Where did that come from?

When I first began this blog one of things that often came up was where stories come from. So many interesting ideas and theories were proposed. Too many to name, but things as simple as observation and as complex as genetic memory came up. Lately, it’s been on my mind again–maybe because I read this post here, by Pat–so I thought I’d bring it up, have a little fun!

One of things one of us mentioned was along the lines of this: that stories are threads out there, threads that we walk into without even realizing. I kind of imagine them like dandelion fluff, exploding, floating and landing and germinating in an endless cycle.

Many many agreed with this feeling. Stories, people, places, they just pop into our head and demand to be written. The problem is most of the time we need to ignore these stories due to time constraints. We pick and choose, listening to the strongest tale, the one that only we can tell, and let the others drift away for someone else to grab.

So, last night after I did my 30 minutes of editing, I watched Big Bang Theory–laughed–said goodnight to hubby and went to bed. I can’t fall asleep without reading, so I read the latest silliness (more on that another day) I have downloaded and fell asleep after reading this: One of the MC’s husband was shot and killed in an armed robbery at a corner store. The story was given to us by a neighbor explaining that the only person she knows who was ever killed was the father of X who goes to preschool with her son.

This morning my son comes to me and says he had a bad dream in the night. He’s still young, his nightmares usually involve people breaking his Lego and whatnot. I asked him to tell me about it. He said this: I was in the grocery store with dad and there was a robber and he started to shoot and because I was holding dad’s hand he got shot instead of me.

So there you have it folks.

Are stories floating around out there waiting for us to grab them?

 

E-book giveaway on Kindle Select

Get the thriller Dead Bishops Don’t Lie, by André K. Baby FREE on Amazon Kindle Select Giveaway TODAY October 9th, tomorrow Oct 10th, and October 23 & 24.

Based on historical events, “Dead Bishops Don’t Lie” draws the reader to the dark side of Vatican politics, where unbridled ambition leads to treachery, revenge and murder.
In early May 2005, the gruesome murders of two archbishops , one in Switzerland, the other in Italy, trigger a worldwide shockwave of indignation and outrage .
Baffled by these ostensibly related crimes and fearing more assassinations, the Swiss and Italian police call Interpol for help. Thierry Dulac, a caustic investigator with an enviable track record, gets the nod.
Dulac’s search for the killers takes him from the hushed corridors of the Vatican and the quiet luxury of a British Marchioness’s château, to the dank prison cells of Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka prison. Struggling through personal trauma and finally piercing the Vatican Curia’s notorious Code of Silence, Dulac uncovers an astounding, unlikely conspiracy of dirty money, blackmail and state-backed terrorism. He’s just realized the enormity of what he’s discovered when a hit-man strafes the windshield of his Renault…
The reviews: “… A lightning-paced thriller. I can’t wait to read the sequel…” Norbert Spehner.
“. The book’s pages will burn your fingers…” Richard Migneault.

Lawyer and author André K. Baby has mined the wealth of his rich legal experience as a Crown prosecutor and international business lawyer, to forge the plot and characters of his religious thriller, “Dead Bishops Don’t Lie”.
Its stand-alone sequel, “The Jewish Pope”, will be launched in early 2013.

 

 

Sneaking it in

We all sneak stuff, right?

Another cookie, another glass of wine, or chocolate, or anything delectable that we’re supposed to minimize.

But I’m not talking about getting those delicious treats in when no one’s looking. Right now, I’m talking about sneaking in writing time. Time that you haven’t alloted to writing. Because, no matter how much time any of us have to write it’s just never enough.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to sneak in bits of writing, and well, I’m sad to report that it’s just not working out. I’m not a morning person. At all. I can’t get up earlier than the already too early 6:30 am wake-up call. I just can’t. After the family is asleep I’m too brain-fried to do anything productive other than read like a lump. When the kids are home, it’s just too busy, I hardly have time to even figure out what needs to be done, let alone do anything more.

Can anyone share how they sneak extra writing time? I’m really hoping that this golden time is there, but that I just haven’t stumbled on it. Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? (I’m imitating the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ll let you add the inflect.) But, please don’t sneak out by pretending there’s been some major family drama to go drive around in your friend’s dad’s super expensive car. Please stay and share your secrets about sneaking it in.

Anytime, anywhere, anyplace, read!

