News!
I’ve got a new writing gig: blogging twice a week about my triathlon challenge for Chatelaine.com. Today’s the first day. Let me know what you think!
Category: Writing
Ups, Downs; Downs, Ups
The week has gone by in a blur. I’ve had less energy, yet have stuck to the basic routines. And here we are, arrived at a holiday. Kevin is home from work. So I am working. Yes, I am upstairs in the playroom/office typing away on a new project that I plan to reveal next week when it goes live. Stayed tuned.
This week has seen its ups and downs. And downs and ups.
One item that started up, then plummeted down, (thankfully not literally), was our porch, which we hope to rebuild this summer. It’s been steadily decaying due to water damage, and might make it one more year before falling off the front of our house–might. So we’ve been saving our pennies and gathering quotes from contractors and builders. And in the midst of this planning, my friend N offered an exciting suggestion: while we’re rebuilding the porch, could a tiny home office be built, too? There is a perfect place for it: we have a door that leads off the dining-room onto the side porch, and both door and side-porch are currently underused; wasted access, and wasted space. Would it be possible to create an insulated room right there? I have to confess that I was/am hugely excited, giddy almost, to be entertaining the idea of having a home office — a real writing space, a room of my own. I could imagine it in perfect detail: spare and functional, with white painted wood, tall windows, a wall of bookshelves, and a desk. Simple. Perfect.
My feelings were/are almost covetous. Drooling. Dreaming.
Well, here’s the down. We got our first quote for the job and it was double our budget. And we thought our budget was pretty generous. Did I mention that the quote was just for rebuilding the porch? Nothing to do with adding on said fantasy writing room? We’re not quite back to square one, because quotes can vary wildly; but my home office bubble is suffering serious deflation. And you know, maybe it isn’t my time, yet. I need to earn entry into the perfect writing space. I need to sell more books, more words. (Words for sale! Words for sale!).
Speaking of words for sale, I had a pleasant chat with my agent yesterday. And I have news! My second book, THE JULIET STORIES, will be published earlier than originally anticipated: look for it in stores this coming March (in Canada, that is). Which means that there is exciting work ahead, also sooner than anticipated: editing the manuscript on a micro rather than a macro level; discussing cover design; meeting the kind people at House of Anansi; and planning publicity for the book. Yikes! Yowza! Woot!
But enough of ups into downs and downs into ups. Time to stop typing, stop working, and let this space revert back to a playroom for most of the rest of the weekend. It is a holiday, after all.
Post-Race Musings
The race brought up some unexpected and deep emotions. It was inspiring. It was healing. It gave me a new perspective on myself. It brought up thoughts like: if I can imagine doing it, I can set myself on a path to be able to do it. This is going to sound like typical motivational gobbledeygook, but it made me ask: what are the barriers I’ve erected in my own mind that are preventing me from doing the things that I want to do–that are preventing me from even imagining and glimpsing the things that I want to do? It’s too easy to say, oh, that would be hard, that would be impossible, I don’t have the time.Yes, it’s been hard to train myself into a different and more athletically capable body. But it hasn’t been that hard. It certainly hasn’t been impossible. The time is now.
My larger thoughts are still amorphous and vague. But my most concrete thought is this: I already have the skills to do great/good/helpful things. I don’t need to retrain and gain a new skill set. I’m a writer. It’s what I do. Being a writer is similar in a lot of ways to being a runner. It’s an individual journey. But even the individual, within the larger collective of a race, or a running group, or a yoga class, has the opportunity to affect the larger community–either negatively, neutrally, or positively. Think of the good energy you can receive when you practice with a committed group of yogis. It is so much bigger and more inspiring than practicing on your own–but your own practice is important too, and you need to build it and strengthen it in order to give back to the others around you.
So. I’m thinking of my writing in those terms. I’m thinking: where can my writing be of use? Where can I find homes for it? Where is it needed? How do I want to change the world? Small changes, big changes, radical changes, subtle changes? And how can I use what I’ve already got to push for those changes?
