A New Page

I’ve kept a diary or journal off and on since I was fifteen. I remember my first had a tiny lock and key that wasn’t sturdy enough to have kept out a little brother, if I’d had a little brother. Fortunately I didn’t. (No disrespect meant to little brothers, but if I’d had a sibling I would have preferred a sister. Despite occasional hints to my parents, I didn’t get either one.)

Some of my journals contain ramblings that cover multiple years, while others fill up quickly and don’t manage to include one complete year. All my teen volumes went the way of my childhood belongings, and I didn’t resume writing until I’d been a wife and mother for several years. At that point there was a troublesome time that drew me back into writing for therapy. I’ve kept all my journals since then.

There are usually a few blank books waiting on the shelf, since buying journals is a weakness of mine (as is shopping in any stationery or book store…surprise!). And starting a new journal, or a clean page in an ongoing one, is a welcome fresh start…like New Year’s Day, or reaching retirement, or like today — the first day of Spring.

I finished the green 2013-2018 book (shown near the top of my above pile) this past weekend, so it was time to pick a new one. My choice was one I bought while attending last fall’s Surrey Conference.

Can you read the words embossed in gold across the bottom? Here, I’ll get closer…

“Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.” That kind of optimism ignites my creativity. Despite all the obstacles and discouragements that are a part of the writer’s journey, I want to believe it’s all worthwhile…that there is a goal justifying the effort, waiting just beyond the next bend in the road. (Although, truth be told, I love writing enough that the destination itself isn’t my motivation.)

My writing is always a little neater on the first pages of a new journal. I do a lot of my musing and mental meandering before the first entry, thinking it should be a significant thought. Eventually, though, I pick up my pen and begin scribbling.

Today’s entry began with, “It’s Spring! Yay!!!” Not particularly inspiring words. Not even writing-related. But they’re in a new book, on a new page. I’ve made another fresh start, and maybe among these pages I’ll find there has been something wonderful to record. Who knows?

Right now I need to get back to percolating ideas for my fictional characters. I left them perched on the edge of another chapter and I imagine they are as anxious as I am to dive in.

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Thoughts on not much of anything…

A reprise from 2009. I hope you don’t mind.

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I’ve been thinking. What I write here varies with my mood, but the two topics that most often turn up in this blog are my novel writing and my locale. If you were a fly on the wall here, you’d understand why that’s so.

In this semi-rural retreat I call home, I am surrounded by trees, a bit of wildlife, and the stillness that makes for a perfect sanctuary. Nighttime moonlight flits between the darkened trees to find its way through the french doors beside my bed. Morning sunlight filters through trees to bring its warmth into the livingroom.

With hands wrapped around a coffee mug I stand at the bank of windows in our kitchen/family room and check out the slash of deer tracks punctuating the leftover snow in a sheltered corner of the back yard, and watch a lone Towhee who has arrived on the deck for its breakfast. There is no place I’d rather be. When my thoughts settle into this groove my subjects are home and hearth.

Other times my mental closet of plots and process reaches spillover stage and the ideas that tumble out are random aspects of novel writing — the quirks of the Muse, character development, storylines, revision frustrations, even agents and rejection dejection.

There isn’t a lot of logic to why and when creativity clicks into gear or what writing will result when it does. I’ve learned the important thing is not so much what I write but that I write. My responsibility is to keep trying and eventually I become a channel for ideas that need to materialize. Then I simply have to find an appropriate title to attach and launch the creation into cyberspace.

So, with that revelation, here’s today’s contribution. (Not much content, is there? It’s indicative of the state of my morning brain.)

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Private Spaces

The phrase, “a room of one’s own” is forever linked to feminist author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), as the title of her famous 1929 essay, but it has been adopted by many of us who long for a space specifically designed to meet our personal taste and needs.

I thought of that this morning while reading a blog post by Katrina Kenison. She calls it “Making Room“. She has just turned 59 and finds herself wishing for somewhere other than at her kitchen table to write —  “a place in which some new work might begin to take shape, privately and quietly” away from the hustle of her everyday household.

