Circa or Exactly 2018…To be precise. If the fates allow. We are scheduled to take off in 147 days(ish). Not that I’m counting (pssst…spoiler alert, I’m counting).
Every single time I go on a holiday I mean to journal the experience so I can cultivate from it at a later date for my fiction. Every single time I do not do this. Even when I had a novel idea for the Camino de Santiago before I set out to Spain on that adventure, I didn’t journal as planned. I carried a journal in my backpack, though. All the other useless stuff weighing me down wasn’t enough. I also had to make sure I was carrying a journal I wouldn’t crack open a single time along the Way of St. James. I was too busy splashing in mud puddles and meeting new people to bother with a journal. Next time!
I regret my inability to journal immediately after every journey I take. And yet the cycle never changes. So, I’m calling myself out. THIS TIME I shall attempt to journal once again. In September, when we embark on this trip to India, I will have a journal with me. This time will be different. This time I will not only carry a journal across a country. I will open it. I will write in it. I will bear witness to what it is I’m bearing witness to. I will make words every night and keep track of the smells and the sights and the sounds and the people and the animals and the tastes. I will prevail.
And I will scour Ontario for the ugliest journal known to man. This way I can’t use the highly popular excuse, “But it’s far too pretty to spoil” argument that renders me incapable of writing a single word in the journals I choose solely for their pretty factor. I will pick the butt-ugliest journal on the shelf and I will christen it with words before we even land. That is the goal.
As Exhibit A below suggests, however, I may fail in my goal. I carried the same journal with me to 3 consecutive Ontario Writers’ Conference conferences. Each time I planned to take notes in it. Each time I couldn’t bear to destroy it with the presence of ink. At the 4th conference I casually mentioned my dilemma to Wayson Choy. Apparently Wayson is an extremely pragmatic man. He ripped the journal from my hand, opened to a random page and jotted down the following:
Exhibit A
My problem? Wayson is not coming to India with us. Maybe I can toss my ugly India journal into the street and run over it a couple of times with my car. Or maybe I can pound my fists on Wayson’s front door and plead with him to christen my new ugly India journal?
My problem with that is, ever since Wayson wrote in the above journal (Exhibit A) I have been unable to write in it. I mean, Wayson Choy wrote in it! So, no late night drive-by pleading for journal christening. The running-it-over-with-the-car idea is looking better by the second.
I need to journal India. I mean, I need to. I have always wanted to set a story (stories) in India. I don’t know what, but I know I want to do it. I’m hoping the story will come to me in my travels. But I’m afraid it won’t if I don’t diligently journal.
I’ll figure something out. I did commit my commitment to a blog post, after all. That’s one way of attempting to police myself. If I blog about it, it has to happen. Right?
Edit To Add:
Found a journal. This one from the Dollarama spoke to me!
“You always say YES and figure it out later.” ~ Me, circa always
Saying yes in the writing world is the story of my life. Panicking after delivering that yes is ALSO the story of my writing life. But a writer would be a fool to say NO or I CAN’T or I DON’T KNOW HOW or I DON’T HAVE THE TIME.
For writers, opportunities are not endless. Unlike the pesky little bible-thumping crazies of the world, opportunity doesn’t keep knocking. It breezes on by to the next person on the list. As a writer, I always LEAP before I know what awaits me.
This is how I came into two situations in 2017.
One of these opportunities was an invitation from ID PRESS to submit to their romance anthology. I said yes. And then I beat myself up struggling to come up with a short story that was vaguely romantic in nature. Their shtick is to experiment with genre, after all. I had a chance at acceptance if my story skated along the outskirts of ROMANCE. I just didn’t know how hard that YES was going to make my writing life in the weeks that followed. I struggled with this one. I must have had 30 attempts at a story for that anthology. I never pressed the DELETE key so hard in all my life. It was an unendingly daunting task. It literally wasn’t until the midnight hour that I finally hit on something and ploughed through a story and clicked send. Luckily for me, they accepted THE HALF DRAWN GIRL ON THE CROSSTOWN BUS (It later became, at their request, THE HALF DRAWN GIRL). It was only because I said YES months earlier that I even struggled so hard to come up with something. I committed and I needed to see it through. I said yes…and then I figured it out. It’s times like this that I realize there actually ARE writing fairies looking out for those of us foolish enough to jump off the ledge and commit.
