Larry Gibbons
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Organic Writing

16/12/2015

1 Comment

 
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View from our neighbour's deck this morning
When I’m working on something I consider serious, I usually go into my tiny office and shut the door. This isolates me from Sue and Buster. Which makes me feel a little guilty and a tad lonely. Stephen King suggested doing this in his book, 'On Writing'.

I have music playing when I’m writing in my office. It adds a little pleasure to the sometimes hard grind that writing can be. It also dampens some of the sounds coming from the rest of the house. But not totally. I can still hear the vacuum cleaner or Buster sniffing under the door, sighing, or making other doggie noises. Which lets me know he’s oh, so lonely and misses me oh, so much.

I usually work on my book or on revisions of other work in my office. However, if I’m beginning a blog or a short story, I often do it in the living room where I can be with the rest of the family.

You see, one of the tricks for keeping my writing fresh and spontaneous is to make the writing feel like play. This is hard for me to do if I get caught up in worrying about such things as being published, the rules of the craft, why I can’t write as well or as much as some other writer, whether I will be able to finish or start a story - those sorts of things. The office seems to be a place for doing serious writing.

However, writing in the living room, where other activities are going on, makes the writing seem less serious to me. For example, I’m forced, from time to time, to pull an old hockey glove or the bottom of one of Sue’s rubber crocs out of Buster’s well-armed yapper, which I then toss a few times until he gets tired of fetching it. Or Sue asks a question or needs help with something - those sorts of things. The hubbub makes my writing activity feel like an organic part of the whole domestic scene and not as if I’m doing micro surgery on words.

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Sue and Buster being domestic
However, as I said, once I get into the serious revision stuff, it’s best I go into my vault.

But even while I'm in there I try to keep it somewhat light. I say I try, not that I always succeed. In my case, the harder I try, the less I get done.

There’s a story about James Joyce. He was struggling with getting his daily quota of words down on the page. Later on he met with his friend, who asked him how his writing was going. I’m not sure of the exact number of words he mentioned, so forgive me if I’m not accurate, but he said something like, “I was only able to write ten words this morning.”

“Well there you go,” says his friend. “That’s ten more than you had before you started.”

James Joyce replied, “Yes, but I don’t know what order to put them in.”

Now that’s getting right down totally serious.
***
If you have read my collection of short stories, which are lurking between the covers of a book called ‘WHITE EYES’, you’ve probably noticed there are a fair number of profanities in the stories.  The thing about writing is there are so many ways to do it and there are so many folks who have ideas about what should or shouldn’t be in a novel, a story, a paragraph - you name it.

One fella I met in a gas station and who is from a fairly conservative church, told me my book would be more popular if I took the profanities out of it. Like maybe they could use the book as a Sunday School text.

However, I mentioned to another reader, who enjoyed my book, that some folks I knew were saying I had too many profanities in it.

"Oh $%^&*", she said, "that’s the way people talk.”

Anyway, I have tried to milksop my profanity down. Now, when I sit in my cloister writing my stories and one of my characters starts to swear too much, I stop writing and slam down the computer screen so as to give the offending character a time out. While he or she is cooling off, I go into the washroom, dig out some soap, go back to my tiny office, sign in again and then wash the heck out of the character’s tongue.

But seriously, there are just so many ways of approaching writing that it can be scarily daunting if you think about all the techniques and time and plot problems and what-nots that you’re going to have to deal with before you are finally finished.

However, if you stick to it, keep the playful feeling and have some talent then you are likely to find some degree of success.

***
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Oh yeah, and while I’m on this writing thing, there is the part about selling your book or stories. Many writers are loners so that can be difficult.

A little over a week ago I was taking part in the launch of a new anthology of short stories, of which one was mine. The launch was being broadcast by CBC, so I was a little extra nervous when I read my story.

There was a microphone and a lectern and the host of the show told us to avoid dead space in our readings because it was being broadcast live.

I was the fifth reader. I thought I did a good job. I often don’t. I thought the folks there, about fifty of them, were enjoying the story and I thought that the general Cape Breton populace were out in their workshops, on their fishing boats, in their living rooms, their cars and trucks, all over the place listening to my story.

I don’t think they were. I think I was talking into a dead Mike. Mike did not exist. Mike was tits up, dead as a door knob, full of rigour mortis, gone, mort; Mike was shit out of luck.

However, if you'd like to know more about the book, check it out here:
http://capebretonbooks.com/products/local-hero

Will life ever cease to be amazingly confusing and unpredictable?


***
Something I just thought of. If Jesus were a carpenter, as I think he was, and if he built a house, would it be absolutely perfectly measured, straight and true? Just wondering.

               “You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
               By one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to God.
               It is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill
               In a world confused and dark and disturbed by portents of fear.
                                                                      T.S.Eliot, The Rock


***
Stress can throw my brain into the dumpster. It can confuse me and make me come up with solutions that are dog-eared with fallacies.

An example, maestro. A few weeks ago, just before we went back to Ontario to deal with the hard business that followed the passing of my mother, I was asked to participate in a story-telling event at the Sydney Library.

I entered the library with a fresh, right-out-of-the-oven story. Written in two days and was I proud of that!

Before we left for Sydney I had pulled out an old canvas book bag that a friend had rescued from the dump and given to me. I put my still hot story into the bag and off we drove to Sydney.

At the event, I found out I had to sit on a chair at the front, with two other story-tellers. That meant that the forty or so members of the audience would have a good look at us all. Could check out if my beard was evenly trimmed, my laces were tied asymmetrically, my hair was top notch... and on and on did my wee mind race.

However, I eventually got to read my story and it went over well. I can even say that I was pleased.

In the next days we rushed down to Ontario and then we rushed back. Once back home, I received an email from a friend. He wanted to read the story that I had written. Which got me thinking about the hard copy version.

So, still in my rushed state of mind, I went to my office and pulled out the book bag. It was then I remembered that this bag had a trick compartment. I’d found this out earlier. You see, the side pocket had no derriere. It was bottomless altogether.

I searched through the bag from bow to stern and finally had to assume that the story had escaped through the bottom and was now blowing around Sydney for all to see. So, I wrote the fella and told him my sad lost story story.

Well, after having a few days to settle my mind down, I was walking the dog. I got thinking about the story and the pieces of my stressed facts all began to re-organize themselves into the correct places.

I had taken my story in my canvas book bag. I had looked for my story in my computer bag. I went back to the house, looked in my canvas dump bag and there the story sat. Almost as fresh as the day it was born.

Stress can kill and it can also turn you into an idiot, in less time than it took for me to write this blog.
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Ferns still green in the snowy woods
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Creativity, Crocks and Rejection

30/6/2015

0 Comments

 
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There are two new realities and achievements in the world that weren’t in the world last year.

In alphabetical order, we have a book authored by Jennifer Bain. The book is called, “HILDEGARD OF BINGEN and Musical Reception, The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer”.

The book is an achievement for sure. Jennifer said she tried to write the book in such a way that both academics and non-academics would find it enjoyable and instructive and Sue thinks she's accomplished that goal very nicely. (Pic of book)

Then there’s Suzi Hübler’s achievement: a brand new business she has opened up in Toronto and it’s aerobically friendly. The business is called, “HIGH JUNCTION GYMNASTICS”. This is a place where young people can skin cats, do the splits, go to parallel bars, somersault themselves silly and become proficient at gymnastics, because Suzi is an expert at teaching gymnastics. You can check out her colourful website here: http://highjunction.ca/  

(Jennifer is Sue’s daughter, and Suzi is Sue’s daughter-in-law, so you can see why we are excited about both of these accomplishments!)

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High Junction
***
Supposedly, if you’re a writer you’re creative. Which in some ways probably involves a high level of daydreaming and the imagining of scenarios which haven’t happened, have happened or might happen.

Writers write a lot about feelings. Usually, if the story is going to have some punch and power, then the author feels and empathizes with the characters he’s creating or writing about.
So it’s no surprise that writers are filled with strong emotions. In many cases they’re not buried far below the surface. From time to time they even seep out like oil out of the ground.
At the same time, writers deal with the fickle world of fashion, pop culture, political correctness, social perceptions, changing rules, high and low grammar and lots and lots and lots of rejection.

If you write, you get to know about rejection. And most writers aren’t cold stone stoics, so it affects them. Sometimes a rejection makes no sense. And for many writers, the rejection slips/emails reinforce their deep feelings that they aren’t any damn good. The proof is there to see.

But, writers write anyway. Now, what I do is write and duck. Like the old duck and cover procedure they used to teach students to follow if an incoming atomic bomb was heading their way. Incoming rejection coming soon to your mail box. What an attitude, eh?

I heard a story about a fella who submitted some short stories to a national short story competition. They were stories written by the likes of Ernest Hemingway. These stories didn’t even make the long list.

I once had a story on the long list, but not on the short list. Ironically, I didn’t come up short and did. Now that’s a riddle for you.  Anyway, I sent the story out to three other publishers. They all rejected it and yet I’m pretty sure that stories which would most likely not have made the long list, were published in their magazines.

J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was rejected twelve times and then bought by the thirteenth publisher, not an unlucky number in this case.  You want to know the reason why the thirteenth publisher bought it? I’ll tell you. Because the publisher’s CEO’s daughter loved it. How was poor Ms. Rowling supposed to know that she should have addressed her manuscript to the big honcho’s daughter?

The classic, "Lord of the Flies", was rejected twenty-one times. And you can damn well tell it was a classic because they made me read it in high school. One publisher wrote that it was “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”

Do you know what one publisher told F. Scott Fitzgerald when he read "The Great Gatsby"? He said, “You’d have a decent book if you’d get rid of that Gatsby character.” So funny!

Stephen King filled a spike with impaled rejection slips by the age of fourteen. Wow! He was prolific for sure.

My feeling is that if you are going to be rejected, at least have your writing as polished as it can be. That’s why I have an editor. Her name is Sue and she can spy a rogue, “I’ve went...” a mile away. Which, apparently, is one of my favourite illiterate-oral weaknesses. At least in a Jane Austen type of world.

Stephen King wrote, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”
***
cloudy mountainView from our Place on Middle River, Cape Breton


I’ve started reading some poetry and short stories by Alden Nowlan. He was a mostly self-taught man, who was born in Nova Scotia. One of my favourite poems is called, “The Bull Moose”.

Here’s another one of his poems.

                                 “This is the amazing thing
                                   that it is so easy
                                   to fool them—-
                                   the sane bastards.

                                   I can talk about weather,
                                   eat, preside at meetings
                                   of the PTA.
                                   They don’t know.

                                   Me foreign as a Martian
                                   With the third eye in my forehead!
                                   But I comb my hair
                                   cleverly so it doesn’t show

                                   except a little
                                   sometimes when the wind blows.
                                                       
                                                                    Alden Nowlan, “Disguise”



***
                                             “If you can sniff out danger and keep barking
                                     When those around you seem to doubt the cause
                                     And all they find to do is keep remarking
                                     Don’t track up the carpet with your paws!
                                     If you can lick the hand who needs you
                                     and realize it’s really no mistake
                                     When that hand that somehow failed to feed you
                                     Feeds itself the whole darn sirloin steak.”

                                                                                     Lily Tuck,  “Sniff”

Sue says I think like a dog. I’ve been telling her that for years. You see, I can be walking down a busy street and on the opposite side of the street can be, and has been, a man walking his dog.

The dog will stare at me like I’m wearing a tracking device. The dog’s eyeballs will hone in on me and not get his peepers off my moving form until we’re way beyond the human encounter distance of seventeen feet. (Apparently this has been measured by people who like to measure things.)

In some ways I think this places me at the dog's level of the food chain. Which could be way above the human's. This theory comes from watching too much news.

Which might be why I’m more comfortable on a log, inside or outside, rather than on a beautiful couch. A not so expensive, not so beautiful couch, doesn’t bother me quite as much. I guess my mind won’t stop reminding me that there’s a whole lot of social voo-doo comes with sitting on a beautiful couch in a living room.
 
Oh, and before you let your creative minds run wild, I have not yet had the desire to lift my leg and piddle on said log, nor on said less beautiful couch.

So, this Sunday, while I was in the washroom brushing my teeth, Buster was in the hallway barking. Sue, (who now barks back, but that’s another story), could not decipher from Buster’s barks, what the heck he wanted.

I stepped out of the washroom. Sue said, “What does he want?”

I said, thinking I was just guessing, that he was looking for his slipper so he could play “Fetch the Slipper”. So I found the slipper and sure enough, that’s what he wanted to do. Fetch the slipper.

Which goes like this. I throw the slipper or toss it, if you prefer that word. Buster runs and fetches the slipper. He returns with the slipper, which, for accuracy’s sake, is actually an old croc. He lets me pull the croc, thinking that I don’t know that he’s not really jawing down on it as hard as he would like me to think. Because he really wants me to wrench the croc out of his mouth, so the croc can glide through the air like an eagle and land on the kitchen floor in front of the fridge. So Buster can burst out of the starting gate, slide and slam into the fridge door, return the slipper and his drool to me and start the process all over again.

The whole game is a Buster diplomatic exercise in pretending he doesn’t want me to have the croc while wanting me to have the croc. Which I know is all a crock.

tired dog
Buster Tuckered Out From Playing "Fetch the Croc"
                                             “A living room, the catholic area you
                                    (Thou rather) and I may enter
                                    without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts
                                    each visitor with a style,

                                    a secular faith: he compares its dogmas
                                    with his, and decides whether
                                    he would like to see more of us. Spotless rooms
                                    where nothing’s left lying about

                                    chill me, so do cups used for ashtrays or smeared
                                    with lipstick: the homes I warm to,
                                    though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling
                                    of bills being promptly settled”

                                                                                            W.H. Auden, “The Common Life”
Spring Pond
Our Pond in Spring
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Psyching the Mic

25/1/2015

1 Comment

 
Flashpoint
Not long before Christmas, I had to do a CBC radio interview. I’m not going to give out the time of the show because I don’t think I did very well. But what the hey, I never promised I would, and I’m sure all the professional Google people out there can find it. But, just in case you’re interested, I’ll give you one hint. It was on a Friday afternoon.  

I was on the radio because one of my stories was in a book called, 'FLASHPOINT' which had just been published by Third Person Press. I’m grateful that they published my story and also grateful for what they’ve taught me about short story writing.

There are also no fingers on my hand pointed at the interviewer. “She” was professional and kind. (I think I just gave you another clue.)

This anthology of speculative fiction short stories can be bought in some bookstores and can also be purchased from the Third Person Press website. So, before I go any further, I suggest you drop everything you’re doing, and buy the book. Chop, chop.


Here's their website: 
http://www.thirdpersonpress.com/   (There's a lot of interesting stuff on their site, by the way.)

Here’s what John Updike said about being interviewed:  “It rots a writer’s brain, it cretinises you. You say the same thing again and again and when you do that happily you’re on the way to being a cretin. Or a politician.”

Anyway, apparently there are some things that interviewers find difficult when they are interviewing. For example, they don’t like interviewees who give too long or too complicated a response, who are boring, who leave their sense of humour somewhere else - those sorts of things. Well, I have to say that humour is not something I can leave anywhere. My problem is trying not to be funny or crazy when answering questions.
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Quite a while before this particular interview, I’d been prepped for another online conversation. It occurred in the early summer. That interviewer let me practise before I was let loose. When I thought I was ready, I sucked it up and spewed it out.  One of the things this online interviewer explained to me was how to hold the mic. He said that the microphone should be approximately a fist’s length from my trap.  So, while I was being interviewed, the CBC interviewer poked the mic toward my face, while she asked me a question. I tried to grab the mic out of her hand. She quickly yanked it away and I think she shook her head in a ‘don’t-do-that’ way. However, it’s not like any listeners saw me make a grab for the intimidating mic.

Now, I have never loved my voice because I know what the little bugger can do. My tongue, especially if I’m nervous or have exercised hard, has the ability to dump a bucket of hot peppers over my yapper box. On the other hand, the author who was being interviewed with me, had a voice that seemed immune to cracking and squeaking. So I felt a bit intimidated by the contrast. Oh, if I could only sound like Gregory Peck.

Here's another point about my earlier on-line interview session. One of the questions I was asked at that interview was, “What books have been important to you in your life?”

I could have mentioned Grisham, George Elliot, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Larry Brown, Stephen King, or a whole slew of authors. At least some author that would make me look or sound a teeny bit suave, cool, professional and literate.  But no friggen way. Nope, and believe you me, I did hear my brain shouting, fairly loudly, “Don’t say it, moron.”

But all to no avail as I said, “Walter Brookes and his wonderful ‘Freddy the Pig’ books: ‘Freddy Goes to Florida’, ‘Freddy the Detective’, ‘Freddy the Cowboy’, ‘Freddy and the Ignoramus’, and on and on. "
Not anything wrong with the books, but couldn’t I have dug a little bit deeper? Apparently not.  

So, before the CBC interrogation, I’d prepared a little cheat sheet, because I’m not that good at remembering names or titles. This list had included the title of some speculative fiction books I’d read or was reading, along with some other book genres I was reading or had read. But you see, the author who was being interviewed with me, and who I thought had a really cool voice, had no cheat sheet to encumber his response freedom.  So there I was, intimidated by him and by the fact that I’m on CBC radio, live, and so what did I do? I parked my cheat sheet. I went raw.

Then, look out. The CBC questioner asked, “You write speculative fiction, so you must read a lot of it. What books do you read?”

Oh, duh! Come on, Larry. Get a grip. My brain was shouting, “Moron, moron!”, even before I answered the question, and for Pete’s sake I knew damn well that one of the main purposes of the book launch and for us authors being interviewed was to sell speculative fiction and ‘Flashpoint’ in particular. But what did I say in response to her question? I said, “No, I don’t read much speculative fiction.” 

You think the interviewer looked surprised when I made a pass at the mic? Nothing compared to her reaction to that answer. After this faux pas, I bungled around a bit and said I was trying to catch up on the classics and I was even able to name a few authors.

But you see, I don’t try hard to make my stories speculative fiction. Because my life is so damn speculative, that to be accurate I should say that some of my stories should probably be considered non-fiction. However, I didn’t think to mention that. It might have added some balance.

James Thurber wrote: “My opposition to interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give-and-take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”

Also, maybe subconsciously, I mentioned the classics to the interviewer because I didn’t want all the on-line listeners from my summer interview to think the greatest books in my past were ‘Freddy the Pig’ books. Which, by the way, really were a great read, particularly behind my grade five math book.
By the way, Wikipedia defines ‘Speculative Fiction’ as  “…a broad literary genre encompassing any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements.”  It also probably includes a mix of the above, which I would suggest they call ‘mutt speculative fiction’ in celebration of the mutt we just purchased from the SPCA.

His name is Buster and he acts like a Buster. One of his first tasks, after arriving at our little trailer, was to force us to flip the mattress. Which, we then discovered, has only one official lie-on-it side, so we had to flip it back and put the wet end at the far corner, along with a change of sheets. We love Buster.
Our dog and friend
Buster and Mr. Peabody
So, in the CBC interview, I mentioned the classics and then I squeaked out, through the hot peppers and coal dust, that I also read Stephen King, but doesn’t everybody? And finally I threw out the name of a fantasy author whose book I’d been reading. But by gosh, I couldn’t remember the author’s name, because I’d pocketed my cheat sheet. So I said that I was presently reading a fantasy book by Bradley Zimmer. Oh, if I’d only looked at my tiny sheet of paper, I’d have known to say that I was reading ‘The Saga of the Renunciates’  by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Did you notice where the Zimmer and Bradley were supposed to be?

And it totally escaped my mind that I was also working my way through ‘Black Water’, a terribly thick anthology of magic realism short stories.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.”  

So, this blog is, in a way, a bit of an apology for not doing a better job of promoting the book, ‘FLASHPOINT’.

However, possibly on the positive side, I suspect that I have some kind of safety valve in my brain and mouth, which will not allow me to be a cool interviewee or a charming regurgitator. I think I can safely say that I’m in some ways immune to being sucked into the dumping grounds of slickness and consumption and I suppose I should be happy about that. However, if I’m not really immune, but only think I am, then please be kind enough to let me be like the ostrich and keep my head buried up my keister.
Inverness ski trail
Ski Trail Near Inverness, Cape Breton
My next blog, number 35, might have a little more about Buster, our new dog, who has decided that his brand new expensive bed is a chew toy. Lord, help us.  Guess where he sleeps?
Dog destroying bed
Do they really think I'm going to sleep in this thing?
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Literary Angst at the Bird Feeders

6/4/2014

0 Comments

 
I, Larry A. Gibbons, hereby declare that as of Sunday, April 6th, I have received more than enough rain, freezing rain, ice pellets and snow.
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I, Larry A. Gibbons, also hereby declare that my snow blower is useless. Unless I can hire a team of moose to pull it through the above mentioned precipitation. Snow blowers detest ice pellets underneath their wheels. Confound them!
shovelling snowLarry's Daily Occupation
I, Larry A. Gibbons, also hereby declare that after clearing off the snow plough’s many big dumps, along with the sky’s larger dumps uponst all the sundry acres of paradise for which I am responsible, that I have, as of now, fired myself from snow removal. I will continue to be available for minor wood splitting and spooning of sugar into my piping hot tea.

I, Larry A. Gibbons, also further hereby declare, that I was not friggen impressed by the April Fool’s joke of another snowstorm. Ha, ha, and who else is laughing?  

Finally, I, Larry A. Gibbons, hereby and finally declare, that this is my last hereby declaration. Which I hereby declare to be declared.


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Have you read “Cape Breton Christ”, written by Denise Aucoin and published by Breton Books? I have, and although I’m not much for writing a technically proper book review, I can say that I enjoyed this book. It was a comforting and uplifting read. The thing about this book is that it’s a short novel written in the form of a poem. And I loved the ending. I won’t give it away, but I’m reasonably sure that if Christ were going to pick a place to live, he might very well decide to settle down in Cape Breton. It’s an island with a big heart.  Here’s a quote from Denise’s book:  

“not for one second am i about to suggest
that our baby Christ came to be born
in the middle of mabou
or bridgeport
or any other such community on cape breton island
  what i am announcing is that
in the sacred and incredible act of creation
our beautiful island was immensely blessed
by the heart and hand of god
over five hundred and seventy million years ago.”
I’m not a person who has settled into many new places. So I don’t have the skills down pat on how to burrow into a new environment, while keeping the connections back in the last place piping hot and fresh. And, being reasonably sensitive, according to some observers, I worry about keeping the old emotional ties strong back in Ontario, while working on building new emotional bonds in Cape Breton.
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One niggling worry is that my associations in Ontario are feeling the strain on the psychological threads of friendship that were nurtured over so many years.

So, hello to all my friends in Ontario, Alberta and Michigan.

C’est la vie, mes amis. May we someday enjoy a Gamay together at our favourite aunt’s place. 

Rona LightfootRona Lightfoot-Celtic Piper
Life is a koan. Don’t you think? One of the biggest koans might be the viewpoints held by non-Aboriginals versus those of the Aboriginals. Whew, a tough one, and the puzzle is quite apparent up here in Cape Breton, where different colonial cultures live side by side with the Aboriginal population.
On Saturday, I was talking to an Aboriginal friend who lives off the reserve. This offers him a different set of problems from
those who live on the reserve.

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So he deals from his unique perspective with the intrinsic views of the non-Aboriginals and with those of his culture who live on the reserve. If that isn’t a rock to the noggin, problem-solving puzzle, I don’t know what is. His attempts to fit the pieces together must have his synapses firing fast enough to burn down a meth lab.

I was thinking, what if this fella was a writer? He’d have lots of emotional material to put into words. Because, as you know, I believe writers need at least some chaos and uncertainty in their lives for them to have the material to incorporate into their blood and guts creations.

However, it may be difficult to write about a crisis such as a relationship breakdown, if you are in the midst of one. But once you’ve put it behind you and are trucking on down the road, well, the pen will, at some point, be ready to burn, baby, burn.


Many writers, like myself, get discouraged. Sometimes I’ll read a short story or a novel and I’ll think, “Shit, I can’t write like that. Hell, I don’t even think like that”.

Take many of the literary magazines. So many of their stories have been diced, spliced and sautéed into an urban gruel. They’re the ones that seem to grab the publishers’ attention. Put a character in a bar, a bedroom, a downtown apartment, a subdivision, a jail or a whore house on Yonge Street and your odds of being published rise. Of course, I know this is not always true, but these thoughts do occasionally bounce around inside my skull.

And hell, we live in a forty-five-foot mini home in the forest. My main conversations are with crows, squirrels and Ben, the dog down the road. Now, I’ve seen birds and squirrels getting amorous. And I’ve seen a crow eating a dead squirrel while the squirrel’s family members run up and down the branch trying to get a look at who it was that was killed and is being devoured. We suspect the perpetrator was the black cat who creeps up to our house in the early morning and waits for breakfast by our bird feeders.


squirrel at window
Squirrel peeking through our window
And the chatter on the street is there’s a new crow in town. What is the inner angst of this rogue crow? Why does Ben choose to poop on our laneway and not on his own? Look out, literary magazines. Here comes an award winner.

But, really, there are so many good writers out there. Urban or rural. Which leads me to a point about my marketing savvy. By the way, don’t spend too much time trying to find my marketing savvy, because I don’t have a lot. And, I don’t know if I will ever get myself worked up into a marketing frenzy. Which, I think, is a problem for many writers. Because the various forms of social media, with their unlimited potential, are so powerful that writers feel they have to be involved in it all the time. If not, they worry they are going to be left behind by a massive herd of social media-savvy key-tappers. Which must have some deleterious effects on their energy to create.

 Here’s an example of my marketing enthusiasm. When I was a kid and thought as a kid and didn’t look at myself in the mirror very often, I used to have a paper route. The newspaper would hold subscription drives. I hated the door-knocking, the persuading and the rah-rah sessions. I did, however, win a raincoat at one rally, but they had to draw twenty times and there were only about twenty-five carriers in the room. Plus it was a dry summer. Ha.


                                                                            ***

I’m also humble about my vocabulary. Which isn’t gigantic, although it’s growing. People generally use the words they heard when they were growing up. So, if you hear a lot of words when you are a child, you will most likely use them when you’re older, along with the dialect you heard.

Note, that doesn’t make a person with a larger vocabulary more intelligent, but it will open up more opportunities for them. My warning to those with a big vocabulary is to not resent having to drop your vocabulary by a thousand words so you can communicate with the likes of me. Because isn’t it the luck of the draw as to what family you have or don’t have? Just buck up and enjoy your view.

Stephen King has pointed out that a person shouldn’t wait to write until after they have acquired a greater number of words. The words will come with the writing and the reading. However, you must read.


                                                                             ***  
Finally, what amazes me about writing, is that the creative activity involved in this pen to paper thing, opens us up to universal bits and pieces. Maybe because a writer is someone who keeps an eye out for these messages and surprises. Most writers are always on the job. Therefore they recognize more clues and bits of unusual info. 

Like last week. I was travelling down Disheartened Highway 104. I was questioning my vision and my style and indulging in other downer thoughts, when I stumbled upon a Walter Whitman poem. It’s called, “Quicksand Years”. (I do this stumbling thing all the time.) Here’s the poem:

“Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,

Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possesse’d soul, eludes not,

One’s-self must never give way-that is the final substance-that out of all is sure,

Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

When shows break up what but One’s Self is sure?

Does this poem say a lot about what your own soul has to express? Have you stumbled on any creative aids?
Have a great week!
snow buried cabin
Cabin across the road from us
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