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Journal Pages

14 Mar 2012 -

Morning Pages

My methods have changed over the years, but the effect remains the same. Somewhere, there are only stumps in a former forest, because I have single-handedly devastated whacks of trees with my daily habit of three-pages-each-morning journalling.

The picture shows two years of that habit. These two binders are out of the Rubbermaid container buried in the basement in Sechelt. The pink bin is filled with small journals, scribblers, wire-bound notebooks, fancy leather books, and loose sheets tied with ribbon.

I pulled those years in particular because I am working on my memoir and I want to see what I was thinking & what was happening and when it occurred. Relying strictly on my memory of events is not exactly fool-proof…or perhaps proof that a fool is afoot.

Unfortunately, I’m not a very good diarist. I am just as prone to wax on for two pages about the previous night’s dream and then fill a full page with purple prose while describing my coffee and the way the ocean is gleaming. This doesn’t do me much good when I’m trying to find out what exactly was happening on the date in question.

But then I find other days where I’m amazed at the detail of a particular moment or feeling. And now, with my perspective of time and distance, I want to yell at my past-self to let her know what’s coming and to tell her what I can see from here that she could not.

As I read these pages, I can see some things that are so obvious now and sadly, should have been obvious then too. But as I was writing back then, I seemed to be unable to rise above my circumstances and be objective.

“Colleen!” I mutter at the pages, “Grab some perspective. Look at the big picture!”

It’s good advice. I might take it.

Category: Musings, Photos, Writing  Tags: , , , , ,  2 Comments

Writing Advice & Storms on the Pacific

12 Mar 2012 -

“Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” – Henry James

The storm rushed the shore all night and this morning as the tide rose, I walked down to Davis Bay with Karen and her lovely dog Shanti. The highway workers had a pump on the flooded corner, frantically trying to keep up with all that the not-so-Pacific was flinging at them. Logs were flung up on the seawall, the barricades tossed over like Lego and one of the heavy-duty metal picnic tables was crushed…Clearly Mother Nature was in the throes of some serious perimenopausal shifts. How else to explain all that furious energy?

But it got me thinking how She is very good about clearing the decks and starting over. The slate is swept clean and, as the bumper sticker says, Today is (once again) the first day of the rest of your life.”

Let us begin it then.

I am rereading Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. This little book was first published in 1934 and the writing has that distinctly back-in-the-day diction.

Lest that lull you into thinking it’s quaint and lovely, be warned. Miz Brande brooks no nonsense. This is not all lovely affirmations and lovely heartwarming advice. She was someone, I’m sure, who would not have suffered fools. At all.

She doesn’t put up with lame excuses or lacklustre attempts.

You are to buckle down and get at it. If her book were to be summed up, I believe it would say, “If you want to write, write.”

Her most unusual writing advice is to take a sabbatical from words because, “If we are left alone long enough and forbidden to read, we will very soon be talking to ourselves…starve yourselve for a few hours in a wordless void. Stay alone, and resist the temptation to take up any book, paper, or scrap of printed matter…flee the temptation to telephone someone.”

She gives a compelling argument.”Prisoners who never wrote a word in the days of their freedom will write on any paper they can lay hands on…a two-year old will tell himself stories, and a farmer will talk to a cow.”

Her prescription for good writing? Disappear and be alone for as long as you can each day. Resist the urge to talk about what you’re writing, because, “Sooner or later, he himself would begin to talk about the work he had in mind, and, to his astonishment, he discovered that the urgent desire to write the story disappeared as soon as he had got it thoroughly talked out.”

This appeals deeply to my introverted side, who is so often at the mercy of my more extroverted and dominating self. (I believe I have mentioned the whole Gemini thing before…)

The storm is subsiding a little now. The house is still standing. The tide has pulled back & the rocks on the shore are scrubbed clean.

I am sitting here with a cup of tea and with Becoming a Writer at my side. Decks are clear. I’m ready to go.

Category: Video, Writing  Tags: , , , , , ,  4 Comments

How Often To Blog

09 Mar 2012 -

P1030850

I have been mulling something over.

It sometimes takes a while…no, actually, it almost always takes a good long time, for me to absorb and reflect and pay proper attention to little comments and thoughts that plant themselves in my brain.

Last week, a very good friend said, “If you really want to write your book, maybe you should blog less?”

I smiled at her; a knowing smile that suggested that was a very fine suggestion but I wouldn’t be following it.

At the TMAC panel discussion last Saturday there were comments about blogging and the time commitment required and how much was enough and I stuck up my hand to say, “I blog five days each week.”

Someone said to me later, “Wow. How do you manage that? I could never do that and have any time left for the other stuff I want to do.”

Just as these two thoughts joined a few other random comments along these same lines, it occurred to me that I was starting to feel pushed to produce something each day and that is not what I ever wanted to do.

I wanted to write about things that felt I needed to express, not just to fill a space.

In my defense, the ‘filling the space’ plan has been very infrequent. One of the things that I have loved about doing this is that I often find out what I want to be writing about, only when I open my computer and start typing.

There seem to be two types of posts for me; the one I just mentioned, where I flip open the screen and think, “OK Colleen what are you going to do now?” and the other kind where I wake up thinking about something and mulling it and half-writing it while I brush my teeth or walk.

