Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train and Squid-to-Mouth Insemination

So Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is looking good? Maybe? Anyway, I realized that the very existence of this much eye-rolled, possibly good film might make the content of this blog post irrelevant / eyeroll worthy, but whatever. If you don't know what I'm on about, here:

Now that you've seen that, check this out. Inspired by a Rue Morgue Magazine note on the topic, I've been researching Abe Lincoln's funeral train. Wow. Via Abraham Lincoln's Assassination:

Abraham Lincoln's funeral train left Washington on April 21, 1865.  It would essentially retrace the 1,654 mile route Mr. Lincoln had traveled as president-elect in 1861 (with the deletion of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and the addition of Chicago). An example of a published schedule is pictured to the right. The Lincoln Special, whose engine had Mr. Lincoln's photograph over the cowcatcher, carried approximately 300 mourners. Willie Lincoln's coffin was also on board. Willie, who had died in the White House in 1862 at age 11, had been disinterred and was to be buried with his father in Springfield. A Guard of Honor accompanied Mr. Lincoln’s remains on the Lincoln Special. Mr. Robert Lincoln rode on the train to Baltimore but then returned to Washington. The following information summarizes the martyred president's final journey home.

(Emphasis mine.) Good God. You have to love those nineteenth-century types with their lack of squeamishness / hands-on obsession with death.  This would make an incredible foundation for a ghost story, wouldn't it? If not about Lincoln specifically, a story that takes place on a mega-extended funeral train route would be interesting. Question: anyone know how good nineteenth-century embalming techniques were? Would the corpse last the journey?

On a totally other note, a Korean woman's mouth was inseminated by a parboiled squid that she was eating. After she reported into the emergency room with pain, doctors removed twelve "'small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms stuck in the mucous membrane of the tongue, cheek, and gingiva'—the dead squid’s live spermatophores," according to Death and Taxes Magazine. A spermatophore, because I know you need to know, is basically a bunch of semen, aggregated together, with an "ejaculatory apparatus" and a "cement body for attachment." Precisely how it attaches itself to stuff (including the inside of your mouth) is, according to biologist Danna Staaf, a mystery.

All we need to invent absolutely disgusting alien species is a more thorough knowledge of what is here on this gross, diverse planet of ours.

Did You Ever Grow Anything in the Garden of Your Mind?

This is going viral, which is awesome and has partially restored my faith in humanity. PBS it seems has undertaken to create remixes of iconic figures from its catalogue of shows, beginning with Mister Rogers. Symphony of Science / Remixes for the Soul's John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, put together this absolutely wonderful piece.

If you grew up with Mister Rogers like I did, this will probably resonate strongly. For me, remembering Mister Rogers conjures up memories of my parents' basement rec room with its orange carpet and wood panelling, and the ancient television set with the rotor that you turned to align the antenna so it would pick up the station. Along with Sesame Street and the occasional viewing of The Friendly Giant, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was a regular part of my formative years.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

 

A Note on Being Neglectful
So while I've been in blogger-limbo, a number of super awesome bloggers have nominated me for this award:

Apologies to those of you who've handed this to me without acknowledgement. I've buzzed by to let you know I still love you.

Go visit these people, will you?

Sherry Ellis, mommy blogger extraordinaire. Sherry writes short sharp hilarious pieces about family life. She should be more famous. I bet her books, The Baby Woke Me Up, AGAIN (for parents) and That Mama Is a Grouch (for kids) are full of her great humour.

Jim Wright lives in Amman, Jordan. I loved Jim's blog from the moment I set eyes on it because his exceptional life takes centre stage. Lately he's been posting parts of a story called The Wall Crack'd, which is super intriguing and makes me want to pick up his book, New Yesterdays.

I am always happy when I land at Catherine Stine's Idea City because of the gorgeous banner at the top of her page. Catherine's book Fireseed One is on my TBR list. It should be on yours, too.

I'm short on time today so I'm not gonna nominate anyone for this award, but if you want it, please grab it!

I am supposed to put seven random facts about myself here, but I would love it if you left a random fact about you in the comments. I'll claim it for my own, and thus appear much more interesting than I otherwise would.

