Canada Writes Blog
David Tracey (Vancouver, BC)
Western semi-finalist 09
(April 6, 2009) It takes a big man to admit his mistakes. That's why I’m blaming my loss on someone else: ABBA.
I was fine until we reached the music challenge. I had to rewrite the lyrics to “Waterloo.” How many times did I listen to that profoundly annoying tune, trying to replace, “Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way.”
Does that even count as rhythm? To anyone but some Swedish spawn of music hell?
Bad as that sounds, my version was worse. I morphed “Waterloo” into another French military defeat, the loss at the Plains of “Abraham.” But my theme was weak, the jokes thin and the metre clunked. The judges were right to put a fork in me.
Still, it was worth it. I had a great time. The cast were incredibly supportive, and the audience couldn’t have been nicer without getting weird.
My only regret was not making it to the lighting round. I had an idea for the complete-the-sentence challenge that might have “killed.”
The beginning was: “Put down that rutabaga before…”
My ending: ...”you run into some Mounties who mistake it for a stapler.”
(March 6, 2009) If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, “Dave, you write such wildly creative things, where DO you get your ideas?” I’d have…let’s see…hang on…
Okay, nothing. No one has ever said that to me. But if they did, I would know exactly how to answer: “Um, I dunno.”
And I would mean it. I really don’t know. When I heard about the Canada Writes contest, I figured, might be fun, why not? I checked the entry requirements, saw a choice of five categories, with topics open, and no restrictions beyond a 200-limit word count…and I came up blank. I had no idea, period.
But I started writing. Because that’s the thing. You never know where these ideas come from, the ether or the gods or some remote part of the subconscious, but unless you start writing they’ll just stay dormant. Probably that’s a good thing, for most of the ideas that might bubble out of our primordial thought soup, but never mind. One or two might click, and then you’re just a few rewrites away from something that might stick.
