Larry Gibbons
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The Path in the Sky

30/8/2014

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I’m back and hoping that you’ve all had a great last few weeks and are getting pumped up for the fall. Which you know as well as I do, is the precursor to winter.

I’ve just finished reading a wonderful poetry book written by David Woods. He’s a black author and the book is titled “Native Song”. This was his first collection of poetry.   It is an intense and passionate collection  that reveals his determined and unrelenting fervour to right the wrongs that were done to the Blacks.

David Woods has also written plays and is an accomplished artist. Here are a few samples of his poems.


“It is never good to agree
to hands choking you to death.”

        David Woods, ARTIFACT (For Rose)

“Each fragment lying outside
The structure of love
Turns to monster in the late night,

Each society that discards people
Sharpens hands for killing.”

      David Woods, MACHUKIO (The Terror)


***

A few months ago I was asked to be one of the judges for a writing competition. And whew, the more I thought about this judging task, the more serious I felt about the whole venture. Me, having the audacity to tell people that their stories are better or worse than somebody else's!

You see, I’ve submitted a few short stories to a competition or two. And, I’m proud to say, I’ve never won any. Yeah, blow the horns and bang the drums.

However, I’ve come close. One story got an honourable mention and one made it to the long list on a CBC short story competition.

The thing is, I labour over the stories I submit. Rewrite and rewrite. Change the plot. Discard the plot. Start a new story. Totally change that plot. Get out my notes and check the story against lists of short story musts and maybes. On and on and on and then one day I mail the story out. Usually on the deadline day.

Once it’s in the mailbox I try to forget about it. Put it out of my mind, but still, there’s always a tiny flitting bug memory that buzzes around in the back of my consciousness. Which periodically bites me on the brain stem and makes me think, “I wonder how I’ll do in the competition?”  “When will I hear from those short story writing gods?”

I also wonder who is judging my story. Is the judge a woman or a man? How old is the judge? Are they watching television and eating a peanut butter sandwich while they are reading my precious baby? Are they drinking? Oh god, no. While they were looking at my story? My story!!

Is he or she in a bad mood? What kind of life philosophy do they have? Will my story yank their chain the wrong way? Are they sophisticated, snobby readers?

So, when I was reading the stories that I was supposed to judge, I kept all those thoughts in my head. I really, really tried to read the stories carefully. And I didn’t eat anything while I was carefully reading them. Although, I did drink a cup of hot tea.  And I only had quiet music on while I sat in my office with my door shut as tight as a honey jar.

Not only that, but Sue also had a read of the stories and made her own notes. Oh yes, we made notes, but I didn’t read her notes until I finished reading the stories. I didn’t want to be pre-prejudiced. (Is that a word?) Neither did she read mine.

She was as serious about the job as I was and then afterwards we sat over a cup of tea and talked about the stories and argued a bit and then came to a conclusion.

Of course, it was a subjective exercise and in the overall picture that is probably a good thing. Because writing and art are subjective by nature. As are so many of the dictates we are exposed to which tell us how to behave or not to behave, eat or talk. Much subjectivity must rule if our lives are to expand, and if we and our race are to venture out into the creative unknowns.

Writing Tips I've Gleaned over the Years

Here are a few points to remember if you are writing a short story for a contest.

1: Begin with a bang.

2: Try to introduce an element of uncertainty or suspense at the beginning.

3: Make your characters alive and real.

4: Make your story different.

5: If you have no length restrictions then try to keep your story reasonably short. Say between 1,500 and 3,000 words.

6: Have an ending that is positive, meaning one with a different turn to it. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending. It can be sad, but it should say something important.

7: Make sure you have one clear central theme or plot running through the story.

8: Try for a story that goes against the grain. Don’t always stick to the politically correct issues of the day.

9: Follow the contest rules.

10: Watch out for errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.  No matter how many times you reread your work, you will miss some errors. Most writers ask at least one other person to proofread their stories.
***
I’m going to try to tie a thin thread between our time at the cottage and my thoughts on subjectivity, rules, freedom and creativity. Here goes.

We recently spent a week at a cottage. It was a large cottage. It had to be because ten of us were going to be rattling around inside its walls. And it was a beautiful cottage. Alas, it did have some problems.

For example, the well went dry. Which meant the toilets didn’t work for a time. Therefore a gigantic truck had to squeeze down the cottage road and pump thirty thousand litres of water into the parched well.

However, we still didn’t have the downstairs toilet or washing machine operating because there was a pain-in-the-ass leak down there. So the plumber had to shut the water off to the downstairs washroom until it was fixed.

This problem affected the family members who had to sleep in the basement or, to use a more genteel label, the downstairs. The downstairs was damp and probably not so comfortable for those family members and some nights the pump was running almost continuously.

There were other problems too. One family had a sick cat which had to go to the hospital and another family had a child who was bitten by a tick and she had to go to the hospital.

So you might think that I would think the week at the cottage was near to being a disaster. But in my mind it wasn’t even close. And it also proved that having lived a life that was a bit or a lot off the grid can be an advantage.

You see, even though there wasn’t plumbing for a day, there was an outhouse. And that’s what I used anyway. Even before the plumbing went up shit creek. Because I was used to using a shit-house or, if you want to be more genteel about describing it, a privy.

I remember when Sue and I moved to our trailer with the indoor toilet that we missed the outhouse. Missed sitting inside, with the door open, looking at the ants, listening to the wind, watching the clouds, smelling the flowers, feeling the snowflakes tickle our face, listening to the ice on the lake speak. Those kinds of natural earth- bound events.

So, when the two dumpers shut down, it was no big deal for us. And when the plastic toilet bowl pail in the outhouse was full, again there was no big problem. Sue and I simply went outside and dumped it in the designated place so the various family members would have a tidy place to attend to their personal needs and requirements. And she and her daughter hauled buckets of water from the ocean for washing purposes.

The privy had a Dutch door so we could sit in there, secure from onlookers, while admiring the ocean and watching the blue heron who spent time on the beach.

