Happy Halloween Hormones

As you know, my other ongoing saga (besides writer's schlock) is the peri-menopause roller coaster. This does not help me with the challenges of writing and so, today, on Take a Witch to Work Day, I'd like to pause from the serious business of character development, in order to pay homage to the cast of characters currently starring in the Monica show.

The problem isn't so much that I'm dealing with temporary multiple personalities; the problem is trying to guess which one is gonna crawl out of bed every morning. And believe me, it's as much a surprise to me as it is to my increasingly nervous partner. I have found ways to live with Itchy, Bitchy, Sweaty, Sleepy, Bloated, Forgetful and Psycho (although I'd prefer to call her something else - maybe She Who Must Not Be Named.) All of these things are livable. It's the combined effects and the unpredictability that get ya.

If I could get up in the morning and find a little note on my bedside table letting me know who's in charge each day, that would be very helpful. 

Dear Mon, It is I, Bloated. Don't even try the green slacks - you'll just feel bad. Have  a great day.

Or, maybe this:

Dear Mon, If you didn't make a list yesterday, you may as well cancel today. Stay in bed. Love, Forgetful.

Or:

Dear Mon, Itchy and Sweaty here. Just wanted to let you know that whatever you choose to wear today will be unbearable by 1:00 pm. Love you!

And if it's You Know Who, there'd just be a dead rodent or something. Not pleasant, but at least I'd know. Sometimes I don't know it's her until I find myself yelling at the shower for being too wet.

The good news is; today, I am free to be. I am wearing my witch hat as I type this and I look forward to a day of guilt-free witching. I think I'll start by pretending the vacuum is broken. Then, I'll lie and say some kids told me they are coming to trick or treat tonight and I'll go buy candy. Then I'll eat it. (There are no kids - I live on the dark side of the moon.) 

However you spend your day today, remember: It's Halloween! Embrace your inner witch!

Writing process nonsense

Have you ever driven in a snowstorm? I mean a real white-out. I've done it a few times and it's horrible. You waited one minute too long to get off the road and find a place to wait it out and now it's too late. If you pull over, you're stuck and at risk of getting hit by the next idiot who waited one minute too long. Now, all you can do is grit your teeth, lean over the wheel you have in a white-knuckle death grip, and stare at the two red dots in front of you. The tail lights of the car in front of you are all that exist. You are staying in the tire ruts by feel now, and praying for the driver of the car in front of you like he or she is your dearest love.
I am in the midst of a writing snowstorm. The wind is howling around me with the voices of characters. The snippets of scenes I was driving toward with such anticipation are swirling into a whiteout of indistinguishable blur.
Sitting here at the keyboard, with undeniably white knuckles, I am focused on the tail lights of the last scene I wrote but I have no idea where it is leading me. Right now, I just need to keep moving forward and not think about the possibility of it getting worse.
So, I'm writing about the writing which makes me think about the story which, in theory, should keep my wheels in the ruts until I can see again.  (I'm still taking suggestions for Jackie's Homeword that pulls her out of the Vale and brings her to the waking world. That was a few posts back.)
Thanks for indulging me - if I brought up POV or plot structure to the dog once more . . .
So . . .
I have about 50 pages of something. Well, mostly nothing, but some of it could end up being something. Right now, it's a bunch of scenes that have popped into my head and demanded recording. Today, I have them spread out across my office and while it would seem the logical next step is to put these in order and read them, what I see in my head is a bunch of disgruntled actors.
The seven principle characters of this tale (as it now exists) are milling about the semi-lit, cluttered stage of a dusty theatre. They are each bent over their own script muttering about how little is available to them. I hear their questions from my place behind the typewriter in the fourth row:
"But my script starts half way through. What's happened to me before this? And where is the end of the script? What happens to me next?"
I have no answers for any of these questions, so I ignore them and pretend to write. See how I strike each key with confidence? C-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-c-e.
"Okay," mutters the lead. "I see where you're going with this, but what is my motivation?"
My head pops up. That one I can answer.
Jackie: Your motivation is to know your mom who you lost as a child. When you realize that the mysterious things occurring in your dreams are somehow connected to her, you grab that thin rope with both hands. When you begin to finally understand yourself after all your floundering, you tighten your grip. When the ramifications of the outcome are revealed, you plant your feet firmly and square your shoulders. But when you realize that your little sister Desi, is the key to it all - and is in grave danger - that's when you suddenly embody your best self. And you think that your superhero cloak is your mom's - that 'finding' her has changed the outcome. But no, Jackie, it was you all along.

