“The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change.” ~ Maya Angelou
The above quote is from one of my favourite Maya Angelou poems “On The Pulse Of Morning”. I thought about it recently. It’s the sort of poem that once you read or hear it, the steadfast hope for humanity never really leaves the back of your mind. Like a song or a painting that continues to speak to you on a deeper level, even if you haven’t thought about it in years. Until you remember it out of the blue one day. Or, in my case, out of the pink.
I’ve become an early riser. I do think you can be an early riser, but not necessarily a morning person. I like to be left alone with first thoughts and very little conversation over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. This wasn’t always possible and now it usually is. In these bleaker mornings before the winter solstice, I get up to make coffee and bring it with me to my office, where I turn on only one lamp and sit in semi-darkness to write my morning journal pages. Or I open the folder of my novel to continue where I left off editing the day before. I feel the most creative before troubling world news or the day’s tasks have a chance to filter in, along with the first signs of light at the window next to my desk.
The other morning I looked up from what I was writing to see the entire room around me was bathed in a pink sunrise. I glanced out the window to discover an astonishingly beautiful sky, then rushed to the front door to stand outside, shivering in PJs to snap a quick photo before the perfect moment was gone. Then I went back to my desk, remembering Maya Angelou’s poem about the pulse of morning and new steps of change.
This year I wrote a second novel. All the way from the beginning to a more recent end. I can’t tell you what day I started or exactly how long it took me to complete over many months. I only know I wrote the last sentence before I wrote the first one. For once, the ending was clearer to me than the beginning. I didn’t feel the need to document the process this time, not in the same way I did the first one, as though I was looking for permission to pursue the dream again. To call myself a writer.
After so many years of not writing, I think rediscovery was the complicated journey I needed to take, treading lightly, carefully. I wrote that first novel and my initial blog posts here with a sense of wonder. A sense of this is who I was and this is who I am now. Every thought, every memory shared, was a hidden pathway back to the writer I held on pause for thirty years. Once I rediscovered words, I began to struggle with what next and what does any of this mean? Reconnecting with The Writer has reminded me that creativity, like most things in life, requires confidence. Along with the determination to block out excuses and doubts and obstacles I tend to put in place like a protective barrier whenever something begins to feel too impossible to accomplish.
One morning I wrote in my journal: Word by word by word. That is how a novel is created. That was how both my novels were created. The first one out of wonder that I still had it in me to string along sentences into a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and end. The second was written with intention. Less wonder, more focus. I already knew I could take the meandering journey from beginning to end. Now I had to figure out the next steps. The way forward that sits in between finishing one journey and digging deeper to start another.
May the coming year bring new steps, new focus, new pathways between yesterday and tomorrow. Renewed hope and confidence.
“Lift up your eyes upon This day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream.“
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” ~ Margaret Atwood
There’s something about the week leading up to the autumn equinox that makes me more aware of my surroundings than at any other time of the year. Late September feels like the beginning to something I can never quite figure out. It must be related to the days of sharpening fresh pencils and wearing new sneakers that pinch toes because they haven’t been broken in yet. Daylight has begun to shorten and yet the hours somehow feel longer. The other day I asked myself, Do I move forward or stay in the same spot?
Recently I went on a short road trip getaway with my husband to the West Kootenays. We usually do that in August once work has slowed down a little for him. A few days to do nothing except float in mineral hot springs and take long, meandering walks along the lake. Pure bliss. This year we decided to go in September, thinking it would be less busy on the roads and it was. There were moments when it felt like we had mountainous highways all to ourselves and it gave me, the passenger, time to look at beautiful scenery, listen to classic rock, and think about where I am in my novel. That’s the only downside about taking a break from writing. The momentum gets lost.
I’ve spent most of my life thus far squeezing writing in when I can or when I feel motivated to do it. After closing my yarn shop a few years ago, I found myself with a lot more free time and no heavy business worries to focus on. It was the same weightless feeling of a busy school year ending and summer stretching out with endless possibilities. For the first time in a very long time I was able to focus on myself. At first I took some time to do nothing, really. Just putter about the house and organize messes I never got around to doing while working full-time. That’s the thing about mess, though, it always sneaks back in. At least it does for me. And I’m A-okay with that now because there’s so many other things I’d rather do than clean and sort and organize.