Antigonish Harbour
Antigonish Harbour
What were the other positives? The beautiful ocean. The trip to PEI. The chance for the family to better understand each other and to spend undistracted time together. Time to read and drink beer or wine or rum and coke or ginger ale or cola, etc. And the weather was good for the most part, so we all played in various ways outside. The meals created by Sue’s son and son-in-law were wonderful. We got to meet an interesting fella who helped us all realize that the world doesn’t whirl the same way for everyone. Or maybe I should say, revealed to us that the sun shines on everybody. Subjectivity. Subjectivity.

I found a hiking trail; we played games with each other; I met up with a dog named “Luka” who was kind enough to jump up on me and show me his teeth.

white dog
Luka
My new camera captured some beautiful pictures; I kayaked for the first and second time. Oh, I could go on and I’m sure that everybody else has lots of good memories too.

Of course, we all went into the cottage with a bunch of expectations. And, the cottage was reasonably expensive, so of course we wanted everything to work out. But instead there were the problems. Things broke, didn’t work the way we wanted them to and it rained one day, just like life. Lots and lots of things happen in life. And, in my mind, it’s the things in life that surprise us and disrupt our plans, or don’t follow the rules as laid down by those who have the power to lay them down, that play a large part in what moves the human world forward in a creative Wabi Sabi way. (Wabi Sabi is the Japanese art of appreciating the beauty in the naturally imperfect world.)



Antigonish Harbour
View of Antigonish Harbour from Cottage
***
By the way, I painted our trailer a different shade of green. We like it better.

One interesting thing, though. If you look at the picture it looks like one section had one less coat of paint applied to it. However, it didn’t. They all received the same amount. Maybe it was the rain that caused one section to look more faded. Maybe I mixed one batch better than another. Who knows, but
DOESN'T IT LOOK CREATIVE?

mobile home
Our newly painted home
***
             “For every evil under the sun
              There is a remedy, or there’s none;
           If there is one, try and find it;
           If there is none, never mind it.”
                                                   A Proverb


            “The woods were dark, and the night was black,
            And only an owl could see the track;
            But the cheery driver made his way
            Through the great pine woods as if it were day.

            I asked him, ‘How do you manage to see?
            The road and the forest are one to me.’
            ‘To me as well,’ he replied, ‘And I
            Can only drive by the path in the sky.’

                                                  Amos R. Wells, The Path in the Sky

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River Dance

16/7/2014

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“It is springtime. The zen master and his pupil work in the garden. There, a flock of birds in the sky!
The pupil says to the master, ”Now it will turn warm, the birds are coming back.”
The master answers:”The birds have been here from the beginning.”

Mondo Zen

***
I think my blogs are evolving into a novel, or a book of some sort. A story about how two ‘nearly young people’ live in the forest. In a trailer on a flood plain.

The book’s main plot dealing with one big question. When will the friggen river burst its banks? The book ending with the river’s final onslaught. Where she washes these two overly optimistic protagonists, down to the wide open sea? Where the squid live and love and the trailer people row like hell? See: Oceantrip.com.

You see, the Middle River holds our mortgage and some day she might arrive at our door, dripping wet and with a plan. She’ll enter our place, without a please or a thank-you. Turn our legal mortgage documents into lumps of soggy pulp, drywall and chipboard. Row, row, row your trailer. In 4/4 time.

I think we both have gamblers’ blood in us. “You’ve got to know when to hold them and you’ve got to know when to show them”... or something like that. Accurate or not, we’re playing poker with the river. And I don’t even know how to play poker. Not even strip poker, having had to resort to strip euchre and strip crazy eights at certain times in my life.


But why do people gamble? One reason is they like the thrill. And it’s hardly ever boring around here. And both of us hate boredom.
toolshed
Old Wood Shed, now Tool Shed
We have a tool shed at the back of the lot. Huddled in the corner. A fair-sized one and a good place to store our surplus stuff.

An old fella down the road told us that the tool shed used to be in the front part of our property. Ha! Our property. Did I just make a funny?

Anyway, in the great rainstorm of 2010, the rains did fall and the waters did flow and the road became impassible and our lot became a river. The said tool shed floated free of its place, and migrated to the other end of the property.

Sue and I took up the river’s poker challenge, looked at our cards and said to the river, “We’ll raise you one.”

So we had a new shed built in the same place the old tool shed had been located. We also had skirting put around the trailer. So there! But we were careful. We told them to stake the shed down.

woodshed
New Wood Shed
Then one night, not long after these jobs were completed, it began to rain and the rain continued and continued until the river burst her banks. And the waters got close to our trailer. And in the morning, when we awakened after a sleepless night of listening to the river gnawing on our scant lawn, we found all kinds of rocks, stones, branches and other debris laid out on our table. Close to a royal flush.

We were also excited to find a beautiful skeleton of a tree. Its bark fully stripped away. It looked like it could make a shiny sculpture for our property, like a totem pole.


So we said to our river. “We’ll up the ante and enjoy the fact that you put this beautiful tree on our property to use as a sculpture of some sort. Thank you.”
tree from river
Gift from River
Then we went out and purchased five brand new windows for the living room. Oh, oh. What hand is the river holding? A month and a bit later the rains did fall and winds did blow. The flood waters rose and the trees did fall. So that we lost some mighty big trees. Which started to plug up part of the river.

I went out with my chain saw and began to cut the trees up. Until the snows came and made it too difficult.

“Thank you, river. You have brought us a nice chopping block. Actually more than one, and you have provided us with the opportunity to get some mighty fine firewood.”


“Oh yeah,” said the river. So she sent another flood last January. Her waters filled our driveway and flowed up to our trailer. We decided we should vacate because there was so much snow to melt and it was a-melting and it was a-raining. We put some of our belongings on our toboggan and pulled it over the new river and drove to Baddeck where we stayed in a beautiful hotel overnight and then at a friend’s for a few days. Where we had a wonderful holiday.

“Oh yeah,” said the river.

