Daughter: One measly consonant away from laughter

BLONDIE'S PIZZA: That's the background for this pic. The 
Dundas Street eatery also makes great pizza. 

I just wrote a book. Sorta. By accident.

A year and a month ago, my daughter Ewa, who lives in Vancouver, surprised me with a subscription to an online service called Storyworth. 

Over the next 12 months, Storyworth emailed me a story prompt every week. I  wrote something in response to the prompts and at the end of a year, a hardcover book appeared.

That's it. 

I could have written fiction, (my late brother Ed, who figures very largely in this collection, once said I'm best at "non-friction"), poetry, or recipes. Or photos. Whatever I wanted.  

I opted for straight, true stuff, with no pictures.

Most prompts were questions like, "What was your best vacation and why? and "Describe a favourite pet." Try answering either of those. You'll be surprised at how easily you wind up with a fun story.

Of course I didn't have to follow the Storyworth suggestions, and good thing, too, because 100 per cent of my responses went off the rails early on. Somehow, for instance, the answer to the prompt "In what ways are you like your dad?" got morphed into a story about me accidentally visiting a Moscow brothel.

I'm pretty sure that never happened to my father.

Of course that's why me and Storyworth were friends. There weren't no rules. Zero of my stories ended up having anything do with the original prompts.

So between April 2024 and April 2025, Saturday morning after Saturday morning, you'd find me plunked down at the north end of our red couch,  with Iris Cat skritching her skinny neck along the side of my Dell laptop, as I typed out stories that I'd never before published, blogged about or shared on Facebook.

April 26th, 2025, I  hit "PUBLISH." 

Three days later, the elegantly bound hard cover Storyworth: Why Writing is ... Righting appeared on my porch. As you can see, Iris approves.

It was almost as simple as that and I recommend you give it a try.

IRIS BOOK OF TELLS: She puts
the cat into catalyst.

But the story doesn't end there. 

After the original Storyworth book was printed, it became clear that some others in my family wanted to find out what I wrote. I learned that any subsequent pressings of the original single book would cost upwards of $50 a pop. I wasn't going to ask anybody to pay that much for stories I could just tell them if they, you know, phoned me. 

So that's when Storyworthy: Why Writing is ... Righting got turned into a self published paperback, priced as low as Amazon allows. 

But I'm not here to sell my book. As I said, I advise everybody to try Storyworth.

And if you can somehow finagle it, have one of your kids pony up the $150 or so it costs to register.

When Ewa did so, she knew I'd be way more likely to complete the project because she paid for it. 

At work last week, I was talking to colleagues about this project, and mentioned more than once that as fun as it was, having the book done was a huge relief.

SOFT-HITTING HARD COVER:
The original Storyworth product

 That, I said, was that.

Except then I mentioned the thing to one of my co-worker pals, a Manhattan-based journalist euphoniously named Nataleeya Boss.

Me: "My daughter Ewa was the catalyst behind the book. Have I ever mentioned that my kids have spurred me on to new heights? It's the story of being a dad."

Nataleeya: "That should be your next book!" 

So much for doneness.