It’s the time of year again for the Kingston Writer’s Festival! I bought tickets for seven events this year, one of which was last night at the Grand Theatre.
I had the pleasure to attend an interview with Annie Proulx, of Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News fame, and Emma Donoghue, who, most famously so far, wrote both the novel and screenplay for Room. Both lovely ladies talked about and read from their newest releases, Barkskins, (Proulx) and The Wonder, (Donoghue), and I must say both books sound fascinating.
The best part of the evening, for me as an author, was when they talked about writing. I nodded my head when Ms. Donoghue said that if she were to describe where “home” is for her, it would be her laptop. Both authors agreed that when writing a novel, they live there inside it. It’s true for me as well. Emma also told a funny story about when she was writing Room, how she used her young son to figure out the logistics of escaping a rolled-up rug. I did the same, using my son to help me figure out the intricacies of a certain magic trick in “The Great Dagmaru.”
It was wonderful to be able to relate to two famous authors on a professional level – as professional as it can be to use your offspring as a prop, that is. And, of course, to be in the presence of greatness.
Most of the events I’ve signed up for to come are more for the sake of learning. A few are on the subject of writing non-fiction, in anticipation of putting together my memoir on parenting a Deaf child. I hope to update you all on how things are going throughout the weekend.
I’m giving this book four stars even though it pissed me off. For the first half of the book I didn’t really like Clementine, the main character, which made it hard to care about her. What gives the novel four stars is the compelling way it’s written.
Ms. Ream is an extremely talented storyteller. She pulled me through the tale until I couldn’t put it down. Until I began to feel angry because in the end, I was forced to care about a woman determined to end her life. I was mad at Clementine. The novel made me feel, which for me is the greatest compliment anyone can give to a writer.
Losing Clementine is not a lighthearted read. It’s a powerful one, about relationships and how deeply they can affect everything, right down to personality.
Okay, so, camp. I’m not talking about the traditional back-destroying, sleeping-in-a-sleeping-bag, sit-around-a-campfire-and-roast-marshmallows-and-drink-an-entire-bottle-of-Jack-Daniels-whilst-looking-up-at-the-stars-and-contemplating-the-universe-type camping. The days of being able to walk the day after sleeping on the ground are long gone for me. I’m talking about Camp NaNo! What is Camp NaNo, you ask? Well let me tell you.
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is in November. During that time, the goal is to write at least 50,000 words, no excuses. Write 49,999 and you lose. But the people who bring us NaNoWriMo also host two “camps” every year. They are in April and July. During the camps you set your own goal. Anywhere from 30 words to 1,000,000 – it’s up to you. Campers are assigned to cabins, and each member of the cabin encourages the others. There can be challenges, there are forums full of experts to help with research, and chats over coffee… it’s fun!
Since I’m on a quest to finish the sequel of my epic novel, I’ve decided to join Camp NaNo in July. I actually started my sequel at the camp in April of 2014, when I managed to write about 30,000 words.
So, who’s with me? Anyone out there already signed up? Have a cabin for me to join? I’m thinking I may start my own, otherwise. Here’s the link: https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in
Let’s sit around the campfire and roast marshmallows and drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniels whilst looking up at the stars and contemplate writing, without the stiff and aching muscles, together!
It started with an appointment. My son’s behavioral specialist was to go his school to talk to the teacher to observe him on Tuesday, and then come to see me today. On Tuesday afternoon I received a note from the teacher to say the specialist had canceled due to the flu. I, therefore, assumed she wouldn’t be coming here either. Sure enough, I received a phone call this morning from the behavioral specialist’s office. What happened during that phone call is what’s has me… worried? I wouldn’t go that far: thoughtful, perhaps, ever since.
The nice lady who called me only wanted to let me know my appointment was canceled and would be rescheduled. In order to seem, I don’t know, friendly, or sociable, I felt the need to explain that I already knew the behavioral specialist was sick, since she’d canceled Tuesday’s appointment. But even while I was explaining this, my inner editor was screaming at me, “This is not important to the plot! She doesn’t need to know! She’s probably got a dozen more phone calls to make – let her go!” It’s this conciseness with which I feel the need to write, that makes me wonder what it’s doing to me socially.