And she tossed out a spring flood, which did pile up more trees. So now the beavers have found themselves a nice place to live. And on a day when the river was back to being as nice as a little kitty cat, we took a gander at the pile of tree trunks and branches in the river. We studied the physics of the pile of wood and decided that for me to chainsaw it up was like my playing a dangerous game of pick- up sticks. And anyway, we thought that maybe the wall of trees might divert the river’s course and make her less of a threat. Said to hell with the pile of trees. Laughed at the pile of trees and branches. Then drove to the Co-op, located in magnificent Margaree Forks, where we bought a bottle of wine and some other necessities.

downed trees
Mess of Downed Trees
After a week of being left alone by the river, we put up a wee gazebo. A little six-by-six closet that popped right out of the bag. Like popcorn heated up in a micro-wave. We set it up within a few feet of the river.

“Up yours, river.” Of course we didn’t put up the gazebo to antagonize the river, but to stop the mosquitoes and black flies from bothering us.

Because there’s nothing a black fly likes better than running water. And this water never stops running. It’s in superb shape.


Then one sunny day I was sitting in the little gazebo closet. Reading a book and drinking a diet drink. The gazebo all zippered up.

Picture
At one point I stopped reading and studied the mesh wall. Watched a tiny black fly land, then struggle with its own Rubik’s Cube. Which was, in his case, the gazebo’s mesh. I observed the wee insect twist his head this way and that way until he had it at just the right angle. And then, victory! Black Fly Houdini pushed himself through the hole and was free as a bird. Inside my protected place, and I’m sure I heard a whole host of rivulets snickering and chuckling.

So we ordered in our fix-it guy and we purposely installed, “in your face, river”, a brand new expensive front door and screen door.

And the river, within hours, laid a host of mosquitoes down on our card table and just for a laugh sent us, a few days later, Hurricane Arthur.  The winds did blow and the rains did pour down but nothing much really happened here.

Ha!  We raise you two. We’re talking of a pitched roof on our little mobile home. And a new stove. How much would that raise the ante?

***
However, you can tell we’re attached to the place and the river. The birds, the trees, the plants, the animals, the mountains, the people, the scents, the sounds and the seclusion.

It’s a yin-yang thing. Not only is the river a threat, she also offers us solace and is as powerful as any therapist in any office in any city, town or village. A therapist who offers us therapy twenty-four seven. Her office just outside our window.

“Oh Dr. River, I just can’t get myself up in the morning. I drag myself to my coffee cup. I drag myself to my job. Everything is so organized. I need a challenge.”

“I’ll give you a zest for life. I’ll put some adrenalin into your veins.”

She slaps down a flood.

But she teaches us more than that. As we watch the river flow by we realize the water comes from somewhere and the water goes somewhere. In a continuous cycle of rain and evaporation. Patiently flowing by with a no-sweat attitude.


“What! Would you wish that there be no dried trees in the woods and no dead branches on a tree growing old?”

                                  A seventy-year-old Huron


   Like everything in life, we all pass through a complete life cycle. We are born. We die and our bodies become something else. Maybe, when you slap that mosquito, you’ve just sent Julius Caesar back into the after-life. Et tu Brutus?

“Am not I
 A fly like thee?
 Or art not thou
 A man like me?”

          William  Blake


“When the finite enters in the Infinite, it becomes the Infinite, all at once. When a tiny drop enters into the ocean, we cannot trace the drop. It becomes the mighty ocean.”

                                      Sri Chinmoy
 


The river has other lessons. Its eternal flowing into the ocean teaches us not to believe in the nonsensical logic that our society swallows hook, line and news clip. That not accepting the worldly wisdom would reduce the chaos in our cities, temper our crazed belief in unlimited growth, and slow down our lemming-like intrinsic disrespect for our environment. Teach us that we are not in control. Never were and never will be. That’s just one of our myths that will be told by a future ancient.

And our river is music. The music that comes from the stars. The music that is us. Our river dances and sings and growls and calls our bluff. Our river plays a mean game of poker.

“See how I’m sitting
Like a punt pulled up on land.
Here I am happy.”

          Tomas Transtromer


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Cape Breton-Wow!

26/5/2014

6 Comments

 
Congratulations to the following outstanding Cape Bretoners:
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Author Bill Conall, whose latest book, "The Promised Land" won the 2014 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. His novel follows two generations of outsiders trying to fit into their new Cape Breton surroundings.  See more at: http://www.zoomerradio.ca/news/latest-news/bill-conall-takes-leacock-medal-humour/#sthash.i36alvOw.dpuf

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Author and publisher Sherry D. Ramsey, whose speculative fiction book, “One’s Aspect to the Sun”, published by Tyche Press, made the eligibility list for nomination to this year’s Prix Aurora Awards.   See more at: http://www.sherrydramsey.com/?page_id=2094 and check out her current projects in process. Sherry is also well known as one of the three publishers of Third Person Press.

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Multi-talented Leah Noble, whose blog was featured recently on the front page of The Chronicle Herald in recognition of her creativity in drawing the world’s attention to Cape Breton : http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1205722-dream-big-cape-breton . Leah is also quick to acknowledge other local bloggers.


My old buddy George from Ontario has been crashing at our place. It’s his first visit to Cape Breton and we’ve made sure that he’s seen and experienced as much as possible. I’ve taken him on a few hikes in Middle River, including one on the mountain. Sure looked a lot different from the cityscapes he’s used to! And he really enjoyed our trip around the Cabot Trail. It was wow this and wow that. An explosion of oohs and aahs. We made many stops along the way so he could record some of the incredible views, but I don’t think he’s likely to forget any of it.  We finished the day with a campfire in our back yard.

We also took him to the Doryman Pub and Grill in Chéticamp last Saturday afternoon to celebrate his birthday. We were all impressed by the outstanding fiddling offered by Colin Grant and Jason Roach. It was a toe-tapping, glass-tipping time and there was a cozy feeling about the place. A nice mix of Celtic and Acadian music. If you haven’t been there, take a look at what they offer: http://doryman.ca/index.php/events . Try to get there early enough to get a window seat overlooking the water or you might be sitting at a boarded over pool table, which isn’t so bad if you are bothered by wobbly tables.

