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!
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":
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
Sidney Cox once wrote, “Do not try to write a poem until you want to.”
Diamond 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.
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.”
Snow-covered Lake Ainslie
