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For 30 years I worked as a reporter and communications manager. Now I ‘work’ for myself, doing what I truly love, covering events, telling peoples’ stories and volunteering communications services for a couple of organizations in the Chemainus Valley, British Columbia, where I live.

Over my career I have adapted to and embraced the incredible opportunities emergent in the era of the internet and digital production. There’s two ends to that telescope, though: looked at one way, the flexibility and reach of modern technologies make it possible for almost anyone to create exciting news; from another perspective, we are overwhelmed with torrents of random information that disorients as much as informs.

Either way, it’s essential for creative types and community groups – my natural clientele – to become tech savvy, or to ally themselves with people who can provide timely, effective news coverage of events and initiatives. Media and communications needs to be planned and purposefully executed. For example, my recommendation to the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society, where I volunteer, was a plan focused on a mission statement…

The ‘mission statement’ of the communications committee is ‘creating community through the arts’. Central to that mission is the belief that locally experienced and created art is integral to a vibrant, viable community, and that locally produced and celebrated art is constantly having to hold its own in an era of mass communications and big-budget entertainment.

Unless we populate the internet and local media with a continuous stream of news and notifications about the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society’s activities, and the talented artists in all disciplines and genres that live and create here, grass roots arts will incrementally be displaced.

That pretty well describes my commitment to communications in the arts, which has made my career so rewarding and enriching. I love collaborating with people and organizations, telling their stories, and am continuously learning new ways of engaging audiences.

To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.

One of my favourite workshop concepts is the Trailer Party. The idea is for a group of writers and poets to get together, read to one another, critique each others’ work and reading style, then do a final reading, which will be recorded and produced for posting on their own websites, a dedicated page, or social media.

For writers in the 21st Century a catchy, descriptive short is an essential component for promoting and selling books. This workshop will make a virtual necessity engaging fun. Contact me if you want to know more, or if you’d like to set up or join a Trailer Party group.

To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.

I don’t set prices for the services and workshops I offer, because I don’t know exactly what you want, and how we are going to reach your goals. All I can say is: I will come up with a plan we’re excited about, for a price that fits your budget.

Creative collaboration begins at the very beginning, with a conversation about what we hope to accomplish and how we’re going to work together. The first step for me is always a consultation to talk about your vision, and a strategy for making it happen.

There’s no charge for that conversation, no time limit, and no obligation. If we can’t come up with a workable plan, it doesn’t mean we’ve failed, it simply means we’ve learned enough to know we’re not ready to set out… yet.

And if the conversation points you in a different direction, that’s fine, too; I will consider it time and effort well-spent. I believe in the power of literature and take pleasure finding ways for people to share in joys of story-telling.

To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.

Got an idea you want to share? A story to tell? A place you want to take people?

Green screen techniques can help you deliver compelling, informative messages to your online audiences. Green screen isn’t new technology. It’s been around since the 1940s. If you want to know more about it, have a read of I’ve always wondered: why is a green screen green?, an article in The Conversation by Lincoln Turner and Russell Anderson.

I’ll leave the techie, scientific stuff with them, and stick to the fun part of green screen production, that extra dimension it brings to exploring and expressing your stories and ideas through video. Green screen technology, which is portable and easy to set up on location by the way, opens up what I call ‘layering’ opportunities’, putting the narrator into the picture in surprising and engaging ways.

In a nutshell, green screen allows the producer to lift narrators or actors from studio settings and slip new background elements behind them. It also allows you to use visual effects separately on both the narrator and her digitally created environment. Having control of those variables makes it possible for a producer to compress and juxtapose visuals into enriched, creative compositions.

My passion is helping people tell their stories. Green screen is one of the techniques I use to present collaborative works and ideas from engaging perspectives.

To find out more, contact me, or have a look at my Services & Workshops page.

This quotable form Anony Muse, ties into the dynamics of human will, and back to Descartes’ existentialist declaration of thinking as the foundational criterion of human-being.

We usually associate ‘identity’ – as in the definition of who and what we are – with a collection of attributes we claim to possess. But that’s not even half the story. We are defined as much by what we aren’t, as by what we are. If there was no ‘other’ beyond self, there could be no such thing as human will. And, to my way of thinking, will is the active element of human-being.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that willing is the truly essential component of human-being.

If I consider the vast catalogue of ‘not me’, there are three major categories out there. There are things that aren’t me, that I know can never be; there are other things that I do not want to be; then there are things I wish I could be, but am-not.