Here are some of the sights along the Cabot Trail that got George wishing he could move down here.  He had a good time exploring the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, but he also enjoyed shopping in Sydney and North Sydney, eating pizza at Tom’s in Baddeck and getting a haircut at ‘Design Hair’ on Big Baddeck Road.

Cabot Trail
Cabot Trail Winding
Chéticamp Harbour
Chéticamp Harbour
snow on Cabot Trail mid-May
Snow along Cabot Trail in Mid-May
Clouds settling on Cabot Trail
Clouds settling on mountains
Neil's Harbour
Neil's Harbour
Grande Falaise
Grande Falaise
Mountainous vista
Such a Vista!
No matter how many times we drive around the Cabot Trail, we still find the scenery breath-taking. 
Tom's Pizza Baddeck
View from Tom's Pizza in Baddeck
Campfire
Relaxing around the campfire
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Literary Angst at the Bird Feeders

6/4/2014

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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.
Picture
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.

Picture
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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Shack-Wacky Hype

24/2/2014

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A few days ago, I was snow blowing the long path to the tool shed, where I’ve been storing ?????.  I’d started clearing out the snow before the sun had even rubbed the sleepy dust out of its corona, so it was dark, and I was thankful for the headlamp on ????. You see, the weather person had called for rain. Which meant that when the temperature dropped, the rain-gorged snow would become as hard as a stale all-bran muffin.

You may notice the question marks in parts of this blog. That’s because I’m curious to see if you readers have been paying attention to my fourteen blogs. Feel free to leave a comment with the names represented by the question marks! I also think I’m doing this weird question mark thing because I’m feeling frisky. Because I’ve managed to compose fourteen blogs, this being my fifteenth. High five! Fourteen, about to become fifteen!!
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So ???? was shining his light forth into the darkness, while the wind whipped snow back into my face, because it couldn’t figure out where the heck it was going. As ???? blew the snow into the air, more snow filled in the path behind me, and as I inhaled the sweet scent of snow blower fumes and mouse pee, I asked myself, “Is this hell or heaven? Did we make the right move when we up and left ???? to settle in the Cape Breton highlands? Where there are only two kinds of flies, black flies and snow flies? A place, where even when the day is sunny and bright and not a cloud hovers over my head, the snow gently falls from the sky, albeit at an angle, and alights upon my just cleared patch of home turf.” And I thought if I listened carefully, shut the snow blower off for a few friggen seconds, I might even hear the mountain winds blowing through the bare trees. And if I was really, really quiet, I might hear those tall, rounded, tree-covered mountains tee-heeing and having a great old time. For much of our snow is booted our way from the other side of those mountains.

In summary, and after a bit of time to think it over, I’ve decided that it’s not heaven but a hell of a lot of work. I’m reminded of the last verse of Cape Breton poet Aaron Schneider’s poem, “Life at Sea":


“We’ll stay with the storm,
run before it stoking
and steaming, while each day asks
what tied us to this frozen helm
horizon a great white wave?”
FYI, the snow blower is in the shop for repairs and I have to drive through a snowstorm to find out what the doctor has to say.
ski trails and mountains
Skiing on Snowy Ski Trails Beats Snow Blowing!
As I said, this is my fifteenth blog. Fifteen. Not a big deal for some bloggers, who seem to zip one off every day or two. When I first started writing this blog, I was given some advice. These are the two suggestions I remember. 

One fella said, “You have to watch that you don’t write yourself out.”  His fear being, I think, that writers could put so much of their writing energy and content into the blog, that they wouldn’t have much left for their other creative endeavours. His advice put a bit of a scare into me.

The second piece of advice sounded more daunting. It was that I should put the blog out fairly often. Once a week at least. So I could continually be in my readers’ faces, waving some new Larry tidbit.

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Holy crap, Batman. I’m not even on facebook. I can see the value of facebook, but I’m not comfortable with it.

My emails are person specific. One email per person. All personally tailored, with a bit of gossip for this guy and gossip about the first guy to the second guy; each email hand-made with person-specific snoop and chatter. Very few of my emails are generic, mass produced or consumer friendly. So, as you can see, I wasn’t prepared to pump generic tidbits into the blogosphere.


I also worried that if I became too prolific, I might be disrespecting, neutering and trivializing my emotions, ideas and teeny bits of wisdom, by semi-obliviously tossing them into the mass ocean of talk, words and images. Which scream, blare, humour, whisper or sing from anything that has a screen or a speaker. Besides, I don’t think I have an unlimited amount of ideas, news and knowledge to feed into this hungry sea which often seems to have the memory of a goldfish.

Also, I have read in more than one book about writing, that you can talk a story away. Not run out of the ideas or feelings required to write in a blog, but yap away the creative power needed to write something complex and powerful.

For example: I enter a shop. I see a small, older woman in a tiny, cluttered room. She’s selling second-hand books and clay figurines made by her husband. The store is empty. She’s waiting for customers, sitting behind an old cash register and drinking coffee out of a small white styrofoam cup. It’s not hard to tell that her business isn’t doing well. The room looks shabby and dusty and she looks shabby and dusty, but also sad, lonely as hell and a little bit desperate. I can feel her melancholy. I also sense a story bubbling up in my mind. It begins to simmer. Empathy for her plight is stirring it up.

And I know that my muse, who lives under our trailer, can feel it too. Which means he’s probably working on the story while I’m doing whatever. Like when I’m frying eggs and boiling water or clearing snow off our laneway. I think I’ll write a blog about snow clearing some day. Ha!

So, let’s say I meet this woman, and then a little while later, I get together with some friends at a local pub, and while quaffing down a beer I tell them about this lonely woman I saw at this shop. I discuss a possible story. Leak out a few plot ideas. Blah, blah, blah. My friends might offer their opinions and the story becomes muddied, mutated and mangled before I have time to sit in my writing room and keyboard it out.

The next day or so, when I sit down to write this story, guess what? The story has been partially gutted. My emotions,  which were fresh and eager to be penned, have fizzled like a wet firecracker. Damn! 