“My sixtieth year has begun with an urgent longing for quiet time and open-ended hours and, too, for a space that is devoted not to many things but to one thing: the work of the imagination, the murmurings of the soul, the possibility of articulating and embodying some just-forming ideas about how to live in the world as an older person.”  [Katrina Kenison]

At the beginning of every fall, a similar yearning overtakes me, but it has nothing to do with my increasing age. At least, I don’t think it does. The odd thing is, I do have a room of my own in which to write, but I don’t often use it, which makes me think it has more to do with attitude than age or location.

I’m always anxious to recapture the sense of mystery and adventure that accompanies the start of a new season or a new writing project. It’s akin to the delight of discovery in the story of A Secret Garden, but then again, I suppose that story did have a lot to do with place. And age. Hmmm. Well, never mind. Should place and age really determine the extent of a person’s creativity? What is it that makes a room of one’s own so appealing?

Katrina says it would mean not having to clear her writing materials off the kitchen table and make room for her family’s next meal.

There’s that, of course, but I suspect it’s also the ability to surround oneself with favourite things — things that inspire us — or to spread out our tools however we might prefer, and not have to answer to anyone else for our choices (or the mess). It’s that sense of privacy and personal space a closed door gives us — the opportunity to retreat into the backcountry of our minds without distraction.

Some of my friends have created personal writing spaces. In the past year Katherine Wagner repurposed an upstairs bedroom into a library/writing room with a view over her exquisite back garden, and Dawn Dalton’s hubby built her a separate writing hut, a la Roald Dahl’s, in their back yard.

What a treat to be able to indulge ourselves with such special spaces! I should feel guilty that I don’t make better use of mine. That I don’t, suggests my creative efforts don’t depend on an inspiring environment, but that’s not entirely true.

Where I most often sit with my laptop is in my family room. My recliner is adjacent to a wall of windows that overlook the ‘backyard’ — a rural haven surrounded by trees with a somewhat overgrown arbour leading to the unseen marsh beyond. It’s private and quiet. That’s pretty much all I need when I’m writing.

The environment we crave is as individual as the words each of us produces. The main thing is to identify what we require to produce those words and then get writing.

“When I am up here I see only the paper I am writing on, and my mind is far away with Willy Wonka or James or Mr Fox or Danny or whatever else I am trying to cook up. The room itself is of no consequence. It is out of focus, a place for dreaming and floating and whistling in the wind, as soft and silent and murky as a womb…”  [Roald Dahl, ‘Roald Dahl: From the Inside Out – the Author Speaks’]

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“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” [Virginia Woolf]

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Now it’s your turn. Tell me, what’s your ideal writing environment or location? Is your creativity dependent on being in that space?

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Making Excuses

I missed a week! Lost it entirely. Earlier in the week I looked ahead on the calendar and was sure today would be July 8. Then, during a recent family telephone conversation, the arrival of mid-July this weekend was mentioned. Oops!

Perhaps I was preoccupied by the church’s steak barbecue that was happening here last Saturday evening. Fifty-three people had signed up for the annual event and, although a committee does the grocery shopping and food preparation, there were still gardens to spiffy up and housecleaning to do in preparation.

I’ve mentioned our gardens before. Our two-plus acres are surrounded by woods, and much of our gardening takes the form of constantly pushing back the buttercups, ferns, salal and assorted cedar seedlings. It’s an ongoing battle to keep the wildness at bay.

It’s not that we haven’t attempted to civilize the gardens. Through the years we’ve dutifully added trees, shrubs and perennials that are known to prefer our shady, acidic soil. They prefer it so well they quickly overgrow the beds and mingle happily with the wildness. We’re resigned to the ‘au natural’ look.

Distracting me from the gardening and housework has been the near culmination of another writing project I’ve been working on periodically for several years. I’ve been compiling and editing a book containing all the sermons of the late Reverend Kris Davidson. I took a hiatus to work on the church history, but since publishing that last year, I’ve turned my focus back to the book, which is finally done. At least, the compilation and editing parts are done. Now it’s been draft-printed and the line-by-line proofreading is underway. That is the slowest part of the whole job!