Here's to a Better Month This Month

May was a terrible month. Yeah. Wow. First the cat got sick. Then the fish died. Then the dog got sick. Then the cat's antibiotics had to be extended.  The new fish is acting weird. The dog is tentatively better, but there has been some back and forth and I am not convinced he's 100 percent yet. The cat seems better but it's a wait and see.

I am one of those people for whom pets are family, so the whole month was a giant roller coaster ride the theme of which was "What now?" The climax came this past weekend with a bout of the flu, human, in this case, that hit me and then Dave. Just wow, May. Way to overdo it.

(Aside for those of you who've visited and followed and commented in my absence this month: thank you. I will reply and visit and comment soon, promise promise promise.)

Times like these, when I am down, or so wiped out and feverish and sinus-explosive that I can't do anything else, I console myself by watching talent shows. I am not a huge reality TV fan, but I like it when people succeed at being amazing. It inspires me. In the name of doing relatively nothing but sit on the couch and weep, I've watched my way through The Voice UK. Thanks, YouTube Pirates!

(Aside for those of you who are watching The Voice UK: Can you believe that Ruth Brown is gone? I thought she was the obvious one to win. Yeah yeah, maybe her last performance wasn't as mind-blowing as her previous ones, but wow. I agree with Tom Jones that there is something otherworldly about her talent. And okay sure, there are people saying she's shouty and whatnot. I agree, maybe her voice isn't as disciplined as some others, but it's not so much about the training as it is about ripping your soul out every. single. time.) /TeamRuthRant

People who go on talent shows are people who are passionate about art, to the point where they've sacrificed great swaths of time to develop themselves. That is love, the weird kind of love, love of a higher purpose, an ideal, that happens when a person wants to express himself or herself, and will work damn hard for a long time to do it better and better.

I'm talking about the moment that you realize that "What I Did for Love" is not a breakup song. It is about not regretting every bone-shattering, hair-pulling, soul-rending moment you spent working on your craft, even if it doesn't work out the way you wanted it to.



I'm talking about the most insane dog dancing routine ever. What does dog dancing have to do with art? If you have to ask, well, you probably don't belong here. Move it along.

For those of you still with me, I'm talking about expressing your absolute love (in this case, for your dog) so profoundly that you become one insane whirling dervish crawling on a stage to the Flintstones theme song. I'm talking about being completely unafraid to proclaim that your dog dancing routine is Oscar-worthy. Because you know what? If all things were equal, it would be.



This may be the most sideways pep talk ever, and I might be delivering it pretty much exclusively to myself, but hey, I've had a crap month and I'm trying to get back on the writing horse here. Do not be afraid, my friends, to write your little hearts out in June. Go nuts. I wish each and every one of you the literary equivalent of insane dog dancing genius.

The Gate-Keepers Are Leaving Their Gates

"The old rules are crumbling, and nobody knows what the new rules are, so make up your own rules." 

Neil Gaiman addresses the graduating class of 2012 at Philadelphia's The University of the Arts on being artists, enjoying the process, and the changing face of publishing and media. If you're a writer or an artist or a designer or a filmmaker or otherwise creative person who is trying to get yourself and your stuff out there, Neil is your commencement speaker. 

Happy graduation, everybody.

 

Current Inspiration: Guys and Dolls

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No, not the musical, the BBC documentary about sex dolls.

Sex in itself is almost like a violent act. But you know, the dolls are made for it. They can handle a lot of physical abuse.
...
I've had sex with a couple of dolls. Over the years that I've worked with them, there have been a couple of dolls that I had that were amazing. Amazing. This hundred pound doll came to life. It's pushing back, it's not just I'm pushing on it, but all of a sudden it's starting to push back. It's creating motion and friction. And the weight of the product, and how it behaves in this manner is very stimulating. It was an amazing thing. Very life like, very realistic, very odd. But it's just a doll, a very high form of masturbation.

                                                                        ~Slade, sex doll repair man.


Watching this documentary got me thinking about love, about the compelled and manufactured relationships in our lives, about the ways in which masculinity is a friable construct. It got me wondering about whether authenticity is possible in a relationship with a synthetic creature, and to what extent, and under what conditions.