I’m not saying the story has vanished. It might still be there, but the fire may have been partially talked away. And as I said in my last blog, a large part of fiction writing, at least for me, comes from the gut. It’s not really a rational process. 

Maybe it’s because when you leak out or pour out a story idea you partially encapsulate it or frame it. Nothing my creative muse hates more than a framed idea. Gutless, and when I invite my muse up to my writing/Black and Decker drill and saw/Sue’s files/our vacuum cleaner storage unit/office, to join in the writing project, well, he’s ticked off. 

“Hey dude, you’ve already blabbed that story out. So what do you want me to do? Warm it up and send it out as second-hand crap? Go pencil yourself.” 
Larry's Office
My Office
Anyway, as you may know, I spend a lot of my time in a little trailer in the forest. Trying my best to be hip with the hype and not go shack-wacky. Maybe I should say, worrying about getting with the program, but not often actually doing it. And I don’t really want to end up doing what Salinger did. He wrote his last works and then hid them away. I guess writing them was enough for him. Where was his marketing savvy? What was wrong with him?

Sidney Cox once wrote, “Do not try to write a poem until you want to.”

Diamond in the roughDiamond in the Rough
So, maybe writing too many self-promotional words in order to get my writing out there, or talking too much about what I want to create, can mute my desire to write.

I know that as with everything in life, when you create, you’re walking a fine line. Because the diamond in the rough is super hard and yet as fragile as a spider’s web. Choosing not to run as quickly as the hare might fail to get a writer so much into the world’s  hungry, obsessive gaze, but it might also be a way to save his or her writing self by keeping the flames hot.


Yeats wrote:  “But when I shut my door and light the candle, I invite a marmorean Muse, an art where no thought or emotion has come to mind because another man has thought or felt something different, for now there must be no reaction, action only, and the world must move my heart but to the heart’s discovery of itself, and I begin to dream of eyelids that do not quiver before the bayonet.”
Lake Ainslie
Snow-covered Lake Ainslie
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Blood, Ink and Words

3/2/2014

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“One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
                                                                                                  Walt Whitman


From reading the above poem, I would have to believe that Walt Whitman would have agreed with the idea that we write from the gut and not from the head.

So might Salman Rushdie, who wrote: “...the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”

And what is my opinion? I think that emotions are at least as important as logic and knowledge. Maybe more so. That feelings are to our creativity, as firewood is to our wood stove.

And sometimes that can cause a problem or two. Because writers flirt, play, manipulate, tease and struggle with emotional material. Like a lion tamer, who tries to get the lion to do this and that while said lion growls, hisses, roars and even charges at the tamer. Now most of the time the charges aren’t carried to their final possibilities and the lion backs off. But sometimes the lion doesn’t drop his eyes and back off. Isn’t obedient. His attack is for real. Then you have trouble.

PictureDefinitely out of the cage!
Which is, as I previously said, one of the writer’s main sources of literary fuel.

If the lion gets you then you’re emotionally bleeding. A lot or a little bit, and the lion may be out of his cage. Outside your writing office. He’s free to roam wherever he darn well pleases while you try to wrangle him back into his cage. And doesn’t he just love to cuff you around when you’re trying to sleep? Like a cat toying with a mouse.


Chaos is defined in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary as: “utter confusion” or “the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe”.

Chaos is like having a truck dump a pile of building supplies onto your front lawn leaving you to figure out which part goes where. And winter is coming. And you’re low on money.

flooded driveway
What happened to our driveway?
Chaos plays willy-nilly with our normalcy. And yet it’s what writers play with. It’s their construction material. The bricks and mortar of the story that will get the pen smoking, or in this era, the keyboard.
Art hazardsHazardous Activity
I think that writing should come with a hazardous material caution manual or sign. “WARNING, WRITING CAN LEAD AN INDIVIDUAL TO A FEELING OF BEING LOST. IF EXPOSED TO WRITING CHAOS, PLEASE WRITE IN YOUR JOURNAL IMMEDIATELY. WASH CHAOS OUT WITH AT LEAST AN HOUR OF EXERCISE PER DAY. TALK TO SOMEBODY YOU TRUST. WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. GIVE IT TIME. HAVE A BEER OR TWO BUT NOT MANY MORE. MOST OF THE TIME.”

I’ve also both heard about and experienced the problems that arise when writers try to write about emotional experiences they are undergoing in the present. For example, if you’re going through a divorce, it’s difficult to use those experiences and the emotions in your writing until the sensations particular to that situation, have had time to settle and work themselves out.

Or, using the wood metaphor, until the wood has had time to dry. When it’s at its best to get your wood fire turning your stove pipes red. Otherwise, the wood is too green. So can your present emotional experiences be too green. It takes time.


Emotional chaos can come to anyone from a whole variety of experiences. A new job, the death of a loved one, a lost relationship, a new relationship, a loss of faith, a new faith, or from those places that have long been locked away. The hinges coated with rust and the door heavy with moss and age.

However, when a writer gets it sorted out and can begin to write about it, then the writing will be the real thing. The blood will be on the page and what reader can resist reading stories written in blood?

And writers have an advantage. They’re used to dealing with creative chaos. They can write it into something meaningful to themselves and to others. Get the mangy old lion cornered.

When creative or personal chaos strikes me, I look at the sky, the mountains, the trees and the ocean or lake and I see how immense this universe is. It’s easy when you live in Cape Breton to see this immensity of the universe. Then, if I’m lucky, I can allow myself to let go and be gracious about the chaos that is supply teaching for my usual rascally rabbit muse. And I write.

As they say, the tree that bends, lives to grow another day, or something like that
.

According to Grinder, (whom I am going to have to wake up today, before the rain turns the snow into mush, and then the cold turns the mush into )*(&^&^%^$% ice), “The snow blower whose shear pin breaks is a snow blower who will live to blow snow for another day.” I couldn’t have put it any better myself.


Cabot Trail
Sunday Drive on Cabot Trail
And where is our soul while all this is going on? Don’t worry, it’s safe, even if it has to go into hiding for awhile.

John O’Donohue, Irish mystic and Connemara poet, wrote:
“The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery--when the spiritual search is too intense and hungry, the soul stays hidden. The soul was never meant to be seen completely.”

