UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LINKS

Lesley Choyce : Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends

Favourite book when young: Journey to The Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne.
Favourite book now: unknown.
Career: I avoided one. To busy myself, I write novels and autobiographical books, host a TV show, teach part time at a university, run a publishing company, surf, freelance TV and radio work, perform and record alternative music and raise spinach.
My family and pets: 2 kids (12 and 18); a dog and bunch of pigeons and a budgie. I used to have a goat and a telepathic raven as well as a one-winged seagull. No kidding.
Room where I write: Overlooking the ocean on a hillside at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia.
What I do in my spare time: surf, hike, play electric guitar with heavy distortion, imagine, travel, imagine some more.
As a kid I was: skinny, smart but not very cool, daydreamed a lot and made Tarzan swings, river rafts and tree forts.
My first book: the publisher thought it wasn't all that good but I should be encouraged. It was a skinny little book of poetry called Reinventing the Wheel ten years in the making. Kind of immature but full of insight.
Where ideas come from: everything and anything. What makes me happy, what makes me scared. Bang, an idea arrives in the middle of the night.
Influences: waves, Nova Scotia, trees, dragonflies, kids, skateboarders, dogs, eccentric people, Canada, ice, music, books.
How I work: I don't work, never have. Mostly I just have fun and make stuff up.
Something I don't really approve of: shoes.
Advice: Do it. Forget about money and live. Make up your own life as it goes along. Don't let television or anybody do it for you.