Category: Writing
Saturday, Feb 4, 2012 | Exercise, Running, Soccer, The Juliet Stories, Writing |
blue sky, yesterday afternoon
Yesterday I was writing to deadline, pulling together some notes on the context and writing of The Juliet Stories for the ebook version that will be published alongside the printed book. Ebooks offer flexibility, room for extra material, and mine will also include one of my character’s songs. The essay is a short piece with photos scattered throughout. Distillation was key. I think you’ll like it.
But this morning I came across a longer meditation on the same subject, written while I was in the middle of discovering this book’s potential to be what it has become. So if you’re interested in a more detailed, mid-process version, visit “Midwife to Stories.” (Interesting also that the story I was in the midst of writing did not make it into book; goes to show how much gets discarded along the way; and how important it is not to worry about whether or not it will be discarded when you’re working. You can’t get at the story any other way. It all matters.)
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Yesterday evening, as promised, I went for a walk in the dark during soccer practice. I walked briskly for six kilometres, which took about an hour; I could run twice the distance in the same amount of time. The air was crisp and cool and more like mid-October than early February. I’d dressed differently than I would have for a run, and I regretted that; I was too cautious. When I go for another walk tomorrow, I will leave behind the heavy winter coat and the big boots. Both completely unnecessary. The good news is that I was able to march without pain; and that being outside had an excellent effect on my body and mind. I’m still finding acceptance difficult — accepting that I can’t run for now — but there are alternatives and the alternatives can be good, too. Different, but good. If I had to give up running, I decided last night, I would get a dog. I would hike in the woods. I would hike long distances. One way or another, I would cover the ground.
After the walk, I got to watch my Soccer Girl scrimmage for fifteen minutes. As you may remember, she was a rep goalkeeper last season, and will be again this summer. But if you’d happened across the field yesterday evening, you simply wouldn’t have believed it. She looked for all the world like a centre forward. She scored four goals, and came close to six. She handled the ball with such confidence, dribbling through defenders, keeping control, biding her time. She made lovely passes to teammates. She waited patiently, using the space on the field, knowing the ball would come to her. It was so fun to watch. Sometimes parenthood is sweeter than anything else on earth. (And it only takes a smidgen of sweetness to make up for the underlying anxiety and vicarious pain that is so much a part of parenthood too.)
Saturday, Jan 28, 2012 | Kids, Mothering, Writing |
… “m” for Marita!
This was easy and fun. I’m tempted to do it again. I really like giving things away. (Would you come back and enter your names all over again for a second round?)
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AppleApple picked the name out of the basket because she and I had scheduled writing time together this morning. I wanted her help on The Big Fat Juicy Belly Worm story. She’s got lots of top secret information about the BFJBW. So we found a pinch of time on Saturday morning, squeezed in between starting bread dough (me) and soccer game (her). She looked forward to it all week–and so did I. Except it wasn’t as fun as we’d anticipated. Writing isn’t really fun, exactly. There’s a lot of erasing and starting all over again. Most ideas get chucked. Information has to be spun into plot. I’m afraid she found it all very tedious. I’m also afraid I’m very abrupt and business-like when writing, even when the subject is a fun children’s story. And we didn’t even finish the chapter.
Maybe I’m just not good at sharing?
Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Writing |
I’ve been reading other people’s blogs. I’ve been reading and wondering and wandering. My mind is impatient this morning, and more than a bit weary. Up early for a swim. Second swim in three days. I am fit, but I don’t feel strong, not running. Which makes me wonder: what am I seeking in my quest to stay fit, if it isn’t to be fit? My routine is fairly grinding, but I hardly missing a planned work-out. Why? I don’t have an answer. I wonder if I will find one, and whether I will like it, or not.
Here’s what I’m doing tonight. I tried to post the poster, but it didn’t work: my siblings’ band Kidstreet is playing in town. I am staying up late to go dancing!
More napping needed.