Tolstoy wrote in his book, Anna Karenina: “He was nine years old, he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love. His educators complained that he did not want to learn, yet his soul was overflowing with a thirst for knowledge.”

So hang in and believe that some day it will be a bloody wonderful story.                      

                                                ***

Speaking of chaos, have you been listening to some of our skilled politicians lately? The ones who seldom spin a lie, but rarely tell the truth? Now there’s a Zen koan for you.

crows meeting
"Cawcus" Meeting
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CAW! CAW! CAW!

23/11/2013

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We’re back. With a tale of two cities: Halifax, Nova Scotia and Kingston, Ontario. Whew! Busy. So different from the life we live here in Cape Breton. On the Middle River, which, believe it or not, holds our mortgage. Because if the river decided to pump itself up and become like the mighty Nile or Fraser Rivers then we’d be carried away. High rubber boots, trailer, mortgage and all.

As we were crossing the Canso Causeway, heading toward the ‘Welcome to Cape Breton’ sign, I told Sue that it felt like we were emerging from some kind of tunnel of love. Only we would call the tunnel we’d been living in, ‘The Tunnel of Noise, Chaos and Stimulation’. Mental and physical.

The city must have had a considerable effect on my partner. Because on the way home, she mentioned that she wondered where she’d stored her gun cleaning kit. Said she had this hankering to take her rifle to the shooting range to brush up on her skills. First time I’d heard her mention this.
Halloween Aftermath
Halloween Aftermath in Halifax
However, only after we had arrived back at our little Cape Breton trailer did we realize just how different our life is from normal city life. I’ll tell you one of the reasons I knew. It was the story titles I was hearing from either Sue or myself.

Speaking of titles, I’ve noticed that many of the best titles that have occurred to me have come from brief statements spoken during a conversation. I think I have even recorded some of them. I just don’t know where I put the folder. Do you have that problem?

Anyway, after we got home and I’d had time to unpack and pop a cold one, I heard myself saying, “I’m not going to caw anymore.” I certainly never thought such a thing while I was watching my hat get run over and destroyed on a windy Halifax street, or when I discovered a twenty-five dollar parking ticket on my windshield. But here, back in Cape Breton, this phrase made perfect sense.

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You see, I don’t think I understand crow talk. Every time a murder of crows gets cawing from trees above my head and I try to answer with my crow call, they usually flee. Cawing and croaking all the way across the land. Except for one, who remains to make sure all the crows have completely evacuated. Then he or she takes off in a flurry of caws. I have an authentic sounding caw. It’s not that, it’s just that I don’t know whether I’m cawing, “Bugger off”, “Good morning”, or “I have a hankering for roast crow”.
moose skullmoose jaw
And it wasn’t long after I’d made this profound statement that my partner shouted through the screen door, “Would you pick up my deer teeth, please?”

Pick up a quart of milk, a loaf of bread or a case of beer, but I’d never heard anybody ask to have their deer teeth picked up. Not in the city. But out here, resting on our porch railing are a moose skull, a deer jaw, some antlers, a couple of old bottles and several rocks. So it makes perfect sense when you live here and there’s been a high wind all morning.


need for snowblowerWhy we need the snow blower!
However, yesterday I didn’t come up with any smart titles for what I found in the tool shed. I’d wanted to get the snow blower going. Move it closer to the trailer. Unfortunately, I’d left some insulation in the tool shed. There are a lot of mice out in the world that think pink. I pulled the cover off said snow blower. A mouse leapt out. Ran for his or her life. A ball of insulation fell to the wooden floor along with mouse doo-doo, pee-pee and some other kind of pinkish coloured liquid. Which took me a minute or two to figure out. Gasoline. The little bugger had chewed the gas line and now it has to be repaired.  The title for that story: “Pass me the &%##@#&& traps, dear.”

As I stepped through the trailer door, mumbling some distinctive old English words, I smelled something shitty. The aroma seemed to be coming from my boots. I took a look. It was doggy doo. Apparently, when I’d walked to the mailbox, I’d stepped in a deposit that our neighbour’s dog likes to mail to our residence. And believe you me, we’re both pretty sure that there is a message in that soft brown envelope.

Anyway, I took the boot off, scraped most of the poop off with a stick and then ran water onto the boot from our outdoor tap.

Have to run. Sue is shouting that an animal is banging around inside our wood stove.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

deer in Frontenac Park
Deer in Frontenac Provincial Park, Ontario
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Don't Blink-Here Comes a Short Story!

26/10/2013

1 Comment

 
Conall's book
I’ve finished reading Bill Conall’s book, “The Promised Land, a Novel of Cape Breton”. It sure was a ‘novel’ look at Cape Breton, and I enjoyed it. To me, it was a gentle story, chock full of interesting Cape Breton characters, with lots of adventures woven together to make a great read. A wonderful book for tourists and others to enjoy learning about Cape Breton. To read an excerpt, go to his website: http://billconall.com/my-books/the-promised-land-a-novel-of-cape-breton/ 

We will be heading to Halifax on Tuesday. On Halloween Night, I will be trick-or-treating down the dark streets of the city with little Hannah, Sue’s granddaughter, scaring the willies out of the residents. I’ve sent a note to my dentist.

 A few days later, we’ll be off to Kingston, Ontario. So it’s possible I might be off the grid for a few weeks. But don’t worry. I have my dentist’s prescription safely tucked inside my wallet, in case my front tooth gets too sore. And don’t worry, if it does get too achy, I will fill the prescription and swallow the pills. So there, there, it will be all right.

My dentist has promised me that I can have a root canal when I get back. If I so desire. So, don’t worry, and anyway, the many excellent pubs in Kingston may also help with my tooth therapy.  


Middle River
My Meditation Spot on Middle River
The last month I have been struggling with two short stories for a contest. I told Sue that writing a story is like giving birth. I’m sure she finds this hard to believe as she has given birth. Twice.

Of course, I’m talking metaphorically. Because I’m a writer, damn it. I’m talking metaphorical birth. Push, push. Breathe out.