See? That helps. Thanks for listening. I think I see the back bumper of the car in front of me.

Creativity

I am fairly typical in that I tend to communicate when I feel good. In terms of this blog, you don't hear from me on the bad days. But today, I am plunging into new territory to share where I am in the new writing project, and it ain't pretty.
The process of writing is (I assume) completely unique to every person. There are some generalities, some 'schools of thought' that might categorize us to some degree. But how we actually go about gettin' a book from A to Z will have as many variations as there are writers.
I have written three long stories now - a 'practice' Young Adult novel, and two Middle Grades stories. One of the latter is in early draft, let-the-yeast-rise mode, and the second is about to be released into the world in the next few months.
Now, I am in the early stages of another YA novel and am hyper-aware of the process. After three outings to get the basics of construction, I am attempting to move into a more artful approach to the process. Don't sound like an artist at all, do I?
I was going to list all the reasons why I am so left-brained but since that's a myth, and I'm giving up labels for Lent, I'll just tell you that I am not a stereotypical artist (I can't give up all the labels at once. How will I communicate?)
I think I have a decent imagination and competent communication skills. Turns out, you can't do a mash-up of those two things and get a book.
So, I am learning as I go, but for me, the bigger challenge is cultivating my true creativity, which, I gotta say, feels like a tenuous thing most days. I have ideas, I have some skill, I have a good work ethic. I am eager to learn and improve. What I lack is faith in the creative process.
I imagine people who grew up in an atmosphere of creativity are less fearful about this chaotic state in which I find myself. I imagine. I don't know. Maybe it's this uncomfortable for everyone.
Right now, I have more questions than answers. I see some characters clearly, others change a bit from day to day. I hear voices (in a good way) and then when I write one of those nice clear voices, I just hear me. I feel the texture of the dream world called The Vale, but I don't convey it adequately. I know bits and pieces, and I desperately want to be patient and wait to hear the story, rather than force it, but the other part of me (currently eschewing labels such as Virgo) is demanding qualitative evidence of progress.
I find myself doing weird things - or at least they seem weird to practical Me:
Yesterday I listened to a physics lecture on cosmology about the amount of "space" in the universe that is not what we know as matter. It was practically (had I understood the damn math) an invitation to find The Vale. Really.
I'm reading Genetics for Dummies because my villain is a Geneticist (and it took me almost an entire morning to decide if he worked at a University or ran a private lab.) I look through magazines and try to find the facial features of the characters I see in my head. I stare at a painting called, Out of this Dream, which I am convinced has something to tell me about the novel. I ask my characters questions as though I'm hosting a show called, "Welcome to my Novel". In the bottom of my backpack lives a blank, hand-made leather-bound journal that I used as inspiration for the one in my story. I want to make it look older and more worn. I don't know why. Stop asking.
It would be extremely helpful if a small fairy-god-mother type character would show up right now and tell me which of my recent weirdnesses can be filed under "creative work" and which are concerning behaviours I really shouldn't be writing about in a public forum.
I think I am allowing my creativity to direct me, but there is a strong possibility that I am losing it, tottering on the brink of sanity, with a brick of menopausal hormones tied to my waist.
I think I`ll go stare at the picture. Here, hold these bricks.

Don't throw the hatchet at your sister when the sun is going down.

I've heard some crazy lines in my life, but here's the topper:

"Don't throw the hatchet . . . "

No, no, that's no the end of it. Listen:

"Don't throw the hatchet at your sister . . ."

Still not it. Wait for it . . .

"Don't throw the hatchet at your sister when the sun is going down."

Just sit with that for a moment. Throwing a hatchet isn't the problem for mom. Throwing the hatchet at your sister doesn't faze her. But throwing the hatchet at your sister as the sun is going down? Nope, Too dangerous. Here comes Mom.

I love rural life.

What would Charles Dickens do?

