Category: life

Slow Writing

You know we’re in the first few days of Camp NaNoWriMo. And NaNo is all about cranking out the word count. Fast writing! The quicker, the better! NaNo has word sprints, NaNo has word wars (who gets the most words written in the shortest time, that sort of thing). There’s a Wrimo in one of the local groups who can produce something like 1000 words in ten minutes – she literally sounds like a machine gun when she’s typing (I was at a write-in once where I experienced that live. It was impressive).

Now, all of that stuff is fun. It’s all good. We’ve named our Camp NaNoWriMo cabin the Word Count Slayers (you can follow us on Twitter under that hashtag), because we’re gonna slay those word counts, dontcha know.

But… (you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you). Fast writing, writing in the pressure cooker, cranking out the lines, slapping together descriptions, slaying those word counts – do you hear the language? Pressure. Cranking. Slapping. Slaying. It’s all rather violent. What about growing, simmering, steeping, incubating?

I might have mentioned a time or two (hundred) that I like food. Scratch-cooked food. Homemade food. Slow food. A few months back, I was in the bookstore, and I ran across this book: The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft and Creativity, by Louise DeSalvo. I don’t often buy books off the bookstore shelf sight unseen (I usually get them from the library first, and then if I like a book enough, buy a copy for keeps), but this one grabbed me. So I took it home, and (slowly) perused it. And it talks about Slow Writing on just the same principles as Slow Food. Let your work mature. Let it grow. Simmer it, steep it, let it ripen.

I loved it. I want to work on those principles. Not rush, not feel pressurised. And just now, in the rabbit trails of Internetland, I ran across this excellent little video that makes the point very, umm, pointedly. They did a little experiment with kids: they gave them the beginnings of a simple drawing and asked them to complete the picture in ten seconds. Then they did it again, but this time they gave the kids ten minutes to finish the drawing. The results are well worth looking at.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPbjSnZnWP0]

Don’t rush the creative process. Give yourself the time to turn those clock hands into something more, maybe even something entirely different. My favourite of those drawings in the video is the one that turns the rudimentary clock into a cat. Forget the ticking timekeeper, get a kitty instead!

Now, I still love NaNo, and I’ll remain a die-hard Wrimo. You’ll note that when the kids in the video had ten seconds to do something, they did produce – they all had a drawing in the end. Time-pressured projects like NaNo are great for getting your butt moving, getting something down on paper (or screen, as it were), doing your first draft – and some of us (ahem, Yours Truly) need that motivation to get anything done. But when the kids had ten minutes, they drew something better. And so I want to learn to draw slowly, to let my stories simmer, let them grow and solidify, and not subscribe to the rush job that, it seems, everything and everyone wants to push us into. I want to subscribe to the Art of Slow Writing.

And just as a little side note, right at the moment that I’m writing this, I have a meatloaf in the slow cooker upstairs that’s been simmering away since 9 o’clock this morning. The kitchen smells delicious.

Life, the Universe, and the Art of Slow Writing. What project have you got simmering away in your creative slow cooker?

Wordy Wednesday

It seems time is just slipping through my grasp these days. Time, and the ability to generate words. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, but somehow, sitting down at the computer, opening a document, and putting those things into actual words and coherent sentences seems to not be happening.

There’s just been too much other stuff occupying my time and, more importantly, my headspace. For one, there’s a new project I’ve got in the offing which I will tell you about soon. [By the way, did you know that the word “offing” means “the horizon on a sea shore”? So if something is “in the offing”, it’s just showing up on the horizon and about to sail into harbour. I learned that from the annotations the last time I had to read Heart of Darkness in lit class. Anyway…] There’s stories to edit and get ready to publish – yes, they’re still coming. Soon! I promise! And then there’s ordinary life – you know, dust bunnies, family meals, laundry, emails… Between all of that, somehow, elaborate erudition on this blog has been elusive.

Hence the “Wordless Wednesday” posts; one picture being worth etc. etc. And it’s true – sometimes you can say so much with just an image. Why bother spoiling the impact with excessive verbiage? That’s even true for the writer’s craft: sometimes one single verbal image is worth more than pages of exposition (it’s what’s known as the “Show, don’t tell!” rule).

And even right here – I’ve run out of things to say that actually make sense. But I just didn’t want to leave you hanging in cyberspace, thinking that I’ve abandoned you all and gone off to party with the cyber fairies (they throw mean parties, those little critters). I hope that my thoughts will, soon, gel into sense again, so I can once more drop my pearls of wisdom (or witless waffling?) into your path.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with a picture worth of Wordy Wednesday – another act of random refrigerator poetry:

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And that, today, was Life, the Universe, and a Wordy Wednesday.