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Dangerous on the Dance Floor (NaNoWriMo Days 3 and 4)

I am buckling down, my pretties. Yesterday, NaNoWriMo day three, my word count was at 11 957. Today was not an awesome day for writing - Fridays and weekends tend not to be, because that's when I do the majority of my teaching - but I am still ahead of the 100k in 30 days quota at 13 599. After working with my primary MC for the last three days, I've introduced someone new. Someone fabulous. 

I've started making a list of perfectly logical consequences of the way magic works in the story. I can't wait to swing these consequences on my characters. It's going to be awesome, and should make things much, much worse for them. I've named the list "Gruesome Discoveries." In honour of the list, here are my favourite pictures from an image search for "gruesome discoveries." Enjoy, and happy writing.

  

Why I Write Horror Part 1: Dad

When I worked on my guest post, "Why I Write Horror," at Wicked & Tricksy a while back, I cheated. I wrote about one reason why I dig the dark stuff, but in fact there's a whole grab bag of tidbits from my personal history that contributed to making me the horror writer I am today. Here's one.



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My dad is a great storyteller. Although he was a construction inspector by trade before he retired, his real gift lies in converting the daring exploits and bizarre interludes of his youth into sheer entertainment. On a regular basis when we were growing up, Dad would have me and my brother howling with laughter until we couldn't breathe and we thought we would expire.

In terms of sheer craft, I admire Dad immensely. He has a knack for building intrigue and using detail to peak interest as effectively as any seasoned novelist. I aspire to be able to set 'em up and knock 'em down as well as my dad.

But the real value in growing up hearing his stories for me lay in the persistent (or I should maybe say, pernicious) thread that ran through all of his tales. Everywhere in his stories are hints of threat, glimpses of the edge of reason or the neat boundary described by the law.

There's the casual violence: a story about a math teacher who banged a kid's head against the chalk board for talking in class. The high school gym instructor who dealt with insolent students by making them put on the gloves and go a couple of rounds in the ring with him.

There's the adult stuff. For a while, dad's family lived with his grandfather, my great-grandfather. Great-granddad was, by all accounts, an interesting fellow. He sold booze out of his home at a time when it was only available if you bought it from a bar. For hardcore alcoholics, this was a difficult time, since you couldn't get rid of your morning shakes until the bars opened later in the day.

When my dad was still a schoolkid and all this was going on, his bedroom was at the front of the house on the ground floor. Some mornings, the local butcher would come and knock on the window to wake my dad up. Dad would go to the kitchen, pour the guy his morning drink, take his money, and fix himself a bowl of cereal. While Dad ate his cornflakes, the butcher would talk to him about history.

"He really knew a lot," Dad always says.

And then there are the stories about the fighting cocks. Great-granddad raised them. Dad has a lot of stories about these animals: about Great-granddad tossing a rooster in the air repeatedly to exercise him and strengthen his legs so he would be strong in a fight. About the razor-sharp steel spikes the owners would attach to the roosters' legs that would turn any match into a fight to the death. "Saturday night's loser was Sunday night's dinner," Dad says. Dad tells a great story about driving with his dad and granddad over the border into the U.S. on their way down to Buffalo for a fight. "It was my job to keep the roosters quiet in the back seat of the car when we crossed the border," Dad tells us. "You had to keep the cover over them and not let in any light, or they would start making noise."

For me, raised in a small town where nothing untoward ever seemed to happen, Dad's stories spoke to a wider reality, where almost anything was possible, and life served up equal helpings of badness and wonder. Dad is one reason why I write horror.

A-Z Blogging Challenge Starts Tomorrow!

You all know about this, right? A blogfest that invites you to compose 26 posts in April - one for every day except Sundays - based on each letter of the alphabet? The fest is absolutely massive, with 860 people participating so far. Yikes! That is a lot of blogs to visit! But you should totally join. Click on the badge and go check it out and sign your blogging life away!

I am really looking forward to this, and have been doing a bit of tentative planning around it. I've had a piece of paper with the letters of the alphabet posted above my desk for the last month or so, and I've been writing in juicy words whenever I get inspired. I'm pretty much covered for the first few days. In case you aren't, here are some suggestions:

Anger! Aggravation! Agape! Argyle! Albatross! Attitude! Ape! Application! Advertising! Amble! Ambulance! Arbitrary! Achtung! Achoo! Acute! Acquire! And! Agile! Alcohol! Abuse! Ark!