You can pick up THE HALF DRAWN GIRL and other genre-bending romance short stories in the newly released anthology ALLUCINOR from ID PRESS.
A gorgeous cover and a wonderful collection of stories.
The other YES I pulled off in 2017? I have had a Camino de Santiago novel in my heart since I walked the pilgrimage in Spain to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela where the bones of St. James, the apostle of Jesus, are said to be resting. I had a few chapters written, but mostly, as I said, it rested in my heart. Like a soft prayer bead on a rosary, waiting to be caressed into words.
When my agent asked me if I had anything ready that was a contemporary YA novel, I said NO…but that I had something almost ready. So, I also said YES. I told her my years long elevator pitch for my Camino novel idea.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB MEETS THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO.
I have never been so proud of an elevator pitch in all my life. It’s golden. It resurrects the images and themes precisely, concisely and quite specifically. Thankfully, my agent also liked the sound of it.
So—-I say yes, it won’t be a problem. Give me a couple of weeks.
A WRITER ALWAYS SAYS YES! You can always figure out THE WAY after you commit. I did this with my first play and I found myself sitting in a haunted castle basement in the near dark listening to the ghosts mock me while I raced to write a play that would be performed in front of an actual audience less than 24 hours later. What’s the worst that can happen in a YES situation? You don’t deliver? I’m always willing to take that chance.
This is how writers live on the edge. It’s not the stuff of daredevils, but it certainly makes the writing life interesting.
I wrote the Camino novel. I am awaiting agent feedback at the moment. I’m feeling positive and hopeful. Saying YES to that novel was possibly one of the best things I’ve ever done with my writing life. BECAUSE it was a novel that meant a great deal to me even before the first word was down on paper. It was a novel I knew I could deliver in a couple of weeks because the bellows that blew it into existence was alive and living inside me. Did I lie to my agent when I said YES? Not exactly…it was an almost completed novel…it’s just that it was scattered about within the far reaches of my heart and mind. All I really had left to do was allow it to flow through my finger-tips, past my keyboard and land on my MSWord document. No biggie.
Those are two of the major moments in my writing life as I look back on 2017. All that is left, I suppose, is the BRUSSELS NOVEL MARATHON WRITING EXPERIMENT and MY 3rd PLACE WIN IN THE WRITERS COMMUNITY OF SIMCOE COUNTY’S 2017 WORD BY WORD SHORT STORY CONTEST. (<<<You can read my story at the link provided) The story that won 3rd place was yet another story set on the Camino de Santiago. It has become an obsession with me, and I probably won’t be satiated even after I return to the Camino in 2019…life willing.
All set for our pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 2019. Credencials (Passports) and patches in hand.
The Brussels novel writing experiment? Well, I’m not sure. The novel I began there? Maybe it is burning on the stove top waiting to be stirred. I like what I wrote…I’m just not sure where to take it. I’m one third in. I did, however, fall absolutely and completely head over heels in love with the beautiful city of Brussels while I was there under the pretense of writing an entire novel. It is a breathtakingly beautiful city. And nearby Brugges is no limp headless chicken, either. It’s stunning…not to be missed. We’ll see how the novel goes. Oh…I suppose this has something to do with my writing life, too…I received a WCDR Writing Grant to help pay the way to Brussels and my personal writing/exploration retreat there.
I lost and found my heart in Brussels, Belgium this past May.I was also extremely thrilled to find multiple traces of the Camino de Santiago in Brussels. There were MANY of the scallop shells embedded in the cobbles in the streets of the city, as well as a church once dedicated to pilgrims that walked through the city on their way to Compostela. I even found this statue of St. James himself!
Oh, and I have a novel releasing FEBRUARY 6th, 2018. My GAY YA novel, PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE. See the cover below:
Pride is coming from MUSE…the publisher of my debut novel, SUMMER ON FIRE. You can add Pride to your bookshelf on GOODREADS HERE. You can also check out reviews for all 6 of my books on Goodreads.