According to my mom I was reading at two years-old. Now that I’ve had three children, I’m not sure I believe her. But one thing I’m quite certain about is that I was holding a book in my hands most of the time. When I began reading them is up for debate!

I read to my first child all the time. To my second as well. To my third…not as much. It’s something I try to squeeze in, but don’t often succeed at. Just the word squeeze makes me flinch. Reading shouldn’t be squeezed in, it should be enjoyed, treasured.

There are a million reasons why I don’t read as much to my third child. [My older children take music lessons and we practice everyday. They are both athletic, my son is on a competitive swim team, my daughter is a gymnast. Um, I forgot about the daily homework, which in an immersion program is very heavy. And then there's the daily household duties. So my poor little two-year old gets left to entertain himself much more than his sibling ever had to. This is not a bad thing, he's much more independent in some ways (in others not at all!), and he's become very good at getting into things he's not supposed to.]

But there will always be reasons.

Fostering a love of literature in my children is very important to me. I think it’s one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. I’m a writer after all, it’s my greatest passion. But the kids don’t see my process, and they are too young to understand it. All they see is mommy on the computer.

The other day I heard myself thinking, well, it’s okay that I don’t read to my toddler so often, he’ll either like books or he won’t.

Yesterday when it was just me and my eldest in the car he said: “I love reading. I love books. I have to read everyday. I can’t fall asleep if I don’t read.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Even when my eyes are so tired I can’t see properly, I’ll read,” he said.

“Me too,” I said, and laughed. I know that feeling so well, of struggling to keep my eyes open just to turn the page, and then another, and another.

“You fell asleep next to me every night for five years watching me read,” I continued. (yes it took that long before he was able to put himself to sleep. First child–what can I say?)

And that’s when it struck me. Sure, my two-year old may naturally gravitate towards books, but it’s my job as his mom to show him how important they are. How they are an integral part of our daily lives. We learn by example, and this is one example I don’t want to bypass.

If bedtime comes upon us too quickly, I’ll read after school, before diner, after diner. It doesn’t matter when a book is read. So long as it’s read.

 

How about you:

Do/did you read to your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or any other little ones in your life?

And how important is reading to you? Is it something you do daily, or sporadically?

(*image taken from children’s colouring website: http://coloringtown.com/children-coloring-pages/)

When it’s just that good

One of things I rarely talk about on this blog is my love for baking. This is a writer’s blog, after all, not a food blog. But writers need to eat, or more importantly snack. Snacks are a writer’s best friend.

I am a wanna-be baker. Every time I walk into a patisserie shop I think, “I want this.”

I like to cook, but baking is just my thing. The butter, the gooey dough, the spices, the scents….ahhhh…yuuummmm

After a long hot summer when we keep the oven off as much as possible, I relish the arrival of autumn. It’s September, so pumpkins are abound, and yesterday me and my three wee ones (who are not all so wee any more) made pumpkin muffins. They are not only the best pumpkin muffin I’ve ever had, but quite possible the best muffins I’ve ever had!

So, I just had to share this recipe with you! Click here to get it over at the Fresh Loaf, which I got via the The Kitchn (a terrific site I refer to often!). It’s a basic recipe of pumpkin puree, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, chocolate chips. I used mini dark chocolate chips, and we made mini muffins, cause my kids are still mini, and they fit perfectly into snack boxes for school. Plus, they’re small enough that I can keeping snacking all day without feeling guilty. This one recipe made three trays of mini muffins and 6 small loaves.

These turned out to be the perfect balance of spice and sweet, fluff and substance. And the house still smelled terrific this morning! Made it easy to begin the day!

I hope these will keep your writer tummies full and warm so you can work during the season!

(Oh, and by the way, there’s a gluten-free version on the website. )

Update: I was surprised by the number of personal of e-mails I received with this post. As I stated in the post, I am not a professional baker, I am only a hungry mommy who loves to bake! But, I’ll answer any baking questions to the best of my ability with pleasure.  :)

One of the main questions I got asked was does this recipe really require chocolate. I’d say no, it doesn’t, but the flavours and textures go hand in hand, and now that I’ve had them with the chips I don’t think I’d go without (if you asked the kids they’d say absolutely, chocolate is necessary!). I put less than the recipe asked, and by using good quality dark chocolate I didn’t feel like any health choices were being compromised.

For those of you wanting a classic pumpking muffins, I’d recommend this one. Just made it last night, and if you let the muffins sit overnight the flavours really pull through and come out for a delicious moist muffin. Enjoy!