There's got to be something in that list you can work with. These are all yours: my A-word is not on this list, nor is it on any of the lists I've posted on any of your blogs lately.

For those of you who are looking for another challenge, I thought I would mention my diabolical idea. For some insane, possibly death-wishy reason, I decided to do Story a Day in May. I know, terrifying, right? I expect to fail miserably, as I write with the speed of a snail (right there with you, Deborah!), but I will nevertheless give it the old college try. And focus on microfiction. Anyway, my idea is that I'm going to use my A-Z entries as prompts for my Story a Day stories. I'll be five short: there are 31 days in May, and only 26 letters in the alphabet. Five days for spontaneous bursts of creativity! To allow a little more free play, I'm planning to keep my A-Z posts a little open, a little loosey-goosey, nice and juicy. (I'm a poet, didn't know it, my feet show it - they're Longfellows!)

So, for those of you who have taken on A-Z...care to up the ante a little? (Join me...it will be funnnnn.)

The Century of the Self

When Dave and I were negotiating how we would live together four years ago, he told me he didn't want to get cable TV. I was already spending much of my time watching television via DVD, so I had no problem with this. Today, any time I find myself sitting in front of a conventional television, I am blown away by how many and how disruptive the commercials are. Seriously, I used to sit through all that? Yikes!

I've been in the habit of heading out to our local library branch to borrow DVDs, and Dave has hooked up a computer with internet connection to my old TV, so we're never short on things to watch. Lately, we've been into documentaries, and are huge fans of much of what the BBC has to offer.

Enter The Century of the Self. If you're a Mad Men fan, you might be interested in this. Starting with Freud's development of his theory of the self in the early 20th century, it talks about how corporate and political forces have used these theories to shape and manipulate public consciousness. If you're interested in dystopian fiction, you might be interested in the ways public policy makers throughout the 20th century sought to control what they perceived as a society constantly on the verge of mass revolt and violence.

This set of four one-hour programs really gets to the heart of how we see ourselves, and how the powers that be deliberately shaped this self-perception in order to achieve specific ends. It's no coincidence that in the course of 100 years, we've gone from being consumers of necessities to consumers of any number of delights. It's no coincidence that one of the number one values of our culture is "individuality," while more and more we police each other in the name of conformity.

This is a chilling story, and one worth knowing about. I think The Century of the Self is essential viewing for anyone interested in why we are the way we are - a great set of insights for anyone who wants to understand the mechanics of world building or the way that large social movements get started and persist.

From the introduction:

A new theory about human nature was put forward by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered, he said, primitive sexual and aggressive forces, hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings - forces which if not controlled, led individuals and societies to chaos and destruction. This series is about how those in power used Freud's theories to try to control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. 

Write 1 Sub 1

Inspired by the lovely Misa Buckley, I have decided to participate in the Write 1 Sub 1 challenge. The insano version.

I realize that I am tired of setting goals and then wishy-washying out on them. I love the idea of having a little community of writers who are all trying to do something rather rigorous (like a mini-NaNo, or maybe not so mini?).

You should totally sign up for this. Seriously.

Movies as Folk Art

Are you familiar with lubok? This Russian folk art form involves simple artwork and narratives taken from popular and classic literature, made up into poster-like art that you can hang on the wall, like this one from the late 18th century, "The Mice Are Burying the Cat."

Russian artist Andrey Kuznetsov used science fiction and fantasy films to create amazing lubok art. These are really delightful. I only wish I knew what the text said. Anybody?

Enjoy. More here.

Conspiracy, the Paranormal and Me

Image by Ibrahim Iujaz of Not So Good Photography.

I'm in love with modern conspiracy theory and current research on paranormal phenomena and their attendant concerns about shifting realities, earth changes, dimensions of consciousness and the darker aspects of the powers that be. If you're like me and you want to eschew vampires and werewolves for a different flavor of beast, might I suggest reptilian overlords and black-eyed kids? You need only dip your finger into the rich, weird soup of paranormal and conspiracy research to find endless fodder for new mythologies and world building.

I'm not (so far) drawing directly on any of the common tropes of conspiracy theory, like 2012 predictions, the New World Order, or UFOs. I've dabbled a bit in shadow people and old hag syndrome (although the latter isn't new - it's quite old).

I think what really interests me in this research is the way that attending to extreme experiences makes you feel. After listening to a podcast or reading about paranormal and conspiracy perspectives, the world around me tends to feel just a bit shifted from normal. There are lots and lots of us whose experiences don't fit into the comfortable, mundane boundaries of the everyday. When you listen to a story from the fringes, and the teller is obviously speaking his truth, it changes your ideas of the possible. For a writer - especially for a genre writer - that is a very good thing.

As I'm continuing to work on my current novel, I'm putting my characters through the kind of profound paradigm shift that occurs to people who undergo fringe experiences.

If you want to get a taste of what I'm talking about, I can't recommend a better entry point than the Mysterious Universe podcast. Hosted by the lovely Benjamin Grundy and Aaron Wright, the podcast covers "the strange, extraordinary, weird, and wonderful and everything in between." Focusing on the UFO phenomenon and paranormal news, Grundy and Wright read stories from around the world and discuss the implications each week. Bonus factor: cool Aussie accents.

If you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, Red Ice Radio is where I would suggest you go. Unlike MU, which tends to filter stories through discussion, Red Ice chooses researchers from an astonishing range of alternative backgrounds and perspectives, and gives them an hour or more to share their stories, theories and points of view. I've learned more about the huge variety of things that people can think about and research from Red Ice than I ever imagined possible. They discuss "Ancient Civilizations, Geopolitics, Conspiracy, Secret Societies, Fraternal Orders, Esoteric and Occult Subjects, Science and Technology, Phychology, Space, Spirituality, Health, Religion, History, The Future, Transhumanism, GMO, Archaeology, The New World Order and much more." Host Henrik Palmgren approaches every interview without judgement and with questions aimed at allowing the guest an optimal chance to share his views. I've especially enjoyed interviews with Neil Kramer, Christopher Moors, and Jeremy Narby, but you'll have to find your own magic combo. Bonus Factor: cool Swedish accent.

Palimpsest

And I would compare myself to a palimpsest; I shared the thrill of the scholar who beneath more recent script discovers, on the same paper, an infinitely more precious ancient text. What was it, this occult text? In order to read it, would I not have to erase, first, the more recent ones?

~André Gide, The Immoralist

When I think I'm king, I just begin

Oh, Kate Bush. You barely make sense and yet you speak to me.



I've been listening to The Dreaming again. It's really wonderful. In the aftermath of February, which frankly sucked, I'm feeling the need for a serious infusion of eccentricity.

I always wonder how Kate Bush managed to break through. She's so amazingly weird, and part of that weirdness is the way her lyrics seem to go straight into my brainpan and massage my creative centre. How could this gorgeous genius be allowed to circulate her strangeness to the general public? Don't the authorities know this kind of thing can result in mass happiness and outbreaks of wild creativity?

Things get even more nuts when you look at her videos. She's a highly disciplined dancer, and everything she's got ends up getting channeled into this wild imagery that's both unexpected and iconic. Dunce caps and minotaurs, everybody!

Something Smart

I once knew a guy who was wise in many ways. He said something incredibly brilliant to me during one of many long and fraught philosophical discussions.

"Your oldest friends are not the best representation of who you are. They are a product of who you were when you met them. You've changed, you're a different person now. You can't possibly be the same as you were so many years ago when you thought that forming those attachments was a good idea. Your most recent friends, they're the ones who represent who you are now."

I'm paraphrasing, of course. It was probably much more gorgeously phrased at the time.

True? Maybe not. Fascinating? Absolutely.

(Going straight from this post and into my novel? Probably!)

Time Part 2

One of the trickiest things about time is its weird subjective flexibility. We’ve all had the experience of concentrating on something we enjoy, and looking up at the clock to find that it’s much later than we could have guessed. Good conversation can be like that. Good writing can be like that, too.

(And there's the opposite scenario, the experience of doing something you hate and watching the time drag.)

