The Power of Procrastination

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What??? I peered intently at a receipt for when I sent my manuscript to the publisher.  I sent the ms to Ronsdale OVER a year ago???  You’ve got to be kidding. Panic took over instantly, and I took action. The first, most obvious action, was to attack the person responsible for this hideous reality. How could I possibly have taken so long to rewrite this story? How did I let the time get away from me like that? I should NOT have taken on so many speaking engagements this year. How can you concentrate on rising action when you are crafting a presentation? Really. AND the tour to Fort McMurray. Sure it was a great week of camaraderie with other authors and exciting school visits, but did I really have time for that right now? Then there’s the house renovations. Okay, so that one is a bit of a challenge. Having asbestos in the ceiling was NOT my idea. Having my house demolished to the 2 by 4′s was NOT my idea, but still, did I REALLY have to spend every waking moment choosing finishes and shopping for new bathroom taps? Honestly. There had to be a couple of hours every day to write, had I not been so distracted.  Discipline. That’s what I was lacking. That had to change.

Having pretty much destroyed what was left of the muse, my writing and my self-esteem were at an all time low.  I was hopeless.  The manuscript deserved life in a sock drawer, and I deserved, well, nothing.

In this state of mind, then, it was hardly surprising that I suffered the longest migraine of my life.  Nothing was working and my agitation grew along with my already lengthy to-do list. The discipline plan was failing me. So, I waved the white flag of defeat.  I decided to ignore my already late income tax papers and the last-minute renovation shopping. I decided to leave the packing-up of our temporary home and the packing for our road trip. AND I decided to leave the manuscript. The sock drawer would always be there.

I climbed into bed, determined not to get out until the migraine was gone. A very interesting thing happened. As I lay in bed, sleeping, dozing, relaxing, my mind made space for my manuscript, and I began to live the story, in my sleepy stupor. Without any effort, the muse presented the solutions to the sticky areas of my manuscript and even whispered an ending.  Actually, it was a pretty good ending.

The to-do list awaits me, as we speak. And I still have to shop for casings and back splashes. But the migraine is gone. The disappointment in myself is gone. The muse has returned. And I know that there will be time to sit at the computer and commit to the page all the great ideas  the muse presented me with yesterday.

I am truly hoping the migraine does not reappear any time soon. But it did leave me with a gift. I realized that, while important, discipline is not always what is needed. Sometimes letting your mind run completely free is what is needed.  I remember my uncle’s words of advice when I was visiting them once many years ago. He and my aunt were wrangling with a sticky issue and I wondered if there was something I could do to help the situation. My uncle said, “Clear your mind. That’s all you need to do.” Although I thought it was an odd answer at the time, but now I realize that the wisdom of those words.

Sometimes there is power in procrastination. (And a little extra sleep probably doesn’t hurt either!)

The Changing View

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Okay, so I have a plan.  As you may or may not know, my writing has sufferedconsiderably during this ginormous nightmare-of-a reno project as has everything else in my life.  Conversations, to-do-lists, every waking moment and most of the nonwaking moments revolve around electricians, drywallers, tilers…you get the picture. Our beautiful bungalow is a skeleton of its former self while we send encouraging, inspirational, motivational vibes and numerous phone calls to every trade imaginable in hopes of finding that glimmer of light – that ray of hope – that will move us closer to that day we dream of. The day we can return home.

So…here is the plan.  In the midst of all the chaos, The View is going on a road trip. Yep. We are packing up as few worldly possessions as possible and travelling east. It will be exciting to actually have something else to talk about other than whether or not the roofers are going to finish our roof and if they have fixed the stack that they screwed up when they didn’t finish our roof or if the spray-foam guys are going to spray the right foam in this time. Stuff like that. (Don’t even think of mentioning the word ASBESTOS to me.) AND there is always the possibility that my sadly neglected manuscript will flourish with the change in scenery.  Our final destination is Ottawa, but I’ll keep you posted along the way.

I can hardly wait.

Behind The Red Velvet Curtain

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Wow. It’s amazing how hard it is to get the writing muscle back in gear after focusing on presentations for so long.  Another week has gone by and finally I’m sitting down to do this blog – NO MATTER WHAT.

The Aspiring Authors group wrapped up on Sunday. Two of the young authors were brave enough to share their writing which we all enjoyed. I shared my story of the magical Mi’kmaq quill box and read a couple of excerpts from Winds of L’Acadie.

I will miss my young enthusiastic authors.  We were just getting warmed up.  AND they had some awesome ideas for stories about the quirky meeting room at the Fish Creek Library in Calgary. Shaped roughly like a triangle, closed off from the pubic with luxurious red velvet theatre curtains, it is the perfect setting for a mystery. Hmmm. Something to add to my notebook for a future novel.

One of the Aspiring Authors creeped out the librarian by asking her if the library had ever done a ghost assessment. His family, apparently, are all gifted in the detection of supernatural spirits, and he definitely felt ghosts in the room.  Hmmm. More fodder for the future.

Yes, of all my commitments this year, my Aspiring Authors group was the most fun. I’m SO looking forward to the fall when I can once again enjoy the view from inside the velvet curtains.

 

Longing for a Familiar View

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Today, I am feeling particularly homesick.  There is nothing worse than feeling homesick AFTER you get back from a trip.

The WordPower Tour to Fort McMurray was amazing. The kids were fabulous and I loved sharing Sarah’s journey to L’Acadie and my journey as an author with several different schools.Author extraorinaire, Natash Deen, was my partner.  Each day we plotted the route to the school via the closest Starbucks.  A friend who understands your caffeine addiction is a friend indeed.

So…after a busy yet inspirational week of author visits and author gab-fests, I arrived “home” but  not at home. We are renting in a neighbourhood close to our home, thanks to unexpected renovations.  Our world was thrown into “asbestos hell” when we discovered that our 70′s bungalow had asbestos-filled popcorn kernels on our ceiling.  Who knew? Now, our house is completely gutted and on many days it’s hard to remember what it was like in the good-old-days when all I had to complain about were manuscript revisions.  Oh how I long to return to those days!

Well, I may not be in my “home-sweet-home” as my daughter says, but I AM going to get back to writing and those stubborn revisions that await me.

Thanks for checking out The View.

See you Sunday after my Aspiring Authors wind-up at Fish Creek Library.

Twisting the Lens

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Today as I sip my latte in Starbucks, I have to admit to being a little frazzled. Okay, maybe more than a little.

It all started on New Year’s Day, when I woke up with a migraine. Never a good thing on the dawning of a new year. It was symbolic, or perhaps a foreshadowing of things to come.  Things being a leaking fish tank on the lower level which caused several dominoes to fall, leading to a reno we weren’t going to do, and asbestos in our popcorn ceiling of the entire main floor of the house, leading to a reno similar to the one required by London Bridge.

I woke up in the dark tunnel of an overwhelming “to-do” list which is now competing with my Oxford Dictionary for length.  But then, in the midst of the darkness, something happened. I decided to twist the lens. To find a different view. A view that was more appealing than the weighty “to-do” list. What I found was a lot of happy pieces coming together like brightly coloured shards of glass forming a brilliant mosaic.

Here are a few of the happy pieces:

  • My presentations WILL get done despite the additions to the list.
  • My manuscript, while long overdue, is coming together nicely.
  • Next week  I get to speak at a convention and stay in a peaceful hotel, leaving the lengthy list behind at least until the week end.
  • The weather has turned suddenly spring-like and sunny, making the many errands much more enjoyable.
  • My daughter is very happy at school.
  • Nana is coming to babysit while I’m away.
  • My husband is taming his own “to-do” list for our “project”.
  • We will have a beautiful, like-new house when we are finished. (We will get finished some day – right???)

Sometimes when the view is dark, it just takes a little twist of the lens to improve the view.  ( Thanks to Kaleidoscope Literary Conference for the title).

 

 

 

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Tales of an Incompetent Tooth Fairy

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When my son was growing up, the tooth fairy was extremely reliable. It was a simple routine. His tooth would fall out and that night he would place the tooth in the little ceramic dog dish attached to the little ceramic dog. In the morning he would find a looney in the special slot on the dog’s back. So cute. So much fun. And reliable like clockwork. Fast forward twenty years and well, what can I say, times have changed. My daughter has her big brother’s little ceramic dog, and a beautiful porcelain tooth fairy box. She also has a very incompetent tooth fairy.

My daughter is six. Here is her tooth fairy experience so far. When a tooth falls out, she puts it in the little ceramic doggy dish just like her big brother used to do. Sometimes in the morning the tooth is gone. Most of the time the tooth is still there. “Mom, the tooth is still in the dish and I can’t find any money.” Oh no. You’ve got to be kidding. I get out of bed, bleary-eye from staying up too late, working on my latest manuscript. “Isn’t that odd that the tooth fairy didn’t take your tooth, I say, my mind racing about how to make the money appear. “Go tell Daddy what happened.” While she is gone, the tooth fairy puts the requisite coinage in the tooth fairy box. Daddy, on the other hand, doesn’t get what’s happening and he has other ideas about the tooth fairy. He comes with her into the bedroom. “When I was a boy, the tooth fairy always left the money under the pillow. Let’s check.” Sure enough, she finds some money under the pillow. “Really? I say. I thought she was going to use Nana’s porcelain box.” My daughter checks there. More money!  Woo hoo, is she excited about the tooth fairy.

That was a few months ago. This week we had more tooth fairy issues. The morning began the same way, only this time my daughter checked under her pillow, in the porcelain box and in the doggy dish, all to no avail. “Oh, how strange,” I said. “Why doesn’t your tooth fairy ever take the tooth?” I opened the porcelain box and found a large silver coin stored in there from a previous tooth fairy gift. I dumped it out in my hand. Sure enough the new coin–a special quarter with a tooth fairy on it–was underneath.Gosh. When did the tooth fairy visits become so stressful? How many more teeth are left anyway?

The tooth fairy’s days are numbered. It is only a matter of time. I can only hope that one day my daughter will look back and laugh at why she got such an incompetent tooth fairy. Sigh!

 

The View Returns

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I decided to get back to my original theme for this blog and that is The View from Starbucks. Sitting in Starbucks, surrounded by real-life stories, it seems a shame to let this material go to waste, or even to hog it all for myself. So, I have decided to pass on the daily drama to you.

Today, I’m going to tell a Starbucks story. This story took place just after Christmas one year. I had some time on my own to write, so I headed off to Starbucks, which is usually not as distracting as staying at home. Not so on this particular day.

I was entrenched in my writing, enjoying the ambiance and the grande non-fat latte, when a rather rough-looking fellow, “thirtyish”, sat down in the comfy chair beside me. It always makes me a little itcy when someone sits down close to me and drinks his coffee. I mean, you expect that in a coffee shop, right? But I mean when someone ONLY drinks his coffee. He doesn’t read the newspaper or a novel and he isn’t visiting with anyone. He’s just staring, straight ahead. I catch a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision and decide he is, at the very least, suffering from lack of sleep.  I sit at my computer, trying to pretend that he isn’t there, or that he is busy doing something, but still it is very distracting. This Starbucks is in Chapters so, why doesn’t he get a book or a magazine or something? All right, you aren’t really allowed to do that unless you pay for it. But still, the longer he just sits, close to me, without DOING something, the more uncomfortable I get. Now my condition has deteriorated from “itchy” to “twitchy” meaning that I may soon have to get up and move around, or find a new seat.

Then his phone rings.  Yay! He has a cell phone. Now he has a friend to talk to. That’s where the real story starts. It turns out that the fellow is from Thunder Bay. Interesting. My husband’s family is from Thunder Bay, so I wonder if they know each other. Not that I’m going to ask. That is one of my rules. I sometimes break it. But the rule is, no matter how interesting the conversation is. No matter how I want to add my two bits worth, I am not allowed to initiate conversation. Initiating is always a mistake. When spoken to, keep it short and polite, but NEVER do the initiating.

In a loud voice, he tells of the incredulous situation he found himself in that very morning. “You won’t believe this,” he begins. “But this morning I woke up to find…” this is where the very colourful language took over, so let me paraphrase. What the fellow found was a surprise guest who had apparently followed him home and spent the night. “I have no idea who he is,” he told his phone buddy. By now I have given up any attempt at writing. My concentration is completely shot. Instead, I switch to undercover note-taking. I know that truth is stranger than fiction, but really, this fellow is definitely a character. For a writer, he is rich material. And so I open a new document and scribble some details. Everything from the disheveled appearance (matted hair that sticks out like a scared porcupine and narrow eyes that look like they’re bleeding), to the hoarse voice that expresses a child-like wonder about the events as though he is merely an observer in his own life, and not a participant.

The story takes a tragic turn as he explains a horrendous event that   took him back to Thunder Bay for a funeral right before Christmas.  He was back in Calgary for Christmas and spent it with a girl he met, who invites him to her parents house for Christmas.Thoughtful of the girl. He has no idea where she is now.

And that was it. He got another call and switched to the new caller, beginning a new conversation.

I had so many questions about the story. Loose ends that needed connecting and some kind of an ending. But no. What I had was this slice of real-life drama.This glimpse through a tiny window of a stranger’s life.

