Life's best laid plans

Wednesday is my Type M time slot, but I am both late and fairly inarticulate. My apologies. Life gets in the way of the best intentions. I have a stack of research books related to Ukrainian history which I hope to use for the backdrop of a new Inspector Green novel. I bought one new from my local independent bookstore, and ordered the other three from that wonderful boon to researchers of obscure texts, Abebooks. The books remain unopened in a stack by my side along with my coffee cup. Life has intervened.

Last week, just as I was about to host my family's first Rosh Hashanah since the pandemic, my dog had a kind of spinal cord stroke which has left him paralyzed on one side and unable to move, walk, or even stand. Hopefully it is temporary while the spinal cord heals over the next few months, but meanwhile, his care, and the various hospital, neurology, and rehab appointments, have taken over all the hours of the day. And his needs have taken over my living room. There will soon be a huge x-pen (dog playpen) in the middle of the living room floor so that when he does begin to get more mobile, he won't hurt himself. I am sleeping on the couch beside him to try to keep him calm. 

Until last night, neither of us has had more than four hours' sleep over a night. This is also not conducive to creative thinking. Embarking on the creation of a new book requires not only the time, mental focus, and eagerness to start the daunting journey but also the physical reserves to mobilize the brain cells. Both sadly lacking right now. I did have one book appearance to talk to a local community group this week, and that was a welcome respite. It was a rare chance to connect face-to-face with readers, reminding me of why I do this job. That gave me a morale boost to pick up the first of the Ukraine books. 

Once I have a spare minute. Hopefully by next blog time, I will have something to report.

Washing floors, anyone?

I know I promised to reveal my four secrets to a successful story on this blog, one secret at a time, but that was a  month ago. As everyone has noted, that was another life. We have entered a period of surreal, suspended animation. As my daughter calls it, it's as if the world has stopped. And in many ways it has. All our daily routines and activities have changed, replaced by constant email, text, and phone conversations and non-stop news. A trip to the grocery story is now a huge excursion, and as Aline said, the highlight may be that daily walk. In my case several walks since I have two dogs, but now the walks are around the same few neighbourhood blocks. Gone are the parks and trails I used to take them on, because in their wisdom the National Capital Commission that runs them all has shut them down to avoid crowding. So now there is no quiet, serene place to avoid the crowds.

Life is not normal, and people are distracted and discombobulated. As writers, we are all struggling to find focus, to find our characters in the desert of our imagination, and to sink into that oblivion that we call the creative zone. I have all the time in the world, I tell myself, and surely this is not so different from my usual hermit life. So I've been pushing myself and berating myself for my meagre output and for my desire to wash the floors (yes, wash the floors!) just to put off picking up the pen.

And then I found this article on Facebook. It's very human and full of understanding, hope, and sound advice. The author wrote it for her fellow academics but it applies equally to us writers. To anyone whose work comes from within their own head. Judging from her story, I assume she has lived through war and terror, and has now found safe haven in Canada, and so she knows a thing or two about disrupted lives. Canada has never had a war on its own soil (discounting the war of 1812, which was very localized and very long ago), and so people born in Canada have no experience facing the kind of trauma and turmoil that much of the world has lived through. We have much we can learn from the refugees who have chosen our country, in terms of resilience and wisdom.

So I decided now is not the time to blog about the third secret to a successful story. Someday – I have no idea when – I will return to it, but it's not what we need right now.

This is what we need.

Wayward Words

A friend asked me recently if I read fiction when I'm writing and if that interferes with my own work. No, reading while writing doesn't affect the work in progress, and giving up reading when I'm writing just makes me cranky. Nevertheless, when I'm currently reading a book with great description or characterization I feel goaded to improve whatever is on my computer at the time. I also find myself giving more thought to details in my own work.

Most novelists have a horror of "unconscious plagiarism." So I was infuriated by Rick's recent blog on the outrageous blatant plagiarism perpetrated by a woman who copied a novel nearly verbatim and then posted it on Amazon as though it were her own book. She made quite a bit of money by doing this.

I feel so strongly about the issue of creative piracy that I won't even read books that expand on a dead author's characters or plot lines. I'm too cowardly to list all the books I refuse to read because I don't want to respond to readers who see nothing wrong with it.