Because I meditate regularly, I am familiar with how easy it is to sink so deeply into an altered state of consciousness that time has almost no meaning at all. It’s always surprising to look at the clock after meditation. Sometimes I’ll feel like hours have passed, and it’s only twenty minutes since I first sat down. Sometimes I’ll feel like I was only down in a meditative state for a few brief minutes, and I’ll find that it’s been forty-five minutes or an hour.

So: time is a slippery bastard. Ultimately, our idea that time is something to be measured in steady, regular increments is one of our most delusional notions.

I guess one of the questions that got me into trouble* when I was at a career crossroads was getting into the habit of asking not whether I’d gotten good value for my time, whether I’d been “productive” or “used my time well”, but whether I could look back at the end of the day and feel satisfied. Some days, I noticed, just felt right.

How much time does it take to achieve this sense of satisfaction? If you have to ask, I’d like to propose that you’re thinking about satisfaction in an entirely wrong fashion.

For me, whether a day is good or bad depends entirely on how I feel. And how I feel is in turn dependent on a number of ephemeral and non-ephemeral things: did I write something that made me excited about writing? Did I drink the right amount of coffee? Did I get to play with the dog and cat? Did I do something to make me think more deeply about my art? Did I get outside and clear my head at some point? Did I manage to fit a really good stretch into my day? Did I learn something new? Did I imagine something outrageous?

When asked years ago, I defined a good life as getting into a state of flow and staying in it as much as possible. A concept that was co-opted by western psychology in the early 1990s, flow could be characterized as one of the core methodologies and goals of eastern meditation practices. When you’re in flow, you’re riding on the cusp between focus and relaxation. You’re totally engaged in what you’re doing, and everything else falls away. The question is not how much time you have, but how fully engrossed you are in the task at hand. This applies to doing dishes as much as it does to putting words on the page. In flow, there’s an escape from the pressures of time. In flow, there is access to the essence of joy.



*made me decide to stop doing almost everything else and make a major publication effort

Time Part 1

I’ve been thinking lately about time: how we use it, how it uses us. How it continues to move, even if we don’t use it. How we think about it in terms of bankability: I’ve got two hours, therefore I can do x amount of actions. As if having time were the only factor involved in our capacity to get things done.

All of these concerns about time and how to get things done are of essence to a writer. If you don’t spend some of your time putting words on paper, then it’s pretty difficult to lay claim to the name. At least it feels that way to me.

But I guess one of the most relevant questions about time and writing is, how much time do you need to write?

There are many writing advice guides that will tell you that all you need is fifteen minutes or half an hour of writing every day. This advice is helpful at the beginning. Indeed, an academic version of one of these guides, Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker, was one of the golden keys that allowed me to get through my PhD.

These books all sing the same song: just begin. Do one page of writing. Three pages of stream of consciousness whatever. Squeeze it in between laundry and making dinner, between dinner and bedtime. Get up half an hour early, get into bed fifteen minutes before your usual time. Grab a notebook: any modest spiral bound will do. You don’t need a special pen. Just whatever you’ve got lying around.

The thing to realize about these guides is that they are lying to you. Fifteen minutes a day is not enough time to write, if writing is what you want to do.

You know what fifteen minutes a day of writing is? Or half an hour? Or three pages first thing in the morning?

These little scraps of time spent writing are the gateway drug to wanting to be a writer. Start with your cute little journal pages. Get into the habit of writing your stream of consciousness here’s-what-I’m-thinking-about stuff every day. The next thing you know, you’ll be scrounging around for an hour to spend with your writing. On the weekends, you’ll start thinking about Sunday afternoon in a whole new way. You’ll shift your responsibilities around. You’ll cut back on sleep. Maybe you’ll do what I did, and start thinking about whether you can quit your job.

And worse yet, before you know it, the ideas will start to come, because writing daily – no matter what you’re writing – will call down the muses. They’ll start fluttering by your ear when you’re doing other stuff, “important” stuff. They’ll wake you up at night. And they’ll demand that you tell their stories. To tell them well, you’re going to have to practice writing. You’ll have to practice hard. For that, you’ll need more time.