And that is essentially what kept me from realizing I’d missed posting anything last week. So here I am, making excuses. I’m afraid excuses don’t make the best of blog posts, but it’s this or nothing. Hey, I provided garden photos. That’s something, isn’t it? 😉

 

Uncomfortable Visibility (or, An Introvert’s Woes)

With each passing year I am increasingly surprised at my endurance here. This morning WordPress reminded me today is this blog’s eighth anniversary. My 1,086 posts during those years average more than two-and-a-half posts a week.

My Bio warns that musings here may wander through my assorted realms of interest, and they certainly have, although most have ended up relating in some way to a writing theme, because writing was my initial reason for creating this internet residence. After writing devotionals and occasional magazine articles sporadically for years, I finally moved into fiction and needed a different audience — a new kind of visibility.

I don’t have a huge following here — WordPress tells me the total is 667 — but I’ve appreciated the cyber friendships that have developed both here and on Facebook.  The visibility that I referred to in that first post eight years ago, has been relatively painless because of them.

Other writers might understand the reluctance with which I embarked on this online journey. I’ve discovered many, like me, are introverts. Like my backyard ursine visitors, we’d prefer to remain unnoticed … to view the world’s activity from a safe and somewhat unobtrusive distance.

The very definition of visibility indicates why it isn’t a welcoming situation for us. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary explains it as…

• the ability to see or be seen
• the quality or state of being known to the public

But I’ve forced myself into other beyond-my-comfort-zone situations through the years, knowing that in order to achieve a particular goal, I had to overcome my hesitancy. When I think about some of those situations, I am encouraged  by the realization that I can do things I once believed weren’t possible.

• establish a business that involved interacting with and being depended upon by hundreds of people
• accept public accolades from an astronaut, and subsequently be interviewed by newspaper and magazine reporters about my role in his life
• act as a consultant in the making of a major motion picture
• be the theme speaker at a community youth convention

Life is all about growth. I may not have actually ‘enjoyed’ every growth opportunity, but I recognized the necessity of stretching to do a job; plus there were benefits. I gained satisfaction from getting involved in something new and from doing the job as well as I could.

So now I continue on my writing journey, blogging my way into another year while also working on assorted writing projects. My thanks to those of you who have stayed connected with me here and on Facebook. I truly appreciate your faithfulness and support.

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Céad Mile Fáilte — Yes, welcome!

Although I’m a second (third?) generation Canadian, on St. Patrick’s Day I always enjoy taking advantage of my vaguely Irish roots. I haven’t been spending much time here on the blog, so no “new” post today, but if you’d like to catch up on some of my earlier Irish-hued entries, you could click back into the archives:

2009 and again in 2014 – A Green Moment in Time

2010 – Spreading the Green Around

2011 – The Luck o’ the Irish and Other Blessings

2012 – An Irish Recipe and a Blessing

2013 – Going Green?

I apparently missed posting anything last year, but there’s enough now to keep you reading for a while, if you’re so inclined. And if you needed a little Irish song (with men in kilts, no less) to set the mood, you might like this…

Go n-éiri an bóthar leat

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Spring Things and Other Excuses

I haven’t gone AWOL, but I admit to ignoring my blog recently. It’s one of those priority things I mentioned a couple weeks ago — I had to decide if writing posts was a bigger priority right now than family, work commitments, the mess that passes for our slowly-unwintering garden, and my ongoing novel writing. It wasn’t, so blog posts lost out.

The annual ‘March Madness’ challenge with my #wipmadness gang began on March 1st. ‘Speedbo’, a similar effort involving the Seekerville peeps, also started then. AND my garden began showing signs of spring. Next weekend Daylight Saving Time will begin, and we’ll lose an hour that I won’t be able to find again until November.

Everyday life still has its share of obstacles this month, too, so if I don’t plop new posts into this space quite as often as usual, please don’t hold it against me. In fact, you might even consider joining me in the writing frenzy. We can keep each other accountable since excuses don’t wash under scrutiny.

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