Archive for the 'author’s notes' category

Every time I’ve been away too long

Jan 22 2012 Published by under author's notes

Friends sometimes ask me if I still write. I give them the factual answer: I do. Three pages of free-flow writing (almost) every morning, according to the school of Julia Cameron. But that’s me dodging the question. They want to know if I am still writing creatively for an audience or with an audience in mind. The true answer: I don’t. Or I haven’t been. My excuse is that I have a large project percolating, but again, that isn’t the true story.

I’m harbouring some unproductive patterns, and the effort to break out seems immense. Somehow, the two-point-five metres between the couch and my desk has become an insurmountable distance, no matter how many rules I try to impose on myself. Then, even if I’ve made it to the desk, a thousand distractions lurk between logging into my laptop and opening any word processing software. Even as I’m slogging through quagmires of aggregators, clicking link after link to view pointless images, I know that stringing phrases into sentences — however horrible, however few — is a better use for my time than what I’m doing. But there’s always one more link to click, one more comment thread to read, and then it’s too late to go to bed early. Again.

So I write this because I want to return to something without going backwards. Whatever I was writing 10 years ago is not what I will produce now, under these circumstances, with these surroundings. I’m no longer interested in adhering to a schedule or delivering n posts per week. This space is no longer a goal in itself. But it’s as good a place as any to experiment with putting one word next to another, just to see how they fit.

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And then there was October

Nov 01 2011 Published by under author's notes

I’ve been writing long enough to know that writing about not writing is the very worst kind of procrastination while at the same time being crucial to getting past the not-writing stage. True story.

So the intent was always to post something once a week. Not just anything though. Something good. And fuck if that plan didn’t seize up my creative muscles until I was just barely getting by on what I could squeeze out for the unbelievably easy to please office crowd. Between perfectionism, feeling generally uncommunicative, and a couple of extracurricular editing contracts, I have been pretty well silent here for nearly a month.

Someone at work today told me it’s winter. Which is impossible because the world is still green and yellow and red and orange. These West Coasters don’t understand my winters, and I’m not sure I understand theirs. But I am in love with this lazy autumn. My street is littered with big orange-gold leaves, and just today, I conceded that the mornings are a bit too chilly for my heavy summer jacket and shrugged into my light wool coat. The rains will start soon enough, and I’ll have to learn to deal with the damp heavy darkness. It’s amazing what the sight of green grass can do for the soul at this time of year.

Somewhere else it’s NaNoWriMo. And Movember. But I am participating in a different kind of contest. A photo challenge to document aspects of my world with a different focus each day. I don’t have any aspirations to join the ranks of my many photographer friends. It simply seems like a good opportunity to re-engage with the world I find myself moving through. I’ve been disconnected and distant so far. Reluctant to force my way in anywhere. But it’s time to connect with this city a bit more. Learn it for what it is and isn’t. Take us both for what we are.

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In which we find no triumphant return

Aug 15 2011 Published by under author's notes

I lost my voice. Or rather I buried it in a pile of fancy words and fictionalization for many years. Because I have a deep fear of being too open. If no one knows what I really think (or worse, what I really feel), then my solemn little soul is safe. It can never be absurd in its own home.

Recently, I uprooted what feels like everything. In reality, I kept my husband and parts of my job, but we moved our lives to the West Coast, leaving many good friends and a few bad habits behind. The physical upheaval unearthed a capacity for openness that has taken me two months to begin examining.

It could be that just living here breeds both physical and mental activity. In the context of this new life, I can’t seem to stop exploring thoughts. Chasing down ideas and finding the intersection where I can join the conversation.

All this is just the catalyst for a vocal resurgence. I’ve been excusing my silence as a refusal to add to the din of opinions battling inanely in the chasms and caverns of the internet. Which is ridiculous, now that I name it. A thousand others may say the same things, more succinctly, more loquaciously, more elegantly, or more crudely. But maybe I can pick up a few things others have missed along the way. And within this, we may find the beauty of meeting each other inside experience. In plain voice.

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The Gold Rush

Mar 05 2011 Published by under author's notes

I suspect that I fell in love with Charlie Chaplin today. I could blame the atmosphere. A world-class concert hall. The orchestra playing my emotions. Hundreds of children providing the laugh track, with all their delight in watching a man waddle and stumble from scene to scene.

But it was something more too. A blink, an innocent glance, a sudden grin. His face shifting from expression to expression. Charm and pathos and perfectly timed anything for a laugh. I’m a sucker for a man with crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

And pratfalls. They get me every time.

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