To me, poaching characters is dishonorable! What's more, a line from an old Kipling poem, The Mary Gloster, comes to mind: "They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, And I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

The out-and-out plagiarism Rick referred to is in a class by itself. It's criminal. But I've noticed the "legitimate" books built on another author's foundation don't stand very well. Because the original creative spark isn't there they flounder in the marketplace.

Creative energy is unique to an individual. The source can't be duplicated.

Nevertheless there is a great deal of craftsmanship involved with creating good books and much to be learned by studying the techniques of the masters. Especially when one begins to write.

I often turn to books that I especially liked to see how they did something. I went back to Love Let Me Not Hunger to see why I thought Mr. Albert's leaving the circus was one of the saddest events I had ever come across.

How do other writer get characters out of room and change scenes? Oh. They don't. They simply double space. Why do the pages in this book rush by? Oh. Short, short sentences. Short chapters. Mostly action. Why do I like longer books with more detail? Oh. It's characterization.

Most of us go to the masters for instruction and inspiration, but a pox on anyone who goes with the intention of copying material.

Vampires

by Rick Blechta

No, I’m not thinking of switching to the horror genre, nor trying my hand at penning a YA novel (although I have always been a fan of Bram Stoker’s Dracula). I am also not talking about those LED thingies on all our appliances and electronic devices that you just can’t turn off unless you unplug the whole damn thing, in which case you’d spend half your life bending down to plug/unplug nearly everything you own.

What I am referring to are those people who just tend to suck the life and joy out of everyone surrounding them.

You know the type: high maintenance people with big needs, never very much help with anything and usually with constant complaints about nearly everything.

It’s easy to collect them, especially if you’re any kind of an empathetic person. I am and I do. These sorts of vampires can suck you dry of any energy or enthusiasm in one brief phone call. Maybe the legends of blood-sucking night creatures actually revolve around the sort of person who seems to have perfected self-misery and shooting themselves in the foot.

I had an email from someone the other day, and I am well aware that emails from this person are usually very negative. It’s as if they sense where my weaknesses are and the home in on them like a guided missile. I was just about to sit down and work on my very “sluggish” novella project. Now is the time for it to get into hyperdrive and really start humming along. I know what I want to write and it’s dammed up inside my head, threatening to gush out whether I want it to or not.

But I opened the email anyway. I know, I know. It’s like that horror movie where you know something awful is hiding in that closet, but you watch helplessly as the character insists on opening the door.

Instant despair. I just sat there blinking like an idiot when I finished the lengthy missive. If I really was going to be the terrific friend I’d like to think I am, I would have hopped on a plane and gone out to help sort out a life filled with turbulence due to a lot of misery. I can’t help it. I’m an empath and really feel that I could help. It’s a close friend, and well, it’s hard to turn away.

Knowing I couldn’t do that, I picked up the phone. By the end of that lengthy conversation, I was completely depressed and stared at my computer screen for a good five minutes, mind completely blank and feeling like I just wanted to go back to bed. Perhaps that would have been a good idea: start my day over.

Yeah, you’re probably thinking that I should just not turn on my computer’s mail program when I sit down to write. Problem is, I have to know what my design clients are up to. A new job may be in the offing, or there might be a problem with something I’d sent off to the printer the day before. I have good reasons to watch my incoming mail.

In thinking about it since, I realized that I have to steel myself against taking ownership of other people’s problems. If this means losing friendships, so be it. This empathy thing can easily become a very full-time job.

Its side effect of sapping one’s creative energy, however, has gotten me thinking.

Why is creative energy so much more fragile than physical or lower-level mental energy? On the day in question, I went on to be very productive doing the (admittedly rote) assembly of a large graphic design job I was working on (adding images to an already conceived layout). And I did a large amount of work out in the kitchen on some meat-curing I’m involved in. I shoveled snow. I vacuumed the upstairs.

But as for my grand writing plans? Zilch. Nada. The circus had left town — at least for that day. I tried again later in the evening with nothing useful happening. It was as if my writing idea vault suddenly had a big fat lock on it. Even though I knew what I wanted to say, it just wouldn’t come out.

Next morning, I stayed away from the computer for a couple of hours and had a very profitable time writing. It meant, though, that I had to get up at 6:00 when clients are never in their offices. The house was quiet, and the phone wouldn’t ring unless it really was an emergency.

It was lovely.

So here’s my question folks: why is creative energy such a fragile and whimsical thing? Any ideas? Please share them! I, for one, will thank you.