And isn’t that true for all of us, to some degree? Whether we’re trying to take shortcuts in speech (how many times have you heard someone utter “lol” out loud? Do you do it?) or cutting ourselves short, as I feel I should have done this morning, it has to be affecting the way we socialize. Writing has become the norm, and speech secondary. We spent far fewer hours with pen and keyboard even twenty years ago, unless it was part of our job, versus talking on the phone or in person. Now our lives are largely lived with the written word.
Writing has always been, in a practical way, different from speech. Drafting a formal letter, whether the recipient is a business associate or a lover, is done with care. Choosing the right words is essential to get the point across. With this in mind, are we bloggers actually better at speaking? Has the practice of finding the correct way to say things, and the editing that goes into many of our posts, improved our skills of communication across the board? And have Facebook and Twitter minimalized our speech to the bare necessities?
I have to wonder how we are evolving. And really, that’s what it is. An evolution of mankind who, at one time walked miles to convey a message, now looks no further than his pocket. We’re not quite to the point that our hands get more use than our tongues, but will we, one day, end up with wrists that bend in odd ways, and mouths that are used only to consume food? But I’m getting ahead of myself (and everyone else).
How we socialize with one another–how we communicate–cannot not be affected by what we spend three quarters of our time doing in order to communicate. Small talk is how we connect with one another. It’s how we discover our shared sentiments. It’s what we do on Facebook and Twitter, but without the human interaction–or at the very least it’s human interaction with a machine as a buffer. Will there come a day when we save our small talk only for such situations as taking pictures of our food on social media, and keep our direct interaction as a form of necessity? I think you really have only to look around a restaurant, or peer into people’s kitchens at dinner time these days for the answer.
A couple of weekends ago it was my pleasure to stay in one of the oldest operating inns in Canada, The Queen’s Inn, in Kingston, Ontario.
It’s a comfortable hotel with friendly staff and, considering there’s a sports bar downstairs and I was there on a Friday and Saturday night, it was very quiet. Despite the fact that they provide WiFi, the place hasn’t lost much of its ambiance from back in the 1800s when it was built. As you can see, drywall, in my room at least, isn’t necessarily a consideration.
After dinner, I went outside to take a picture. My windows are on the second floor with the light on.
In the morning I had Coppers Pub downstairs to myself for the complimentary breakfast, so I wasn’t at all self-conscious about taking pictures.
While I was sitting in the pub, I wrote in my notebook:
I love these old buildings. They send my writer’s imagination into orbit, much like I want to believe the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel did for Stephen King. The feet that have walked these floors and gazed upon these walls – people with a million different thoughts in the their heads even as they looked but barely saw, astounds me. Humans stopped here for the night with their horses stabled nearby – weary souls traveling through came here, refugees from the cold as far back as 1839. The place has so much history, and I can only imagine…
I love staying in Kingston, so it fits well with The Bee’s Love Is In Da Blog prompt for today, “write about places you love.”
If you’d like to read about my most memorable and amusing, (and spooky) visit to Kingston to date, you can find the post here.
This just in: Boroughs Publishing Group has just announced a contest for writers of Romantic fiction that is ethnically diverse and/or LGBTQ. If your fiction fits into this category, check out the link!
As many of you know, my epic work-in-progress (my novel The Great Dagmaru) is a paranormal romance about a magician and his assistant. As many of you also know, I have great fun doing research in the interest of making the book as believable as possible. This research has in the past included staying in the haunted mansion in Kingston that inspired the setting, and traveling to Ottawa to spend an afternoon backstage at the National Arts Centre, where one of the performances in my novel takes place. (Check out the links. There are pictures.)
