just in recording them.

Janice: How do you research and how do you know you can trust your sources?

Dee: In spite of the frequent questioning of the information provided to us by Google, it is likely no less trustworthy than all the information that our traditional sources have provided us with over the hundreds of years. Everyday a new revelation comes out telling how we have been misled.

Janice: Good point! What do you like most/least about writing.

Dee: I honestly can’t think of what I like least about writing. I just like writing. I thoroughly enjoy editing others’ writing; the challenge of composing messages, reflections or homilies for my church. The focus provided by writing for the many courses and workshops I have attended over the last twenty years has also provided direction. But most of all, I love writing to tell a story, even if the story is only for myself.

Janice: What are you favorite/most effective social media?

Dee: I am not much of a “social media” user. I find most postings on social media at least as ill-informed as I am myself. I do not need collaboration of my own misconceptions.

Janice: Okay then, moving on (smiles)…How do you balance professional time with personal time?

Dee: Since retirement, I am free to do whatever I want. However, without deadlines, commitments, or career obligations, I too often find that “nothing” is what I end up doing. I believe most people operate best under pressure and deadlines. However, from the perspective of eighty years, I think I’ve used most of my time wisely. I have accomplished much of what I would have planned to do, if I had been a planner.

Janice: I like that. What are you currently reading?

Dee: I have just finished reading a book called Rock Creek by Thelma Poirier. The author lived her whole life on ranches in the Rock Creek Valley, which now makes up part of the Grasslands National Park here in Saskatchewan. Since I have lived as a wandering gypsy most of my life, I have great admiration for those who have lived “in place” for generations, and have come to make the place a part of themselves.

Janice: What are some of your favorite things?

Dee: I truly love nature. But I also truly love people, places, travel: the silence of the high Arctic, the hectic liveliness of a tropical village, the ocean in a storm, the diminishing of person when standing on a high mountain, the terror of roaming through bear country, and the quiet aloneness of wandering the trails of Grasslands.

Janice: How is your faith reflected in your writing.

Dee: My faith is inherent in all I see, in all I know and in all I do; it is an integral part of me. My faith is an essential part of all that I write.

Janice: And finally, what advice do you have for a beginning writer?

Dee: It will be the same advice that all writers give to potential writers: just do it! But we must also insist that beginning writers know the importance of re-writing. While taking courses at the local college with young students, I have been quite dismayed by the students’ inability or reluctance to work at improving their writing. They all seemed totally content with their initial production, in spite of, and often with total disregard for, what the instructor has told them.

Janice: Thank you, Dee, for taking the time to visit with me today on my blog. You are and always will be an inspiration.