Changes are afoot. I am getting ready for 2011 in some different and exciting ways.  I have a month-and-a-half to prepare.

First, I’ve been accepted to the online writing program at Humber College  and my assigned mentor/teacher is David Bergen. This is both daunting and exciting.

Daunting because, well, just read his bio and all the prizes his books have garnered.

Exciting, because…see above.

What is so cool about this program is that you work on your own manuscript, so it’s completely tuned in to what you want to focus on. That is one of the reasons I signed up for this particular writing course.

This schedule runs from January 2011 until the end of July 2011. This effectively stops me from traveling. Apparently, I’ve become a travel writer, and so…you can see what I mean about changes afoot.

I am already feeling a vague panic at thinking I will not be in an airport for months. I am still planning on going to the Travel Media Association of Canada conference in Ottawa in March but I’ve already shortened that trip to take in only the conference, instead of the usual pre-and-post-tours.

My plan is to clear the decks in anticipation of the new commitment in January. I am sorting out my office and editing the mess like crazy, clearing out space in the basement, and generally setting up some order. I believe that this will give me no excuses for avoiding the work and will give me the metaphorical and physical space to be creative.  It’s a good theory.

I am also granting myself permission to not sweat the days of no writing that this clean-up exercise will entail.

Additionally, we have quite a bit of company coming over the next weeks and then there’s the whole Christmas thing. I’ve decided to fully involve myself in all of it and to allow no guilt about the lack of writing effort as a result.

It’s just not the time. Not just yet.

Instead, I am recognizing that all this is mental and physical preparation to start the work; tilling the earth so to speak – so that I can grow the garden. Oh that was groan-worthy. Do you see why I need a mentor and just a little guidance?

I also believe that this preparatory time is letting me mull over what I really want to do. I had decided after the Florida Write by the Water retreat that I was switching to fiction, but I’m vascillating on that – yet again – and am using this time to ask myself some hard questions about what I want to achieve by writing this, whatever this is.

What I think I do know is that I like the idea of a collage or novel-in-stories approach whether it’s in a memoir or novel.

I loved the Pulitizer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It worked so well and yet it defied the usual format of beginning, middle and end with the narrative arc that we’re all supposedly looking for.

Instead the format was a series of linked short stories where, in one story Olive Kitteridge might be just a minor character, or in another story she might be the entire focus.  Each story adds layer after layer to the reader’s understanding of this woman’s life, and with each different perspective, builds toward a more complete understanding of who she is. There is a great discussion about this on this Psychology Today link

Olive wasn’t the one-dimensional sum of one single narrator’s viewpoint but instead, through a multiplicity of angles, we gain an understanding of who she might be.

I loved it because I think that’s the truth of all of us.  We aren’t just one person’s opinion of what we’re about, including our own. Like the bumper sticker says, “You don’t have to believe everything you think.”

Most of all, this pearls-on-a-string approach gives me hope for the “story” I’m concocting. It seems I can’t get myself to get into the standard chapter by chapter mode.

I have a series of stories that (I’m hoping) build upon each other and perhaps result in an overall more substantial piece because of this framework.

My guess is that Mr. Bergen is going to have his work cut out for him when he tackles my flip-flopping fickleness. It could be tantamount to nailing Jell-O to a wall.