Margaret Atwood Siren Song — Blog

This week, I listened to Cheryl Strayed speak with Margaret Atwood, my favourite Canadian author. (My dream came true when Margaret wrote to me about my novel, Love Lie Repeat…you can read about that here if you’re interested.)

On the podcast, Margaret explained that her mother used to say, “Roll up your sleeves, girls!”

It’s a little bit old-fashioned, but I love the sentiment. How does it strike you?

As I said a while ago, I’m a do-er during quarantine, not a pause-r. Both responses and everything in between are absolutely valid, but for me, doing really helps me feel better. So while everyone else on the Internet made sourdough, I did, too.

And actually, it’s easy.

First you make a starter, which is just equal parts flour and water exposed to the air for a few days so you catch natural yeast. You keep it on the bench top and feed it more flour and water every day until you get around one cup. That’s the minimum amount of starter you’ll need to make a loaf of bread. You can save the rest in your fridge and feed it weekly if you want to make more loaves.

The truly interesting part of the process was how complicated writers and foodies are making this whole sourdough thing sound. Search around the Internet and you’ll find complex videos and blog posts galore. A zillion of them.

But I’m a woman who had a “Roll up your sleeves, girls” mother — just like Margaret Atwood did. And I spent my whole childhood on the farm, watching her routinely take four loaves of bread out of the oven AT A TIME every Saturday morning. For me, a total beginner, baking ONE loaf of bread felt like no big deal.

So I just did it. Found a recipe, cut out the complicated parts, made a starter with flour and water, fed it for a couple of days and then made a loaf of bread.

And this is the power of example.

I watched some one do it, so I could do it, too.

It’s a really important reminder. It’s easy to see someone else doing something and think it’s too hard, rarified, only for experts, impossible for us to do. Or we can feel jealous — as if the person we’re watching has superpowers that we don’t.

But if we roll up our sleeves, we can do so much.

Figure it out.

Give it a go (or give it a shot, if you live in North America).

Baking bread, writing a book, starting a business, making a tough phone call, healing a relationship…the first steps are all the same.

Baby steps.

If someone else has done it before us, we can too.

Time to roll up your sleeves, girls. Today might be the perfect day to tackle something you’ve always wanted to start.

Sending love to you and yours on this beautiful weekend. I hope everyone is keeping well and safe…and I’m thinking of you.

Catherine x

PS.

Want the recipe I used for sourdough? Let me know!
And if you want to read my first novel, a YA thriller, you can find it here. My first picture book is here. Currently working on a new non-fiction book and I’m excited to share that with you :) It’s very different from my novel. Stay tuned!

Imagine a 24 year old Catherine in an emerald green dress.

It was the 90s and I was young, and I was in a competition to win a job teaching English at a beautiful private high school on Vancouver Island in Canada. Six other teachers applied, and we were asked to teach a sample lesson to a year 12 class with members from the English Department judging our performance from the back of the room.

I taught an excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Out of seven of us, I got the job.

Then glance back, ten years earlier, in Saskatchewan: Catherine at 14. Long brown hair, sitting by myself in a tiny country school library, figuring out love. I’d found a book of poetry, with one line that read:

“You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye”

— Margaret Atwood

And for some reason, my heart connected with Margaret Atwood’s words. Over the years I’ve read every book Atwood has written. I’ve taught her poems.

We share a publisher — Penguin Books. I wrote my own novel inspired by my favourite Atwood poem, “Siren Song.”

Last week, I listened to her speak in Sydney, my home for the past 23 years. The week before that, on a rainy Tuesday, I found a letter from her in my mailbox, soaking wet, encouraging me in my writing career.

I dried it carefully and framed it on my study wall.

I’m writing all of this to say we have no idea what will become of us.

If I could tell that 14 year old girl in the country school that I would be Australian, she wouldn’t have believed me. Or an author? She would have wanted that, but probably not had any idea how she would do such a thing.

But let’s get to the interesting part: you.

What wonderful thing don’t you know about your own future?

Though my worried mind often turns otherwise, I like to ask myself this: