Maureen Bush's Blog, page 9

Sarah Seleky Workshop

Last Saturday, I spent the day in a writing workshop with Sarah Seleky. Her focus is on writing from deep inside, to find the story instead of planning what to write. We worked through a series of exercises that felt peculiar and yet were oddly effective.

In one exercise, Sarah gave us a noun and then asked us to sit with it until another noun came to mind that was completely unrelated. No apple-ball or apple-poison allowed. Then she asked us to chose three of our word couplets and turn each into a metaphor or simile, taking these completely unrelated things and relating them.

One of mine was magpie (her word) and plum (my word). My result: The baby magpie was dark and round, a plum of a child.

We continued through the day, through writing prompts that forced us, over and over, to simply let the words flow through us. Sarah recommends always writing this way, in what she calls drift.

I asked about writing for children, and the need for a tight core to the story.  She asked the age of the kids. Elementary, I answered. So it can’t be meandery, she said. Exactly. Her recommendation was to write a meandering first draft, and carefully edit it after.

Now I have to figure out what to take from this workshop. I tend to work in this way some of the time, but not right through a first draft. That’s resulted in massive rewrites, which I hate. Absolutely hate.

I have a file of story tidbits – I think I’ll use these as writing prompts to work with Sarah’s techniques, and see how that seeps into how I work on longer projects.

Maureen

Proof of Spring

It really truly is spring. I have flowers, I have bugs, and here’s the proof.

Maureen

Sanity in a Snowy Spring

The only way to stay sane through a snowy spring is to never, never fall into the trap of thinking that snow = winter. This is spring snow. How to tell the difference? There’s green stuff underneath. I know, I know, it’s pathetic, but judging the seasons by greenness rather than by snowfall is a much saner approach in Calgary.

I now have four kinds of flowers in bloom. I can’t see them, because yesterday’s snowfall hasn’t melted yet, but I know they’re there. Snowdrops, not-snowdrops (leucojum), the first muscari (tiny blue), and hepatica blooms that are playing shy in the cold, waiting slightly closed until the warmth returns.

Forsythia buds are fat, there are tiny leafies-in-waiting on the cotoneaster, and shoots of green in the grass (well insulated under a blanket of fresh snow). And I’ll be cooking with garlic greens this week. Because it really is spring. Really.

Maureen

Feather Brain Reprinted

Feather Brain has been reprinted – this is the fourth print run. The cover is a little darker, and a little glossier. I’m thrilled, and speculating this is related to Feather Brain being picked as the June book club pick for the Ontario TV show Reading Rangers.

Maureen

Not-A-Snowdrop

Every year in late winter, I begin to watch for my first flower. About a third of the time it arrives in the last week of March; two-thirds, in the first week of April. Except, recently, it’s been moving closer to the middle of March (thanks to global warming, I suspect). Until this year, with our wickedly cold and deep and long winter (as a result of the as-predicted shifts in the jet stream), when spring teased us in mid March and than vanished for a couple more weeks. So the search began – will a flower bloom before the end of the first week of April?

Will it be a snowdrop? Muscari? an early crocus?

It has arrived, the first buds opening on Sunday, April 6th, just in time to fit within the first week. But I can’t remember the name. It’s like a snowdrop, but it’s not a snowdrop. Snowdrops are fussy to grow here, and I have a few, but they’re still under a bank of snow on the east side of the house. My not-snowdrops grow in full sun, and this year, they won the race.

Maureen

The Tree Has Fallen

In January we stuffed our Christmas tree into a snowbank and I declared it would be spring when the tree fell over.

It started to lean in mid-March, when we had our first hint of spring, as the temperature jumped 49′C (for my American friends, that’s 88′F). The roads became lakes, the snowbanks melted, and enough basements were wet that people got twitchy, remembering last June’s massive flood.

The tree finally fell, and then the temperature dropped and it snowed and snowed and snowed, for what felt like every day of the last two weeks of March.

Yesterday the big melt began, with temperatures forecast to be balmy, but it snowed again last night, and the tree is once again dusted with snow.

I’ve decided to fall back on my old measure of spring ­– my first flower. The first bloom typically comes in the last week of March or the first week of April. I’m counting the days now, hoping there are snowdrops waiting underneath the snow.

Maureen

Have Treadmill, Will Travel

I have my treadmill, and I love it.