Great oceans of time that you can dive into and swim around in. You’re going to need all the time in the world so you can dream and think and plot and plan. And space – you’ll need that too. You’re going to need to tell everybody to back off.

You’ll do what you have to do. You’ll find the time. Great oceans of it, or at least small lakes. And you’ll make a space for yourself, somewhere in the world, whether it’s a room in your house or a corner of the library or a table at a coffee house.

Once you have that, once you give yourself time, let me tell you, it gets so good. You can relax, because you know that in the course of a day you’ll be sitting down to do some writing. Whatever issues you’ve got with your story, you’ll be working them out. Whatever questions you have about how to proceed, what makes good writing, how to make your writing better, or the mechanics of a good novel, you’ll start to figure out. Because the only answer to these questions lies in sitting down and writing it out. If you want to be a writer, you have to give yourself time.

Accountability

Before he left for work today, Dave told me he's going to drop in at his besties' place for drinks tonight. His plan was to grab dinner near work, and if I know Dave and his besties, they'll probably imbibe and revel until quite late in the evening.

Since I didn't make plans for tonight, I am left unaccountable to anyone for my time.

Woo. And hoo!

I have back-to-back classes to teach on Friday afternoons. Once they were done today, and I was home, the evening opened up to me like a gorgeous vista. The first order of business was to do a little checking of various email accounts to make sure I have no brush fires that need extinguishing before the weekend. Then it was off to the woods with the dog for a little treacherous trail walking. The sunset was incredibly gorgeous tonight - I was grateful to be outside and looking at it, despite the ice that is all over the trails right now.

Now I'm sitting at the computer facing the rest of my evening. I'm nursing a small glass of Chianti and a small bowl of nibbles. I've got a roasted garlic pizza in the oven. Once I've had some awesome, effort-free dinner, I plan to down a dose of caffeine - probably some coffee with a lot of warm milk in it. And then I will spend a few hours getting some raw word count down.

It's been a busy week. I've been doing a lot of editing and too much rush work for other people. More than anything right now, an evening to myself, and time to commune with the page, sounds just about right. Time to create. Time when no one will be looking for me, no one expects me to be anywhere, and no one is waiting on me.

When I think back to my time in D.C., I think that the low expectations I had of my social life there was among the best things about it. I was in a city where I knew almost no one, and I let myself off the hook for feeling bad about not having something to do on a Friday or Saturday evening. Time did amazing things in those two winters away: it stretched like a lazy cat, and I could finally see that it was my choice to do whatever I wanted with it.

Not that you shouldn't have a social life: don't get me wrong. Just that occasionally, it's good to hide out. Good to be alone with your thoughts and plots. Good to set aside a vast expanse of time - however you define that - for playing with your muse.

If you're going to get your oar in the water, you've got to have a lake.

Trading Up

Two years ago, I decided to rearrange my life around my writing. Some people work a regular job and do their creative work on the side. I am convinced that I am not one of those people. A lot of different things factored into my decision, but a huge part of it was hitting my late thirties and realizing that I didn’t want the rest of my life to look like the first part of my life. I wanted to make creative work the centre. I had always wanted that, but how I came to own my desire is a little bit of a story.

Here it is, in case anyone wants to know.

I’ve always wanted to write. My real passion for it began when I was in grade three and Mrs. Thompson gave me three gold stars for my story about a duck. She even let me write it out in huge letters! in magic marker! on a giant pad of paper! so everyone could read it. I guess that counts as my first publication.

I took a degree in English and Philosophy after high school. I finished my undergrad in 1993 and said goodbye to school. I jumped head first into a dysfunctional relationship that would last for most of the nineties. Despite my crazy love life, I wrote on and off during this time. I did manage a few publications, mostly in homemade magazines with bad artwork and utterly gross aesthetic sensibilities – right up my alley.

After a few years of freelance editing, I decided that the whole school thing wasn’t so bad after all. I went back for more. During my Master’s degree I flirted with minor intellectual stardom. I was a medium sized fish in a small pond. I liked it.

My dysfunctional relationship couldn’t share space with my burgeoning academic career, so I took the cat and moved into an apartment all my own. I took a PhD in English Literature, specializing in Renaissance Drama. I replaced my crazy ex with a crazy thesis supervisor.