As the year winds down to nothing but the past, I sit here awaiting word from my agent on my Camino novel. AND I work on final edits on my 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon Best Adult Novel Award winning novel, I WILL TELL THE NIGHT. AND I await getting into final edits with my MUSE editor on PRIDE. Sounds like I might be doing a lot, but I promise you, I’m still the laziest writer in existence today. I do a flurry of activity and then hibernate for 8 or 9 months. L-A-Z-Y.
Outside the writing life, unto my daughter and her husband a newborn child was born in 2017. This year has seen the arrival of HARRISON:
This little smile of a boy brings so much joy. He should be called Mr. Happy, but his name is actually HARRISON.
Go ahead…click all those links. I know you wanna.
I guess that sums up my 2017. The appearance of busy while maintaining my lazy status. Level up to 2018!
It is with a heavy heart that I announce my return from Europe. Then again, I’m so glad to be back home with loved ones. What a pickle, traveling is. It’s a strange alternate universe where everything you know drops away as you head for The Great Adventure.
The Beautiful Grand-Place Town Square in the Heart of Brussels
Just back from Brussels & Brugge, I have fallen in love with yet another foreign country. Belgium is golden. I would recommend it to anyone.
So much of Brussels pulsed with hints and signs of the great pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago. At times, I just wanted to abandon everything and follow those shells as I followed them across Spain back in 2014. The Camino calls to me every day. It felt like home seeing its signs in Brussels.
Ostensibly, I was there for a self-motivated novel writing marathon, in lieu of attending the 2017 Muskoka Novel Marathon. I had it in my head that I would write a novel while staying in Brussels.
Manneken Pis – The World Famous statue pissed a continuous stream into the street a mere minute away from my hotel room. If you want a great story, Google Mr. Mannekin Pis’s history. Wow, that baby has had quite the life. He’s a knight, you know!
But one cannot visit a country they have never been to without taking a walk about and seeing all there is to see. I believe in injecting myself into the city streets and walking madly off in all directions. It’s the best way to learn a foreign city and make it yours. Boy, did I do that in Brussels.
Brussels, Belgium. 2017.
Assorted photos of Brussels. My favourite place to eat was Le Grand Cafe on Boulevard Anspach.–and of course I needed to have a Stella IN Belgium! The city workers painted the crosswalks RAINBOW while I was there. BRUSSELS PRIDE is on May 20th. Just missed it. Try the waffles…they are to die for! And Ellis Gourmet Burgers makes the best burgers in the world! I walked to the top of the Arcade du Cinquantenaire…it’s a beautiful view from atop this triple arch in the centre of Cinquantenaire Park.
Just prior to leaving I had received a WCDR (Writers’ Community of Durham Region) Writing Grant, for which I’m extremely grateful. It served as a reminder to put BIC and get some work done while I was there. I used the grant money to purchase passage to Brugge, where I spent the day exploring the beautiful medieval town. And what tour of Brugge would be complete without climbing to the top of the belfry tower there? The tower has been made famous in the phenomenal 2008 movie IN BRUGES. One of the main characters–Ken, played by Brendan Gleeson–jumped from the top of the tower and died on the cobbles below.
The Belfry Tower in Brugge–a steep climb to the top, but well worth it once you see the breathtaking view of the medieval town spread out below it.
Needless to say, I fell in love with everything I saw. Thankfully, I did get a great start on my novel writing project. Nowhere near what I had hoped for, but the bones are still being formed and it has the momentum it needs. I cannot complain about that. It’s a young adult novel, just over a third done…maybe.
Brugges, Belgium. 2017.
Some more sights from Brugge. including shots from inside the Basilica of the Holy Blood, which is a famous church that houses a venerated relic–a vial said to contain the blood of Christ himself–brought back from the Crusades. The 12th century basilica is located in the Burg Square and has both a lower and an upper chapel.The statuary in these chapels were sad almost to the point of ghastly…and so beautiful in their depiction of pain and sadness.
Now, to get my feet back firmly on the ground here in Toronto and settle in to finish this novel. Travel is a wonderful thing, but so is coming home. Being home. Time to write.
KEVIN CRAIG 