Writing Life – Page 10

Writers – Fill Your Toolbox with Love Not Hammers

I wrote this a few years ago. It was originally published in the WCDR Wordweaver Newsletter. I think it’s a good reminder for writers everywhere…

Filling Your Writerly Toolbox

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the writer’s toolbox could include such a thing as a hammer! We could smash those uncooperative words to bits and smithereens whenever they decide not to mold to the articulations of our wandering thoughts. Sadly, this is not a very helpful tool to the creative force behind writing. We would tend to think of the hammer as Home Depot’s answer to that nagging internal editor… not very practical when creating. Perhaps we should leave it where it belongs… in the editor’s toolbox. They are more apt to use it with the care, precision and respect the weapon, er, tool demands.

What the writer should be able to find in their toolbox are flowers. And trees. And memories. And people. And voices. And birds. We should be able to open that box every day and walk into another world. Picture Narnia without the bulky wardrobe, Neverland without the hassle of learning the leap of faith needed to fly or even Wonderland without the bumps and scrapes accumulated from the fall that takes you there. We should be able to open our toolboxes and look in, reach in and grab out imagination itself. Whether we crack it open for a creative session of poetry or to write the latest freelance article on sleep apnea, we should be able to find helpful gadgets inside that will help us reach our eventual goal.

Writers should realize that the world around them is their toolbox. They should remember to take long walks in conservation areas, memorizing the texture of bark and the names of plants, trees and flowers. (Or even the taste and grit of dirt on their tongues, if they are so inclined.) They should sit on benches in malls and stare into the faces of strangers. They should collect scars, hairstyles and peculiarities from these people… write them down in notepads for future use. They should be in the business of accumulation, swallowing whole the world around them and spewing it back into their neat little toolbox for future excavations into the world of words.

Alongside daisies, alders and people–pictures that can be freely amassed–writers should also find at least one dictionary and an accompanying thesaurus. (We are never too old to learn new words and strengthen our vocabularies.) Leaning against their collected sounds of the ocean, and insects and wind, they should find a good reliable style guide. These things help to curb our tendencies to ramble, suggest to us the best possible way to present our thoughts. These are all good things, just as necessary to the process of writing as jumping off the edges of our imaginations to discover other more tantalizing worlds than our own.

Whatever you choose to arm your own toolbox with, you should make sure it contains a healthy balance. It should be two parts imagination, one-part reference books and maybe even one-part bravado… borrowed or genuine. If this is not enough, if capturing the world and squeezing it into the small confines of an imaginary toolbox is not quite enough to get you to where you need to go…take courses. Attend workshops in the areas that interest you. Never forget to squeeze mentors and teachers into that bustling box. Never underestimate the amount you still need to learn to improve upon what you already know about this thing called writing… this beautiful gift that is yours for the taking. Cultivating your gift with a well-stocked toolbox is the only way to show it the respect it deserves.

Look Back, Look Way Way Back…the Writer You Used to Be

I was recently sifting through my previous blog, which is now locked away in the interwebz forever. It was called A WANDERING MIND and it was almost exclusively for poetry. Circa 2007-2010. It carried hundreds of poems upon its crooked little back. The thing I notice when I occasionally pull it up to have a read is that the poems were, by and large, inauthentic. Or, if you will, fictional. Sure, I occasionally pulled out an authentic retelling or heart-truth. But everything was cloaked and shrouded…presented from a place of darkness with just the tiniest hint of a back-lit glow to the authentic. I was writing from a place of self-repression.

I give you exhibit A. In way of preamble, I wrote it on March 30th, 2008. I never burlapped a thing in my life. Hydrangeas? The word must have sounded pretty to me at the time. The bloody things do not have winter limbs…if you do it right. I don’t recall EVER being in Penetanguishene. Or on a train heading north, for that matter. My father was never dying. What’s a Plymouth? I couldn’t pick one out of a line-up.

