The To Do List

I am very good at making to do lists. Sometimes I even write items on my to do list that I have already done, just so I can cross them off (I know I’m not the only one). Last week I got home from a particularly long week away. Work, appointments and other obligations had me in the city until Wednesday. When I got home, I was so happy to see my desk at the window, so I sat and looked out the window and made a list. #1: figure out life; #2: finish application to Banff Writing Studio. Lately I have felt this pull of paid work and volunteer obligations become so heavy I feel I can’t breathe. I need to get back to writing and the manuscript. My #2 related to my #1, so I finished the Banff application, (fingers crossed!) and got back to working on an improved plan for paid work that will allow me to focus on the manuscript.

New Window Arrives!

After a weekend at the Vancouver Film Fest, I arrived back to find a new window installed. Along with my new window and new season that arrived over the weekend, there are other new things in my work-writing life: macbook, music (Iron & Wine), and a writing plan (real deadlines).

Mixed Media-Inspired

On Thursday last week, I took a mixed media class, taught by Arleigh Wood to see if i could inspire my writing. It made me think in textures and layers, which is much like my writing. I layered a photograph with washers, protractor and then scratched engineering equations into the wax. Producing a new piece of writing wasn’t the goal, it was to be creative in another genre again, something I need to fuel my writing. Now some friends and I are planning our own encaustic workshop November 17th in Danielle’s garage. If you have an old electric griddle, let me know! Oh, and if you haven’t been to the Eastside Culture Crawl (Vancouver), mark November 16,17,18 and be sure to check out Arleigh’s studio.

Reading & Writing

With all this summer weather in September, I decided to ride my bike to the beach and write for a few hours. Instead, I should have brought the book I am reading: Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks. It was just that kind of writing day; the kind where I should be reading instead of writing. Sometimes, when I am stuck in my writing (and I have to admit I am at the moment) it is always best to go back to reading what is in your genre and what speaks to you. Sometimes this reading can cause further despair, more questions of “What was I thinking? I can’t do this!” But for me, it often spurs valuable thinking time and a resettling of what I am trying to achieve.

While I tried to write and very little sputtered out of my pen, I kept looking up at what was hanging on the tree. A child’s hat? No, it was a bikini top. Size Large. I smiled at the story it presented: a late-night skinny dip full of passion and fire that the top was lost once it’s owner was back on the dark shore.

Questions for God

I have started a routine – halleluiah! (I even plan to discuss this schedule with my clients in September so I can stick to it). I get up in the mornings and take my coffee and notebook down to the front patio to work. Getting away from my computer helps my creativity and so does being in the world first thing in the morning. I usually write/edit for one to two hours. Today I edited for one and wrote for one. I am working on a key piece in my manuscript: Questions for God. I can’t get this one right– not the timing, not the tense, not the order of occurrence. Today I realized I needed to write two other stories in order to get to this one. So I did. One story involves a book I was never allowed to finish, Forever by Judy Blume. I realized today I have never actually read this book after my mother confiscated it.

What is this narrative about anyway?

Today was a day of celebration for not working in an office anymore, and the creativity that allows. Utah Phillips said it best “Why should I rent the contents of my brain out for 8 hours a day and expect it to be returned to me in an un-mutilated condition?” It is impossible.

I went to yoga class at 10:30 and when i got to the top of the hill, someone said it had been canceled. As I turned to go back down the hill I actually stuck my bottom lip out! Pouted all the way down the hill!

After I finished my paid work and a conference call with another contract at 1p.m., the sun came out and I decided to ride my bike to the beach to write. I am supposed to hand in my *as-is* manuscript to Jane and Danielle on Friday. Suddenly I am not so sure of my form, my narrative, my mixed-up sense of time. And it doesn’t help that strangers are asking me what my book is about, and I can’t seem to find the easy answer. Lately I have been calling it autobiography. Yes. autobiography fits better than memoir. That I can live with. I came to the conclusion that it is a difficult, intense narrative that requires a lot of the reader. I love these kind of books, so I know there are some readers for it out there.

O.k., so after I wrote myself through this crisis, I met the local nudist on the beach, who said he’d seen me before (I don’t think so) and then biked home. No bugs in the teeth today.

(Re)inventing Memoir: blogging a year of collected moments

So I have started this blog for several reasons: to practice writing every day; to practice living in the moment; and to use the window in my home-office as a space to see this year. Memoir doesn’t have to be a lifetime, it can be one year, and so here, I am going to collect the moments that will add up to a year of living in Grantham’s Landing. When I quit my job in March, my relationship in April, and my city life in May, I never expected to find myself in a small town. But here I am. Loving it. And it is partly because I am drawn to the sea. I recently read a quote that said “go where you feel a pull” and: here I am. I officially moved to Grantham’s Landing in June, and so have collected several moments since then. I wonder where i will put all these back posts?