My mother told me something a long time ago when I was a young mom trying to balance work and kids’ activities and household chores etcetera etcetera. She said, “Nobody is remembered with perfect housekeeper written on their headstone, and if they are, well, isn’t that a damn shame?” I thought that was hilariously ironic then because my mom always worked outside the home and kept a fairly tidy house, and she still cleaned mine from top to bottom whenever she visited and I never knew if I should feel insulted about it or deeply grateful. I’ve only just realized she did that to give me a free moment to myself. Age and experience had taught her as it has me that mess will always come back no matter how hard we work to stay on top of it. It’s time for yourself that escapes far too easily.
These days I catch up on chores when I can and when I feel motivated to do so–the way I used to do with my writing. I’ve been meaning to clean my oven for three months. Almost every morning I tell myself I should do it over the summer before I use it more often in the fall and winter months. Then I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my desk to write. One summer day I decided instead to put on the air conditioning and roast a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for the entire family in honour of my son-in-law’s birthday. If I was going to clean the oven anytime soon, maybe I should really mess it up first. It still hasn’t been cleaned, but that unexpected turkey dinner was delicious and seemed well-received by everyone.
A day or so after we returned from our road trip, once everything had been unpacked and washed and put away again, I sat down to continue working on my novel and the only word I can think of to describe how I felt is numb. So I pulled out my writing journal to try to make sense out of it and saw the last time I wrote in it was back in July. I try not to look over past pages in my journal. In fact, I use a clip to close previous pages so the next time I open it I can focus on what comes next. Since July I’ve been working almost daily on my novel and haven’t felt the need to question where I am in it. It’s a pattern, or so my journal reminded me when I did look back. Sometimes I write because there is no other alternative. It’s what I must do before everything else. Other times what made sense to me last week suddenly feels like a load of rubbish. Yesterday I wrote in my journal: I have stepped away and now the inner critic has stepped in.
Usually it helps when I’m stuck to go back and read my first chapter to remind myself what originally excited me about the characters and the story. I tried it and that’s when the numbness set in. Along with the question of do I move forward or stay where I am? I decided not to change a thing until I know for certain it’s me the writer and not me the fixer who is in control. At this point it would make perfect sense for me to tackle that dirty oven. I did open it one morning and made a face at it before closing the door. Then I picked up my knitting and put a record on the turntable and lost myself in the mindlessness of knitting a plain hat in the round to let my thoughts wander as they did along mountain roads.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” ~ Scottish proverb & nursery rhyme
I have a story that began last week and also a very long time ago. I wasn’t going to share it, but when I told a friend about it and saw her reaction, I realized I wanted to write it down to think about it some more. First I need to give a bit of backstory to (hopefully) help it make more sense for anyone who hasn’t read my previous posts about why I started writing again after thirty years. It’s complicated, but to keep it short: I now have the space and time in my life to allow the creative process to take over because that’s what it does for me. It completely takes over. In the space of a year I wrote a novel, and then I rewrote it several times more. Finally satisfied, I sent query emails to a couple of literary agents along with the first chapter. And then I started writing a second novel that’s a spin-off from the first one. About halfway through the second novel, I realized this story could not exist until I was truly happy with the first one. Confusing, I know.
