I’d like to welcome Don Sawyer back to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!

Favorite thing to do when you have free time: Travel

The thing you’ll always move to the bottom of your to do list: Anything financial

Things you need when you’re in your writing cave: Wife

Things that distract you from writing: Wife

Hardest thing about being a writer: discipline to attack the blank screen/page

Easiest thing about being a writer: joy of watching the words unfurl nicely almost independent of me

Things you will run to the store for at midnight: Haagen Dazs ice cream bar for my wife

Things you never put on your shopping list: calves’ liver

The coolest thing you’ve bought online: solar-powered light and fan for friends in Cuba

The thing you wished you’d never bought. 1971 Renault 12

Favorite snacks: mixed nuts with no peanuts

Things that make you want to gag: cruelty and bigotry

Something you’re really good at: speaking

Something you’re really bad at: knowing when to speak and when not to

Something you wanted to be when you were a kid: funny; I don’t recall any particular professional or personal aspiration

Something you do that you never dreamed you’d do: podcasts

Something you wish you could do: speak Spanish

Something you wish you’d never learned to do: become convinced that I can’t learn to speak Spanish

Favorite places you’ve been: Bilbao, Languedoc, The Gambia, Jamaica, Cuba

Places you never want to go to again: Florida

People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): George Monbiot, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Kingsolver, Jose (Pepe) Mujica

People you’d cancel dinner on: Anyone associated with the current American administration

Favorite things to do: have a few pints with good friends in a classic London pub (with no TVs)

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: I’ve eaten bugs; they’re the tenderest when they’re in the larval stage.

Best thing you’ve ever done: Marry my wife and have two terrific daughters

Biggest mistake: develop Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Heading out to the University of British Columbia in a 2-cycle SAAB in 1969 ties with deciding to have kids

Something you chickened out from doing: Not much

The coolest person you’ve ever met: Thich Nhat Hanh

The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: author Pat Conroy

The nicest thing a reader said to you: “I would like to acknowledge how much I really enjoyed your novel Where the Rivers Meet. This novel was the only book I’ve ever read and actually finished.”

The craziest thing a reader said to you: (from a rejection letter for Where the Rivers Meet, set in a predominantly aboriginal high school): “The characters talk in too adult a manner and insights are too well articulated.” The book went on to sell 20,000 copies, mostly to First Nations’ schools.

The most exciting thing about your writing life: Realizing I could affect personal and social change through my writing; being invited, along with my wife, to speak to 600 Education students at Lakehead University who were reading Tomorrow Is School. Writer as rock star.

The one thing you wish you could do over in your writing life: My writing life has always been secondary to my lived life; I feel enormously fortunate to have been able to have to have combined the two.

About Don:

An educator and writer, Don grew up in Michigan and came to Canada in the 1960s, where I more or less flunked out of a PhD program in Modern Chinese History. This turned out to be a blessing as it opened up a world of opportunity and experiences I never contemplated. From teaching in a small Newfoundland outport to training community workers in West Africa to teaching adults on a First Nations reserve in British Columbia to designing a climate change action course for Jamaican youth, I have worked with youth and adults from many cultural backgrounds and in a variety of locales.

Inevitably, these experiences have made their way into my writing. I have authored over 12 books, including two Canadian bestsellers: the YA novel Where the Rivers Meet (Pemmican) and the adult non-fiction Tomorrow Is School and I Am Sick to the Heart Thinking about It (Douglas and McIntyre). The first book in his Miss Flint series for children, The Meanest Teacher in the World (Thistledown) was translated into German by Carlsen (hardback) and Ravensburger. My articles and op-eds have appeared in many journals and most of Canada’s major dailies.

I’d like to welcome Don Sawyer to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Things you never want to run out of:

Diet Dr Pepper, although my doctor tells me I should drink more water, so I guess water?

Things you wish you’d never bought:

Televisions. Life is too short.

A few of your favorite things:

Saxx underwear, a good imperial stout, any book by Ursula LeGuin, mixed nuts (no peanuts)

Things you need to throw out:

Half of my clothes and all of my university essays

Things you need for your writing sessions:

My computer, quiet space, inspiration, focus

Things that hamper your writing:

AC/DC (though I love them at other times), feeling unmotivated, time, fatigue

Hardest thing about being a writer:

Moving a reader toward identification with your characters and their conflicts when all you have to work with are clumsy, limited words. Sometimes it feels like trying to build a fine watch while wearing heavy work gloves.

