Comfort Zones and Writing

If you venture out of your comfort zone and can’t find your way back, maybe it’s all good.

by Garry Ryan, @GarryGarrettRya

This story probably began in Singapore. I spent the last two years of high school in a sweaty multicultural concoction of diverse languages, foods and monsoons. It was jarring and I had to adapt. An unexpected dividend was the ability to become a student of the inner workings of societies.

Back in Canada, the kindness of Casey and Pablo exposed me to First Nations’ perspectives. Sometimes the intense heat of a Blackfoot sweat lodge left burns on my shoulders. It also allowed me to see – with more clarity – the connections between humans.

Sitting still for hours in the southern California heat is extremely uncomfortable. Photographing hummingbirds revealed how their beauty, competition and aggression are actually reflections of human behaviour.

Havana, Cuba was old and new shoved up against one another in a way I hadn’t experienced. The outcome was a novel (Matanzas) about Cuban and Canadian cultures dancing with one another.

Seeing the remnants of Mayan civilization at Chichenitza was another of those mind-altering experiences. It required pushing a wheelchair in plus thirty temperatures while learning secrets about the way Mayan architects played with sound.

Travelling one thousand kilometres in one day is gruelling. Yorkton, Saskatchewan unexpectedly provided the backstory for a new character I’ve been working with. She came to life while I was searching for a cup of coffee.

Calgary’s 2013 floods have influenced a novel about the way a city can come together after a disaster.

Even an idyllic San Jose setting can help you to imagine a scene where beauty and ugliness are shoved up against one another.

You may see potential scenes in out of the way locations. If you carry a smartphone with you, it will always be possible to catalogue evocative images for later use.

In 2004, NeWest Press published Garry Ryan’s first Detective Lane novel, Queen’s Park. The second, The Lucky Elephant Restaurant, won a 2007 Lambda Literary Award. NeWest has since published seven more titles in the series: A Hummingbird Dance, Smoked, Malabarista, Foxed, Glycerine, Indiana Pulcinella and soon to be released Matanzas. In 2009, Ryan was awarded Calgary’s Freedom of Expression Award. In 2012 a second series, the historical fiction novel Blackbirds, was published by NeWest Press.