So, I'm driving home from the gym this morning and I suddenly see a classroom with a kid asleep at a table and everyone in a panic around her. They can't wake her and are considering calling 9-1-1. The kid, I realize, is Jackie Stark, the protagonist of a story that doesn't exist. Yet.
Back to the classroom.
Just as the teacher decides to call an ambulance, Jackie's friend Martin returns from his trip to the washroom and quickly assesses the situation. This is what Jackie had been trying to tell him - that sometimes she gets trapped in the Vale and can't get out. In the waking world, it looks like she is unconscious, completely unresponsive. Last week, she told him a word and made him memorize it. It is the word that will snap her out of her state - the one word that can travel into the Vale, find her, and release her from whatever holds her there. He pushes through the crowd of students and asks the teacher to wait before calling the ambulance. He puts his hand on her back and leans down to whisper her Home Word into her ear.

But . . . I don't know the word yet.

Also, I think the reason there is such an age gap between Jackie and her little sister Desi is that there was another child who didn't live. A boy. But I don't know what happened to him. I'm a little worried there may have been foul play.

And I'm pretty sure that the stupid woman from the car dealership who is dating Jackie's dad is involved in some way, but I don't know how.

This is the garden of a new story. At one end, I'm still putting nutrients into the soil and preparing the beds, and at the other end, things are sprouting. And some are growing into baby stalks already. I'm all over the place and at this stage, I'm not entirely sure which shoots are weeds and which are going to produce something I can sink my teeth into.

It's not going fast, and I'm determined not to rush things. I had a dream the other night in which I lost control of my car and it flew off a cliff ala Thelma and Louise (but Shannon and Monica) and the one line I could still hear as I woke, was, "Why the hell was I going so fast?" If that's not a sign, what is?

But it is agonizing. I want to have something to show for every hour - a word count. I need to be able to measure my progress. I'm a Virgo.

But, I am determined to let this story come to me. It may be a disaster, but I have to try it this way.
So, I go to the gym, and clip the dog's hair, and make fajitas for dinner and while I'm doing these things, I think about Jackie. And Desi. And Martin. And the evil Jackson Kraft.

I'm  prepping the beds of my garden.
I'm collecting questions and planting them like mystery seeds.
It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.

Why do you write?

"What do you do to stay motivated, to keep a steady belief in yourself and your writing?  There’s a persistent voice in my head asking ‘what’s the point,’ and what are you going to do with all these words anyway?"

These words appeared on my screen yesterday in an email from a friend and I have been thinking about them ever since. Why do I write? 
There have been many answers to this question through the centuries, so I thought about some of the classic responses I've heard or read, and the very first thing that jumped into my head was, "Because I must."
Did you just roll your eyes? Me, too. But since it popped so insistently into my head yesterday, I gently put it aside for consideration and carried on.
My writing started with a simple desire to process. After the most intense period of teaching in my life, I began to write my memories, feelings, impressions, lessons . . . and before you know it, it was starting to look and feel like a book. I was a writer! Creative non-fiction, mostly. Ways to process my own experience and clarify for myself, who I am and where I fit into the grand scheme. E.M Forster summed it up for me: How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?
Slowly, my tastes wandered into fiction.
My fictional characters have taught me as much about my life as the real people in it. We are all mirrors for one another. When someone rubs me the wrong way, I take a closer look because, inevitably, the thing that bugs me about them is something that bugs me about myself.
Every time I bring one of the voices in my head to life (I heard it, you know what I mean), that new character has a little of me somewhere in them. Yes, even the villains. Especially the villains.
Every character is a chance to take a real close look at that fascinating connection between experience, thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
Here's a little example of what I mean. I wrote a young adult novel with a fifteen year old protagonist who loses her dad to cancer. That scenario mirrors my own life. In early writing group explorations, I kept getting negative feedback about the main character. People didn't connect with her; they liked her friend better. No-one could quite put their finger on why. It took me a long time to suss it out: I was writing that kid with a very real chip on my shoulder. I was giving her ample opportunity to grieve normally, act out, be a normal teenager.
And I was annoyed with her.
Somewhere deep inside me  a voice whispered, Just suck it up, Kiddo. I had to.  I was impatient with her acting her age. And it was wrecking my writing. I had to go back and do some work around my own fifteen year old self - a lot of work, actually. And then, the writing changed.
I think it is safe to say that I have learned something about myself through almost every piece of writing I've done.
I certainly don't think that is every writer's experience, but it is mine. Writing is my Sociology, Psychology, and Theology studies, all in one.
So why is this important for me?
That leads me to the Big One: Why Are We Here?
The best answer I can find for that age-old question comes from the Dalai Lama: We are here to be happy. I don't think he's talking about the "happy" we're being sold by North American culture; the one that's all about "fun". I think he's talking about real joy.
I'm all in for that.
Visualize a world where everyone is happy. Content. Satisfied with what they have. Full of love. Can you see that world? It's so different from the mess we've made.
So, next question: Is it possible to be truly happy if you don't really know yourself? If you don't understand yourself? I'm  thinking . . . nope.
So, if I want to change the world, I must be happy. If I want to be happy, I must understand myself. To understand myself - and this is just MY way - I must write.
Why do I write?
Because I must.

