Category: Writing
Tuesday, Feb 12, 2013 | Books, Work, Writing |
science presentation, in progress
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News to report: I have an essay in the just-announced anthology, Truth, Dare, Doubledare: Stories of Motherhood, a book conceived, curated, and edited by Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This, one of my favourite Canadian book blogs. Read more about the deal here. Other contributers include Heather Birrell, Alison Pick, Zoe Whittall, Marita Dachsel, and my friend Deanna McFadden, whom I first met at the University of Toronto in a grad class called Restoration Women Writing. (Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure we took another class together called Victorian Women Reading, which seems oddly symmetrical).
This anthology is going to be an excellent collection of work, guaranteed. I just can’t wait to read it myself. I also suspect the launch party will be memorable.
Now the bad news: The pub date is Spring, 2014, so we’ll all have to be patient until then.
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Somehow I lost an hour off of my work day, and I’m not sure where it went. Vanished. I was supposed to be sitting down at my desk at 10am, and it’s very nearly 11. I did drive a large posterboard (pictured above) up to the school for the boy who has a science presentation today (yes, I drove the posterboard, not the child). That took up about 14 minutes. There was a load of laundry. The dogs kept wanting to go in and out of the back yard. But I’m pretty sure the time-sucker was email.
Messages replied to this morning: 12.
Book clubs I will be visiting in the next two weeks: 3.
Social outings I attended yesterday: 2.
involving coffee: 1
involving beer: 1
Words written in new book yesterday: 388.
goal for today: 1000.
which would bring the total word count to: 80,000.
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And …. GO!
Friday, Feb 8, 2013 | Baking, Chores, Cooking, Play, Winter, Work, Writing |
Yup. It’s a real snow day, school cancelled, library cancelled, extra-curricular activities cancelled, children playing in snow drifts, people walking by in the street because the sidewalks are too messy, snow, snow, snow coming down, down, down.
I’m happy for the kids, who were praying for a snow day, but oh how I really wanted to keep on writing in my new book. Yesterday’s hair-pulling session netted me 1800 new words, bringing the book to 78,000 words, and three new scenes. (Scrivener has handy “project targets” and “project statistics” features to which I am utterly addicted. I do realize that stats mean nothing if those 78,000 words do not work together to move the reader. But it’s comforting to quantify my efforts.) I have about four new scenes to write, plus another six or seven to revise before this draft is complete. I’m not looking for new material, I just need the time/space to write what has already been plotted out in my head. Unfortunately, my current situation is not conducive to scene-writing: two children and two dogs crowded into my office, dogs to sleep, and children to chew gum, sit in dog beds, listen to songs, and generally disrupt the quiet every two seconds with requests, wonderings, and commentary. The smallest is at this very moment stamping his feet for some perceived wrong I’m not entirely clear about. Maybe it’s the typing I’m doing on this here computer.
So … here’s what I plan to do with the rest of our snow day.
* bake cookies
* make yogurt
* make dough for homemade pizza
* shovel the sidewalk since I won’t be running tonight (no soccer skills means that my regularly scheduled Friday run, which I do no matter the weather, is also cancelled)
* pull smallest on sled while we walk second smallest to play date
* put in movie for part of the afternoon and sneak in some writing
For the purposes of reality checking, here’s what I’ve actually accomplished so far.
* chatted with sister-in-law on the phone
* almost finished one cup of coffee (gone cold ages ago)
* fed everyone breakfast, and a few people lunch
* tried to talk husband out of leaving for his boys’ cottage weekend in the middle of this storm (doesn’t seem to be working)
* put in load of laundry
* cleaned up dog poop in upstairs bedroom (c’mon, DJ, if Suzi can go outside, you can go outside!)
* read front section of newspaper
* answered a few work-related emails
* took photographs of snow
* puttered. Really, mostly I’ve puttered.
Monday, Feb 4, 2013 | Blogging, Book Review, Cooking, Kevin, Reading, Swimming, Writing |
shovelling with dogs, Monday morning, early
Slow start. Hi there, Monday. Why you be so Mondayish week after week?
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I’m thinking of starting a regular lost-and-found feature. The latest on the list:
* one Playbook, lost and then miraculously found at the bottom of my sports bag where it had rested patiently since last Sunday’s soccer game, going to and from exercise studios
* one black Celtic hat and pair of pink mittens: CJ’s, last seen Friday, or maybe yesterday, who can remember? This lost hat & mitt combo represented this morning’s final crisis before leaving the house, late, to catch the bus.
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It felt like a weekend of non-stop-ness. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time getting going this morning. Even the fun parts were relentlessly timed. For example, coffee date with son. (These coffee dates/errand running, with each child getting a turn, have become regular Saturday morning events.) Thankfully he did not complain about having to eat his onion bagel with garlic & herb cream cheese in eight minutes flat.
The turn-around time was terribly tight: I was off to a swim meet in Brantford with the swim girl. There is something very similar about all of these pools, and the meets too. Noisy music; insanely tight seating (this time on deck); a dad seated directly behind you with a bullhorn of a voice hollering at his kid in the pool who clearly will never be able to hear or follow the directions being given; technical glitches with the scoreboards; expensive race sheets that you have to buy or you won’t know when your kid is racing; searching endlessly trying to locate your child’s cap, goggles, and suit amidst the multitudes of other similarly clad children; sitting for butt-numbing hours on end; child races, heart rate accelerates, sitting again; boggled by the limited supply of bathrooms in these facilities; wishing you’d brought a better snack; trying to read/work while keeping an eye on the race progression; chatting with neighbouring parents; waiting endlessly for swim kid to locate lost items at the end of the day (this meet it was a GIGANTIC copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that took us half an hour to find in the littered stands, no exaggeration.)
