On Writing

Shade’s story is finished—for real this time. I wasn’t wholly happy with the ending of the first draft, so I gave it a few days and finally accepted that it needed more work. I did the hard copy edit at the same time and played with titles, none of which I liked until I glimpsed one this morning. I’ll wear it for a day or two and see if it fits as well as I think it does. If so, yay. If not, sigh.

In his most excellent book On Writing, horrormeister Stephen King dispenses a trove of advice on, well, the obvious. I generally shy from how-to books on creativity, since I believe that creativity has no boundaries and so many of these manuals state hard rules as the only way to success. While that may be true in the intellectual world, in my heart, I believe that the artist must follow her instinct and develop her own style unhampered by the fear of not following the formula. I once tried to write a formulaic romance. Into the third chapter, the characters were running off the page in all the wrong directions and I was bored enough to let them. Needless to say, it went no further than those 2.5 chapters. That’s when I decided to write what I want to read rather that what others may want to read. The formula romance market is huge and I could make a killing in the genre, except that I don’t want to write stuff that makes me roll my eyes. When I read a few romance novels in preparation to write my own, my eyes behaved like drops of spilled mercury. I knew what I had to do, and I had a template to ensure that I did it … but I couldn’t make myself or the characters do it.

I have great respect for romance writers. It’s way harder than it looks.

Anyway, On Writing is more autobiographical than instructional, which makes it far more helpful to me than any of the “How to Write Whizbang (Insert Genre Here) Fiction” manuals. One of the hints within is to drop a “finished” project into a desk drawer, ignore it for six weeks, then go back and look it over. If there are flaws—and there will be—that’s when you’ll be able to see them.

Naturally, I don’t wait that long. I buff and polish as I go (big mistake), and if there’s a structural problem, I usually know it right away. The end of Shade, for instance. I had promised myself to get it finished by the end of my Christmas vacation, so at 5:45 p.m. on January 10, 2014, I typed “The End” and breathed a big sigh. I had done it. The story was told.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. It was mostly told. I knew the ending was too abrupt and needed more work to tie up the loose ends—that means more envisioning, imagining, and composing—but I wanted to be finished by the deadline. A stupid self-imposed limit could have resulted in a sub-standard product. As it happens, it only needed half a page more, but I wanted so much to meet my goal (I hate that word except in hockey, and then only when it’s my team scoring one) that I ended the story prematurely. And I knew it. And I tried to deny it. During the course of last week, I made myself feel better by rephrasing the original commitment from “finishing the story” to “finishing the first draft”. It satisfied my ego, which is now only mildly miffed at a short delay in the cool inspection. Ego appeased, I was free to add a couple of vital paragraphs and now I can honestly say:

Shade’s story is finished.

I think.

Shootout at the Rodge

everybody grab a partner

Holy cow, what a bout at Rogers Arena. Two seconds into the Calgary/Vancouver finale to Hockey Day in Canada, every player on the ice except the goalies got into a fight and when the penalties were assessed, 176 minutes were assigned, including four game misconducts. The Canucks’ coach lost his mind and started screaming at the Flames’ coach, the players on either bench were chirping back and forth, the guys in the penalty boxes continued verbally abusing each other after the doors closed, and it took me forty minutes to get the dinner dishes done because Ter kept yelling at me to “come and see this!”

It was unbelievable, if only because no one in the game was wearing a vintage Flyer jersey. It got crazier at the end of the first period, too. The Vancouver coach was seized outside the Flames’ locker room, apparently intent on berating (or worse) the Calgary coach during the intermission. This set off the talking heads between periods; one guy was so upset that he couldn’t focus on anything else they might have discussed about what hockey had been played so far. Eventually, the teams did settle down and the game progressed, but with the shortened benches on either side, it was like watching two periods of playoff overtime when the guys are so tired they start tripping over the blue line and bumping into each other. They were tied 2-2 at the end of regulation, and still tied after 5 minutes of 4-on-4 OT, so appropriately enough, they went to a shootout. Vancouver won in the fifth round.

I could only imagine what my younger older brother must have been saying. The Canucks are his team. They were mine, too, last night, because I really dislike the Flames, but I must hand it to them—they gave us a darned good show of “ we went to the fights and a hockey game broke out”. It was wild.