It almost didn’t fit – the official measurements were a little off, and it took a lot of futzing to fit into its very little space (100 lbs of awkward). What we thought was condensation turned out to be lubricant leaking when it was transported on its side, and I had to let that outgas for a few days before I could work in my office.

It’s all good now, and I love walking while I work. I find it invigorating, and more relaxing than working out when I’m watching the time. Now my time is about writing, which I love, rather than exercising, which is an obligation (on a machine. If I’m outside it’s a joy).

My body feels comfortable and quiet, I have more energy in my hands, and ideas flow more easily.

I stand beside a window, where I can watch birds, and squirrels marauding in the garden. I think an early spring pot of flowers on a table outside might be a nice addition, in a week or two.

The pace for walking while writing needs to be slow, but I find the slowest setting glacial, like that exhausting stroll through a museum. So I turn it up, a little for writing, a lot for editing, if I’m mostly reading. Of course, cursor accuracy vanishes at that point… but it’s fun going faster.

The worst part has been stepping off the treadmill and staggering, as my body expects the ground to be moving. A friend suggested I slow it down first, to let my legs adjust before stopping, and that helps.

Complications I haven’t figured out yet: which glasses are better for this distance (computer or regular multifocals); how to drink coffee while on the move; and whether I need to put a phone nearby. I’m not one to chat on the phone, and I often ignore it if I’m working, but there’s an awkwardness to leaping off the treadmill to answer it, and perhaps I’d chat more if I was in motion.

Mostly I ignore those complications, and simply walk and write, as I discover that walking helps me travel longer distances in my head.

Maureen

Junior High Android Attack

I just got back from a great school visit.

I spent the weekend in a Reiki workshop – not a good preparation for a presentation and workshop. I woke Monday morning deeply quiet and still, and a little freaked out that I’d never be able to amp myself up enough to do a good session. But I forgot something and had to scramble last minute to get it ready, and then drive over, and then I was there and the kids were funny and we were off and running.

I was working with a group of 35 struggling junior high students. We had two hours together (always a treat), and I talked and then we made up a story together.  The teachers said they have trouble inspiring the kids to write, and sometimes the kids have trouble coming up with ideas, but once we got rolling that wasn’t a problem. We turned the grade 8 teacher into an android from another planet needing nice full grade 9 brains, to help him bring donuts back to his planet. Donuts run the core of the planet, and they were running out. We had Tim Horton jokes, Android phone jokes, and the tragic death of a student before we finally defeated the android with his greatest weakness, water, in a grand water pistol fight.

One guy was bursting with ideas and questions and sometimes had to be hushed, but he also had the best analysis of why one of our two ending options was a mistake, in terms of good story. He caught the problem sooner than I did, and convinced me.

Then they created monsters, in groups. I’m going to have nightmares. When they gave me a bulldog stuffie (the school mascot) as a thank you, I had to check to see if it would turn nasty at night before I would accept it.

I came home excited at how well it had gone, and then I slipped right back into silence.

The lessons for me: make sure to plan for a couple of work-at-home days after Reiki workshops, just as I do after a meditation retreat.

Go wild with the kids, and give them permission to go wild. They’re much more creative that way.

Maureen

Writing For Children

I’ve just finished teaching my second course about writing for children. The first was heavily leacture based; for the second, we agreed on a workshop style, with a focus on in-class writing.

My students’ greatest difficulty was finding/making/stealing time to write. We began each class talking about how writing went that week (starting with me), and every week there were groans and shudders. And yet, writing happened, both in class and during the week, and some really interesting work emerged.

One the greatest challenges for me was putting what I’ve learned about writing into words. You’d think that wouldn’t be hard for a writer, but some days it was a struggle. My greatest pleasure was focusing on exactly what each student needed. Overall, they needed to understand that writing garbage is normal and necessary, rather than a failure. They all struggled with that internal editor, trying to still that critical voice. And, always, they needed to simply put in the time.

My favorite experience? listening to their stories – funny, touching, real, weird and wonderful.

Maureen

 

A Standing Desk

I have a standing desk. No treadmill yet – it is still to come.

We’ll stain the desk once it’s warm enough to work outside, and we’ll have to level it, once we have the treadmill mat. We discovered the floor slopes rather radically down from the window wall, so I’ve propped up the other side on pads of post-it notes for now. Once everything’s in place we’ll use Mark’s trombone cork to pad up the feet as needed. Once again, we remember that nothing is level in this old house.

Maureen