Watching your kid swim two fantastic personal bests in races that amount to a total of just over 2 minutes. Seeing her take deep pleasure in the reward of her hard work. Marvelling at her race-intensity. Being proud. Figuring it’s all kind of worth it.
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Also this weekend: babysitting exchange at our house. Eight kids plus two dogs overnight. Kevin was in charge of food, and he really outdid himself. Two casseroles of homemade mac-and-cheese, a graham cracker-chocolate-cookie-cake that had everyone rushing for seconds, and a triple batch of pancakes and sausages for breakfast. “I love having kids around to cook for,” he sighed with satisfaction, to which I said, “Wha???? Don’t we always have kids around to cook for?” Apparently cooking for other people’s kids is more fun than cooking for one’s own brood.
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Add in two giggling girls awake at 5:50am, a swim practice, a sledding miscommunication, two soccer games (no subs and a tie for me, two goals and a win for her), a carshare car, and a Super Bowl supper, and we were done. We were toast. We were ready for bed early. And the alarm sounded early. And it was Monday. It is Monday.
Deadline to meet tomorrow. Must. Get. Writing. Not. Blogging.
Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013 | Writing |
Sometimes I wonder what the universe is up to. Also, and relatedly, sometimes I spend way too much time reading clues that may or may not be there. I wonder: what does it all mean, when quite possibly it only means that I’m paying attention to certain things and ignoring others. When quite possibly, the evidence is evidence only of my own perspective.
Remember how I wasn’t going to write freelance this year? Yesterday, I received news that not one but two separate freelancing contacts were no longer in the business of commissioning work. To put it plainly, that means less freelance work for me. So it fits with my plan, right? Except in the past week, I’ve also gotten two out-of-the-blue commissions for other (small) writing jobs. Well, which is it, universe?
A horoscope recently informed me that I was doing too much and would need to scale back. What? No! Argh!
While composing this post, the phone rang. Exciting, right! The phone almost never rings! It was a woman at a call centre who said, “Hello, my name is Jennifer, and I’m calling about your computer, okay?”
Thanks, universe. You just interrupted my train of thought.
This is my 1,000th post as Obscure CanLit Mama. Random, but true.
The question is, says my very patient husband who has to listen to this stuff even more often than you do: Is the universe a good source of advice?
Friday, Jan 25, 2013 | Friends, Writing |
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| Tricia and I make a flying leap |
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| So far, we can’t think of a team nickname. Suggestions? |
(Photos by Stephen Edgar)
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Driving children to and from activities last night, I realized that I’m in a sweet spot in my book. I know what’s happening and what needs, yet, to happen. Two crucial characters have solidified in my mind. I have some exciting scenes to lay out. I could sit and write non-stop if someone would bring me emergency supplies (and if I didn’t have children to feed, snuggle, tuck in, clean up after, and drive to and from activities). I don’t know how long this sweet spot will hold, but I hope it’s right up until the very last page of the book.
I can’t believe I ever tried to write a novel without Scrivener. It’s the most useful structural tool I’ve ever encountered, for writing. Now to see whether I can write a novel with the help of Scrivener. If I can’t, I might as well stop trying, honestly. (The wonderful thing about Scrivener is that it would be useful for any complex book-length project, so if I fail at novel-writing, I’ll turn my hand to some other literary challenge instead.)
Wednesday, Jan 9, 2013 | Book Review, Reading, Swimming, Writing |
“Artistic discipline and athletic discipline are kissing cousins, they require the same thing, an unspecial practice: tedious and pitch-black invisible, private as guts, but always sacred.”
– from “Practice” in Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton
I loved this book. I bought it for my new Kobo, which my two eldest got me for Christmas — their own idea, their own money, their own surprise. I hope to use it to buy more of the books that I might not quite make the leap for in the bookstore. But I’ve now learned that it might inspire me to buy certain books twice, because having read Swimming Studies as an ebook, I long for the actual physical artifact of this particular book, so that I can share it, and so that I can leaf through its pages.
I was sad to reach the end of Swimming Studies. It is a memoir written in a style that I found both affecting and aesthetically serene. Shapton shares a series of moments, linked by their connection to her own life, and to swimming. She resists the impulse to analyze (I admire this, being compulsively analytical myself). She draws scenes that are coloured with very specific detail, that open the possibility of a story the way clues do. It gave me the sensation of looking at old photographs, and wondering about the people captured there. It gave me the sensation of disturbing a private scene, almost, and not fully grasping the significance of everything going on.
I find myself wondering over certain small scenes, like one early on: Why did the women behind the counter at the coffee shop rebuff her mother’s friendliness, in the early dark of morning, and why did her mother keep trying to be friendly? Or even just resonating with a familiar sound I have never paid attention to: the clanging of a frozen rope against a flag pole.
I like that the book seemed to belong to no established genre, nor to care. It didn’t need to fit easily into a category. I did not find myself becoming impatient with some parts that I imagine others might find indulgent: the minute descriptions of pools she remembers swimming in, or her collection of swim suits. I kind of just loved the whole thing.
I can’t imagine growing up with an athletic discipline and routine underpinning my daily life. But I know all about artistic discipline. I find it fascinating to glimpse the mind and experience of someone who has lived both. And I wonder if I could find some lesson, some inspiration here, some ease with the small; the ordinary transformed by attention; the possibility for forward motion within a scene that looks set and still. If ever I were to write a book based on my blog, I think this is where I would begin.
