Rona Maynard is known for being a brilliant storyteller: someone who understands the many ways stories can bring people together. It’s the thread that weaves together so many of the different chapters in own life. She was the editor-in-chief of Chatelaine from 1994 to 2004. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir My Mother’s Daughter. And, next month, her latest book, Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging, and Loving This World, will hit the bookstore shelves. I recently had the opportunity to ask Rona a few questions—mostly about the stories behind her story-rich book. What follows are my questions and Rona’s beautiful, heartfelt responses.
I’m always fascinated to hear stories about how book ideas manage to find authors and how authors manage to find book ideas. Do you remember when and how you landed on this book idea? What made you realize that Starter Dog needed to be your next book?
Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging, and Loving This World by Rona Maynard
When Casey joined the family on Easter Sunday, 2015, I'd been struggling for years to get a second book off the ground. I couldn't find a shape in all the writing squirreled away on my hard drive. I had something to say--Important with a capital I--about walking away from a job that had once consumed and defined me, but it died on the page. A rescue mutt with a torn right ear and a lust for squirrels that nearly knocked me off my feet was not my notion of a worthy subject. Casey seemed much too silly to be anywhere close to Important, yet silliness became a gateway to a new way of seeing and feeling. Laughter knocked the hard edges off me. I stopped taking myself so damn seriously, and in this lighter, brighter state I noticed everyday wonders that presented themselves on my walks with Casey. He sniffed, I looked. I met my neighbors, watched murals come to life, watched a bee at work inside a coreopsis. (Now I can name that flower. I couldn't, before Casey.)
To paraphrase Mary Oliver, the world offered itself to my imagination. I couldn't not write about this awakening. So I started posting vignettes and photos on Facebook. People connected with them. They asked me for more. I'd never had so much fun writing as I did inside that little rectangle on Facebook, capturing whatever came to mind without obsessing over target readers, editorial mix or any of the things that constrained me while I ran a magazine. I didn't know or care what I was doing except sharing delight, one moment at a time.
It was Kim Pittaway, my successor at Chatelaine and now director of the MFA program in creative nonfiction at the University of King's College, who said I had the makings of a book. Little by little, I realized these vignettes were asking a question: What is Importance, anyway? Why should presenting a strategic plan matter more than my daily adventures with Casey? Mary Oliver wrote, "The world offers itself to your imagination." I'd been looking the other way. No longer. I became a neighbor among neighbors, an animal among animals.
In the early pages of Starter Dog, you recall what a joyous experience it was for you to settle into the process of writing your first memoir—My Mother’s Daughter—after so many years of helping other writers to polish their own prose. Was the process of writing Starter Dog similarly joyous for you? What moments will you remember when you think back on the time when you were writing this book?
With My Mother's Daughter, I had something to prove. I had the chops to tell a story of my own instead of polishing someone else's into shape. That thrilled me, as if I'd pulled a sword from a stone. It had always been mine, yet I had never grasped my own powers. With Starter Dog, I had nothing to prove. Writing parts of it made me smile, or even laugh out loud at the transporting silliness of canine joy, which became my own joy. And yet Starter Dog was much harder to write than my first book. For the longest time (years!) I couldn't find a conflict to build the story around. No conflict, no story to keep the reader turning the pages. My first book gave me a foil: my adoring, formidable, controlling mother. Casey wasn't much of a foil, no matter how much trouble he got into. I was writing joy, and it felt like pinning clouds to the page. I missed the clarity of writing about struggle. The book came into focus when I saw that the foil was my own lifelong focus on achievement, drilled into me by high-achieving parents and reinforced in the magazine business.
Would younger you have been capable of taking a “Casey’s eye view” of the world? Would you have been ready for his masterclass in paying attention and really noticing the day-to-day wonders of life? Or did you need to grow into a different version of yourself—or step into a different life stage—to be ready to learn from this teacher?
Some people naturally turn toward happiness like a plant toward the sun. I'm not one of those people. I have a tendency to look for what should be better instead of what's beautiful and special as it already is. I was perfectly cast as an editor but not as a human animal walking this earth. In those days of "We need another rewrite" and "Let's have another run at this layout," I wasn't open to happiness lessons. It's often said that an addict has to hit bottom before resolving to change. Well, in a way I was addicted—to the quest for perfection, as if such a thing exists. I had to get deeply uncomfortable with myself before I could consider another way to be. I also needed a firm push from my husband, who had always wanted a dog and sensed that a dog would inject some fun into our lives. Love makes you do the damnedest things--like say yes to a goofball dog when what you think you want is something Important with a capital I.
Ann Douglas is the author of 26 non-fiction books including, most recently, Navigating The Messy Middle: A Fiercely Honest and Wildly Encouraging Guide for Midlife Women (which was published in Canada last fall and will be published in the US on March 28, 2023. She is the “Midlife Reimagined” blogger for Psychology Today magazine. These days, she is trying to teach herself how to write her first novel.