Oh, that magic.

 

I’ve gone from a panster to a plotter during the re-write of this novel. This novel is complex, lots of plot points, so much to keep track of with the multiple POVs, I had no choice.

I forgot that I’m a panster at heart. So, when a problem arose I played with it for days by sitting and thinking, writing down notes, asking myself questions, and when a solution arose I began to work it into the problematic scene. While I was writing, something new and unforseen unfolded: the perfect event, the perfect solution to my dilemma. I was thrilled. And I was reminded of the magic of writing, of not seeing where I’m going, of letting the words flow of their own accord and watching stories take shape before me.

I’d forgotten all about that magic because I’d been so intensely plotting and fixing and tweaking. But there’s no way that this particular twist was going to present itself to me, it waited for me to let my subconscious work and then came out.

Sometimes it’s best to just sit down and write and let the story tell itself. Sometimes, all the planning in the world just isn’t going to help.

I suppose the trick is learning when what’s needed: careful thought, or free flow.

Do you move back and forth between the two worlds of panster and plotter?

 

OK, OK, it’s September!

 

 

It’s really only August 29th. But, today was the official first day of school, and apparently I’m stuck in the past when school began after Labour Day, so to me it’s September and all that comes with it.

September is time to get organized, time to clean away the piles of mess collected during the summer, time to start paying attention to the clock again. Time for early mornings, and packing lunches. Time for homework, and practices, and rehearsals, and monster schedules that eat away almost every waking moment.

For me, it’s also a time of separation from my children who have followed me around like a litter of puppies, nipping at my heels, all summer long. Truthfully, this is the hardest part for me, letting my kids go again every year (and for the first time of my 2 year-old, who began preschool today).

September is the beginning of fall here in Montreal. It’s the season of closure and preparation and possibility. It’s a season of colour and crispness and fresh air. It’s my favourite season (not only because I was born in autumn).

September is the time I get to do everything that was put on pause during the heat. I can panic at the hours required to return my house to its state of calm, but I try not to. Instead, I ignore the catastrophe that is every inch of the house. I sit and write this post, reminding myself of all the wonders of this day, and I return to my WIP that has been waiting patiently for me these last three weeks as I tended to one of nature’s most fundamental elements, death. How appropriate that the timing of it all is linked to a transition in seasons. And soon it will be apple picking time; the air is already full of the delicious scents of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon.

I wish you a wonderful September, with all the catching up and returns that come with it!

 

 

a release

When I was a little girl into to my early teens I used to write poetry, but only when the moment called for it. I sat in the dark and wrote unseen words; I’d let my pen or pencil drag crookedly across the page, or I’d write in neat lines, depending on what emotions needed to Get Out. It was always fun for me to wake up and see what I’d produced during the night. Not so much the words, but the pattern and shape that they made strung together as cord or as disconnected pieces.

I haven’t done this in years, I actually forgot that I used to write like this. Somehow, during the growing up process, I let go of this ritual.

These past days have felt like a moment for writing poetry (or what I called poetry but was only a word dump). I’ve been holding it in, not writing, not seeing the words. And then I remembered: I don’t need to see the words. I just need to open up and a shape will take form.

So here goes:

A cliché. They say it in books, in movies, on tv.

A broken heart.

A pain that lashes, that rips, that tears, and binds.

A memory.

Almond eyes.

A myriad of smells that belong solely to one person.

A voice. Loud. Always yelling. Always caring.

A touch. Fleeting, rare. Hands kept tight, working, not soft, not gentle, not idle.

Reserved.

A memory.

Of love. Always, of love.

Of life.

A life.

A whole. A unit.

A goodbye.

And the bindings begin to unwind. Letting in breath and wind and light.

And then a smile. Of what’s remembered. Of what’s to come.

Blah. So there, it’s out. For now. Not sure why I wanted to do this on the blogosphere, maybe it’s about moving forward, moving on. Maybe it’s about release and connection. I wonder if my words would have been the same if I was writing them for no other eyes, instead of here, when I knew others would read them. Maybe later when I come back and read these words, I’ll see a pattern, a shape, of what I produced, in the light this time. Not in the dark.

This was written in loving memory of grandma, who passed August 16th, at the age of 88.

an unexpected consequence of e-readers

 

I didn’t want an e-reader. I mean I really really really didn’t want an e-reader. I would read paper books only. And that was that.