The Tale of Us Against the Monster…Introduction

I don’t often get personal like this. But this post by a grad school friend of mine just needed to be shared. She wrote her Master’s thesis on Monster Stories in Popular Culture – Frankenstein, Zombies, that sort of thing. Now the monster is coming after her – and the courage with which she is facing it is heartbreaking and inspiring. And as she says: “…maybe someone suffering with their own monster will read this ‘tale of us against the monster’ and know that they are not alone.”

Happy Christmas, and CAT AND MOUSE

IMG_20151225_163835Christmas Greetings from my house to yours!

If you’d like a bit of a different seasonal read, give Cat and Mouse a try. A fair chunk of it takes place in winter – there`s lots of snow to be had, and even [teeny tiny spoiler] a Winter Solstice Feast!

Here`s an excerpt from the scene when it first starts snowing:

By the time they were finished supper, the snow was already three inches deep, and the wind was picking up. Cat could hear the snowflakes hissing as they hit the inside of the chimney pipe.

“Ooh, cosy,” she said with a comfortable little shiver. “Nothing like a good warm fire on a cold evening! Is there going to be lots of snow, do you think?”

“Probably,” Guy said, “it’s usual this time of year. Only four more weeks to Solstice. There’s been years where I barely made it through the snow to get to the Solstice Feast.”

“Oh, yeah, the Feast! Is that like the Equinox Feast that we had in town in September?”

Guy laughed. “No, not quite–it’s about ten times as big. The hall is usually filled to overflowing. The Solstice Feasts are the biggest ones of the year; all of Ruph and the surrounding areas comes decked out in finery. Which reminds me, I need to look out my feast clothing; the mice had better not have got into it.”

“Feast clothing? You mean everyone dresses up? But,” Cat’s eyes were wide, “I don’t have anything to wear!” Then she laughed. “Listen to me! I don’t have anything to wear,” she repeated in a high-pitched, affected voice, wringing her hands theatrically and fluttering her eyelashes. “Oh deary me, whatever shall I do?”

Guy grinned. “I’m sure we can find something,” he said.

[…]

A sudden wind blast rattled the outside of the cottage, and howled around the corners.

“Whoa!” said Cat, “that was a big one! I’ve never actually heard wind whistling around a house before, I only read about it, but this one sure does whistle. What’s it looking like out there?” She went to peer out through the window. “I can’t even see anything out there, it’s blowing so much!” She stepped over to the cottage door, unlatched the hook, and pulled open the door a few inches. “Oy!” she called out, having to suddenly lean hard against the door as snow blew in through the crack. “That’s a humdinger of a storm, and it wants to come in!” The snow was whirling hard past the door, Cat could barely make out the trees on the other side of the clearing. Then Guy was behind her, helping her push the door shut, and latched it again. Cat brushed at the snow on the floor with her foot. “Is that an extra-bad storm, or is this normal?”

Not to give anything away, but aside from getting their fair share of snow, they sure know how to party in Ruph. Next to having a celebration myself, I love nothing so much as writing one for my characters. So if you haven’t read Cat and Mouse yet, go check it out!

And now I’m going back to munching goodies and drinking Glühwein (mulled wine), and I might just watch one of the movies I got for presents (Cinderella and Inside Out. Yup, kids’ movies. Your point is … ?).

Hope you have or had a lovely holiday season yourself, whatever festivity you celebrate! And if you don’t celebrate, poor you – I mean, umm, hope you had a great Bah Humbug Day, just the way you like it.

Life, the Universe, Christmas and Cat and Mouse. See you in the New Year!

The Wetzlar Cathedral

Wetzlarer Dom (2)I don’t recall having ever been inside of those before: a Simultankirche, or Simultaneum. But I got to see one this summer, on our trip to Germany. You might recall my pictures of Wetzlar, the Goethe-town? Wetzlar not only has beautiful half-timbered houses and the sentimental association with Goethe’s Lotte, it has the Dom, or Cathedral, one of the earliest Simultankirchen.

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The Protestant altar in front, Catholic in back.

So what’s the big deal about those? You see, they’re ecumenical churches. Almost right from the start of the Catholic–Protestant split in Germany, since 1544 (Martin Luther was still alive), the Dom in Wetzlar has been used by both denominations. That’s right – unlike in so many other churches, the conversion of the townspeople to the Protestant form of Christianity did not mean that the Catholic believers were evicted. The rift between the denominations that has gone so very deep in so many places is, in this church, only evident by the fact that there are two altars – and up until 70 years ago, there were two organs, one in each end of the church, one for the Catholic congregation and one for the Lutherans. They simply take turns having their service.

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Early 14th century fresco

The Dom in Wetzlar is ancient. The first church on that site was built in the late ninth century, but construction on the cathedral as it stands today was first begun in 1230. There is still clear evidence of the medieval building – wall frescoes from the early 14th century, a Pietà from around 1370, a late-Gothic statue of Mary with angels that are mounted on something rather like a chandelier (with no candles). It’s an impressive building, a centre of spirituality that has been a place of worship for Christians of either flavour for more than a millennium.

