Who the hell is Heather, anyways?

It's book. It's a blog. Either way, I've been waiting for you.

In spring of 2020, finding myself office-less, hobby-less, and as it remains, childless, I had what felt like an excess of time. While I’ve come to learn that a slow pace is something that we quickly become accustomed to and that my tolerance for nothingness knows no bounds, I wasn’t there yet. I still craved productivity. I had a desire to make it feel like the world hadn’t stopped, and if it had, I wanted to use this pause button to get ahead. 

I planned to take advantage of time spent in the shadows to become great. I’d come out on the other side of this old-timey, sepia tone plague better and badder than ever. Think: revenge-body dumpee who strictly follows two-a-day workouts and a tight nutrition regime to reveal herself to have secret abs (and a likely rhinoplasty) to unsuspecting on-lookers at the annual cottage regatta. 

This was my vision of me.

Only instead of choosing anything topical that might get me laid (or at least invited to a few parties), I chose to write a book. And let me tell you—it’s a slog. Don’t let any reality TV star and ghost-writer benefactor let you think differently. Setting this lofty goal and writing every day felt like feeding an insatiable beast. It felt like climbing Mount Everest with the “severe pes planus” that my podiatrist dared to label me with.

Writing a book requires enormous volume. And this relies on deep internal mining—which you guessed it, is exactly the type of work we tend to avoid. Some days, I did the dishes, shopped online, or let red wine headaches excuse me from answering the call. Other days, I woke up early and sat at my computer where the words just poured out. On these rare and spectacular occasions, it didn’t feel like I was writing. Instead, it felt like I was channeling something through an open portal within. It was like dreading child labour and suddenly, your vagina hole opens up into a glowing hula hoop and the baby rolls out *painlessly* and begins walkin’, talkin’ and makin’ mommy money.

These moments were an earned vacation from the hours of mental labour. 

Writing through the highs and lows and building a catalogue of essays and lessons learned in my first 30+ years was a satisfying purge. The writing felt like making a first real friend in a new city. It was like having a morning coffee with someone that I was still getting to know, in a place I was settling into it. It was like getting to overshare to a captive audience that wasn’t bored of me yet, and reversely, I still wanted to impress. We were in the unknown together and weren’t sure what would shake out, but fuck it, we were miles away from home.

After about a year of compulsive Tools > Word count tracking, I had done what I set out to do. I had drafted a full-length book to call my own. For those aspiring non-fiction writers, this is about 80,000 words give or take. And for me, this was prime minus 7,000. Either way, I had a substantial body of work that for once, was tangible and totally my own. Until this, I’ve only worked for other people or performed stand-up comedy where unless you’re recording an album of fart jokes, there’s no take-away item. You can’t flip through five years of live performances in basements across the GTA. I finally had something I could hold on to.

By being so focused on the actual writing, I had overlooked one critical piece: getting the book out in the world.

I assumed that once I was done writing, I’d be asked out to lunch by some artsy power babe who ironically used a flip-phone, we’d strike a deal, she’d hit publish, and I’d tour North America in a winnebago vinyl-wrapped with the book’s cover meeting folksy locals and searching for the best small-town gravy.

As it turns out, this is very much not how it works.

Colour me a deluded optimist, but I grossly underestimated how dire and depressing the publishing industry is. Publishing in Canada is convoluted, gone broke, and is guarded by a small crew of traditional yet surprisingly woke gate-keepers with bottleneck glasses and micro-bangs. Without a large number of followers, proven track record, or any real authority, my humour collection of self-help lessons and stories was unlikely to be the chosen one. And when I say one, in the case of some of these publishing houses, I literally mean the only book slated for publishing in my category that year. Once you subtract points for the aforementioned lack of notoriety (I’ve actually lost followers from the draft to publish phase of this article), the likelihood of me being a Winner! Gagnant! through traditional publishing was slim to none. 

Had I known how difficult the path toward publishing would be, I honestly don’t think I would have written the book. While the pursuit of writing is noble, I am not. I wrote the book as a gateway into a new life. I wanted this book to become a New York Times bestseller and for me to be catapulted far, far away from the monotony of my 9-5. I wanted this book to represent me crossing-over into a life of my own design—a life where I could finally justify the gross arrogance that I come by naturally.

So, this all brings me to today and the reason behind this blog. 

Note: Do people “blog” anymore, or do we call it something different now? Blog seems very 2014, click an image on Pinterest and be redirected to a recipe for “How to Build a Travertine Side Table with Home Depot” ingredients.

Rather than continue to sit on the book for another year, filled with disappointment for not getting it out in the world and then panic-querying another agent, I’ve decided to approach this whole thing a little bit differently. By sharing parts of the book and other writing, it gets to unfold before the both of us. Think of this collection as a dynamic, experimental book that’s evolving, growing and spiralling before our eyes. By you even being here, you’re already a part of things. Exciting, right? If you comment “more stuff on dogs, please”, I might pepper that into a next post. If you say, “is this just some giant ruse for her to live-edit this book?”, I might say “no, but that’s genius!”. 

Admittedly, when I set out with the goal of authoring a book, I probably would have deemed this independent, slow-trickle release as a consolation prize. I dreamed of wandering the aisles of Indigo and fancying myself a “Heather’s Pick”. I no longer feel this way. We’re living through strange ass times and the ways in which the world operates have shifted. Things are Wild West-y and it’s up to us to make it happen for ourselves. By bringing my writing straight to you, there’s no middle man to shave down the edges or strongly recommend that I not compare fast food as a religion to the Presbyterian Church (true story, and that essay is to come).

Plus, who the hell is Heather, anyways? 

The overarching theme of my collection, of this dynamic book (if you will), is about reclaiming our shameless. In other words, shedding some of the extra fucks that we’ve picked up along the way, and unearthing more authenticity. I want us to become the adults our kid selves would be proud of—before tight bras, taxes, and any computer-induced quasimodo hunches took hold.

If you just caught wind of an inspirational undertone, Sherlock, are you an undercover D, baby? While I am not, nor will I ever be, trying to sell you shampoo, I genuinely want this to be a place where we leave feeling a little better. A little lighter. A little bit more like we can be rewarded for being our true selves. 

At the end of this, I want us both to reveal our metaphorical abs at the summer regatta.

Your journey back to shameless has just begun.

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So, join me here every week as we try to figure it out together. I promise to keep things honest, leave in the edges, and *hopefully* empower us both to make it happen—our way.