 “Okay,” I said to Sue. “Does giving birth last for weeks and weeks? Does giving birth turn you into a neurotic when you’re finished”? 

Maybe it does, I don’t know. Does giving birth make your eyes blink rapidly for weeks? Make a teeny-weeny ache feel like the most acute, scary disease that humankind has ever been smitten by? Oh, I could go on and on.


Katherine Anne Porter said, after finishing her novel, ‘Ship of Fools’, “I finished the thing; but I think I sprained my soul.”
prepping hiking trail
Making the Gold Brook Mine trail safe for a group hike
I’ve been doing some research on what judges are looking for in a short story. I’m talking about stories under 4,000 words in length. What I’m finding is that many of them want a long version of a short twitter. So I’ve been cutting, pruning, gouging, snipping, crushing, erasing, splattering and stomping on large sections of the first versions of my stories. As a result, what may have begun as a one-hundred-word paragraph, might, by the time I’m finished, be down to fifty words, or twenty words or maybe the paragraph gets the big SNUFF.

I think learning about and trying to write short stories for contests is similar to athletes training for and running the hundred yard dash.

I know people who go walking. I mean WALKING. They read books on how to maximize their stride. They walk a certain distance each day, walk as fast as they can to get the maximum aerobic effect. You see them dropping their heads periodically to check on what their computerized watches are telling them. And those watches can tell you a heck of a lot. Your blood pressure, your heart rate, how many calories you’re using, how many footsteps you’ve taken, how far down your stomach pipe your last granola bar has slid - oh, just lots and lots of data.

I think writers writing for judges can be like those intense walkers or cyclists. They’re trying to reach a goal. To win, and in writing short stories that means making the story super tight and super taut. Big muscles with little fat.

What about the hiker who hikes to see things? To smell, listen, taste, touch and think? That’s how I like to hike or to cycle. To be aware. Not to do a twitter hike.

goldfish
However, I’ve read that the average reader nowadays has the concentration level of a goldfish.

“Oh look, Bob, there’s a man in a funny looking helmet blowing air bubbles.

“Oh look, Bob, there’s a man in a helmet blowing bubbles.”

“Look, Bob. A man blowing bubbles.” That’s my goldfish twitter feed short story.

Anyway, here are two, oh what the heck, I’ll give you three short story pointers. Start with a big bang and finish with a big summing up bang. And of course, as in all good writing, show, don’t tell.

Have a good week.


fall colours
Buddy Lee enjoying fall colours at Lake 0' Law
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The Suspect

14/10/2013

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Holy Helvetica font, Batman. This is my seventh blog post. So thank you to all the readers who have actually landed on my website and have taken the time to read it.

Last weekend, the Cabot Trail Writers Festival hit North River. Sue and I attended the Friday and Sunday events. Well worth it! We enjoyed the readings by authors Russell Wangersky, Carol Bruneau and Peter Robinson, their panel discussion on Sunday morning, the music of Otis Tomas, Carmel Mikol and Buddy MacDonald and all the tasty food. The fall colours were nearly in full display so the venue was about as perfect as one could wish for.

So, I got myself all educated up, by listening to excellent writers throwing out their writing wisdom and then I went home.
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Panel Discussion at Cabot Trail Writers Festival
Last Monday, I was working on a short story. Previously, I had read an article on what judges are looking for in a good short story. I’ll give you a partial list. Here it is: The writing should be sincere, hold few generalities, pack an immediate punch, show rather than tell, be character-driven and have knock-out sentences. There are others too. Aren’t there always others?

The one point that stuck with me was the grab-the-reader idea. To fill my stories with zip - wild sex if need be. To grab the readers by the shirt collar, lift them up off their feet, stare them square in the eyes, and shout, “Read my story, damn it, or I’ll melt into a puddle of talking-head verbiage.”
PictureIn Creative Mode
So, I was sitting in my back-friendly chair, tapping away on my old, somewhere around twenty-year-old Performa 580CD MacIntosh computer. A workhorse. I was attempting to write something that had sticky plot claws and would save me from becoming another wicked witch in a meltdown. I’m not sure, but I might have even been wearing coloured striped socks, when did I not see floating by my window a scary looking woman wearing black, riding a bicycle with a little black dog in the bicycle basket? Oh, probably not, but as I shook that image away, I thought I’d stumbled upon a real zipper. Which I can’t share, because I’m still considering it. Because that’s one of the rules of writing. Don’t talk away your story before you have written it. At least it works for me.

I sometimes hit upon topics that emotionally seem to be so far outside my comfort zone that they induce guilt in me. Scare me, and having been raised in a religiously conservative tradition, I come by this feeling naturally. So, there I was, tip-tapping away, while noticing that my back was beginning to complain. I put the pain down to the damage done to my back years ago when it prevented me from being crushed by a falling, fully-loaded fridge, or to a psychosomatic reaction to writing "no-no" stuff. I adjusted my chair and kept on slogging away and suddenly the paragraph I was working on was jumping all over the computer screen. What the h---! I started banging on a few keys to make it stop. It didn’t. The wild, grab-you paragraph I was writing just leapt to another page. Then another and then back and then I was getting dizzy.

As if that weren’t bad enough, I realized that I had added about fifty blank pages to this story. I ran my fingers over the keys, hoping I could hit a key that would stop this nonsense. I’d lean forward to try another key and my paragraph would high-tail it for another page while more blank pages were being added. I started to wonder if my muse had something to do with it, but he was nowhere to be found.   I whispered, “Oh my god, I think I’ve written my way into a perverse, dangerous, spirit-filled hell-hole. Maybe I should stop writing this story and change direction.”

PictureThe Suspect
Then I figured it out. It was so simple. Did you see it? Remember, my back was sore. I’d readjusted my chair. The right arm of said chair was resting on the <ENTER> key on the keyboard. So simple...yet I was a little disappointed. Because, if my writing had been able to get my inanimate computer’s attention, just think what it might have done to the reader. It frightens me to think about it.