The latter is the gravitational force of human will. In fact, ‘what I do not want to be’ is also a part of human willing… the part that says ‘I want to be who I am, not that tempting other option’ or ‘I want to be more assured of my beliefs as a human being, and not drawn in that other direction’.

Willing is a dynamic gravitational triad consisting of: who I think I am; who I think I want to be, but am-not; and the effort I must expend becoming what I am-not, but want to be.

So, when I say to myself, ‘I am living up to my potential’, I am saying I do not need to change, I am content with inertia. I do not want to become anything other than what I am.

My life of crime started young, ended early. But in that brief span, when I plunged into the netherworld of social dis-grace, I learned enough to last me a lifetime… not as a penitent, it turns out, but as a grateful celebrant. What am I most grateful for? That’s not easily set down in a sentence. But if I had to take a stab at it, I’d have to say: The knowledge that real joy comes from giving, not taking; from sharing, not possessing. Can’t say I’ve always lived up to that precept, but the farther I stray from it, the more it tugs at me like a bungie cord wrapped around my neck.

From The Mural Gazer, Just for Kiks

Sometimes you don’t want to put a period to the end of a paragraph, because what you’ve said has implications that go on and on. Those, to me, are the moments I write for, those instances when an episode in your own life, transcribed into fiction, makes sense of everything in that particular frame of reference.

Just for Kiks, the Mural Gazer story I’m working on right now, is based on one of my real-life experiences. As a child I loved Popsicles. I could happily slurp them up all day, and take one to bed with me at night. They were magical flavours that melted in your mouth and infused your whole being. But I wasn’t allowed to have more than one a week. I didn’t realize it at the time, but part of my ecstasy was the very fact the Popsicles were a rare treat, which would lose their exciting tang if I could have one whenever I wanted – but that another part of this story.

Fact was, I did want Popsicles all the time, and was secretly yearning to get my way.

So one day, when I saw my mother’s purse unattended on my parents’ bedroom bureau, I snuck in, opened it up, took out her wallet, and snatched out a bill. I was too young to realize what denomination I had filched, all I knew was, paper money bought more than coins, so – living up to the saying ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ I went big time.

Pilfered lucre in hand, I hurried off to Besners Corner Store to complete my transaction. I slapped my mother’s twenty down on the counter, and said to Old Man Besner, “I want all the Popsicles I can buy with this.”

Old Man Besner’s white, bushy eyebrows arched, over his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes popped out, almost touching the lenses, then he frowned. I knew something had gone awry before he said a word, a sense of doom closing in as if the atmospheric pressure might crush my skull and stave in my rib cage. “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

If I’d done my math, I would have better understood the condemnation in his voice. Popsicles cost something like five cents apiece at the time, so one dollar would buy twenty of them; twenty dollars, four-hundred. But that wasn’t the miscalculation that really counted. Even if I’d only stolen a nickel, and got away with the purchase of one Popsicle, I’d have broken a rule… more importantly, I’d have broken the trust my parents, and by extension the world beyond, placed in me.

At that age, that was all that mattered. Break the rule, take the punishment. Dad offered me a choice: a week without TV, or the strap. A week without Leave it to Beaver, Bonanza, Gunsmoke… that would have been prolonged torture, so I accepted the medicine of quick, sharp corporal punishment instead, which he administered halfheartedly.

It took me many years to figure out the implications of my life of crime. In fact, I’m still working on it. But it comes down to this, my working mantra: Give with joy and grace; receive with gratitude and appreciation. It’s giving that brings real joy into our lives – giving support when it’s needed; of our talents, when we can make life better for others; even our lives, when the ultimate act of giving is demanded of us, and we have the courage… In fact, the whole meaning of life is defined by what we give of ourselves, and how we do it. And being conscious of that equation is part of being uniquely human.

During my ‘Writer in Residence’ shifts at Askew Creek Bookstore, (usually 10 AM to 4 PM Fridays) I am offering to record and produce readings by Chemainus Valley writers. Authors at any stage in their development, who want to get people into their works – be they fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, or non-fiction – can sign up for a spot to become online storytellers, and I’ll get back to make arrangements. No charge, although I would encourage participants to join the CVCAS, and/or the Federation of BC Writers.

Get in touch and we can make arrangements for your ReachOut!.

CraigSpenceWriter.ca