Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Deja Vu

After another hour-long marathon conversation with my publisher, during which we discussed my late-February/early-March trip down to pitch this anthology series, I made a startling connection.

I’ve done this before. It was my thesis defence.

You write something, people read it, and have their own opinions. You show up in person before a scary panel of those stony-faced people, re-present your arguments with confidence and style, and then field questions in order to convince them that your conclusions are sound, and they should not only give you a degree, but hail you as a new light in the academic sky.

In this case, the only difference is that the something I’m writing is a six-page detailed proposal for an anthology series, and that they won’t give me a piece of paper to hang on my wall if I convince them; they’ll give me a contract and money instead. (You know – all those things that a degree doesn’t automatically do, but we all wish they did.)

So no, it’s not a glitch in the Matrix. It’s one of those moments where I’m relieved, because I now have an experience to which I can equate the current situation; I’m no longer working in a vacuum. It’s also a moment where I now can have genuine mini-nervous-breakdowns, because now I have a memory to build on and make even bigger and scarier when I envision delivering the pitch in a boardroom south of Boston.

Kind of good; kind of bad.

Mind you, I did kick ass during my thesis defence. I take comfort from this fact.

Here And Gone

So now that I’ve got this bulletin board, very cool-looking with lots of important story assignments and ongoing projects pinned to it (have I mentioned that I got a postcard from Neil Gaiman?), I am experiencing writing blocks the size of Stonehenge.

No, actually, I’m not. I’m exeriencing computer aversion.

Yes, there’s a difference. Last night I went to bed early, curled up in candlelight with cats, and began to work through a Great Canadian Novel issue that had been dropped by the wayside a while ago. Yes, all two of you out there who’ve read the GCN, I refer to Ben, poor guy. Yeah, he kind of vanished, didn’t he? I’m certain my protagonist would like him to stay vanished, but that just can’t happen.

I have never been a fan of the concept of jacking into some sort of computer system, but ye gods, if there were to be a method created for authors to allow ideas to pour straight from noggin to file, I’d be all for it.

And, of course, when I woke up this morning… gone. This is even worse considering that I’m one of those people who urge others to write down their ideas in order to encourage the creative subconscious with positive reinforcement (which, as t! pointed out to me last week, is simply another term for brainwashing). An evening of work, lost due to being warm and comfortable and sleepy. (And speaking of t!, yay for regular posting!)

As others in my general artistic circle are realising, writing without a regular schedule is just asking for problems.

One of my thoughts last night was about the idea of outlines. I had a rough chapter-by-chapter outline for my 2003 NaNo novel, and it worked. Not only did it work, I added stuff in-between. Now, I also enjoy working in a discovery-type fashion – no outline, no idea, just sit down and whee, where’s my protagonist going today? The GCN is written like that, and in general it works really, really well (the problem of the disappearing Ben aside), because the novel is about the protagonist discovering herself.

I used to write in a very episodic fashion: I’d have an idea for a scene and I’d write it. This meant I’d have a pile of scenes that I could play with like a jigsaw puzzle, or – even better example – a Tarot spread. How do these scenes relate? In what order do they appear? How can I tell a story that connects them all and have it make sense?

I’ve recently revived an old set of scenes written like this about a decade ago. They’re good; I like the characters. I know what order they come in. Now I just have to write the stuff that connects them all, which means – yes – an outline of sorts. And for some reason, I’m really resisting the outline idea right now. Probably because I know it’s Good For Me.

None of which, of course, even remotely connects to the computer aversion issue. Which is, quite simply, the fact that I don’t want to sit at a computer to write. Don’t tell my creative subconscious, but I’m going to outwit it by going back to pen and paper for a while. I might even buy it a new notebook and pen to lull it into complicity.

Shh. We mustn’t spoil the surprise.

On Going Home

There’s something odd about going home for the holiday season as an adult. Sure, my parents now live in a different province, in a house that features in absolutely zero of my childhood memories, but there’s more to it. My parents seem to look forward to having us here, but sometimes I wonder why. I arrive with laundry to do, change their radio stations, have classical music on all the time, and light candles. I either sleep at odd times, or hide in a corner with a book, or go out to roam Oakville (they have a remarkable invention here called parking lots, making shopping a much less harrowing experience).

I look forward to coming here. There’s something terribly comforting about having familiar meals served to you by your mother. Sometimes they’re new meals instead, which I look forward to discovering just as much because my mother is a fabulous cook. Last night we had slow-cooked lamb shanks with polenta, which was divine. Some things are best left to discovering as an adult. Had my mother served me polenta as a child, I would have pushed it around my plate until it got stone cold and even less appealing, tasted a speck and decided it was too much like oatmeal, which I hated. (I’m still not fond of oatmeal; it’s something about the texture. Thin or thick, I just really have to be in the mood, and it needs plenty of salt.)

