You can't take Winnipeg out of the writer

Sidura Ludwig (Dave A. Brown)

Synopsis of Holding My Breath: "The year is 1947. The world has survived the Second Great War, and in the north end of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Saul and Goldie Levy are married at Royal Alex Hall. Goldie's parents and her two sisters, Carrie and Sarah, are in attendance. Noticeably absent is her brother Phil, who died during the war in a plane that crashed somewhere in North Africa. Five years later, they will have a child, a daughter they will name Beth."

When I was a teenaged aspiring writer in Winnipeg, I declared to my mentor that I did not want to be known as a "Jewish, Winnipeg writer."

She laughed at me.
 
What I thought I wanted then was the freedom to write outside of what I knew. What I realize now is that I have always had that freedom. But the stuff that's really good--the writing that makes the crowd inside my head cheer when I am sitting alone at my computer reading over my work--is when I'm writing about what matters to me. And when I look back on the two novels I've penned (albeit, one yet-unpublished), on the collection of short stories growing on my computer, they all point to one conclusion: I am a Jewish, Winnipeg writer.

She was right to laugh.

I haven't lived in Winnipeg in almost 18 years, and yet I never feel more grounded than when I walk the elm-tree-lined streets of River Heights. Is that just nostalgia? When I wrote Holding My Breath, I was living in Birmingham, England. But I had no problems conjuring up the image of a dusty Main Street on a summer's evening, or my grandparents' old house on Scotia Avenue. It recently occurred to me that I should try writing a story that takes place in Thornhill, Ontario, where I live now and where I am raising my family. But how come when I close my eyes on this summer solstice evening, I cannot remember what the snow sounds like here on a walk in February? In Winnipeg it is like crushing Styrofoam.

I think there is an element of letting go at play here, and there is a big part of me, the part that fears change, who clings to my childhood memories, be them accurate or not. And so there is a comfort when I write from that place.
 
Ah yes, and now I see my next challenge. Because I can feel that what matters to me will grow beyond the dikes of my old city. And so I must teach myself to become a Jewish Winnipeg writer who occasionally writes outside her comfort zone.

Sidura Ludwig (Dave A. Brown)

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