Of course, I had to clean up my chair’s interference and cut and paste to another document so I wouldn’t be saving about a hundred blank pages. Sue’s printer would not appreciate it, nor would Sue.

So, as you can see, writing is a psychologically dangerous profession. And even though I had solved the problem, I began to wonder if my chair was trying to give me a message. Not the computer, but my chair. I mean, what are the odds that my chair’s arm would be able to hit the key that would make my brilliant, Hemingway-like paragraph leap around like a jumping bean?

Thanks again for sticking with me and my blog. I hope this blog doesn’t make you nervous about the objects around you but instead gives you a good idea to use so you can grab your readers’ attention and throw them on their proverbial asses.


Picture
My Hiking Buddy, Lloyd Stone
I know blogs aren’t supposed to be too long, because of the twitter world, but I just have to tell you that our bat is not far from us.

A few Saturdays ago, we were having new windows installed in our little ancient trailer. In preparation for this exercise, I had leaned a large piece of particle board against the woodshed and covered it with a large tarpaulin to keep it dry.

The contractor came to our door to tell us that there was a bat sleeping in the dark folds of the cover. Oh, we knew. She was back. We followed him to the board.

Yep, there was the little gal. Sleeping, and this is where it gets interesting. Sue is scared of bats. We have an understanding. I catch the bats and she catches the mice. So I found a box and tried to swipe the bat down into the box. The bat fluttered away. They do flutter like butterflies. Very interesting how they flutter and she fluttered to, you guessed it, Sue’s shoulder.

I walked around Sue, who was standing like a statue, and watched the little bat bare her teeth. They looked healthy and sharp. She seemed to like the material in Sue’s sweater.

Well, I did finally persuade the bat to drop off Sue’s shoulder into the box. Sue was the one who carried the box to the woods where she let her go. I expect to see both again.


I also must say that I was proud of Sue, who won’t let her fear of a creature get in the way of her understanding a creature. No matter how small or big it might be. 

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I'm a Writer, Dammit!

1/10/2013

2 Comments

 
I met a fella in a Baddeck store who’s trying to be a writer, like I’m trying to be a writer. Okay, okay, maybe I should have said that differently. He’s a writer like I’m a writer.

You see, if you’re like me, you only feel comfortable telling people your rank, serial number and how many toothbrushes you go through every year. You find it hard ratting yourself out by saying, “I’m a writer.”

What I tend to do, if I’m asked what I do, is skirt around the question. I’ll say, “I do a little writing.” “I’m trying to write a book. I doubt I’ll ever get it finished” “I have this idea for a story but I’m not sure it’s going anywhere.” I seldom say, “I’m writing. I’m a writer. I’m writing a novel.” Take that and put it in your pipe.

Abandoned truck
Buddy Lee's friend Smiley, down the road from our place
Anyway, while we were in the check-out lineup, he told me that he was having some trouble with his writing project. Then he rather apologetically said that he was mostly working on material that he’d already written. He looked sheepish. Which indicated to me that he felt that he wasn’t doing real writer’s work and was only piddling around on stuff he’d already wrestled down on his sheet of paper. He wasn’t being creative and productive.

I told him that in actual fact, I preferred to be working on something that I’d already got down in rough. It’s hard work too, but easier in some ways. Because I don’t have the problem of worrying whether I’m going to lose a transient thought or emotion before I get it down on paper. It’s there. It’s solid in its actual existence. (Like Smiley above!)

hitchhikerSmiley and Hitchhiker
For me, the first draft is the emotional draft. It sometimes comes out as easily as a fresh carrot being pulled from well turned soil. Sometimes it’s like pulling out a stubborn tooth. But once the emotional framework is laid down, once I have it in my favourite courier font, then I can chew on it. Savour it. I can leave the keyboard and go to the kitchen and make myself a cup of Ovaltine, knowing that when I return to the computer keyboard, the idea will still be there waiting for me. Confident that I will do something amazing to make it amazing.

It’s like decorating an empty apartment, when you’ve paid the first and last months’ rent. You know it’s yours. You can relax. Take your time getting it set up the way you want it to look. Unless, of course, there's an urgent reason to get it done quickly.


I’ll give you an example. Let me take a paragraph from my story, “Pigs, Prophets and Haunted Depths”. It can be found in my book, “White Eyes”. Let me show you what it looked like in the rough. Then I’ll show you the finished paragraph. Hang on. Here goes. “It felt like a thousand lizards were crawling over my body. I was losing my courage and I wanted to run like hell. Like Denise’s sister, I wanted out of the trailer, except the heavy rain was pounding down outside. So I leaped back into the bed, still having to have a pee. The blankets soggy, heavy and offering minimal protection.”

This paragraph reveals that the character is frightened, probably very frightened. Outside the rain is pounding down. The character is too scared to escape whatever scared him in the trailer and instead he runs back to his the bedroom, crawls into his bed and shivers the rest of the night away under his damp blankets.

The emotional action is laid out. I know where the lines are. What the parameters of this paragraph are all about. Now my job is to sit down, or stand up if I prefer, and fill that room with more details so the reader can really get a feel for this character’s sensations and situation.


The finished paragraph looks like this:

“I was overwhelmed with the sense of a thousand tiny lizards crawling all over my body, their wee nails pricking into my courage and leaving me with an unmanageable desire to run like hell. Like Denise’s sister, I wanted out of the trailer, except Niagara Falls was demolishing the night. So I leaped back into the bed, kidneys as seized up as I was. The blankets damp, heavy, and offering minimal protection.”

There, I think the character’s experience is clearer. The room has been enhanced.

Something struck me while I was writing the example paragraph from “White Eyes”. I wrote, “thousand tiny lizards crawling all over my body, their wee nails pricking into my courage.”

How many times have I gone over that paragraph and yet, only this morning, did I begin to wonder if lizards really have nails? The question never entered my mind. Now I’m assuming they do, because it’s too late to do anything about it, but still...Do they?

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of Smiley, one of Buddy Lee’s abandoned friends who lives down the road, and of the Druid Meditation pond which lies on our property.


Cheers,
Larry


Druid Pond
Druid Meditation Pond
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