I Think I Can, I Think I Can

I'm starting to feel like the Little Engine That Could. I keep plugging away at things but most days it seems like an uphill battle.

There's been a lot of storm systems moving through our area (and I won't run my precious lap top when it's storming) and even more grey days. Lack of sun is my number one energy sink. Which is ironic because although I like to see the sun, I don't like being out in it and I can't stand bright light.

Notice, however, the progress bar on DIF has moved. I've written almost 4,000 more words since I last updated. And after I realized that I immediately rested on my laurels and haven't written much since. I did, however, jot down a couple of new ideas in my writing journal. One of which is for a romantic short story, which I've never tried before. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.

I have made far more progress with my writing than with cleaning out the spare bedroom closet. How could such a good idea have gone so wrong? I never realized what a pack rat I am. Well, that's not true. I knew, I just didn't want to acknowledge it. After having spent who knows how many dollars on all this stuff, I'm loathe to just throw it out. *sigh*

Thirty years worth of the Writer and Writer's Digest
At least five years worth of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Three years worth of Omni Magazine
A lifetime of craft magazines and books.
I won't even start on the art supplies.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I think the following two pictures fill my writing quota for the last couple of days. The first is the stuff I've taken out of the closet, the second is the closet itself.

The Write Focus

As I’ve mentioned before, I got my writing start with poetry. I was a poet through most of high school. It was my “thing”. I was a poet.

Then I started writing short stories, most of which turned into rather long stories. These stories were all in the fantasy genre. I was no longer a poet, I was a fantasy writer.

When I ventured into novel writing I still considered myself a fantasy writer. Now I was a fantasy novelist.

I took a writing for children course. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. My focus shifted to writing for children. I was a children’s writer.

It was a very restrictive way of thinking and I did myself a great disservice in doing so.

I would lock myself into one method of writing, to the exclusion of all else. And when I started to stall, so would my writing. I would be so focused on whatever kind of writer it took to write that piece that I couldn’t consider any other writing.

When I was writing short stories I wouldn’t write poetry - I was a fantasy writer, not a poet. When I wrote for children I set aside my novels - I was a children’s writer, not a novelist. My fantasy novels never really succeeded because most of my plots were hopelessly romantic in nature. It never occurred to me to write them as romance, I was a fantasy writer after all.

Thank God I out grew this mind set.

Now I don’t limit myself to genre or length. I accept the ideas as they come and write them all down in the same notebook. Writing is writing.

In the end, that’s all that really matters.

Found One!

Where there's a will there's a relative, I mean, a way. I found a quiz for your entertainment pleasure.

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

Rainy Day

It's been raining steadily for the last couple of hours, with no sign of letting up any time soon. I was going to offer up a quiz for your entertainment, however having searched for the last hour I am having no luck at finding one that offers the html coding so that it will appear on my blog.

I ask you, what good is a quiz without the cool picture in the results to encourage others to take the quiz?

As I was waking up yesterday morning, I had an epiphany where DIF is concerned. But as usual with these things I had no time to work on it because it was off to Hamilton for my Aunt's 80th birthday party (thunderstorms outside, un-air-conditioned church hall inside, but that's a story for another time).

Still being in my Charles de Lint phase, I couldn't help but realize the current book I'm reading was written in both the first and the third person point of view, depending on which character the story was focusing on. While this works quite well for him, I'm not sure that it would work for me.

I don't know why I'm so resistant to the whole first person thing. I'm sure I have reasons, they're just not very clear to me right now. However, I started thinking about first person from two different perspectives and I think that might just work for DIF. I can't say that I've ever read a romance done this way, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

So, I'm taking a deep breath and starting from scratch with DIF. And when I start suffering from first person overload, I've still got Changeling to work on.

Moonlight Madness

In honour of the full moon tonight, I think it's time for another poem.

The interesting thing about this poem, is that it's the first one I've ever composed completely on the computer. Normally I use pencil and paper for poetry and only type it out when it's completed. I'd say this is progress!

**********************


this poem begins
in hope and dreams
closeness shared
poetic themes

trial by fire
the years mutate
as much by desire
as left to fate

neither space nor time
the closeness rive
but one will alone
cannot survive

it withers, fails
not knowing why
its purpose dims
remembrance shy

couched in words
of poetic intent
the past is gone
the message sent

Food For Thought

I have two printers. My trusty little HP Photosmart and a honking big Samsung colour laser printer. About a year ago (could be longer) I ran out of black toner for the laser printer and it's been sitting in the corner collecting dust ever since.

A few weeks ago (I say weeks but it may have been months) the husband bought me a replacement cartridge but I never got around to installing it. I had a 50+ page document to print and since my HP is getting low on ink I thought I'd install the new cartridge.

First I had to re-arrange some wires: When I rearranged my office I had always intended for the printers to be plugged into their own power bar so I finagled around until I got this done, then I had to search for the printer's USB cord.

Okay, everything looked good until I noticed that the toner cartridge the husband bought me was the wrong one. I needed the document for tomorrow. Should I use up the last of my HP ink or should I go to Staples to exchange the cartridge?

I went to Staples. I didn't have the receipt but they gave me a gift card with the difference on it (the correct cartridge was cheaper).

The point to all this (you knew I'd get to the point eventually, didn't you?) is that on the way home I started thinking about the balance of good and bad. It was good the husband bought me a new cartridge, bad that it was the wrong one and I had to go all the way across town to Staples, but I got the bonus good of a gift card.

Taking it further, I started thinking of the balance of good and bad as it applies to life. There's no question that you can't have one without the other. A lot of the time it seems like we get more bad than good, but that's because the bad tends to stick in our minds more. Things happen for a reason, both good and bad.