Some form of league discipline is likely to be delivered to the Vancouver coach for his behaviour. Whatever he was doing in the corridor between periods had everyone up in arms. Even I can’t figure out what the heck he was thinking. He might have been choked at the visiting team playing their fourth line at the puck drop, which resulted in him having to send in his goons … The saddest thing is that one kid had been called up from the minors to play his first NHL game, his folks had flown out from Ontario to see him play, and he got tossed from it in the first two seconds. I still can’t get my head around it. In the old days, stuff like this happened all the time; they say the quietest room in the league was the visitors’ locker room in Philadelphia (oh, yeah, babe), and though scraps and staged dances are sprinkled throughout an 82 game season, for the most part, bench-clearing brawls don’t happen anymore. Philly is still the most penalized team in the league, but that’s guilt by historic association. It might also be untrue after last Saturday night.

Was it a good game? Yeah, it was. I loved it. No peace-loving beatnikery here, boy. I have a dark side. I also disagree vehemently with hits from behind and deliberate attempts to injure; fights don’t cause injuries the way sticks and knees and numbers-crunching do. I love the speed and skill of a fast forward, but I also admire the third and fourth line players, the guys who don’t score that much but can motivate their team by causing a ruckus or pulling the other guy’s jersey over his head. Saturday night was a tad extreme, and I do feel bad about the kid from the minors, and I cannot condone the coach’s conduct, but it was fitting that, in a day of celebrating the great Canadian game, the final match was a shootout in the wild, wild west.

Not My Bliss

My guru hero from "Kung Fu Panda" - Master Shifu

How’s that acceptance gig going, Ru?

Er … well …

2.5 hours into my Monday and I’m yelling at a co-worker: “Do you know how many New Year’s resolutions I’ve broken since I got here? Including the one about not yelling at you anymore!”

I like my job; really, I do. I like the people I work with, truly. I’m part of a supportive, cooperative, dedicated, talented group of adults who get important things done despite the powers that be, and I’m proud to be counted among them.

But this is not my bliss. I spent my vacation living life at my own speed in my own environment with my own peeps. After the holiday hoopla was over, I found a rhythm that matched Nature’s daily cycle. I was productive, I was happy, I was … okay, serene will never apply, but I was pretty darned close to experiencing ongoing inner peace. I actually felt able to re-enter my office world and not lose my cool.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Extenuating circumstances? Maybe. Full moon follies? Sure. Fourth quarter crazies? As usual. Then Ter mentioned the pendulum swing. She and I both wanted to slit our wrists after two days back at work. The third was the tipping point. We were tired at the end of it, but we were also more optimistic about surviving the rest of the week. We’ll make it ʼcause we always do. Humans are nothing if not adaptable, and much as I hate, loathe and despise waking up before I’m ready, I am finding my rhythm again.

Acceptance is next.

The Milkman's Son

before the Leppard show in 2005

According to my mother—who should know; she was there—it was a dark and stormy night. The pipes at home had frozen and flooded the flat. My older older brother, a toddler at the time, was staying with his maternal grandparents, so rather than help Dad clean up the water, Mum went into labour. She says she was still cold at the maternity hospital, but at least she was dry, and at the end of the night she had her second little boy, my younger older brother, the self-proclaimed Handsome One, so she figures all was worth it.

On paper, he doesn’t fit the family profile. Four of five kids were born in September. He was born in January. Four of five kids have green or hazel eyes. His are blue. Four of five kids have brown or black hair. His is auburn. In fact, he looks so much like our maternal grandfather that a family resemblance to the Greigs would have to reveal itself in personality … and I’m unsure that it does. His deadliest charm is his sense of humour – razor sharp, lightning fast, screamingly funny, and practically identical to the wit of our mother’s father.

Hmmmmm …

Wedged between my older older brother and my older sister like the jam in a sandwich cookie, he was, quite simply, the brightest splash of comedic colour in my growing up. Six years lie between us, so my earliest memories are vague. I remember a fairly active temper, mostly when I was goading it, but when there was laughter in the house, he was usually in the middle of it. He and my older sister were the perfect comedy team, recording their own radio shows on the old reel-to-reel in the basement (he asked me to provide Indy racetrack sound effects for one skit). He taught me to tackle him like a football player on the front lawn. When he wasn’t putting together models of them, he was downstairs with his pellet rifle, shooting at pictures of old WWII airplanes. He took me to my first hockey game (the Victoria Cougars vs the Medicine Hat Tigers) and drove me to the record store so I could buy my first Elton John album. He’s the headbanger in the family, gunning his electric guitar like a Sex Pistol while my older older brother favoured the folksier acoustic form of modern music. He’s crazy-ticklish. And he’s a one-man Goon Show, able to mimic any of the characters made famous by the British radio troupe of yore.