I’m trying not to think about the dentist appointment booked for tomorrow morning at 7:30 (who does that to herself?). Or the dr’s appointment the next day. Or plans to go out Friday night, and to throw a scotch party here on Saturday night. Which will mean cleaning this whole disastrous kid-friendly house. Which means I’m trying not to think about the living-room, either, strewn end to end with the tiniest toys the children could find to strew about. I’m not thinking about the missing library book, due Friday, already renewed to the allowable limit of times, and nowhere to be blinking found. While I’m at, I’ll try not to think about the half hour I already spent on my hands and knees this morning looking under things for this book while cursing the tiny toys strewn about everywhere.
Instead, I will think about lunch. And coffee. And napping. And blogging. I found some great posts out there this morning. My friend Rebecca blogs about taking a week off from blogging due to feelings of inadequacy. She ends with a quote from Marianne Williamson, which coincidentally my yoga teacher read out to our class on Saturday evening, and which I meant to share here, but it slipped away in my shavasana daydream: “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” And yet. My virtual friend Kerry blogs about Gabrielle Giffords, and how the miracle of her very survival is yet somehow not enough for the narrative of redemption that has been foisted upon it. How we crave the light of redemption and recovery, we want that story. “The narrative of her ‘recovery’ has been so remarkable for its falseness, for its abject denial of the realities of brain injury,” writes Kerry; the piece is worth reading in full.
I have to tell you. My darkness frightens me. But maybe it’s true that my light does too. Marianne Williamson’s quote goes on: “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”
Can we play big, be our better selves, and be truthful about the darkness in each of us, the inadequacies, the mysteries, the wondering and wandering, the good luck and the bad? Well, yes. I think so. I think that might be why I blog.
Friday, Jan 20, 2012 | Books, Reading, The Juliet Stories, Writing |
The latest issue of The New Quarterly (winter, 2012) featuring one of the chapters from The Juliet Stories. ie. your chance to get a sneak preview
Okay, friends, let’s give the giveaway a shot. So, I’ll offer up a prize, interested readers comment below, and a week from today (Jan. 27) we’ll have a draw and announce a winner. Sound like a plan?
Yesterday I visited The New Quarterly’s office and picked up copies of their latest issue. The New Quarterly is a local literary magazine with pedigree and staying power. They’ve published award-winning Canadian talent like Annabel Lyon, Erin Noteboom Bow, Douglas Glover, Stephen Heighton, Russell Smith, Diane Schoemperlen, Rebecca Rosenblum, and Andrew Pyper, to name just a few. A recent issue offered an interview with one of my favourite writers, ever, Alice Munro. Their issues frequently sell out.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed to be a part of the magazine, starting in 1991 when they published two poems that I wrote as a sixteen-year-old angst-ridden word-happy big-dreaming high school student. That kind of encouragement makes a huge difference in a developing writer’s life, let me tell you. It was the beginning of a long relationship. And their winter 2012 issue, freshly mailed and on its way to bookstores, includes a chapter from The Juliet Stories. Here is your chance to get a sneak preview of the book, which won’t be available until March.
The New Quarterly has offered me a copy of this latest issue to give away on my blog. Now, I’m a newbie at giving things away, but I like the idea. Heck, I’ll throw in a copy of my first book Hair Hat for good measure. Why not.
(Speaking of giveaways, Goodreads is giving away ten advance reading copies of The Juliet Stories. And my husband has launched a website called “Help Make Carrie’s Book a Bestseller,” (hey, we can hope!), which will also be giving away prizes to participants. Consider joining.)
Aaaaand. Enough with the giveaways. To sum up: Prizes — The New Quarterly’s winter 2012 issue and a signed copy of Hair Hat. Comment below to enter. Deadline Friday, January 27th, noon.
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It’s Friday, the kids are home from school, the sun is shining, there is snow on the ground, and here I am. Wondering: will I write more of The Big Fat Juicy Belly Worm today? My kids are wondering too. AppleApple keeps asking for chapter four. Truth is, it’s been a scrambled week crammed with conversations and variety and plans and a whole lot of dashing thoughts and activities. Amidst the scramble I’ve yet to find a way to settle and sit and focus my mind and find words. But I still have all afternoon.
