Monthly Archives: April 2003

Too Much To Expect?

There was a knock on my door yesterday morning at about eleven-thirty. I opened it to find a young woman with a dog standing in the hall.

“Hi,” she said with a smile. “I used to live in this apartment. I don’t suppose you have any mail for me?”

Now, we moved in thirty-eight days ago. The apartment was empty for a month before that for renovations.

“Er, no,” I said. “We’ve been writing `Return to Sender – Moved- No Forwarding Address’ on them all.”

“Did you get any mail today?”

“Well, I’ll put some shoes on and I’ll check,” I said. We went downstairs, and sure enough, there was a GST cheque for her in my mailbox.

“Oh, great!” she said. “Listen, if you get any more of may mail, can you just give it to Dale in apartment one? I’ll stop by for it every once in a while. I’ll be changing my address soon, I promise.”

Thirty-eight days, plus a month. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I move, I use that handy-dandy mail forwarding service which the Post Office provides for a nominal fee. The previous tenant’s mail that we have rejected included several government forms, parcel pick-up slips, school documentation marked `Time-Sensitive’, and personal letters.

I so do not understand people like this. Call me crazy, but I see it as my responsibility to ensure that I still receive my mail, to let the various organisations and offices know that I’ve moved. My husband says that some people don’t want their mail to follow them, that it’s an easy way out of responsibility for them. Granted, there have been times I’ve changed my phone number and deliberately not given certain people my new number, but that’s a slightly different matter.

I just don’t get it.

Writing Through The Argh

I’ve been reading Caitlin R. Kiernan’s blog on writing Low Red Moon journal every day for a while now, ever since Ceri posted the first reference to it a couple of months ago. It’s interesting to see how a published author feels about the day-to-day process of writing, editing, proof-reading, and the other minutiae of the writing life.

Today, on the craft of writing, she says, “[T]o put it another way, yes Samm, it is always difficult.

Except, sometimes, it’s really difficult.

When it’s easy, it’s only because you’re not doing it right.”

Sigh. You know, there are those days when things flow. Then, there are the days where you feel like you’re hacking your way through a textual jungle of snarled storylines and crossed characters, and you have absolutely not a single spark of imagination, and it’s work.

Damn it, though, it’s work you’d rather be doing more than anything else in the world. Even when you cry, and growl, and tear up notes, and re-write an entire day’s pages. It’s work you must do; you don’t have the choice. You write, or you shrivel up and blow away in the wind.

Some days, that makes me cranky. Actually, it makes me cranky most days. If I ignore it, it gets worse. So if I make myself pound words out, then at least I’ll have the grudging satisfaction of having a word count to write down in my log book, which does much to stave off the snarl-inducing feelings of guilt if I defiantly ignore my laptop.

Almost Home

I’ve been going through an avoid-the-phone phase, but today all three times when the phone rang, I picked it up. I managed to have an hour-long chat with Elim, and another hour-long chat with t! later on, and in between I spoke to my husband for a total of seven minutes. And then, tonight, my oldest friend came over for tea and a chat about art, which sort of evolved into a general talk about life and love and dreams. It’s been a good day.

The only vaguely bad thing so far has been my discovery that I cannot burn ten-inch tapers on the lower shelf of our new mantel. At least, not until they’ve been reduced to seven-inch tapers by being burned somewhere else first. I’ve covered the smell of barely-scorched paint by burning frankincense resin. Otherwise, the candles look lovely in front of the huge mirror (which I had to polish again today – how do so many fingerprints end up on it?), which reflects the candleflames beautifully, creating a lovely glow in the living room.

I spent today unpacking the fragile things I own, like my irreplaceable signed Royal Doulton Coalport figures, our masks, and the tiny also-irreplaceable collectibles passed on to me throughout my life. We now have things hanging on the walls of the bedroom, so it doesn’t feel so sterile any more, which is a relief. We’re almost there; it’s almost home.

The State Of Me

Apparently my delight at the rapid vanishment of snow and the onset of spring was premature. We’re supposed to get tons of snow this weekend.

(I have two degrees. If I say ‘vanishment’ is a word, it’s a word. Okay?)

I’ve had a couple of queries regarding my recent decrease in posting. Apart from Blogger publishing then munching that post on the debate and the challenge my husband and I faced in attempting to correct our info on the electoral list, Blogger apparently didn’t publish my April 1 posts. How… amusing. Ahem.

Otherwise, I’ve been writing all week on my laptop, which means I’m not working on my desk computer, which is the one that’s connected to the Wide World of Web. And yes, the writing’s going just fine, thanks for asking. I’ve now finished the second (and final) bonus chapter of my NaNo novel, which needed a couple of plot points tied up. All in all, I’ve pulled off 4, 758 words this week so far, in that bonus chapter and the new chapter of the Great Canadian Novel.

Now, if the sun would just come out, things would seem even cheerier. I’m surrounded by that dull brown light that means precipitation is on the way, and I’ve heard reports varying from fifteen to twenty centimeters of That White Stuff headed our way.

I just want it to be over. Please?

Oh, Sure…

I’ve been working with my doctor regarding my sleep problems, and she asked me to start keeping a dream diary. Now, I’ve always been one of those people who rarely remembers dreams. I figured this would be amusing and wouldn’t take up that much time.

Well. Haven’t I dreamed pages and pages worth of notes to write each morning since I began? And haven’t all my dreams been vivid and detailed?

Someone somewhere is laughing at me, I think.