Actually, I can voice a mean Bluebottle, myself. My brother and I carpooled with Dad for the course of a summer in the early 80s; Dad drove, bro and I bantered in non-stop Goonese. My (our?) father is not a morning person, so getting him to think of cracking a smile is monumental. On those mornings, he’d sometimes take the role of ultra-slick Grytpype Thynne or the frazzled Major Bloodnok, and we’d howl with laughter all the way to town. Those hysterically happy rides to work would never have happened without my younger older brother.

A lot of good times would have been missed without him. The family trek across Canada in 1971. Riotous suppertimes when my arthritis was brand-new and raging. Attending a Def Leppard concert in 2005. Trash talking hockey with his son and recognizing his deeply affectionate nature in his daughter. I don’t recall any serious moments with my younger older brother. I’m afraid that if we tried one, we’d both burst into tears and drown in each other’s arms. A mother lode of passion is packed pretty deep within us; if avid support of our respective NHL teams isn’t hint enough, I suspect that our similar senses of humour are employed in precisely the same way for precisely the same purpose: to deflect and disarm incoming missiles that might otherwise reduce us to emotional rubble. I think sometimes that he and I are more alike to each other than we are to any of the other sibs – that’s why it seems appropriate to wish him a happy birthday today in a language I know he’ll understand:

YING-TONG-IDDLE-I-PO, bro!

Acceptance

This moment sucks. So how do I find joy in it? How do I drum up enthusiasm for the relentless pounding behind my left eye?

I don’t. I take Tylenol and a nap, and hope that it’s better when I wake.

It isn’t. In fact, it might be worse. It’s one of those hormonally-based migraines that last thirty-six hours and peak at 5 on the Richter scale. Not enough to make me barf, but enough to make being awake unpleasant. It also gets me to thinking about the downside of being present. There are some moments where I’d rather be anywhere else but where I am, when hearing a cheerful “be here now” is less likely to make me grateful than it is to make me a murder suspect.

One of the principles admonished by spiritual guru/philosopher/consciously-aware smart guy Eckhart Tolle is a threefold number that can be applied to every crappy moment/event/situation in life:

If you can change it, do so.

If you can remove yourself from it, do so.

If you can do neither of the first two things, accept it. Accept that the moment sucks and accept that it will pass. Good, bad or indifferent, no moment lasts forever. Perhaps the most helpful thing you can do in a so-called helpless situation is allow yourself to feel ripped off – denying fear of a root canal or anger with an executive decision will only make it worse. Don’t dwell on it, but don’t deny it, either. Accept how you feel and move on. You may feel better for it – I certainly do. I cannot change when the Flyers are losing a game. I can quit watching, or I can accept it and be happy that I’m watching them at all. That’s the other thing Professor Ekkles has done. He’s broken acceptance into further opportunities for presence. Once you accept the moment. you can:

Be enthusiastic; and/or

Find joy; and/or

If you can do neither of these things, then acceptance will have to do. Ironically, it takes more strength to stop resisting than it does to resist, but accepting what you cannot change can actually empower you. Letting go is liberating.

Back to the thirty-six hour migraine. When the Tylenol/nap attack fails, I do what I can to live with it. My ridiculously-priced green tea is always comforting, so I brew a tumbler and cradle it in my hands, sipping slowly and savouring the sweet grassy flavour. I compose this post, squinting at the computer screen as I collect my thoughts. I talk at Ter, who is having a day herself; we don’t complain, but we bolster each other through our respective sucky moments, finally admitting out loud that “it is what it is” and moving on despite the lure of continuing to whine.

And then, as it always does, the thirty-seventh hour arrives.