Monday, Jan 16, 2012 | Parenting, Publishing, Work, Writing |
This week has not been the easiest. We’re halfway through January and already I’m seeing cracks in my new year’s plans. My hip creaks (literally) and I need a training plan that will accomodate returning me to injury-free status (no long runs for a little while? I’m ever so slightly panicked at the thought). I haven’t taken a Sunday photo today. The weekends are proving more packed than anticipated. I sense the dropping of many balls. I’m probably dropping several right now as I sit and type in my dark office instead of heading for the dinner table.
….
And I’m back. Decided to head for the dinner table when the cries for Mommy grew too strident. They need me at the dinner table. I need to be there too, catching what’s falling, in touch with the many moods.
And there are many moods. Disappointments to walk alongside. Hopes. Plots and plans. Energy that might be silly and outrageous or emptied out and low. Sadness. Grumpiness. Sibling unkindness. Siblings racing around and egging each other into greater and greater goofiness.
Tonight my mind is occupied, too, by tomorrow’s publicity meeting tomorrow with Anansi. I hope to return with good news to share, and good energy to share, too. I’m entering into a new stage of this book’s life, and I have very little control over what happens next: how the book is received. It’s a tough stage for me. How to let go? How to be graciously accepting, no matter what? How not to dwell or muddle or worry or fret? There may not be an easy answer. Sometimes just gutting through is the only answer I’ve got.
Friday, Jan 13, 2012 | Book Review, Publicity, Publishing, Work, Writing |
I’ve been reading Charles Foran’s biography of Mordecai Richler. It’s a fat book and I’m not even halfway through, but already lines are jumping off the page. I’m deeply intrigued by the portrait of the formative writer–the kid, no more than twenty, who set off to Europe cadging money from any willing family member or friend, working as if possessed, carousing, ambitious. That’s what strikes me most about his formative years, when he was writing frantically and receiving nothing but rejection letters–the sheer volume of his ambition. Of course, in part what he displays is youth. And he had talent even if it was awfully raw at that point in his life. He had luck too. Just before he left Europe to return to Montreal, broke, just twenty-one, he found an agent who admired his potential, and helped him see his way into this life he was demanding for himself.
Charles Foran writes about what might have happened, had Richler not been found and professionally validated; he had a lead on a job at the CBC and in fact worked there briefly writing news copy; but not for long. “By 1952, CBC radio and the new television network were already the destination of choice for those with talent and culture who dared not risk seeing if they could really make a go of it as artists…” [my emphasis]
Guess what Mordecai Richler dared to do?
What elements make up the personality of someone willing, as Foran writes, “to hustle, do what was required. … Henceforth, he would be freelance, his own master and servant. Without security. Without nets.” Brash? Egocentric? Bold? Calculating? Intensely focused? In many ways, it’s not the nicest personality, is it? It can’t really be. You can’t worry about pleasing others, or meeting conventional expectations. It helps not to be apologetic in your approach. Why apologize for being who you are?
(Side question: Does this apply mainly to male artists? Personally, I don’t think so, though traditionally it’s been less acceptable for women to be unapologetic in their ambitions. Now where the heck does motherhood fit into the bold/brash/intensely focused rubric?).
One more thing. Around this same time, Richler wrote to his editor Diana Athill: “Often I think I don’t like or dislike writing, it’s just something I’ve got to do.”
I read those words and felt like something in me had been struck. Yes.
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This week has been a flurry. There’s a lot of hustling going on. At various moments during any given day it feels like I’m keeping up; not keeping up; almost keeping up; hanging on by sheer will; taking a tumble; staying with it; losing track; back in the game; organized; overwhelmed. But mostly, okay.
I’m okay because I keep landing on this thought that completely amazes me: I’m doing what I want to do. No, you know, it’s even more amazing than that: I’m doing what I’ve got to do.