All the while, I was studying tai chi and various other forms of energy work. These two different worlds – academia and the mystical – didn’t quite mesh, but I was okay with that.

Throughout my years of study, I always meant to do creative work, but there was just never time. Grad school really crushed the creative urge out of me: since you’re supposed to be publishing constantly, there’s little time for any writing beyond the academic. In my field, it’s article writing or nothing, so I wrote articles. I told myself that it was enough of an outlet. All the while, a protest was building in the hidden chambers of my soul. Because I was busy, intellectually and emotionally engaged in school, and under the special kind of pressure that grad school brings, it was easy to ignore.

Things began to turn around when I finished my degree and won a fellowship to do two years’ further research. Part of the deal was spending winters in Washington DC. Through a mixture of stubborness, determination not to be separated from my cat for three months at a time, sheer good luck, and kismet, I ended up renting a Victorian house on Capitol Hill for those winters.

There was something magical about my time in Washington. The cat and I had this huge, rambling place all to ourselves, I had all the free museum access I could handle, and there was enough cash to keep me going without having to worry – at least for a little while.

Most importantly, for the first time ever, no one was watching me. I was a little bit accountable to my new supervisor (who was lovely and not crazy in the least), to let him know what I was working on. I worked steadily, but slowly. I gave myself lots of space and time to fiddle around. If I didn’t show up at the research library, people did comment, but my funding was from an independent source, so it really didn’t matter. Most of my time was my own.

Sometime in these Washington winters, I started to play with creative work again. I meditated and I practised tai chi in the tiny garden at the back of the house. Slowly, I reacquainted myself with the magic of words on paper. Once I started, I didn’t want to stop.

A realization was beginning to simmer at the back of my brain: if I wanted to be a writer, I couldn’t be an academic too. I’m sure some people can. Some people are way more amazing and capable of multitasking than me.

But I have to say that I’ve also seen a lot of academics who are battered down, unhealthy, and drained dry by their careers. The average English department is chock full of frustrated creatives who just don’t have the time or energy to play with writing. Those people scared me. One of my mentors – one of those people who seemed to be balancing creative work with a professorship – ended up in the hospital with a serious illness. When I asked senior faculty members what their careers were like, they did nothing but complain. I saw a possible future me in those people.

At the same time, the academics of my generation who were getting tenure stream jobs were the ones most incredibly driven to succeed. They worked tirelessly at their research and nothing else.

The academic job market that was supposed to be wide open by the time I graduated was tighter than ever. I found myself competing for the few available jobs with people who had been at it for years. They wanted it more than I did, and I knew that. I’m sure the committees who interviewed me knew it too.

As someone who had outside interests, I was an exception. I knew sooner or later I would be forced to decide between my academic work and the rest of my life.

Slowly, I started to make a decision. This was in no way something I rationally thought through. It’s more like my heart broke open one day and all this stuff came flooding out. I couldn’t put it back in, not without causing myself some damage.

In September 2007, as the academic job market was gearing up, I went up north to our family cottage, sat by the lake, and cried my guts out.

When I was done, I walked back up to the cottage and told my partner that I wanted to quit academia.

He nodded. “I know, it’s making you miserable,” he said. “What else would you want to do?”

I think telling him that I wanted to be a writer took more courage than just about anything else I’ve done in my life. Admitting it to him meant admitting it to myself.

I’ve been working at it for two years now. Mostly it’s been a downhill ride in a shiny red wagon. I'm not where I need to be if I'm going to make writing a career. But I know what I want to do and I’m giving as much of my time as possible to doing it. I have rearranged my life around writing.

I won’t lie: this is a crazy tough road. I’m living with a ridiculous degree of instability. There is nothing right now on which to base the kind of future plans that most people make. I’m working very odd jobs. I would say “to make ends meet”, but at this point I’m really just hoping that ends agree to talk to each other sometime in the future before my line of credit runs out.

For the first time ever, I have peace. My insides feel right, and that is something you can’t buy.

I’m unsure that my creative career will ever go anywhere. But I do know that it wasn’t going anywhere before, and I do believe that if you put positive effort into something, it will grow.

Into what, that’s not for me to say. But I’m going to do my best to make it something awesome.