It was good when I first got the job at the call centre, but it turned bad when I had to take a stress leave. It was bad when I got terminated from my job, but the opportunities that are opening up for me are very good.

Everything has purpose. Call it Fate, call it Karma, call it God's will if you like. Even though it may not feel like it at the time, maybe things, both good and bad, happen to make us better people.

Just saying.

Stupidity and Hidden Treasures

As I may have mentioned before, I cleaned out my spare bedroom. Keeping in the organized frame of mind, I thought "Wouldn't it be nice to keep the extra bedding the in closet in the spare bedroom. I should clean out the closet to make space."

Thus we have the stupidity portion of this post.

The closet in the spare bedroom may look very small, but it's not. It's not wide, but it is very deep. And it has built in shelves. Very full shelves. So full, in fact, the top shelf is definitely sagging.

To get into the closet I had to move a substantial stack of paintings the daughter has done. A couple of shelves are filled with various art supplies belonging to both the daughter and myself. There is between twenty and thirty years worth of writing magazines (thank God they're tied in bundles). There are boxes of craft books, and many boxes of miscellaneous stuff that had been deemed not quite useless enough to be thrown out.

Are you understanding the stupidity part yet?

I did come across a pattern for a shawl I'd been looking for in a box of craft books and magazines, but that's not the true treasure. The true treasure was found in a box of miscellaneous magazines.

Many (many, MANY) years ago I'd taken a writing course, just to give my writing a boost. Okay, it was more to give me a kick in the butt where my writing was concerned. I wanted to take my writing more seriously. Anyway, I found a couple of comment sheets from this course:

"This is far and away the best story I've gotten in my years of teaching. You should be proud of your accomplishment and gains as a writer; I know I am."

"This is a wonderful story. Everything I have read of yours is truly professional. I love your "visuals". Reading this story was like watching a film. I saw the entire thing."

"You have a gift for making your characters very real in very few words."

Too bad I have no idea what story the instructor was talking about.

I Have a Dream!

My dream is to go back to school to acquire the skills I need to have a career instead of a job. I've had jobs, lots of jobs. It's high time I got a job I liked, a career.

I've been doing some research online about second careers and there's a lot of choices out there. If I was 20 years younger there's a couple that I would really love to try out. I think the trick is to narrow down my choices and go in to my next meeting with my job counsellor armed with the information I need to get started.

Of course my first choice of a career would be writing. However, I'm also enough of a realist to know that when I finish my book and sell it I'll still need a day job. I have no illusions about being the next Nora Roberts.

On the plus side, I have been getting myself into the habit of coming down to my office every morning and working at the computer. Okay, there's a lot of surfing and piddling around going on, but at least I'm sitting at the computer. I've even started getting some writing done. (Does a 6,000 word letter to my sister count?)

Maybe I'm finally getting there. I can dream, can't I?

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams go
Life is a barren field
Covered with snow.
~Langston Hughes

Under the Tree

Day Into Night

The dreamer sits on a cushion of grass,
rough bark at her back, the hush
enfolding her like a shroud.
Time passes on a breath of fresh cut summer.
Silence whispers through the trees
while the sun is filtered
through a thousand shades of green.

An eruption of starlings guide
a cat’s passage,
through the wild,
into the green.
The all clear is sounded
by the rusty clothes line screech of a jay.


The shadows dance to the chime of the fountain
as they pull away, away, into the dusk.
A host of minuscule vampires attack,
vanishing in a splinter of moonlight,
fleeing the rose garden perfume
wafting on the deepening dark.
A shooting star,
the descent of a dream’s promise.

There's That Road Again!

You know the road I'm talking about. And where it leads. And what it's paved with.

Just when I'm getting in a writerly frame of mind, paper and pencil in hand, headed out the door to the great outdoors, I get a two hour warning that my sister is coming to visit. Argh!

Don't get me wrong. I love my sister, really, but still . . .

We're not as close as she thinks we are. It's not that we don't try, it's just that we're two very different people and she has all these pre-conceived notions about me. There's ten years difference in our ages and even our childhood memories are very different. There was a lot of water that went under the bridge between her childhood and mine. And turbulent water at that.

That's not to say we didn't have a good visit. We went to the movies one night, and the next day we went down to the waterfront. We had frozen yogurt, went for a long walk, and finished up with funnel cake (that almost finished us up).

I was able to jot down a few notes under my tree before she arrived, and a few more while she was here, but I'll have to wait until my next post to see what they amount to.

By the Dark of the New Moon

My little moon phases icon is telling me that we have a New Moon tonight.

Having worked in the public sector, I can tell you that the dark of the moon can affect you every bit as much as the light can. The word lunatic literally means moonstruck, subject to the changes of the moon. Perhaps we need a word to describe the effects of the new moon.

I've been reading the work of Charles de Lint lately. He writes urban fantasy, which is this magical way of weaving together different mythologies and having them touch the modern world. It makes me want to pick up a pen and a pad of paper and go out under a tree and write - maybe not tales of myth and mystery, but write without a set purpose, just to see if I can recapture the magic writing used to hold for me.

I look at my bookcase filled with books on magic and folklore and I have to wonder, when did I lose interest? I have books on ancient civilizations, world mythology, mysteries of the unknown, psychic phenomena - they were once a big part of who I was.

Perhaps we all go through phases, just like the moon.

My moon phases icon shows the moon as zero per cent full. I like the thought that this is the beginning, not the end, of the lunar cycle. A time for beginnings. Hopefully, I’m entering a new phase too.

I guess you can colour me pensive tonight.