It was summer by then and I decided to step away from my desk to get out of my head and spend more time outdoors. The younger writer I used to be would’ve told myself to quit overthinking the process and press on. This older version understands after living a long time that creativity is not a race to the finish line. It’s a marathon of uphill climbs. Something wasn’t working for a reason and I needed space to figure out why. By fall, I was itching to write again, but still not ready to revisit the two novels. So instead I read insightful memoirs about writing written by published authors. One of those was Stephen King’s “On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft”. I’d read it once before when it was published about twenty years ago and can’t remember what I thought about it then. This time, however, I found myself dog-earing pages and highlighting paragraphs to read again and again. Above all else, one idea of his particularly inspired me and I’m paraphrasing it here: if two separate stories aren’t working, try combining them into one. It was as if a light turned on in my imagination. And so begins a different (yet familiar) novel…
I borrowed a character from each of my two novels and I made them sisters. I made them my age. I took a lake from one story and a small town from the other and I relocated it and combined it under one made up name. The setting is loosely based on two places I spent a lot of time in during my late teens and early adulthood. Hope, B.C. where my parents had their retirement house, and on Cultus Lake where I spent many long summer days hanging out with friends. I made the two sisters complete opposites, telling their story from very different perspectives and outlooks on life. In other words, one chapter is told by one sister and the next one is narrated by the other one, and so on. In order to create and keep track of their unique voices, I’ve had to mentally envision them as Nice Sister and Mean Sister. Not their names, of course, just their attitudes. And not surprising, Mean Sister’s perspective has become the most fun to write.
It’s a story as old as time. Siblings who must confront a shared past while temporarily stuck together in the present moment. It’s summertime in a small, lakeside town. There’s a cast of quirky, secondary characters–the townsfolk–who have secrets and troubles of their own. The sisters grew up here, abandoned by their superstar mother in the early seventies so she could freely chase her rock and roll dreams. Then they’re reunited with her as teenagers in the late seventies to become her backup singers for one summer tour. Now in their fifties, the sisters are forced to reconcile the past in order to move forward in their present lives. And because this is written by me, there must be humour to even out the drama, and great background music to give it a dreamy, nostalgic feel. My comfort tunes, mainly from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The music that has shaped my own life and inspired me to dream. The first chapter begins at the present time, with Nice Sister about to take a shower when the doorbell rings….She answers it to receive an unexpected gift package from an unknown person. While this has no meaning right now, it does later on in my real-life story–which I will get to very soon, I promise.
Chapter five, at exactly 13,793 words, I mopped one of the sisters, figuratively speaking, into a corner and I had to wait for the floor to dry for the next scene to unfold in my mind. I was as stuck as she was. While staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking at me, I suddenly typed this from the character’s perspective: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. My grandma used to say that, I think. Or maybe I’d heard it in a song.” My paternal grandmother did used to say that to me often when I was a kid. I’d tell her I wish I had this or I wish I could do that and she’d give me that horses line. It’s a Scottish proverb and a verse in a very old nursery rhyme. I had no idea why she was calling me a beggar because all I’d done was state the truth. My own sisters have said that as a toddler I used to tell them, “I wish I was a mouse so I could climb into your pocket and go with you.” A storyteller, even then. As for the song part, it was also familiar to me in a warmly nostalgic way, but I couldn’t place it. So I went on a Google deep dive, as the curious tend to do when avoiding work. This is what I remembered…
In seventh grade there was a song that played so often on local radio station CFUN that I ended up making a poster of it in art class. “Roxy Roller” by the Vancouver glam rock band Sweeney Todd. Nick Gilder was the front man of the band at that time. He left shortly after ST became successful to pursue a solo career–also a story as old as time. That was when local boy Bryan Adams, at only sixteen, became the front “man” for a short time and he’s featured on Sweeney Todd’s album “If Wishes Were Horses”. It’s considered a very rare album now because not many are still in circulation, or so I’ve discovered. Kind of niche, and only something Canadians, more specifically British Columbians that were teens in 1977 might still fondly remember. For reasons unknown, it’s nearly impossible now to listen online to Bryan Adams’ full version of “If Wishes Were Horses”. Trust me, I did the dive. Bryan’s voice was very different then and not at all the raspy, familiar voice of the eighties and onwards. He also had a solo disco song in his late teens that I used to dance to with friends called, appropriately, “Let Me Take You Dancing”. He had the voice of an angel then, although he may beg to differ now.