Hague Lake Haiku

My seasonal love affair with the lake started up early this year. There was a bit of carry over, in fact, as I spent the end of each school day basking in the sunshine on the softball diamond, then dragged my over-heated body down the hill to be baptized in the fresh.
The lake and I were in full swing by mid-May and my first big swim of the season came about six weeks earlier than usual. I wondered if my enthusiasm would wane by now, end of July, height of "Stupid Season" as one local calls the busy tourist season that balloons our quiet dot in the ocean to a bustling epicentre of all things summer. But no, I've only lost some muscle strength - still nursing a slight shoulder injury from said softball. I can't swim the big swims right now, but that doesn't stop me.
I bring my equally enamoured dog, Jed, to the lake in the morning. I wear my Just in Case under my shorts and t-shirt. I should probably change the name of this bathing suit to For Sure: every morning this summer seems to come to us bright and warm. Jed and I tumble down the moss bluff to a new, recently discovered  beach, and the old boy takes his exercise before the heat of these days sends him and his dark fur inside to guard the couch.
Sometimes, my joy to be swimming in a beautiful lake every day is so intense I don't know what to do with it - besides the occasional mermaid flip. At least once a week, I wish I had gills. After a morning refresher, or an hour long swim in the late afternoon when my work is done, or an evening dip on a particularly warm day, I emerge each time dripping with gratitude.
Every day, I say good morning to my lake from the house - out the window in the winter months and from the deck all summer, over a cup of coffee. Contemplating the surface from above is a balm and an inspiration, but nothing triggers my creativity like the water holding me completely; the beach sounds muted, then obliterated around the back side of the island, the solitude, the complete tranquility of moments shared with no one but my lake.
I offer up a few fun verses in tribute to the other love of my life . . .

Hague Lake Haiku

Mr. Tanager:
Your head is disguised
by the crab apples you stalk

One hundred flight paths
cross our clear blue lake -
everyone going nowhere

We all love the lake:
The yoga dude smokes
before sun salutations

My dog swims with joy;
lake is his life-force,
dry fur is his Kryptonite

Coyote Pack

At long last, the year I've been dreaming of  . . . I've finished my term teaching position and will return to being a substitute this fall, with no worries about getting another term or even how many days of work I'll get.  I'm jumping off the cliffs of creativity for real this time . . . with the safety net of a Canada Council Grant lying solidly below me. Yippee!

Yesterday I cleaned my office like a knife-juggler searching for a contact lens five minutes before the show. It's clean and I'm ready!
In the cleaning, I found many things that I'd forgotten. Unfinished stories, essays, projects, ideas . . . I know what I need to do first, but then what? The grant project seems the furthest from my mind right now. I am excited about other things. I have moth-belly. Last night I was so excited about getting a good night's sleep and getting to my computer this morning, that I couldn't sleep.
The last time I had to make the adjustment from teacher-brain to writer-brain, I went house-sitting and had a three-week workshop with a one-eyed dachshund-terrier named Doug. And no offense to Doug, but it took all three weeks to really get my pen moving.
This time, I was lucky enough to have Ivan Coyote coming to my little island to do a writing/storytelling workshop two days after school finished. And luckier still, my dear friend was planning to take it as well. And then, because cosmic good fortune apparently does come in threes, I really liked every member of the group in my workshop and felt completely at ease . . . and free to write. Ivan's teaching style was a perfect match for my learning style and we made good use of every minute of our five days. On Thursday night, Ivan performed and I sat and listened, transfixed.
I'm still processing all the learning. Little dragonflies of wisdom fly through my dreams and land one at a time in my conscious mind. I look forward to discovering each one and applying it to my practice.
I'm sharing a piece here that came out of a list of watershed moments in my life, and hospital waiting rooms played a role in several of mine.
So, with a heart full of gratitude for an amazing week of writing and listening, I'd like to share a piece that is the result of my workshop experience. Thank you to Ivan and the rest of the pack!