Wetzlarer Dom (7)
The Pietà, ca. 1370/80

But why am I telling you about this today? Because it’s Remembrance Day. And one of the things that struck me quite forcibly when we visited the Wetzlarer Dom is what senseless destruction is wrought by war.

On March 8, 1945, Allied bombers flew over Wetzlar, and a hail of missiles struck the cathedral. The choir, the famous rood screen, the high altar, both organs, and all the stained glass windows were reduced to rubble.

Wetzlarer Dom (5)
March 1945

The Dom is not just a building – it is a house of worship, a gathering place of the people, a symbol of unity despite differences. Seventy years ago, it was destroyed in the course of the horrific violence that is war.

The Wetzlar Cathedral was rebuilt. There are once again two altars; but the organ is now shared by both congregations – and the rood screen, which once separated the spaces of Catholics and Protestants, was never reinstalled. The pews in the choir, that very part of the church that was a sea of rubble after the bombs fell, are reversible, so that the congregation can face the altar of their choosing – Catholic in the apse, Protestant in the crossing.

Wetzlarer Dom (1)

The Dom is once again a symbol of unity, of ecumenical faith. But it is also a reminder of the devastation brought about by war. It’s been seventy years, but the scars will always remain. They are an indelible part of the millennium-long history of this amazing place.

Lest we forget.

The Stile

IMG_20151011_142536It’s a glorious Canadian Thanksgiving Sunday. The bird is roasting in the oven, the pies are baked, and there was nothing else to do but go for a walk. So we went – up the hill, all the way to the gate. Yes, that gate. And then – we skirted around it, and kept walking.

Yes, the saga of the cut-off walk has finally come to a satisfying conclusion. Let me back up a bit: you’ll remember that a couple of months ago I got all bent out of shape about the neighbour at the end of the road who had blocked off access to the forest road? Well, that wasn’t the end of it. It’s a bit of a long and convoluted story, involving a conversation with the lady who lives next door to that property (or next driveway, as it were), who gave me the phone number of the man who sort of looks after that place when the owner isn’t here (it’s recreational property; the owner lives in Alberta), who talked to said property owner, who…

Anyway, as it turns out, what for the last fifteen years I’d thought of as Crown Land is, in fact, private property. It’s still owned by the same person who’s had it for quite a lot of years now, and he hasn’t actually changed his tune on allowing people to go for walks there – he’s just waging an ongoing battle with dirt bikers, who like to chew up the forest paths with their rice rockets. Hence the gate. Then the “Keep Out” signs. Then the wooden bars on the side. Then a chunk of wire fence strung between the trees beside the bars.

IMG_20151013_085750But it was that same day the chunk of wire fence went up that I got an inkling that the lady-up-the-road was probably right about his attitude towards walkers. I wasn’t comfortable just pushing my way past the Ponderosa pine on the right-hand side of the gate like she was doing – not without express permission from Mr Property Owner. But that day, I noticed that the branch of the pine tree that was most in the way had been bent aside, and at the foot of that tree there was an arrangement of logs and boulders that looked like nothing so much as a stile. A nice little stile for friendly pedestrians to step over, but not nasty noisy dirt bikes to get through.

IMG_20151011_142217And a couple of days ago, I came home from running errands, and there was a note from my Man on my computer keyboard: “It’s ok to walk up the hill.” Huh? Oh!! The man-who-looks-after-the-property had finally called me back, and it’s official: Walkers Are Permitted.

IMG_20151011_142155So up the hill we went. And it was glorious. The sunshine glittering on the lake, the deep greens of the pines, gold and bright red of the turning leaves, brilliant blue of the October sky – such a gift to be grateful for on this Thanksgiving Day. And my gratefulness is that much more profound for having thought, for just a few weeks, that I was cut off from this pleasure. What a difference a little stile can make.

LIfe, the Universe, and The Stile. Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Flying a Holding Pattern

Yes, we got back from Germany. Yes, I’m going to tell you all about it when I get my photos downloaded and organised. However, Real Life is happening again with a vengeance and demanding my attention, so I hope you’ll forgive me when I leave you hanging for just a bit longer.

Meanwhile, to tide you over, here’s a picture of an Air Canada plane taking off from the Calgary airport.

3566Life, the Universe, and Returning From Travels. I promise I’ll talk to you soon!

I’m Leaving On a Jet Plane…

…for a couple weeks’ worth of visit to the Fatherland. Checking in with you from the airport, waiting for the first leg of the flight.

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Here’s Steve, yesterday, waiting in the bag for me to stop fussing with such unnecessary things as which clothes to take, and get on with packing him up already.

Posting might be somewhat intermittent in the next bit, but we’ll try to keep you updated.

Life, the Universe, and Travels. See you later!