Easiest thing about being a writer:

Finding things to write about.

Note: both of these were provided by my eldest daughter, who knows me pretty well. (Though I did think she went a bit overboard with the second question!)

Words that describe you:

Focused, serious, principled, committed, caring, sensitive, persistent, passionate.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t:

Impatient, judgmental, obsessive, stressed, grouchy (only sometimes)

Favorite music or song:

Werewolves of London

Music that drives you crazy:

Anything that doesn’t have a beat and is easy to dance to.

Favorite beverage:

Toss up: Dr Pepper and a good stout (that complies with the Bavarian Beer Purity Law) Something that gives you a sour face:

Sour beer. They shouldn’t be allowed to call these things beer.

Something you’re really good at:

Socio-political analysis

Something you’re really bad at:

Making small talk

Last best thing you ate:

Fresh peach pie with whipped cream

Last thing you regret eating:

Too much peach pie with whipped cream

The last thing you ordered online:

David Samson’s book Our Tribal Future: How to Channel or Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good

The last thing you regret buying:

Shoddy woodworking set for my grandsons

Things you’d walk a mile for:

A great English pub

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room:

A bar with Fox News on the ubiquitous TVs

Things you always put in your books:

Empathy, ethics, justice, passion, compassion, friendship

Things you never put in your books:

Overt eroticism

Favorite places you’ve been:

The Gambia, Ghana

Places you never want to go to again:

Florida

Favorite books (or genre):

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Left Hand of Darkness, The Poisonwood Bible

Books you wouldn’t buy:

Anything by Ayn Rand

Favorite things to do:

Explore human diversity through travel and interaction with other cultures

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing:

Attend a Trump rally

Best thing you’ve ever done:

Have kids

Biggest mistake:

Not having my OCD diagnosed earlier

Most daring thing you’ve ever done:

Riding on the back of a crocodile at the Paga Crocodile Pond in northern Ghana

Something you chickened out from doing:

Not a lot

The nicest thing a reader said to you:

(Letter from a student): I would like to acknowledge how much I really enjoyed your novel, Where the Rivers Meet. This novel was the first book I’ve ever read and actually finished.”

The craziest thing a reader said to you:

I don’t think I’ve had many crazy comments. Some are naïve or reflect a lack of knowledge of writing and the writing process, but crazy? I can’t think of any really.

Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done:

Developing the West African Rural Development training materials for grassroots development workers and training a brilliant group of facilitators in both Ghana and The Gambia.

A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it:

Jamaica Climate Change Action Training for Youth. Ending of funding and change of government meant this promising program was never fully implemented.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books:

Watching an elderly Native Indian woman who could not pay for groceries be humiliated in a grocery store in Lytton, BC. That scene was incorporated in my YA novel Where the Rivers Meet.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not:

One of the main characters in Running loses his father in a hunting accident he blames himself for. The trauma affects him deeply. This was not me but based on the experience of one of my good friends, Bob Garrison.

About Don:

An educator and writer, I grew up in Michigan and came to Canada in the 1960s, where I more or less flunked out of a PhD program in Modern Chinese History. This turned out to be a blessing as it opened up a world of opportunity and experiences I never contemplated. From teaching in a small Newfoundland outport to training community workers in West Africa to teaching adults on a First Nations reserve in British Columbia to designing a climate change action course for Jamaican youth, I have worked with youth and adults from many cultural backgrounds and in a variety of locales.

Inevitably, these experiences have made their way into my writing. I have authored over 12 books, including two Canadian bestsellers: the YA novel Where the Rivers Meet (Pemmican) and the adult non-fiction Tomorrow Is School and I Am Sick to the Heart Thinking about It (Douglas and McIntyre). The first book in his Miss Flint series for children, The Meanest Teacher in the World (Thistledown) was translated into German by Carlsen (hardback) and Ravensburger. My articles and op-eds have appeared in many journals and most of Canada’s major dailies

I was never a very good boxer, but I continue to train in the ring and walk in the woods whenever my hips don’t hurt too much. I currently live in St Catharines, Ontario, with Jan Henig Sawyer, my very tolerant wife of 54 years.