I decided one evening at around ten o’clock–the perfect time to make rash decisions–that I needed to get my hands on that old album again for the sake of my writing. Somehow it had written itself into my story and I needed to understand why. I’d already found one available for sale on Etsy that was being sold by a local seller in Vancouver. This person, a woman I later discovered, has very good reviews and a ton of used vinyl sales. It was reasonably priced. It was in excellent condition. It was local. I used to love it. All signs pointed to go! I paid for it and that was that. I was about to shut my laptop and go to bed to read when, almost instantly, I got an email notification from the seller. I thought about leaving it until the morning, but I wondered if there was a problem with the sale. So I read the long message and I was surprised by all of it. Astounded, actually. I decided not to respond until morning in order to process what I’d just read. I stayed awake for a long time thinking about it. About life, about being young, about how our best dreams rarely change, and how we sometimes take the long way to get to where we’re meant to be. And by two in the morning, how just one message can lead to a very long, restless night.
What the seller told me was that she laughed when my album purchase came in late at night because she’d just been coincidentally in my area shopping earlier that same day. It’s funny how life goes sometimes, isn’t it? Yes, it is, we agreed. We’ve had more email conversations since that first one and this is where the story turns from haha to are you kidding me? Turns out she is a writer and music lover like me, who recently started writing again after closing her business, also like me, shortly following the pandemic. She now lives in the very place I am currently writing about–Cultus Lake. We are around the same age and both grandmothers. We love books and vintage finds. She sells her found treasures online, I just collect mine. Oh, and by the way, she was Bryan Adams’ high school girlfriend right before he left to join Sweeney Todd to be on the album I’d just purchased.
I’ll let that sink in…
Early in the morning, two days later, I was getting ready to take a shower when the doorbell rang. A package was left by our Canada Post carrier on the doorstep. Sound familiar? Unlike my character’s gift package that I wrote about several weeks before this day, my gift package was from myself. The “If Wishes Were Horses” album. Tucked inside was a postcard note from the seller giving me her best wishes on my story and a few other personal tidbits I’ll keep to myself. For some reason I was nervous about playing the album, specifically that song. Was I expecting too much? Had this gotten so blown out of proportion that I was romanticizing it into something more than it is? The answer is, it’s everything I needed to hear at exactly the right moment.
When I finally sat down to listen to Bryan’s much younger, angelic voice sing the lyrics I believe he co-wrote at a time when he was probably hoping all of his music dreams would come true, it made me unexpectedly emotional and even more introspective. I thought about my own dreams at fourteen. I saw myself so clearly, listening to this same song. Maybe I was thinking about the singer, imagining who he was because nobody really knew him then. Maybe I was thinking about my grandma too, who used to say the same thing to me. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I’d lost her at thirteen, yet here she was again in a song. Now, after thinking about it some more, I’ve come to realize that my younger writing self is reminding this current self to keep believing in the creative process, no matter how long it takes to sort the story out. That’s why I’m sharing it now, just in case you need a reminder to keep following your story.
If Wishes Were Horses, Sweeney Todd lyrics
“Come with me you can wish upon a star You can do all the things that you’ve longed to And you won’t have to wonder who you are You can be anybody you want to In a land full of promises and kings All your best laid dreams are for catchin’ You can have the world to tie up on a string Just close your eyes and imagine If wishes were horses Beggars would ride All dreams and desires would ride along side Worries and troubles would fall off behind If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
To a land far or near come along There’s an all new-round everyday glow Like the young girl sang in the song ‘Somewhere over the rainbow'”
If Wishes Were Horses (featuring Bryan Adams) Sweeney Todd – back cover photo of Bryan Adams
“You never get over the fear of writing.” ~ Maya Angelou
One day I said to my husband of over thirty years, “Remember when I used to be fearless?” He’s known me since we were in our early twenties and he looked at me that day the way he has many times before–with total, absolute confusion. In hindsight, it does seems like a random thing to say while in the middle of chopping salad vegetables for our dinner. Truthfully, I’d been mulling it over for quite some time and he just happened to walk into the kitchen when I was ready to let those feeling out.