Back to Work

Shade’s story is finished. I wrote for three solid days and got it done on Friday. A hard copy edit and cool inspection are the next steps before I decide whether to “publish” it; right now I’m caught between letting it go and revising it to death. There’s an odd sense of emptiness when I return to the real world from my own. I was so consumed by the story last week that I was basically useless around the house; I kept dropping things or bumping into Ter or forgetting what I was saying while I was saying it. I’m still kind of useless in those ways, but now it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself.

Fortunately (?!), I’m back to work tomorrow. I won’t say I’m tripping-over-the-moon delighted at the prospect of squeezing back into the 9 to 5, but I can say that my vacation was successful in that I got the break I desperately needed and feel somewhat ready to tackle the challenges of the fourth fiscal quarter. I have a new penguin calendar and a new coffee cup and a whole new bulletin board to fill with pics and quotes to get me through the year. Ter came with me to the office yesterday and helped me to prep it for 2014. This year’s theme is “wouldn’t it be fun to …” and I have a new bunch of coloured gel pens and Sharpies to make it more vibrant. Ter started it off by writing “Dobby was here” in deep purple ink; after I quit laughing, it occurred that I should invite people to scribble their own quotes if they like. My office has more of the playroom than the professional aspect to it anyway. Stuffies and Star Wars figurines will do that.

I am not looking forward to getting up at 6:00 a.m. when I’ve been sleeping until 7:30 these past weeks., but I’ll get over it. My main challenge is Ter, who is so convinced that Monday morning will be a gong show that she’ll unwittingly make it so unless I can use the Force to counter it. Our work environments are so different that I can’t blame her for getting her angry on before she gets there, and while I may envision myself greeting colleagues with enthusiastic vigour, who am I kidding??? I am not a morning person and Mondays can be brutal.

They can be. They don’t have to be. It’s up to me which way mine goes.

Wish me luck.

Clotheshorse

trying it on for size

Four days to go and the thing I dread most about going back to work is deciding what to wear. I’ve been in hoodies, jeans and sneakers for the past three weeks, with the infrequent foray into a brassiere for public appearances, but starting Monday, I’ll have dress up and do my hair and wear earrings and proper shoes and bother with makeup again. Ugh. So much work for so little return.

I do myself a disservice. I can look pretty snappy when I want to, and looking good does help to boost my self-confidence, but I cared so much more for fashion when I had better legs and no back problems. These days, my work wardrobe passes as “business casual” and I’m able to get away with wearing running shoes because I have chronic back problems; however, I am aware that the battered Nikes are closer to retirement than I am.

Shopping for clothes is a dismal endeavour. I see countless possibilities when I’m not in the market and can never find anything when I am. I went shopping earlier this week, walked into a store and promptly forgot what already hangs in my closet. It’s hard to match items when you can’t remember what you have to match them with! And thank the gods I had my cool inspector with me; I asked Ter if the tawny sweater I’d chosen would work on me and she swiftly recommended the oatmeal instead. Then we went to Mark’s because I’ve been hankering for a pair of their bottle green cords since last fall. I should have bought them then, but Christmas shopping took precedence and I hoped they’d go on sale after Boxing Day.

My size is average, which means there’s rarely anything available in my size. I hoot at tags reading “4/32” – that’s a size 4 with a 32 inch leg. I’m sorry, but anyone I know who’s size 4 with a 32 inch leg also has an eating disorder. Anyway, Ter found the bottle green cords, they were on sale, we located a pair in my size (that should have been my first hint), and off I went to try them on.

I was immediately cast back to my youth, when my wee sister and I would crowd into a change room together and get each other’s opinion. I remember once nearly being escorted from the store because we laughed so hard we almost peed ourselves. In the change room at Mark’s, I kicked off my sneaks, slipped out of my jeans, and immediately suspected something odd when my foot was almost too wide for the pant leg. A little persistence won out, mostly because I have fairly skinny legs, but once I was in and zipped up, I looked at my reflection and damn near cracked myself up.

I looked like nerdy Howard Wolowitz in Big Bang Theory, the engineer who is 30 years old and wears a boys’ “large”! I hadn’t noticed the label - the pants model was “curvy/skinny”, which means made for someone not built like the Grinch. So I peeled them off and gave up.

We were both in a wardrobe-enchancing mind, though. Ter picked up a gorgeous top that Moon Pie decided would work extremely well with his natty blue scarf … too bad it’s not in his size.