Long before she became the renowned author of the best-selling Schmecks cookbooks, an award-winning journalist for magazines such as Macleans, and a creative non-fiction mentor, Edna Staebler was a writer of a different sort. Staebler began serious diary writing at the age of sixteen and continued to write for over eighty years. Must Write: Edna Staebler’s Diaries draws from these diaries selections that map Staebler’s construction of herself as a writer and documents her frustrations and struggles, along with her desire to express herself, in writing. She felt she must write—that not to write was a “denial of life”—while at the same time she doubted the value of her scribblings.
Spanning much of the twentieth century—each decade is introduced by an overview of key events in the author’s life during that period—the diaries vividly illuminate both her intensely personal experiences and her broader social world. The volume also presents four key examples of Staebler’s public writing: her first published magazine article; her first award-winning publication; the opening chapter of her book Cape Breton Harbour; and her lively account of the Great Cookie War. Must Write: Edna Staebler’s Diaries portrays an ordinary woman’s struggle to write in the context of her lived experience. “All my life I have talked about writing and kept scribbling in my notebook, as if that makes me a writer,” wrote Staebler in 1986. This volume argues that the very act of writing the diaries, with all their contradictory accounts of writerly ambition, success, and conflict, made Staebler the writer she yearned to be.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C818/.5403
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9780889209145 0889204810
- LCCN
- PR9199.3.S73
- LCCN Item number
- M88 2005eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (viii, 301 p.)
- Published in
- Canada
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)jme00324129 (OCoLC)180772954 (CaOOCEL)402710
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- This page intentionally left blank 3
- Contents 6
- This page intentionally left blank 7
- Acknowledgments 8
- Introduction 10
- Edna Staeblers Diaries 10
- This page intentionally left blank 25
- Ednas Chronology 26
- Family Lines 29
- This page intentionally left blank 31
- 1920 32
- Words to Express 32
- From the Diaries 38
- 1930 50
- Longing to Make Something 50
- From the Diaries 56
- 1940 64
- Must Write 64
- From the Diaries 74
- Duellists of the Deep 102
- 1948 102
- How to Live without Wars and Wedding Rings 114
- 1950 114
- This page intentionally left blank 129
- 1950 130
- Writing 130
- From the Diaries 133
- This page intentionally left blank 145
- 1960 146
- Must Work 146
- From the Diaries 151
- 1970 174
- Something to Write About 174
- From the Diaries 178
- This page intentionally left blank 197
- Cape Breton Harbour 198
- 1972 198
- This page intentionally left blank 209
- The Great Cookie War 210
- 1987 210
- 1980 230
- The Business of Publishing 230
- From the Diaries 233
- This page intentionally left blank 245
- 1990 246
- Must Do 246
- From the Diaries 251
- 2000 280
- Still Interested and Interesting 280
- From the Diaries 284
- This page intentionally left blank 293
- Bibliography 294
- This page intentionally left blank 299
- Index 300
- This page intentionally left blank 311