Waiting Room

I’m 14 years old, and the walls of this waiting room are so ugly, I can smell them. My cousin Carla and I are eating mojos and throwing the wrappers at my other cousin, Brenda – 10 points for cleavage. Jerry and Brian are having wheelchair races down the only hallway without a nurse’s station.

When Carla and I celebrate a banana mojo bullseye a little too exuberantly, Brenda stomps off in a huff, digging mini paper wads out of her cleavage and muttering about disrespect.

Carla climbs onto a chair to turn the TV to the other channel. She plops back down, looks at me and sees that I’ve left again – my mind drifting down the hallway to Dad’s room, where Mom sits beside him on a hard plastic chair. She won’t be talking to Auntie Elsie or Uncle Bill. I know she’s just sitting there, hollow. Waiting.

Every room in a hospital is a waiting room.

Carla smacks my corduroyed thigh with the back of her hand. “Hey.”

“What?” I ask, coming back, seeing a table of magazines materialize in front of me; a TV; a cousin.

She frowns at me – we have the same frown but different smiles. “He’s gonna be okay, you know.”

Everything in me shifts infinitesimally backward, as though her words have reached out and shoved me, and for the first time, I see clearly that he will not be okay.

Carla is from the heathen branch of the family. She doesn’t speak Christian. She doesn’t say, “God will heal him,” or “You just have to have faith.”

Her words are not stirred up by murky images of God. The mud settles to the bottom and I see clearly that he will not be okay. He will die.

My heart sinks into the mud along with my feet but there is some relief in knowing that I can finally stop swimming.

I’m 29 years old and we’re lined up along the hallway outside of ICU – a makeshift waiting room - a gaggle of dykes lining the wall like geese on a log. We lean against the wall and each other, taking turns on a bench the colour of caramel pudding forgotten in the back of the fridge.

The group has been here for 12 hours - the culmination of many days of coming in shifts, one or two at a time. Wiping Janet’s face and wetting her mouth, keeping vigil as she made her peace somewhere deep in the coma. She should have been gone by now, according to the “experts”, but they don’t know Janet. Remember that double overtime ball-hockey game? When it was over, every one of us collapsed where we were, gasping for air, and Janet . . . Janet, did a victory lap. Always the smallest, but the strongest. In every way.

But Lymphoma was too much for our sinewy friend. She faced it head on, chose the risky bone marrow transplant to “try and get her life back.” That’s how she put it in the letter she wrote to us all -- just in case. Her partner Beth delivered it to our house one day a month or so after the funeral.

I shift from one sitting bone to the other and glance across the hall at Janet’s parents on the other bench; they look black and white in the dim light of this narrow enclosure with no windows, no air, no hope. 

They are still as winter birds, these Mennonite parents who keep losing their girl – first to agnosticism, then to “the gays”, and now to cancer. I can’t look at Janet’s mom – the pain in her face makes my chest ache. She is thin, like Janet, and she clutches her husband’s hand like it’s the tiller of a boat headed for the falls. His plaid shirt is a tartan of despair. Grey on darker grey.

We should be comforting them, but they don’t want us.

They tolerate our presence because they understand that we are Janet’s family, too, this group of women; a hockey team, a touch football team, a spongee team, and once a year for the gay bar’s tournament, a softball team. But always a family.

Two families here in this hall, and every heart breaking.

I straighten my shoulders and look at Janet’s mom. Her eyes stop flitting back and forth between the air vent and the emergency light and fall to mine. How can I tell her how sorry I am when she doesn’t want to talk to me?

I picture Janet in my mind, her smile like sunlight sparks on a lake and I feel my love for her – let it shine through my eyes. Then, I multiply it by a mother’s million and for a fraction of a second I feel what I see in her mom’s eyes and it is almost unbearable. Simultaneously, we each surrender a tear. She nods at me. I nod back.

