To launch its new season, 91亚色鈥檚 Canadian Writers in Person course and lecture series presented听writer Zoe Whittal reading from her听novel Holding Still听For As Long As Possible, which was published in 2009.听Special correspondent Chris Cornish (BA Hons. 鈥04, MA 鈥09) sent the following report to YFile.
You never know how much time you have, right?听 Think about it now.听 Feel a little sick?听 Run your tongue along the roof of your mouth.听 This is all you are.听 Cells meeting cells.
听
from Holding Still For As Long As Possible
by Zoe Whittall
For Zoe Whittall鈥檚 latest novel, writing is a matter of life and death.听 Appropriately enough, it begins and ends in September, a time when students are starting a new school year and the leaves are preparing to turn and fall.听 She recently visited 91亚色 as the first author of this year鈥檚 Canadian Writers in Person series on Sept. 18.
Zoe Whittall听听
In Holding Still For As Long As Possible, Whittall鈥檚 ensemble of young characters meet life as it happens: complicated, messy, unresolved and interspersed with moments of intensity.听 Though the main characters are queer, one transgendered, Whittall is careful to represent this community faithfully without drawing unnecessary attention to their orientation.听 Rather, it was her intent to normalize them, to place the focus on their human experience first; we simply see them living their lives. Whittall is likewise unapologetic for setting the story in particular neighbourhoods of Toronto, grounding the story in the details of a specific and Canadian place.
The novel also considers how we handle emergencies and death.听The character "Josh", through his work as a paramedic, finds people at their worst and most vulnerable, and despite these brief but intense encounters, rarely sees them again except when a chance meeting triggers a memory (Whittall was often surprised when apparently random people recognized her partner, also a paramedic, on the street).听 She was fascinated with the profession and began to do extensive research, interviewing 30 paramedics and riding along for some of their calls.听 Because paramedics witness death so regularly, Josh becomes numb to it (鈥渃ompassion fatigue鈥) until an emergency involving a loved one wakes him up to a new perspective.
Whittall, who describes her writing process as exploratory, often writes blindly through a first draft, only to discard much of it while experimenting with different tenses and narrative voices.听She admits that paramedics (weren鈥檛) didn't even figure in the earliest draft and that much of 听the narrative revolved around the dream-world perspective of a character in a coma.听Though she says she cut much of this out, she stresses that "writing through" the narrative is an important exercise for a writer to get to know their characters and their backgrounds, even if it doesn鈥檛 end up in the 
final publication.听 The title also came late in the process (the night before publication), but because Whittall knew her characters so well, she felt that it reflected the sense of stasis in their lives, like a long held breath.
She believes that every character has at least one secret, often shared only with the reader and usually the most humanizing thing about them. Billy is a former Canadian teen idol who is consumed by crippling anxiety.听 To most of the other characters, she appears relatively cool and confident but the reader discovers her New Year鈥檚 Resolution is to stop being afraid, to end her uncontrollable thoughts, neuroses, and compulsions.听 Whittall was also careful to represent mental illness accurately: as an individual rather than a generalized experience.听 Because of her own exposure to these disorders, she is fascinated that this generation is the first to have these both normalized and medicated.听 Yet prescriptions are not always effective and in the face of ineffective treatment, Billy鈥檚 ritualized mantra, 鈥淕ood Will. Good Will. Good Will鈥 reflects her own strategy for self-care.
However, in an age when we are numbed to disasters like SARS, Hurricane Katrina, and the War on Terror, it sometimes takes a more direct confrontation with a critical emergency to start healing and start living.
The Canadian Writers in Person series of public readings at 91亚色, which are free and open to the public, is also part of an introductory course on Canadian literature. It is sponsored in part by the Canada Council for the Arts. At 7pm on Oct. 2,听Don McKay听delivered a reading听from his book of poetry, Paradoxides. On Oct. 16, at 7pm,听in Room 206 of the Accolade West Building, Karen Solie will read from her latest book of poetry Pigeon.