In that regard, this is such a good writing discipline because, by virtue of this commitment to five days a week, I have to sit and write some mini-essay on something. For that, it’s been great.

But it’s the other niggling question of producing only for the sake of filling the space that bothers me. I don’t want to waste people’s time with ramblings of no-account.

Now. Some might argue that all my ramblings fit that aforementioned category. Whatever. I assume those people have left by now anyway. Besides, that is a discussion for another day…or frankly, never.  I am old enough not to care too much about that.

No. I am talking about my own standards of what is acceptable and whether my self-discipline that can serve me too well, is also the very thing that can hang me up.

I have been known to swing on hooks of my own devising. Much too often. Much, much too often.

I guess what I’m saying is that I lack perspective on myself. I do not know if this blogging habit is good self-discipline or harmful.

To understand what I mean, you should know that I was raised practising piano four-hours a day. That was the deal. You can see how that kind of program could perhaps skew one’s sense of proportion.

So, my new plan is to blog four days a week and see how that feels. Which four days? I’m not sure. Definitely not on Sundays. Probably still not on Saturdays either. I think I’ll leave it at that. Somewhere between Monday and Friday. TBA.

Feel free to express your opinions on the matter or advise me on the days of the week that sound right to you.

It’ll take a while, but I promise that eventually everything that is said will percolate and coalesce into some new plan.

It’s almost guaranteed.

 

Category: Musings, Photos, Writing  Tags: , , , , ,  7 Comments

Writing a Book

07 Mar 2012 -
Glass Hearts

Follow Your Heart

 

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing.

You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I love that I am taking comfort from words penned in 1903. But this is such wise and timeless advice, that is so obviously applicable far beyond the subject of writing. This line in particular, really resonates,

“You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. “

I spent so much of life hoping that someone or something outside of me would have the answer(s) to all my questions. Someone else could ‘fix’ things. There is something quite lovely about being on the other side of 50…and being able to see that there are no real authorities to send me in the right direction.

Tag. I’m it.

And so I continue down this rabbit hole that is this process called writing a book, which, like anything we pursue, is really about the process of creating our lives. There is no one to ask for assistance. It is the ultimate in solo travel.

But these other words of Rainer Maria Wilke let me know this is hardly new. My hope is that they might help you on whatever path you may be on…

“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside.”  

Category: Books, Memory, Musings, Photos, Writing  Tags: , , , , , , ,  10 Comments

Writing About Death

05 Mar 2012 -

 

Mom at her Mother's Funeral
I grew up going to funerals.

That’s just the way it rolled in the Mennonite world. My earliest memories are of standing among the headstones as another black casket went into the ground.

By the time I was twelve, I’d probably been to more funerals than weddings…and I’d been to lots of weddings. It was generally accepted that the whole church was invited to either event.

The way I grew up, if you scratched a Mennonite… you’d find a funeral waiting to happen. Everyone knew that life was something to get through, the suffering required so that ultimately you could reach the big reward of your spot in that heavenly Hymn Sing.

There was nothing quite like gathering in the cool austerity of the church basement while drinking multiple cups of weak coffee, eating  thick sugary squares and talking about someone who wasn’t there. Of course…that could also describe a wedding.

And, unless you were listening closely to the sharing (and if there was a definite absence of an open casket at the front of the church), it was pretty hard to distinguish between the two main events.

It wasn’t until grade eight, with my newly expanded circle of non-church friends, that I discovered not everyone had photo albums stuffed with dead relatives. How mortifying to discover that my new friends found it odd to have close-ups of dead people  among the family vacation photos.

But even knowing that some found it strange, I found it even more amazing that some people had never been to a funeral at all.

Last Saturday I was on a panel at the BC Chapter of the Travel Media Association of Canada professional development day. I was part of  a group of writers and PR people who were fielding questions on the do’s and don’t's of operating with integrity on either side of that fence.

Somehow the topic of death came up…I swear I didn’t introduce it.

But it circled around the question of what to do if there’s a death on the cruise ship, train, kayak trip or whatever trip you’re currently being hosted for, and that you’re supposed to be writing about. Judging by most of the responses, it seemed the majority felt that death would be a subject best left out of the travel story.

In defense of my response, I just want to add that I can’t recall a day of my childhood where my mother wasn’t listening to CFVR’s funeral report, how else to explain my quick defense of death as a fine and worthy topic.

Granted, it’s not usually the first thing you see on an ad to Disneyland, but think about it.  Could there be a much more convincing reason to go on a trip?  ”You’re going to die so come see Mickey before you do!”

Hmm…maybe not.

I have had two stories published that included death as a fairly central theme. The first one published in WestWorld magazine and themed around a dead body I saw while floating down India’s Ganges River.

The more recent story was prompted when someone died while Kevin and I were on a bicycle trip in the Czech Republic. I wrote about that in an Adventure Cyclist story that intertwined some of the dark layers of Czech history with the tragedy of the man who lost his life while cycling.

Death is not an easy topic to tackle. And I understand it’s not a particularly catchy lead to most travel stories.

But if I’m not exactly fond of the subject, I am certainly familiar with it. Death, after all, is a large part of the reason Kevin & I retired. We knew there was no guarantees on this ride.

Besides. I grew up going to funerals.

 

Category: Musings, Photos, Travel writing, Writing  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,  16 Comments
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