Until I bought an iPad. Then I discovered how easy it is to read with a reader. And how wonderful it is to have books available all the time. Heck, my library even lends e-books! I discovered how comfortable it is to read curled up half hidden under the blankets with the lights off–reading in the dark!!! Who would have thought? My inner child was smiling in delight!

But I noticed something the other day when I was looking for my next book to read: I’ve become fussy. All of a sudden I can sample an endless supply of books without doing any work at all. I don’t have to go the bookstore or the library. I don’t have to spend hours looking at titles and reading the flaps and the first pages and decide if I want to bring something home or return it to the shelf. I don’t have google reviews and decide if I want to add the book to my cart.

I can read a few pages without any sort of commitment at all.

I noticed this, and I noticed that I would literally read a line or two sometimes and delete the sample. Sometimes a paragraph. Most of the time not even a page.

This wasn’t a conscious decision. And this is certainly not something I would have done before. Read one line and give up on the book? Never. And yet, here I am doing it.

As a writer, I questioned myself: What kept me reading past those first lines? And more importantly, why didn’t I keep reading?

The answer was that I wanted immediacy. I wanted to be brought into a situation right of the bat. If there was descriptive prose, it had to be linked to something or someone. It couldn’t be words for the sake of beauty alone. So, not only have I become a fussy reader, I’ve become an impatient one. I don’t want to sift through pages and paragraphs to get to the story, I want to be in it with the very first word.

The take away message here is this: Writers, if we thought those first lines were important, e-readers have made them even more so.

An empty crowd

We are surrounded by a crowd. I have always thought a team would huddle prior to a match–but there is no huddling here. There is a cheering, roaring, mass of people, singing for themselves and each other. There is an energy in the air that sparkles like lighting, fierce, determined to strike. There is an announcer who breaks in on the loudspeaker, and a hush descends. But it’s not a true silence, there can be no stillness here.

The swimmers line up, the youngest girls first; heat one begins with a shrill. And the yelling resumes. The cheering. I am shocked when it’s my son’s turn and I’m kneeling at the feet of the timekeepers shouting his name as loudly as I can. He reaches the edge of the pool and knows he’s not first–he came second and he’s unhappy, but he’s clapped on the back too many times to count, given high fives, and told what a good job he did. A minute later he’s smiling, already eager for the following swim meet a week later.

This is new for me: This is the first summer any of my children have joined a team. I was never part of a team for long; I played right forward in inter-city soccer when I was a kid, but I don’t remember it being long-lived–and more importantly I don’t remember this type of team spirit. When I trained professionally with a dance troupe there was no cheering, no unification among us. As an adult when I began to play a musical instrument there was no team.

Today a professional violinist who just came back from touring in Poland expressed how unified the orchestra is over there. How they cheer each other on before each show, how the crowd surrounds them at the end of each concert demanding autographs. She expressed to me how gratifying it is, how encouraging it is, to know that others treasure your art.

Writers, painters, illustrators, musicians, we do it alone. We have no crowd, no one cheering us. Most of our work is solitary, often times behind a closed a door, always behind a metaphorical one.

And yet, we need this gratification do we not?

Last week, Linda posted about this very topic in her post, Writing in a Bubble. When a few days later I was at my son’s swim meet and I saw the effect such cheerleading had on all the kids I was stunned. And I thought–how we do it all alone? How do we keep writing if we don’t have anyone behind us, cheering us on.

Yes, there is the gratification in the release, the voices that don’t stop shouting until we write them down, the stories that become so real to us we want to inhabit them all the time. But, it’s not always like that. There is work. Years of it. And most of us do it alone.

A few weeks back I was at a local coffee shop and a painter was hanging up her work. She told me she’d never had a vernissage, never joined a group, never put her work on display anywhere. And she’d been painting for her greater than thirty years. I wondered how in all that time she didn’t have a need to share what she created.

I know that as a writer, I am encouraged when others read my work, when I’m caught totally off guard by someone approaching me and saying they read X by me and loved it, or totally related to it. It feels good. It feels like I’ve connected with the universe in some small way, but in a way big enough to satisfy me. But most of the time that doesn’t happen. Most of what I write will never be read at all.

I’m left wondering, how do we as writers and artists, keep going at all alone, with only ourselves as our very own cheerleader?