For the second year in a row, my parents haven’t put up the Christmas tree; they put white fairy lights on their six-foot-tall silk fig in the corner and gather gifts underneath it instead. I don’t have any seasonal decorations up at home, either, which might have contributed to my lack of holiday cheer. Christmas seems to have arrived awfully quickly, something like all that snow at home.

The drive down was a breeze. The three feet of snow that the Montreal city crews are ignoring gradually vanished as we drove west, disappearing completely by a half-hour past Cornwall. I’ve been going about in my cardigan over a t-shirt outside here. Last night I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the roof and the window. I had forgotten how much I love that sound.

Tonight after dinner we have a date with some popcorn and The Return of the King; tomorrow we pick up our borrowed printer and do the official seasonal dinner and the ritual opening of gifts. For the rest of this afternoon, though, I think it’s going to be dozing with a book and perhaps a Maine Coone cat.

NaNo 2003, Day 10 recap

Thanks to Ceri’s presence yesterday, I hit 14,448 words. Yes, that’s about 5,500 words in one afternoon. There’s nothing that makes you write like the sound of someone else madly typing. I wanted to double my word count, but hitting 18,000 was a dream; I was so exhausted by seven o’clock that I had to admit defeat. Still, 5,500 is just shy of two-thirds of my goal, so I’m pleased. Ceri made me a little sticky-note with a secondary goal of 15,200 words on it on it, and I almost reached it. Granted, these goals were deliberately exaggerated, but they certainly kept me going! We also discovered that the perogies from the Russian shop nearby are absolutely delicious (thanks for the tip, Bev!), so the day was a remarkable success all around. Ceri made yummy spaghetti sauce for dinner, too.

I woke up feeling somewhat human this morning, which is a really pleasant switch from the sub-human feelings I’ve been experiencing lately thanks to this cold. I passed up the Remembrance Day services downtown at Place du Canada in favour of staying home where it’s warm; I’m not going to risk a relapse when I’m so close to getting rid of it. Every year I do a small ritual for Remembrance Day at eleven o’clock if I’m home, and this year was no different. I burn rosemary and a yellow candle, and marvel every year at how the beginning of November is full of ceremonies honouring the dead: Samhain, All Souls, Day of the Dead, Remembrance Day. CBC Radio Two sucker-punched me this year by playing the ‘Nimrod’ movement from Elgar’s Enigma Variations directly after live coverage of the Ottawa ceremony, reducing me to tears. This is a piece of music that unabashedly rips your heart to bits, and playing it with my second orchestra this year has only made me more sensitive to it.

On to writing! Let’s see: got my tea, my afghan, my laptop, my cats, and my stuffed ferret. I’m set.

Ego Boost

I was offered a place in a second orchestra last night. Nothing says “You’re more talented than you think you are” like someone else asking you to come in to support a weak cello section, let me tell you. Autumn to the rescue!

Interestingly enough, Cantabile was founded by my current LCO conductor, Douglas Knight, though it’s been led by Peter Willsher for a few years now. Go figure.

Cantabile is a choral group with a full orchestra. On November 15 in a Lachine they’re performing Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Since this is rescue operation, I don’t know whether I’ll stay on full-time, especially as rehearsals overlap a bit with the class I teach on Sundays. However, for the three weeks until the concert, I can be flexible.

The odd part is that the choir is peppered with people I used to sing with about ten years ago. It’s going to be a bit awkward, I think. I’m a very different person, I use a different name, and, well, I’m not as mousy and tremblingly polite as I used to be. I probably still be polite, of course. It won’t be the same, though. Am I making sense? I’m a whole decade older; I like to think I’ll be comfortable enough to walk away and enjoy being by myself as opposed to empowering others by being a patronised audience.

In all likelihood l’m being very uncharitable, and they’ll all probably be delighted to see me. Besides, I’m focusing more on the fact that this is going to be an excellent test of my sight-reading; there are only three regular rehearsals before the concert, after all.

Yes, That

From Subversive Harmony:

It’s sort of amazing to me how possible it is to be so busy that you forget to eat, and yet still have nothing much worthy of blog-interest to say. It’s just… daily minutiae. An endless stream of daily minutiae.

Sigh.

On the up side, I now know exactly where to go to register myself as a business, if/when I choose to do so in the future.