I packed up my computer and went home to my cozy house where I found my husband and daughter waiting for me with warm hugs.How easy it is to sit in Starbucks and sip my latte, taking for granted the joys and comforts that make up my world. It has not always been this way for me, either. But that is another story. For now, I think I will pause to count my blessings.

Frustrating Friday

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That’s my new theme for Friday. I know. I know. Not a very positive or encouraging way to face the weekend or life, for that matter.

Thursday was great. We all went to the musical “Two from Galilee”, a wonderful musical performed at First Alliance Church Calgary.  Superb talent and a beautiful retelling of the Christmas story. We all went to bed inspired and happy.

Friday morning dawned and in swept the darkness. After dotting all the ” i’s” and crossing all the “t’s”, we discovered that when you pay into long term disability for years and become unable to work, there is no guarantee that you will receive help.  Doctors may say that you can’t work, specialists may say you can’t work, but then, as it turns out, they don’t get the final word. Someone who is not a doctor, is still allowed to say. “I think you can work.”  Thus, the frustration.

This is the situation my family has been put in.

I’m sure by Tuesday, I’ll come up with a positive spin on life once again, but for now there is a lot of anger at our house. Anger at a system that has misled us and failed us miserably. Lots of anger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bad Bunny Marble Loves the Christmas Season

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Christmas at the Donovans

After falling behind in everything yesterday (bad migraine) I spent twenty minutes of valuable time this morning chasing Bad Bunny Marble out of the living room. The bunny gates are fairly easy to move apparently, now that Marble has discovered the joys of the Christmas season. A tree full of ornaments, many at just the right height for a bunny to tap and chew and sniff. Wow. And then at the base of the tree is a skirt with little strings all the way around it. What bunny could resist that? There would have been some cute pictures of Marble exploring if I wasn’t so busy trying to keep him from eating the tree skirt, chewing the cords and munching the ornaments. Bunnies are smarter than people give them credit for. He knows the exact spot in the back corner under the tree where I can’t reach him from either side. As usual, I tried to entice him out of the living room with treats. He came close, kicked up his heels with glee and took off. If I thought a little pumpkin cookie was better than exploring the Christmas decorations, well, I had another think coming. Next I tried the trusty water sprayer but there are so many things I did not want to spray with water, well, that didn’t work either. That’s when I noticed the roll of kraft paper in the dining room where I had been wrapping presents. Perfect. I chased him around the living room smacking his hind end with the paper roll until he got tired enough of this game and ran back into the safety of the family room. I fastened the bunny gates a little more securely and Marble went about the task of pretending to be a good bunny. He washed his face, he sat under his little willow tent. He chewed on his willow tent and pretended not to notice when I left the room.

Marble in willow tent. Good Bunny

Marble in his willow tent. Good Bunny.

 

Marble washing his face. Good Bunny.

That Bad Bunny Marble sure is cute! Sigh.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD Friday

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Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong? Today was one of those days. I should have known even before I got out of bed that it was going to be one of those days. I should have known when I woke up in the midst of a dream (translate nightmare) where I was trying to deal with house renovations and contractors at the same time as I was supposed to be getting a classroom full of children ready for a field trip. Ay Carumba!

The day started off with me being late for parent/teacher conferences. There was no reason for being late, that’s what makes it really bad. Being late for a good reason is excusable, but being late because, well, because I didn’t think I was going to be late and then I was, is NOT acceptable.

That’s when the migraine kicked in.

After the PT interviews, I planned to make a quick trip to Costco (and yes that IS and oxymoron) to redo some work that was already done for a Christmas gift. BUT the Costco computer isn’t that interested in Christmas as it turns out and refused to cooperate again today. After I  dropped off my flashcard I had planned to work on my manuscript that was supposed to be finished in September and then for sure by the end of November…you get the picture. As a result of the scrooge Costco computer system, I ran out of time for any writing.

Discouraged and in a foul mood I went home instead, only to find that the rest of my family, who thought I was happily writing away, decided to go out for supper without me.

At home I looked up directions for tree cutting which we are NOT going to do and hotels for a New Year’s Eve event we are NOT going to participate in. More wasted time. Sigh.

I did manage to make some progress on my revisions but then, as I went to shut down my computer for the night, I realized that I forgot to write my Friday blog and its 11:44pm. Yikes!

Now that I have finished that rant, I will go to bed and sleep peacefully knowing that, on a day when these are the only things that have gone wrong, I must be a very lucky person. What if I had real problems to deal with?

Tomorrow is another day!