I reminded him of the time many years ago when I brazenly walked into the offices of a local newspaper with our toddler on my hip and asked to speak to the editor-in-chief. What I got instead was an assistant editor who should have been managing editor, but it was near the start of the nineties, when qualified women were still unfairly passed over for promotions like dodgy-looking shrimp at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She led me to her cubicle office, thinking, dreading I’ll bet, that I was there to complain about a recent editorial piece or wanted to share a gossipy news tip. Or maybe I came to beg her for a part-time secretarial job just to get myself out of the house. I don’t actually know what she was thinking, she never said. To her credit, though, she offered me a chair so I could put my daughter on my lap, and then she listened to me.
When I was done speaking, the editor asked why I thought I was qualified to write a freelance book review column without any prior experience. (Other than the fact I was a star reporter of my high school newspaper and had some college creative writing classes under my belt.) I told her that I read all the time, more so since becoming a stay-at-home mom, and that her newspaper was lacking in opinion pieces written from a young woman’s perspective. I remember staring at each other for an uncomfortably long moment as I bounced my child on my knee, radiating nervous energy. Finally she said something that I’m positive surprised us both that day: “Write me a sample book review and if it knocks my socks off I’ll give you a shot.” Not sure if I knocked her socks off, but I did earn my shot at a monthly book review column and other freelance work that I continued to earn for a few more years.
Now a bonafide newspaper columnist, I decided that I’d gained enough confidence to leave my first born in somebody else’s care for a few hours a week to take more college writing classes. To say I thrived in that environment as a mature, more confident student is an understatement. I loved every minute of it and didn’t take a single moment for granted. It didn’t bother me that most of my nineteen year old classmates called me Mom. They only ever did so with affection and, I like to think, a little admiration for sticking it out for another semester while expecting a second child.
During that time, I wrote fiction and poetry, short stories, and heartfelt pieces about new motherhood and my life so far. I was asked by an instructor to read one of those stories in front of an alumni audience in a large college auditorium. I was close to nine months pregnant by then and had to waddle down a long aisle and up several stairs to a stage. I still remember standing there, steadfastly, reading my emotional piece about fearing for my children’s future as the Gulf War continued to rage on far away and much closer to home a gunman had senselessly massacred fourteen female university students. My soon-to-be-born son kicked and stretched as I leaned into the podium to receive my shining moment of applause for the words I’d fearlessly written and shared from the very same heart connecting the two of us to life.
“You’re still fearless,” my husband told me while we ate that salad I’d made for dinner. I knew he meant strong about facing the hardest things over the years that needed to be either accepted or worked through. “Except for when it comes to my writing,” I said to him. “Why can’t I be fearless about that again?”
Where was the wannabe columnist who made up her mind one day she wanted a job she wasn’t qualified for? What about the woman in her late twenties who went back to college because she hadn’t given up on her dreams? The mom who discovered not only did she still have a lot to say, her writing touched another woman enough to make her cry in the front row of an auditorium. That writer never feared sharing what she wrote because she believed in every word. Even if her stories never saw anything beyond a cluttered desk drawer, she still kept writing them. She wrote for herself first. In fact, her only priority was telling her stories as well as she could.
We’re told so often to look ahead, to keep moving forward. Don’t look back! Focus on the road ahead. Sometimes looking back to who we used to be is the only way we can move forward now. Recently I sat down and started writing and I kept writing for over a year. Pages and pages until the story was done. I’ve rewritten that novel three more times since then because I believe in it just the much. Today I’m writing a second novel. The words keep coming and here I am, a grandmother now, happy to receive all those many words. Some days I dream about trying to get my novel published. Other days I’m content to leave the manuscript safely in a drawer. Regardless of the outcome, close to 90,000 words have reminded me there’s a certain fearlessness in staying true to yourself.
“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
It’s been a long time since I shared another story here. Mostly, I’ve been preoccupied working on the second draft of the novel I finished writing in June. Yes! I finished it. I could hardly believe it myself when I wrote The End. In fact, I had to keep going back to check those two words to make sure I hadn’t imagined the entire process.
From the first chapter to the last, the writing of it poured out of me during the span of a little over a year. I can’t say why or how that happened because it seems like a fever dream, as I look back on it today. The words were flowing all of a sudden. The plot possessed me to the point I lost sleep and sometimes couldn’t tell if I was awake or dreaming the scenes. The characters became real people, their voices constantly interrupting my thoughts like toddlers demanding to know the why of everything.