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Also, I think one of the stumbling blocks to change is knowing that one will be changed–but not knowing how. That can be scary. For example, I did not know, when I started the triathlon project, that I would want to run long distances, too. The idea of running a half-marathon, let alone a full marathon, never occurred to me. I also couldn’t have predicted or guessed that the training would turn me into someone for whom 5:15am is a happy hour of the day. I like rising early. I love my naps. I can’t undo figuring that out, even though it means sacrificing a lot of late nights in order to enjoy the early mornings.
And change is slow. That’s the other factor I continue to keep in mind. Patience. Slowly, slowly, the accretion of work and discipline, and the unexpected, will change you. Being curious, exploring along the way, testing things out, being willing to drop things that aren’t helpful or are blocking the way, accepting opportunities that arise, being spontaneous: these all make the slow and steady journey interesting. The goals, the end-points, those markers are going to change along the way, too. How fascinating is that?
Many Parts
There’s a picture in my head made up of words in the shape of a clock, or a circle. The words are ones I associate with myself, with who I am. This is the post I planned to write awhile ago, and it has been marinating ever since. I keep thinking the ideas will come together more coherently, but instead it remains the same as it was when I first came across the thought: a circular list of words. Some are big–bigger than I am–and apply only in a theoretical sense. I haven’t accomplished enough to claim some of them, but they’re not end-point words; rather, they’re associative, hopeful.
Writer. Mother. Chef. Photographer. Doula. Athlete. Friend. Partner. Family-member. Musician. Designer. Organizer.
I could add in a word related to doing laundry and dishes, but I don’t want to. I choose not to.
These words represent the ways that I use my time. Everything I’ve listed gives me pleasure or is something I want to pursue further.
(Which is why the chores get left off the list; yes, I use my time to do a lot of chores, but they’re not essential to who I am. Or are they? Probably they are. Probably they’ve taught me all kinds of good things about patience and persistence and the necessity and and meditative nature of routine. But I’d still let someone else take over the bulk of them, at least half the time, without blinking an eye.)
Thinking about these words gives me a way to consider what I’m doing, and what I would like to be doing. Which words are more ascendant within me right now? Or this week? Or this year? Or long-term? I have a lot of energy, now that I’m sleeping through the night, and when I set my mind to a task or a goal, I home in on it with laser-beam eyeballs and a focus that frightens me just a little bit sometimes. My question right now, having sent off my manuscript, and balancing on the cusp of who-knows-what, is where should I direct this focus? I am filled with ideas, and long-term plans and plots, but everything scatters like dust without concrete goals. Without placement.
The portrait project is a good example of something that has drifted, that, finished, feels a bit purposeless. I like a solid goal. I appreciated the challenge of taking a portrait every day, and appreciated everything I learned over the year. But. There it ends, a series of photographs, some quite lovely, some I’m happy never to see again, without any kind of summing up, without a home. What, I wonder, was the meaning of that? Could it add up to something other than the disconnected list that it is?
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In other news, my eye woes are mending. Not altogether healed, but improved. In fact, as soon as the gigantic pustules started shrinking–and even while they remained quite large and ugly-looking–I discovered an instant upswing in my confidence. The confidence was (and may very well still be) entirely out of proportion to the size of the pustules; the confidence relates, quite simply, to how bad it was before. Simple comparison. As long as it is better than it was, I am flying, I’m on top of the world, brimming with confidence. Plus, I have peripheral vision again, which is handy and quite useful.
Writing Day: Up
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged on a writing day. But I have a feeling today is going to be a good day. Here’s why: the manuscript is ready to send, save for a few crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s, and my editor has given me the green light to send it to her. In the months that it’s sat quietly waiting, I’ve had the chance to polish some stories, and decided in a fit of dissatisfaction last week to completely rewrite one, which seemed weak and undone–the notes to a story rather than a completed story. I didn’t want my editor to read it as it was. I knew it could be better.
