April: The C(r)oolest Month for Writing

April is a month of endings in the university world. The academic year comes to a shuddering halt, with students desperately trying to hold it together over final exams and instructors equally desperate, trying to get marking done and grades in within-five-calendar-days. It is the month when most people walk down the sidewalks, dodging puddles and making sure they don't meet anyone else's eye in order not to see or show the crazy person in there behind the iris.

April is also a month of beginnings, at least in my family. My grandparents were married in April, as were my great-aunt and uncle — the first double wedding in the Peace Country. My parents were married in April. I was married (twice) in April, and the second one stuck. Even William and Kate were married in April, not that they are actual members of our family. Pip Pippa. William Shakespeare, Hans Christian Anderson and Samuel Beckett were all born in April. The trees in Edmonton begin to bud in April and if you clear the mulch and leaf mould away, there are tulips shooting through right around now. Bunnies turn brown. Lambs frolic. It's no wonder people indulge in redecorating and massive cleaning projects at this time of year — everyone wants in on the regenerative process.

Unless, that is, you're already in the middle of the first draft of a book, a book that is decidedly not set in the springtime. Which I am. Having learned the hard way from the great editor, Jennifer Glossop, I always write with a calendar firmly in mind as the story goes along. So, this April, I spent two days with a kerchief on my head and dustcloths exploding out of my pockets, deep cleaning and rearranging the living room furniture. It looks great, I think, and no doubt appears to be a sacrifice to new beginnings. But this time it's not.

The reason behind all that sweeping and shifting and stevedoring and sneezing was so that on weekend mornings before the family wakes up, when I tiptoe down the stairs to write, I can sit with my back to the window that looks out on the apple tree and the bird feeder. I can pretend I'm lodged, along with my characters, in the darkening days of Hallowe'en and that new beginnings aren't busting out all over. That way, I figure I can keep my mind on the task and my eyes on the prize... a tidy ending.