Life in progress

Tag Archives: writing


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Why I write fiction

English: Icon for lists of science fiction authors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was sitting here trying to come up with a blog post when I realized it. There’s nothing going on in my real life that’s worth writing. Whenever I came up with something, it was either something I want or something I imagine.

For instance, I was out on my paper route today, looking as I always do for inspiration, and there was this woman walking her dog. From a distance it was an odd looking dog, mostly because it was black and gray and the gray parts of the dog blended in so well with the sidewalk that parts of it were invisible. So, of course, my imagination took over.

What if I woke up one day and no longer recognized things that I should… as though I’d woken up in a different dimension. And what if I saw this dog on my paper route and *gasp* it had four legs?!? Everyone knows that animals all have two or three legs – except birds who of course have four. But imagine that! An animal that resembled a dog except it had FOUR LEGS!

So that’s my life. Dogs with four legs. Exciting stuff, eh?


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To pseud or not to pseud

…that is the question. What’s in a name after all? It’s something by which you are instantly recognized. But which one of you do you want recognized… I think that’s really what it comes down to.

We all have different personas for different occasions. To my children’s teachers I am nothing but a dedicated mother. To my readers, a sage. (Stop laughing.  Oh okay laugh. It was a joke.)  But seriously, I am myself. I am a woman who has never, on a regular basis, worn makeup. What you see with me is what you get. And yet few of the people in my real life understand where my imagination goes.

This post was brought about by the fact that, after a rather questionable fic I wrote last night, I lost a follower on my fiction blog. Whether it was someone who went ‘Ewww, what am I reading?!’ and clicked unfollow or whether it was someone who deleted their blog (a robot perhaps?) I have no idea. But it got me to thinking. My writing covers many different things. I’ve written a children’s book which is currently being illustrated by a friend and most certainly will go out to a publisher under a pseudonym. The stories I tend to enjoy writing however, go from humorous (my Second Seat on the Right series ) to perverted ( Beauty ) to horror (see a short story entitled ‘Reaper’) and of course the psychologically horrific Boy Series on this blog.

I understand that it’s probably important to write under different names for different genres. My biggest concern, however, is protecting those I love from the depths of my imagination, not only for what they would think (I believe they already suspect a great deal anyway – case in point, my eighteen year old son telling me I’m a sick fuck) but also for what the people my kids have to deal with on a daily basis – what are they whispering about mom?

Having been married a number of times I’ve been through a few aliases in my life, to the point where the hardest part of filling out an application form for something was deciding on my surname. My kids don’t even have the same last name as I do, and to this day you wouldn’t find me under Linda Hill in the phone book. But it was the name I was born with and the name I’ve chosen to stick with from now on, no matter what.

Unless I don’t.DSC00191


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Private Thoughts, Private World Part 6 – Beauty

In each of us the idea of it is cradled, warm and glowing. It’s something we wish for, something we strive for, something we hope to behold and to create. For each of us there is a singular nuance that we recognize and when we see it, or hear it, touch it, taste it or even smell it we know. It lights up a part of our brain like nothing else can.

It is beauty.

It moves us, it inspires us. It comes in so many forms. I remember once, I had taken an overnight flight from England back home so I had been up all day the day before and because of the time change and having to look after my kids… let’s just say I was exhausted. In this state, I was in the car for some reason and the song ‘Comfortably Numb’ came on the radio. I sat and listened to the entire thing. It wasn’t until the guitar solo at the end when I started to bawl my eyes out, positive that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life. …at least since I saw Pink Floyd live so many years before that.

How do you describe something that, to you, is so beautiful that it makes you cry? By giving it life. Like the gritty, piercing of David Gilmour’s guitar crawling up the back of my neck and wrapping me in a warm blanket of pure, ear-splitting devastation.

By giving an inanimate object a soul we can not only describe what we see but how it makes us feel.

Sakura2

Sakura

I see a delicate cherry blossom, known only to spring. It signifies both the brilliance and the swiftness of life and all its glory, for it comes and goes, so very quickly.

Beauty can be defined in so many different ways. For some of us it is in a face, in the sound of children’s laughter. For some it is home and the aroma of freshly baked cookies or the comfort of a roaring fire on a cold winter night. For some it is the exquisite line, where pain and ecstasy meet – the drop of blood,  the single tear shed for love.

Beauty is one of only many things that move us, that make us want to write or to articulate our emotions in other ways. To be able to elicit in others the emotion that comes from our deepest most precious place where we know things such as beauty is a gift. It’s one that I hope to practice and somehow, perfect.


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Sundays

I remember Sundays BK (before kids) as a day when I woke up in the summer to hear lawnmowers going and the scent of freshly cut grass wafting through my window. I remember waking up and going downstairs to retrieve the Sunday Sun and laying in bed with my first husband, reading the paper and thinking about coffee.

