Maureen Bush's Blog, page 19

Clothesline Editing

In The Artful Edit, Susan Bell recommends a variety of ways to see a story with fresh eyes, by editing pages stuck to a wall, spread across the floor, or hung on a clothes line. Something about hanging a story on a line like laundry appealed to me, so I hung a string across my bedroom (the only room with enough space to walk around it.) Then I pinned short stories to the line with wooden clothespins.

I have a collection of picture book stories, and I pulled out my favorites to take a look at. I worked on them one by one, editing them as they hung on the line, reading them and stepping back and pacing, seeing how the story flowed across the pages. There’s something organic and tactile about this, that makes me long for a large studio where I could always have a story line, instead of needing to tuck it away every night so we don’t get tangled in it in the dark. Caught in a story line. That would be a story.

Maureen

When The Wind Changes

I love when we get a really deep snowfall (well, I love it after we’ve dug out), and then a Chinook wind blows in and the snow begins to melt. The snow settles at it gets heavier and wetter, and melts into puddles that require boots and frequent laundering of pants, especially if you venture into the slush-pit of downtown. Snow against dark edges, like sidewalks and fences and trees, melts back a little, exposing a little more dark to warm in the sun. The depth of snow eases, most visible where it hasn’t been shoveled into mounds, but started smooth, and is now crisscrossed by animal tracks.

In our inner-city garden retreat, it sounds busy, too – with the wind blowing, birds chirping, squirrels deepening their tracks through the snow, and water dripping dripping dripping.

I love it when the wind changes.

Maureen

A Bad Case of January

Lois Peterson wrote about writer’s block on her blog,  http://loispeterson.blog.com/2013/01/13/writers-block-dont-wont-cant/, and HR replied on Lois’s Facebook link: “You’re suffering from January.”

I think a lot of us are – from flu and colds and depression from a lack of light, from cold weather and endless shoveling, or endless rain. Facebook friends talk of travel to sunny (and warm) climates, vitamin D, light therapy.

I’ve had a couple of colds, and writing has been flat. Finally, I feel little bubbles of energy, ideas surfacing that I want to play with. I want to sit at my laptop and type away, happy to feel that surge of energy and joy that comes as the ideas bubble. I hate to compare myself to beer, but I’ve been like flat beer, and now I’m carbonated. Ahh!

So what helps, besides sunlight and hand washing and vitamin D and really bright lights? Candles at dinner, whenever it’s dark when we eat. Lights in the garden –soon I’ll unplug the coloured Christmas lights, but I’ll leave the sparkly white lights up. Sitting by the fire – any fire. I discovered a coffee shop nearby has a fire, and I might go there to write, if I can get a fireside seat to curl up in. We could light our own fire more often, even though it overheats the house.

Winter athletes seem happier – anyone with the guts to run or snowshoe or ski, to rejoice in the cold, and in fresh snow. I’m more inclined to pour over garden catalogues, to fill my mind with images of plants growing.

Humour always helps – the Calgary Zoo takes their Emperor penguins for walks, and my younger daughter and I are going to join them. Because what could be  better in January than a walk with penguins?

Maureen

The View From My Office Window

It’s snowing, again.

After Christmas, we stuffed the Christmas tree in a snowbank in the front yard. Now it looks like we live in a forest.

Maureen

 

Spring will return

The New Year has always been an odd celebration, for me. I’m not much into resolutions or retrospectives, I’m allergic to the sulphites in champagne and my husband and I never developed a tradition of New Year’s parties, as he was a musician and usually had a gig, until we had kids and stayed home with them, instead.

For me, the new year begins either in September (the school year), or in early spring (with the first hints of green). I suppose that really begins now, as the days begin to grow longer. But I forget, in the depth of winter, what’s inevitably coming. So I’ve put a photo of sunlight-sparkling-on-dew-covered-leaves on my desktop, as relief from the winter whiteness, I’m looking forward to browsing a seed catalogue, pondering my order, and I’m thinking about new plants to try in the garden. I feed the birds, so I can listen to them sing. I’ll buy a pot of crocuses, with tips just emerging, and watch them grow. And I’ll buy fresh produce for salads, all to remind myself that spring will return.