Things to Do Today

Remove the snow
from the burlap shrouds
encasing the hydrangeas,
ready their limbs for rebirth.

Take the train north
to Penetanguishene,
where screams of ennui
will be muffled, go unheard.

Call my dying father,
speak of ’72 Plymouths
getting air on railroad tracks
long since removed.

Light the candles
on the sky white mantle,
watch the flames flicker
and later disappear.

post-amble? Come to think of it, I did own something in that poem. I remember the weightlessness of going over railroad tracks while climbing a steep hill in a car. It’s a glorious feeling to get air. Especially if there’s music on the radio at the time. It’s all Dukes of Hazzard and what not.

The more I scour the old poetry, the more I think I should rewrite it with my freer post self-repression mind. When you live with a secret like childhood sexual abuse, you shift everything to fit into little boxes. Even all the things you want and need to be authentic are slightly askew. Simply because you’re not the you you were supposed to be (and you never will be–you are a changed version of what you would have could have been). Your walls and barriers and safe places BLOCK OUT just as much as they RESCUE AND SAVE. So, really, until you face the demons…there is no winning.

That poem had almost nothing to do with me. And just like the hundreds of other poems that came from that period of my writing life, I had no recollection of having written it. It is as separate from my psyche as War and Peace is. I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but I did not write War and Peace. It can also be said that I didn’t write any of the poems that came from the dark era. But I did. It’s a conundrum. How can you own something that is not connected in some way to who you are?

On the same day that I wrote the above poem, I wrote one that perhaps I can still feel a bit of connection to. My go-to novel to use as a template for the perfect novel has always been The Great Gatsby, so the admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those things that is constant in my life…it was there in the darkness and it is here in the light. I suppose a vestige of who we are is always there, whether or not we choose or try to access it.

Ode to F. Scott Fitzgerald

And I will dig up his grave,
and wonder at the box
in which he is kept.
And I will adorn
myself with his bones,
wear them like a coat
enshrouding
my fragile body.
And if he be but dust
I will swallow
in handfuls
to have him inside me.
And all for the sake
of an image
he wrote,
will I suffer
the height
of my madness.
“and the curtains
and the rugs
and the two young women
ballooned
slowly
to the floor”.
And for that
I will adorn myself
with his bones,
wear them like a coat,
Wrap myself in wonder
and partake of his dust.

Perhaps it need stay in the darkness. From what I can gather, I dug up the old sport and ate his dust. These are things of darkness, I’m sure. But thus is the extent of my hero worship of his writerly abilities. So, I’ll own it still. It gets to stay.

I’m not sure what this blog post is about. I just feel the need every now and again to revisit the writer I used to be. I don’t try to judge him or weigh the texts of my past with the texts of my now. I don’t need to know that I improved, and I certainly don’t need to know that I haven’t. I just feel that–whatever it is that I find–I accept it for what it is. Something I wrote while on my journey. As with life and each step we take to get us to the step we’re about to take and the place in which we find ourselves, our past writing is what has brought us to who we are now. Just own it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t discard it. Like the bad memory that made you who you are, the bad poem also had a hand in shaping the writer you have become.

Acceptance of self. It’s a good thing.

On the same day I wrote the two above poems, I wrote this one on apologies. I have no idea where my mind was at…but I won’t apologize to myself for having written it. I am writer, hear me roar.

Prelude to an Apology

We’ll let the devil
Tongue our eyes,
Tantalize
And drink our light
In gulps divine.
We’ll let the saints
In numbers,
Stomp our dreams
And teem inside,
With lust,
The dust divine.
And shout,
We will,
The awkward silence,
Awake the night
We walk in vengeance,
And just a slight of hand
Away from wonder,
We’ll construct
Our own mythology,
but never will we offer
Those elusive
Things we straddle
And preen to pretty,
The often considered
But never whispered
Hushed and hidden apology.