Now I have a new and exciting opportunity ahead of me. This time it’s a little more nerve-wracking. Last weekend when I was again visiting Kingston, I met a magician. And he’s agreed to let me interview him! A real live magician! *ahem* Once the interview is complete I plan to make an article out of it and sell it to a publication. Depending on the slant I put on it, I may pitch it to an online magazine for kids, a parenting magazine, or even as a general interest piece for the Huffington Post. At the moment I’m still coming up with questions. I have quite a few already, but I don’t want to miss anything important. Some of them will pertain to background information that might not even make it into the novel, but they’re things that are necessary for me to understand. Most of the interview will, I hope, shed some light on what makes a magic show fun to watch and what makes a magician want to perform. Not too much light though… it’s the mystery that makes watching worthwhile.
An awful lot is going into the making of my novel. With this article, not only will I have the benefit of the knowledge of someone in the business (a real live magician! *ahem*), but I’ll have something extra to add to my resumé. One way or another, I’m having a blast. It’s all adding up to an experience that not a lot of people get.
I was on Twitter a moment ago and saw that #1lineWed is trending. I didn’t know this was a thing! I wonder if it predates my One-Liner Wednesday prompt… does anyone know? Have you heard of it before?
Anyway, to get more exposure on your One-Liners, make sure you tag your posts #1lineWed! I’ll add the suggestion to the rules section next week. This is so cool!
“Keeping body and soul together is an annoying business.” – a line by Charles Daniel Jacobs, Chapter VI – Revival ~ Stephen King
I was going to post this quote as a One-Liner on Wednesday, but it resonates with me beyond being able to leave it alone – I have to write about it. And that’s really what it’s all about for me.
What is a soul? Is it our life’s energy? Is it what makes us who we are? Is it what places us here on earth from where ever in the universe we come from? I suppose it depends on your belief. I believe it’s what drives me to be who I am. My nature, if you will. It’s what I was born with.
I am a writer. This is not something I chose for myself; I, like many others I have met, seem to be made for this occupation, as it surely is for artists in any medium. We are made to create – we have this in common. The poet who lives to make emotions and sensations come alive on the page; the musician who must play; the artist who needs to express herself in pictures; the architect who strives upwards, brick upon brick; the knitter who lovingly measures, stitch by stitch her work – the one thing each of us shares is the ability to stand back and say, “I created this out of nothing.” And oh, what satisfaction it brings! Our creations are what make our souls shine!
But, as relating to the quote, we all have our limitations. Whether it be physical or a matter of responsibility or both, there are times when we are inspired to create but can’t. For me, at times, it is an ache. A feeling that if I can’t just sit and write… something… I’ll go crazy. I think of Julie Andrews – her botched throat operation must have been beyond devastating. Or Phil Collins’s spinal cord injury that has left him unable to play the drums or even hold a pair of drumsticks. For some the physical disability didn’t stop them – Beethoven who continued to compose after he became almost completely deaf, and drummer, Rick Allen of Def Leppard who lost his arm in a car crash, to name a couple. They are the exception rather than the rule, but it goes to show how the compulsion to keep going can help to overcome what may seem like impossible obstacles.
“Keeping body and soul together is an annoying business.” Indeed, Mr. King. It’s an annoyance, a stress, a heartrending misery that many of us experience. It is a human condition. It is the plight of the creator.
How do you view your readers? As individuals just like you, sitting at a computer? Or as an audience? For that matter, at what point does a list of followers become an audience?
I think what separates the individual from the audience is the amount of interaction we have with our readers. And we have a choice… incite comments and reply back to them in a conversational manner or stand at the podium and preach, collecting “likes” like so much applause. All we need do is show up and display our brilliance.
But what if you could actually get every one of your followers into a room – or for some of you an Olympic-sized arena – and stand before them, each of them with laptops, and write your post for them to read while you watch? Or better yet, read it out loud and then interact with anyone who wishes to comment – would you feel less comfortable?
Ah, the relative anonymity of the internet, eh?
It’s interesting to think about though. That there are those who read our words, who judge without commenting; those we consider friends; people who drop by because they can relate and say so. But there’s also the surfers – the ones without WordPress accounts who read and nod or shake their heads and move on. Maybe they remember us and come back for more, or maybe we’re just like a song on the radio – one they’ll dismiss because it’s rap and they prefer country. I suppose they are our “audience.”
How do you describe the majority of your readers? Kindred spirits? Followers? Friends? People you would read your posts out loud to…?
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