The first prize for The Ottawa Citizen’s 1997 WriteNow! memoir contest, with Charles Gordon’s favourable review (PDF format), did much to remove distractions from keeping a daily date with my writing desk.
My pursuit to “hone the craft” was also advanced by reading E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel — his subject matter for the annual Cambridge Clark Lectures during the academic year 1926-27 — a book which greatly influenced me during the drafting of A Marginally Noted Man.