Last week, I picked and picked at it, with discouraging results. At some point, probably during a yoga class, it occurred to me that the story contained too many disparate elements, and specifically, too many narrative threads that didn’t cohere. Of course, I was quite attached to a couple of those threads, which is why they were still in the story (it’s funny how that works; I actually recognize the problem, but am attached to it, and defend it until it becomes glaringly, arrestingly, hideously clear that it’s indefensible, and we must part ways; I soothe myself by thinking, hey, never know when this might become useful some other time, some other place, some other story). So I scrapped a lot. And suddenly–it was suddenly–on Monday afternoon, as the clock ticked down toward babysitter-going-home-time, my brain jumped tracks and my fingers leapt across the keyboard, and I closed my eyes and typed. The story finished itself. This does actually happen; it isn’t a writing myth. I would never have been able to plot this story and its ending out in advance. I had to wait and wait and tough it out and hang around and attend with patience and hope to receive what arrived, at last, like a gift.
I’ve been thinking about the image created ever since. It comforts me in my mind’s eye. I will tell you what it is: the empty cellar of a burned-down house, overgrown and abandoned and forgotten, and in the centre of the cellar is a box, perfectly placed, left to the elements. Do you want to know what’s in the box? Well, I’m not going to tell.
With some more work done on Wednesday, and the finishing polishes today (hello, my friend Spellcheck), I will send The Juliet Stories away with a light heart. There is more work to be done, of course, because there always is. But I have gotten the manuscript to the precipice, to the furthest corner of the earth that I can currently carry it. And I will be happy to set it down and rest apart from it for awhile, til a new map arrives to show me a way to get even further, even deeper into territory I can’t yet imagine.
I love this process.
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In other news, I received a package yesterday and it had a book in it–not mine, though my name was on the back, beneath a short review I’d written of the book itself. I will tell you more about this book when it becomes available in stores next month. It’s called Up, Up, Up, and it’s a book of stories by a first-time writer (whom I do not know, but look forward to meeting someday; the CanLit world is a teeny-tiny world).
Friday Morning Sitting Around
So far, this morning has been less than productive. I wonder, is it the post-reading feeling of calm? Is it the three previous mornings of rising well before dawn? Is it the empty house, children successfully breakfasted and clothed and shuffled off in their various ways to their various schools?
Whatever it is, I am not cutting with efficiency through my writing day. There are a few small edits to make on a few of the Juliet stories. Otherwise, I’m facing brand new projects. One is a bit like poetry, and can’t bear more than an hour’s concentration at a time. I am taking photos from the 365 project and pairing them with words. But I can’t tell whether or not they’re any good. The results have so far been rather koan-like. Mysterious. Do they bear scrutiny? How can I tell? Any visual artists out there willing to look and to comment?
My other projects are in the thinking stage. I have two ideas for two different novels. Yes, novels. Not stories. I know, it’s so unlike me. But after reading Kate Atkinson’s Left Early, Took My Dog, I have a hankering to write a mystery. It’s an old hankering, actually. I have long admired the tidiness of mystery plotting. When I’m down and out, a mystery is what I turn to.
During my last yoga class, an entire plot plunked itself plain and simple into my brain. This is unprecedented. Characters plunk themselves into my brain. Emotions. Landscape. Props. The colouration of scenes. But the solidity of plot has never been my gift. So I am intrigued and curious to begin, and yet I think, not yet. I’ve jotted it down for later.
The other novel project is based on an older manuscript that I discovered when we cleared off a shelf in our bedroom. I couldn’t stop reading it. It’s funny and light and particular. It was written as entertainment, not to be deep. Which isn’t saying it’s superficial, just that it isn’t The Juliet Stories. It isn’t quite so literary. And it’s really funny.
All these projects seem so different from what I’ve been working on. Scattered. I need to find focus. But maybe that’s not what’s meant to happen on this Friday morning. On this Friday morning, I’m treating myself to a second cup of coffee and a lazy happy drifting mind.