We will go our separate ways.

I’m 45 years old and I’ve been in this waiting room since 7:30 a.m. It’s 3:00 p.m. now and all I have to report is that the number of bicycles in the brick courtyard below the hallway windows has dropped from 48 to 41. I’m expecting a Tour de France outa here around 3:30 or 4:00 at the shift change . . . but I’ll still be here.

The health-conscious sector of the St. Paul’s Hospital staff will get on those bikes and whip past their colleagues who are lighting up – and there are plenty of those  – I’ve seen the smoking courtyard, too  – it’s on the far end of my pacing route. They’ll get on those bikes and zoom frantically away from this place where time drags, crawls on its knees, stops, and does u-turns.

And I’ll still be here.

Waiting for my partner, who, in 25 years together has almost never made me wait; is always ready first, sitting in the car when I get there, early riser, early to the airport, zip, zip, zip.

But she’s sure taking our time now.

And when I’m done with this waiting room, there’ll be others. Maybe another surgery, or more chemo, MRI’s, CT scans, the offices of every ologist you ever heard of including an oncology dentist. Who knew?

And eventually, inevitably, the transplant.

I’ll wait, and I’ll find things to count, and I’ll talk to the god I decided many years ago did not exist. I’ll propose deals and negotiate in business-like terms that bear no resemblance to the lyrical pleas of my youth.

I’ll pace. I’ll worry.

I’ll sit. I’ll doubt. I’ll rail.

I’ll wait.

My Pie-day Friday

Days that start out Cream of Wheat (blech) and end up chocolate cream pie! You know what I'm talking about. I had one of those on Friday.
A migraine headache hit me on Thursday and I barely had it under control as I took two ferries to town that evening - arriving the night before is necessary to make a morning engagement. Thankfully it was a smooth sailing, as I was already mucho nauseated. There was no way I could cancel the workshop I was presenting - it had been booked since November. On Friday morning, I awoke to an uneasy truce in my body, the headache and related effects lurking behind a thin veneer of pain killers, searching for a way through.
I arrived to find the parking lot full at 8:15 and at least one meeting underway. I met my wonderful host, Tina, and we chatted a bit before the staff gathered in her classroom.
Whenever I present a workshop, my number one goal is to encourage teachers. Being a teacher, I know how tired and beaten down you can feel by May. So, I talked about my favourite topic - Positive Conflict - and tried not to bog us down with new concepts. Perhaps it's the same in all professions, but teaching sometimes feels like a series of treadmills you can't keep up with - including programs and new initiatives we are expected to learn, embrace and implement in the course of a morning workshop. I like to think my workshops offer an opportunity to slow life down for a morning, to re-frame what we already know, and to revisit the compassion and passion we teachers can lose sight of on our treadmills. The children can become a blur sometimes, can't they?
So I started out with a joke or two, received politely, if not skeptically, as the group tried to assess whether I was funny or crazy. (No harm in a bit of both, I always say.) But as the morning progressed and my head and stomach felt better, I soon recognized that I was preaching to the choir.
Excellent comments, questions, and challenges led to great discussion and we ended the morning with the staff brainstorming strategies for specific kids. Perfect!
I have only recently started offering workshops again, but back in the day when I did a bit more of this, I was always fighting the tide of negativity that can arise out of trying to deal with impossible situations with limited resources. Since I moved to BC a decade ago, I have watched with dismay as school resources have dwindled like a river in a drought. I went into Friday's workshop fully prepared to listen to the expressions of frustration that I hear rising out of public schools across the province. (It sometimes feels as though we have become secret agents, sneaking around behind the government's back, finding ways to deliver quality care to our students in spite of them.)
But the expected wave of complaints never came. This group spent their time and energy on solutions and I was thrilled to sit and listen to them discuss their most difficult children with real affection and concern - the very things bad policy can beat right out of a teacher.
I have taken a step back from teaching - happy to be a substitute and term teacher.  From that widened perspective and slower pace, it is easier for me to see what amazing people we have in the public education system.
I went to Ripple Rock School on Friday, thinking my morning would entail more giving than taking. But as I pulled out of the parking lot on a beautiful spring day, I thought about the group sitting around the lunch table together as I left, still making plans for kids . . . and the sun felt that much warmer. My headache was gone, pushed aside by a thick layer of inspiration, topped with hope.
Chocolate cream pie! Thanks, Ripple Rock.




Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."

Cocktail Hour

Did you ever go through that phase in your teens and early twenties where creating new cocktails out of affordable ingredients seemed like an entirely appropriate use of time and energy? My experience with this was limited to watching the members of my hockey team get creative with a blender, but I think the evolution of that period of development is the one I'm in now; concocting interesting literary cocktails out of various authors.

I like to have a few books on the go at a time so that I have a choice; generally, we're talking two or three but somehow I have managed to start six books in the past little while and I'm worried I might have a problem. What are the early signs of addiction? Mixing genres? Starting cocktail hour earlier everyday? Reading in secret?

I'm usually reading a book about writing and much to my surprise, my favourite so far is On Writing by Stephen King. It's surprising because I don't care for his novels. That's entirely about content, though, not style, and the man can create characters like nobody's business.
At the moment, instead of one book like On Writing, which is practical advice in an easy-to-read style, I am filling that need with two different books. One is much more creative and inspirational than my usual choices and the other is much more academic than what I would normally select. So, in the "learning" category, I am reading (and doing - there are practice exercises) What It Is by Lynda Barry. This book is gorgeous and fun, with over 200 pages of hand-written notes and drawings and collage and everything a writer could want to get him or her going in the morning! Right brain all the way. Because I have a fairly ambidextrous brain, I am balancing this uncharacteristic romp in artsy-fartsy land with Daniel Kahneman. Yes, the guy who won a Nobel Prize in economics. I know! Normally any of those words would make my mid-range IQ run for cover, but Thinking Fast and Slow is about the brain and that topic fascinates me. I've already learned about the "The Invisible Gorilla" study which I had never heard of. This was a study about what the brain attends to. A video was taped of two "teams" of people, one team in black shirts and one in white. Each team was each given a basketball and told to pass the ball to members of their team. The people simply moved about in a small circle and passed the ball back and forth.The viewers were instructed to count the passes made by the team in white and to ignore the team in black. Part way through the video, a woman in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the scene and pounded her chest, then walked off screen. She was visible for about 9 seconds of the video, yet about half the viewers did not notice her. Better yet, when told there had been a gorilla on-screen, they did not believe it! As Daniel said, "We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness."
On making this interesting discovery, I opted to blow by the ramifications on the accuracy my own perceptions, and consider the implications for writing fiction. Do we, as readers, generally take into account our ability to be blind to our own blindness as we read? And what of the characters? Who's blind and who isn't? In which situations? How can I utilize this little tidbit in creating story? Interesting, yes?
And, just in case those two radical departures from my usual pattern aren't covering all the bases for my writer-self, I've thrown in The Novel by James Michener. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like - a novel about the creation of a novel.

Now, as a writer of young adult and middle grades fiction, I like to always have one of those on the go and so at present, I am on a John Green kick. (With about a gazillion kids.) Looking for Alaska and The Fault in our Stars  are well worth the read at any age. Mr. Green has not unthroned Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), as my favourite, but he is making an impressive run.

Next, if I am lucky enough to get a piece published in an anthology or magazine, I read the entire publication. So, I am also reading Sisters Born, Sisters Found, an anthology edited by Laura McHale Holland. I have a poem called Pink Ribbons  on page 255.

Lastly, my reading for pure joy (although, it gets harder and harder to turn off my writer brain-when I read - but that's mostly a good thing). I am about to slip under the surface of another Ann-Marie McDonald dream - Adult Onset beckons luminously. I have to read it soon, as my partner has just finished it, and my sister arrives from Ottawa soon, and this book is first up for discussion at the Three Sisters Book & Coffee Club. I can't wait.

Speaking of mixing cocktails, I wonder what the effect will be to read Ann-Marie right after another favourite, Marion Toews? I just finished Summer of my Amazing Luck,  which I have been meaning to read for ages and just found at a thrift store recently. I loved it and will let you know what level of intoxication one achieves by almost two-fisting Toews and McDonald. Bit like doing shots of Kingsolver and Ozeki back to back. I've done that and let me tell you . . . it's fun, but it lingers! So much to think about.

Crikey, I'm feeling a bit thirsty . . . must be 4:15 somewhere in the world!
Happy reading, everyone!