I remember Sundays of watching movies on tv and spending my day on a knitting project or going for quiet walks or long drives: destination no where in particular. Maybe for ice cream. I remember laying in bed in the spring and seeing the new buds on the trees outside my window.

DSC00152

But that was all BK.

Now my Sundays are filled with cooking for the family, cleaning, entertaining a little guy with an unlimited amount of busyness about him. Sundays are about breaking up fights between my elderly mother and my young son. Sundays are about sleeping in until 6:30 if I’m lucky.

The one thing I can still hold on to?

080729_tim_hortons_3202

Coffee. There will always be coffee.


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Proof

It is done – my final assignment for the last of the courses I am taking this semester. A few extra grey hairs later and more than a few late nights of agonizing over words and sentences and paragraphs and I can finally breathe again. And blog. Speaking of blogging…

As of this moment (that is before I publish this post) I have had a grand total of three visitors to my blog in the eighteen hours that have passed since midnight. This shows me that in order to have anyone visit my blog I have to visit others and comment on them – two things I have had little time to do these past days.

Proof positive that if you want an active blog you need to be active in the blogging community.

…or you need to put hashtags in front of trending words in your title…


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Adventures on my Paper Route – Ice

Ah, the pleasures of living in southern Ontario.  Instead of the forecasted mountain of snow, we’re having an ice storm. Power is intermittent. If it wasn’t so pretty it would be intolerable.

Ice 4 Ice 3 Ice 2

It took a bit of bravery to deliver my papers today. Having to listen for cracking from above and dodging falling branches.

Ice 5

Timber!

Living in an old part of town is pretty, but it’s also pretty dangerous when the ancient behemoths come crashing down.

Ice 7

My backdoor neighbour’s tree

I didn’t expect to post two of my adventures in one week, but today certainly deserves honourable mention.

 


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Adventures on my Paper Route – Spring is … bent

Well, the good news is my laptop didn’t get stolen. Right, I should probably start at the beginning.

Upon stepping out my front door this morning with my papers I was pleasantly surprised. Not only has it warmed up a few degrees, the sun was coming out and … YAY! so are the flowers at the front of my house. I went back inside to get my sunglasses and my camera and, newspaper bag over my shoulder, set my glasses down absentmindedly to take a few shots of the new spring blossoms.

Spring

Lovely, yes?

So, both satisfied and happy with myself I stood up and reached into my pocket to find my sunglasses. Not there. Feeling a little sick I looked around my feet. Noth…. what’s that under my foot?  Oh look!

Ouch

Bent sunglasses!

So, cussing along my way, I finished off my paper route, but not without stopping by one of my customers – a dry cleaning business where the TV is always on – to find out that we’re to expect 15cm of snow Thursday and another 10cm on Friday.  That’s a total accumulation of 10″ for my friends who haven’t caught up to the rest of the planet. You know who you are 😉

And then, to top it all off, I arrived home, put the key in the keyhole and…. locked the door. In my giddy glee I forgot to lock the house up.

The good news is… yeah. I have something to blog with.


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Third Person About

Nothing against the writers and artists who do this but, what is it with people who write their ‘About’ page in the third person? I’m assuming they are the one actually contributing to their own blog so why do they either a) not write their own ‘About’ page, or b) write it as though someone else is narrating their personal story? If it is a writer’s blog surely they are able to write about themselves.

Maybe there’s a stage one gets to when they don’t feel the need to connect personally with those who read their work. Perhaps they are afraid if they do let anyone feel that connection that they will have more of a responsibility to respond to everyone who writes to them. Or, and I suppose this is true, it’s easier just to copy and paste a bio…

I don’t know, is it just me who is a little put off by this? Is there anyone out there that has a third person ‘About’ who can explain to me why they did it?


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Inspiration

Why is it that the harder you look for inspiration the less likely it is you’ll find it? I think that’s what separates the wanna be writers from the actual writers. ‘Wanna’ just doesn’t cut it.

Today I want to write. Okay yes, I was inspired to write this, but could I come up with an idea for a story? Not a chance.

Distractions don’t help. Which is why I get antsy when I know I have to entertain people – even my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids more than anything. But writing isn’t just a past-time for me, it’s a need. Particularly when I do get inspired by something. But today it’s the worst of both worlds.

I want to wanna…


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Published on VenusBlogs.com

I had an article I wrote published today on VenusBlogs.com.

Flying the Coop

I remember the day he was born – or rather the week he was born. He was my first. My water broke slowly over the period of that week and I slept so little that I was able to read a 1700 page novel in three days. When it was time to push (sans epidural – they didn’t offer them in the province of Quebec at the time) I did so for hours before they told me a physical defect in the base of my spine would make it impossible to deliver naturally.

You can find the entire article here.