Be your writing. And remember to look back on the journey every now and again…

Near/Far – The Journey of the Muskoka Novel Marathon

Once upon a time there was a magical place. It was in a land far, far away. And also quite near. It came to be that a hundred thousand brave warrior knights had heard of this magical place. Or forty or so, at least, give or take.

They set out on a rather long journey. For some it was far, and for others it was simply near. But even those brave warrior knights (let’s just call them writers, shall we) who came from near understood the metaphorical distance of the journey…the farness of their nearness, as it were.

Each year, the marathon raises much needed funds for the literacy programs of YMCA Simcoe/Muskoka. We have a blast, but it’s not all fun. We have an underlying mission that we take most seriously.

It was such a grand time that was had by all that they decided to do it again. And again. And again. And again. The event became a yearly festival/spectacle of writerly endurance, wonder, and mirth.

This faraway land is known as Huntsville, in the province of Ontario, in the land of Canada. The magical place is not really a place, per se, but an event. Actually, I prefer to think of it as a Spectacular Spectacular. Of sorts.

Last year I had the pleasure of reconnecting writerlyishly with M.E. Girard! It’s not always the same people at the marathon, but once you make the trip you’re a part of the #MNM family.

Why do I bring this event up today? Because registration is as much a spectacle as the event itself these days. Writers clamor to get in to this thing! With room for only 40 (ish) and rumours of its delightfulness spreading both far and wide (or near and far—as it were), it is getting increasingly difficult for a writer to procure his/her seat at the gala. As in, it is nigh on impossible.

And every March, like warriors of old, we stand before our keyboards on the night of registration and wait for the seconds to tick off… and for the virtual gate to open so we can scurry about and type our way into this yearly magical emporium of madness.

When the time comes and the gate opens, the Internet feels the tug of love from all points across Ontario as the virtual worms of registration information make their way to the Mother Ship of this Spectacular Spectacular up in the snowy northern outpost of Huntsville.

And at the end of registration night, there are virtual bodies scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding… Wait, no… sorry, I somehow channelled Jim Morrison for a second there. No bodies. BUT… there are, both near and far, those ecstatic to be ON THE BUS and those melancholy to have missed it.

Yes… I’m talking about the MUSKOKA NOVEL MARATHON again. My skin prickles tonight in the knowing that registration approaches. It is neither near nor far on the horizon. And I want to call myself among the tribe of #MNM2016 participants. I want it, I want it, I want it!

Where else in all the world can one writer sit in the same room as 40+ others and do nothing but write for 72hrs? Nowhere. Where else can one take communion with a writing community more vibrant, alive, exhausted, miserable, exuberant, joyful, angry, and insane? Nowhere. Where else can one come together with a group of like-minded people for a cause close and true to all of their hearts? Nowhere.

The Muskoka Novel Marathon Fundraiser for literacy in Simcoe Muskoka County is more than a fundraiser to raise money for literacy, and it’s more than the greatest weekend retreat for writers on the globe. It’s a religion and it’s a cult. But don’t tell anyone. We’d have writers coming from… well, coming from near and coming from far to be a part of the worshipping. We’d have to go underground just to exist. That’s how spectacular spectacular our 72hr novel writing (and I swear to God that’s all we do!!) Marathon happens to be.

This is why writers begin to lose sleep through February and early March. They imagine themselves not registering in time, not securing one of the coveted spots at the July Marathon, not being a part of the most magical writing weekend of the year. And they spend their time at their keyboards, fingers at the ready… Awaiting the opening bells of the registration melee that opens the chaotic yearly ritual.

We want to be there. We want to be fierce warriors against illiteracy and we want a weekend of writing bliss. Whether we come from near or far… We just want a seat at the table. The journey to the Muskoka Novel Marathon… it’s all about words.

Check out the MUSKOKA NOVEL MARATHON WEBSITE!

For the past few years Sue Kenney has been giving writers the gift of her “WALK FOR CREATIVITY” to allow us a reprieve to connect with nature, barefoot. It’s such a welcome part of the amazing weekend!