Maureen

The Christmas holidays come to a crashing end

and now, after a great deal of fun, back to work.

Maureen

Fairy Tales and Monsters

Yesterday we toured through Glenbow Museum’s current show, Fairy Tales, Monsters and the Genetic Imagination. I’d heard wonderful things about it, and as a writer for children, I was excited to see it. I found myself seriously disappointed

It was more an adult analytical examination than immersive feeling-based, with little connection to how children experience the world. To me, that misses the whole point of monsters. They emerge from our dreams and imaginations, and they should feel real.

Much of the art in this show felt like nothing at all to me, and seemed, from the write-ups, to be conceptualized rather than created. There were some exceptions, all of which were better without the analytical explanation.

My favorite was a boy with an old man-sea cucumber creature. They were both asleep, the creature’s head in the boy’s lap, the boy drooped over the creature. The looks on their faces said everything – they were both smiling, both clearly adoring each other.

I find literary discussions frustrating when they shift to the analytical, too. It seems to be considered the higher form of thought, but I find it a step away from reality, from being in the situation. As stories should be immersive, why would we want to step back? We should be stepping into them.

Maureen

Christmas Adventures

Christmas is an odd mix of chaos and peacefulness ­– I like a little of each.

We’re adding to the Christmas chaos by building a gingerbread house, complete with moose, swans in a pond, a bird house, a smarties path, and a couple of dinosaurs (because who could resist using dinosaur cookie cutters?)

After cementing the house together with caramelized sugar, we discovered the sugar does something most strange when water is added to the hot sugar.

Stuck to the wooden spoon, it pulled out of the pan in a single entity, stretching and morphing into something oddly seaweed-like, dark and crystalline but still malleable. It was formed into a couple of sea creatures, and what looked most like a dead duck. The art of this will need a little work. Discovery and failure ­– important parts of Christmas.

Hope yours is merry,

Maureen

 

A New Computer

After months of problems with my laptop, and far too many visits to the Apple Store, I finally have a new computer.

(The details: MacBook Pro, a little over one year old, still under warranty. A recurring but sporadic problem turning it on, with attempts to solve it including a new motherboard and then a new top case. This work lead to new problems, and more repairs, including a second new motherboard. When the original problem recurred, they finally gave up and gave me a replacement).

Through it all, I’ve discovered how deeply dependent I am on computer gear.

All I really need to write is a notebook and a pen (well, several, because they persist in running out of ink, or simply running away). Paper, ink – I can write. This is particularly useful when I’m waiting – in an airport, for an appointment, to drive someone else after an appointment. I can sit, and write, and often get some really good work done.

But to put it all together – in a novel – I want a computer, Word, Scrivener, Google. If I had to choose between a library and Google for research, it would be Google all the way. Other writers I know are equally devoted to their gear – rarely as techies – just as people who find these are really useful tools for doing what we do.

And so I will boot up my new baby with great pleasure, move the dock, find my favorite screen image, reload Scrivener (my darling husband did all the other setup stuff), and be thankful.

Maureen

Surges and Stalls

When writers claim they write X amount a day – so many pages, so many words – as if they write at a steady pace, I think they lie. I’ve imagined this as some kind of goal to aspire to, and I’ve totally failed.

I write in fits and starts and surges and stalls, depending on my mood and my health and family events and where I am in the story and, I swear, the phase of the  moon. There are so many elements interacting I never know where I’ll be tomorrow. I just know today – good writing day, useless, okay – and that has to be what it is.

As long as I write every day – good, bad, useless (well, I skip the bad days; that’s just work I have to toss later) – if I write almost every day, I make progress. The story grows, even if it comes in fits and starts. And other projects emerge at the same time, as I distract myself with new ideas. I play and wander and gradually progress. A slow meander, I suppose, that eventually gets where it needs to go. I just need to learn to relax to the journey.

Maureen