I met Wren this spring at a cottage on Georgian Bay that she rented with a mutual friend. She had just launched her website, wrenjones.ca, and needed some photos. We had fun doing a photo shoot in this beautiful, inspirational place.
I asked Wren to talk about her path to becoming a writer.
During Covid, my writing life was reignited. My kids had both moved out and work had quieted down. I was on the other side of a difficult few years after cancer, a divorce, and caregiving for my dad. Those things were hard, yet they had given me clarity and a knowing – a knowing that we’re here for a limited time; that I need to spend that time with people I love, doing things that bring me joy.
Writing is one of those things. It’s always been in my life, and it’s the art form through which I feel a need to express myself. For me, as for many of us, stories and poems are both a salve and a guiding light.
Over the years I had been in writing groups and taken classes as I worked and raised a family. However, I’d kept writing on the side, tucked away in a closet, sometimes locked in a box and shoved into the basement. I grew up in a home where voices were kept quiet and the arts were seen as ‘hobbies’. Claiming writing and my voice did not come easy.
Within a month after Covid began, I had joined two online writing groups and begun taking writing workshops. I started to share my work on Medium. I edited a YA novel I had written years ago and submitted it to a national contest, where it was a finalist. When my work contract came to an end in July 2021, I saw an opportunity to take a leap. I untethered myself completely – I gave up my expensive TO apartment, put everything in storage, and made plans to use my resources for writing and travel in Canada. I decided I would stay with friends and family, or camp or Airbnb. It was both freeing and terrifying, but I needed to create the space to find out who I was and where writing could take me.
I continued with my morning writing practice and adventured around in the afternoons. In the winter, I signed up for writing courses to give me structure – something I realised I needed. I participated in National Poetry Writing Month, writing a poem a day in response to daily prompts and, yikes!, I launched a website to share my writing.
I decided to do the #100rejection challenge, sending my poetry to literary journals. (So far, so good on the rejections.) Last month, the literary journal Untethered broke my rejection streak and I agreed to participate in their in-person launch/live reading event. As I biked to the reading, I wondered whose crazy idea it was to do this, but I did it and survived, albeit with a now familiar feeling that a friend and I call #excitedfraught.
As I’m coming to the end of this year, I’m filled with joy about the writing I’ve created, and with appreciation for the growth that’s come from letting go. Writing is my north star, guiding decisions about how I live, so it can thrive. I have tons to learn and am excited – and fraught – to have been accepted into Simon Fraser University’s one-year Writers Studio program, starting this fall.
You can read some of my recent writing at WrenJones.ca
“Words carry oceans on their small backs.”
Lidia Yuknavitch