I filled notebooks with scribbles of dialogue, plot points, and disjointed observations. I’ve gone back recently to try to decipher the notes I wrote. Often they were made at around four a.m., right after I jolted awake with a thought I needed to jot down before it escaped me forever. There were many times I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I finally gave in and got up, made coffee, and sat at the dining room table to quietly write until the time I usually got up. Then I would shower and start my day like any other day. Tired, but happy.
Somewhere in the middle of a messy, chicken-scratched page of plotting notes I wrote this: It’s not enough to be happy enough. I want more. At sunrise. On a boat. This time won’t last forever. Set the course. One of the characters in my novel is a musician and I think these might be his lyrics to a song. I didn’t use them in the story. I did, however, give him this bit of dialogue in the first chapter, “You know it’s okay to be grateful for what you have and still want more for yourself.” I suspect I was telling myself the same thing.
For the first time in years there’s been room in my life to explore the creative interests that used to give me so much happiness. Writing is the most important one, yet it’s an interest I’ve given the least amount of care and attention to. Why? Because I turned off that faucet a long time ago. The very nature of writing stirs memories and sometimes memories hurt. It became easier for me to move forward and not look back. Sometimes a drop would trickle out to remind me I used to be good at it. A poem. A paragraph. A witty observation. Then I’d get busy again and the words abruptly ended. Busy work, I call it. The things we preoccupy ourselves with to avoid looking inward.
This time was different. I gave myself permission to turn the tap on and leave it running. More importantly, every word I wrote was for myself. I didn’t think about who might read it. There was no imaginary audience in my mind. No sneaky editorial comments trying to derail me. No grammar police. No thoughts about publishing or rejection or doubting the process. No deadlines. Just me, moving forward page by page. Chapter by chapter. Moving forward, while also daring to glance over my shoulder from time to time.
Mostly it has been a joy to write again. Never hard, just all-consuming. Oh, how I’ve laughed at my own dialogue. I’ve gone back a number of times to read some conversations and cackled at them all over again. Slowly I fell in love with my characters, while at the same time not always understanding them. Near the end I wrote a scene that came out of nowhere and made me cry. I closed my laptop after writing it. I opened it again hours later and tried to take it back and turn it into something else. I really wanted to move the scene in a completely different direction because how could my characters hurt each other like that? Then I realized what I was doing was creating human beings. Humans make mistakes. So it remained the same, while I dug deep to find a believable way to help them grow together from the experience. Just like in real life.
A year is a long time. I expected to feel indecisive when I typed The End. Is it truly done? Don’t I have more to sayabout it? My husband once commented that I must be reaching the end of the book because I’d started to look sad while writing. Truthfully, I didn’t want the story to end. It had become comfortable. A refuge, of sorts. Yet there was no denying that what I was feeling was peace. It was done. I took a moment to enjoy the accomplishment, to be proud of myself. I printed it and held the stack of pages in my hands. Felt the weight. The work. I thought about my mom. How I wished she could read it. How I’d put a little of her personality into the grandfather character. How I’d put a lot of myself into all of it.
The End.
Only it really isn’t. I set the story aside to give it space and time before editing began. Let it percolate, a long ago creative writing teacher used to tell me. My characters had stopped speaking to me in the middle of the night. My dreams were my own again. I immediately started gathering notes for a plot idea that developed from the first book. I didn’t want to lose the momentum. I felt guilty about liking these new characters, as much or maybe even more than the first ones. They’re different, exciting. They have a lot to say, but in a gentler way. They’re not as rude as the others because they don’t interrupt my sleep to shout their ideas. It’s like they understand their story can’t be fully explored until I revisit the one that came before theirs.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, revisiting the place I started at. After weeks of letting it percolate, I fully expected not to like the story as much. I thought I’d be more critical, less enamoured. I have to say that I’m loving it just as much the second time around. It’s rough around the edges, often messy in spots. But it still feels like a gift from myself.
August – writing about a lakeside cottage while staying at one.
A Roaring Good Yarn 