Reading: November 5, 2012. Rowers' Pub Reading Series.

#10. Life of a Writer. No time to waste.

An interesting report, positive, from reader for my agent on my mystery, "Two Left Feet." The report points out strengths and also what might benefit from revision. So...no longer is there time to waste as the writer (yours truly) sinks her teeth into revising.

Some remarks lead to obvious solutions. An error can be corrected by doing a bit of research. Others require a lot of time and thought. How does one take someone's POV (point of view) out of a story/novel and yet have them visible and known through the eyes of others? Well, that's precisely it...through the eyes of others. Not so easy really. Thoughts can't be conveyed through others most of the time, unless there is something obvious occurring that suggests them.

At any rate, that is today's challenge. Likely next week's and next month's also. I will keep on working on it and possibly (probably) report back in further posts.

Luciana Ricciutelli (R), editor at Inanna, with two of her authors. Zoe Roy(L) and Mary Lou Dickinson (middle) at WOTS, Sept. 2012

Did I say there is no time to waste not only because this revision takes up a great deal of time, but also because I have a finite life span. At an advanced age already, getting things out there now may lead to publication while I am still alive to enjoy that.

#9. Life of a Writer. How to Waste Time.

If I ever wondered about something I am good at, now I have found that talent. I can waste time like no one else on this planet. Maybe it is a characteristic of writers. Or maybe it is when I am incubating ideas. This morning I went to No Frills to buy unsalted butter that was on sale. It was an extra trip since they were out of it when I arrived yesterday. After coming home and putting the butter in the refrigerator, I decided it was such a beautiful day that I must be outside. So I walked over to Avenue Road (Toronto) to see an exhibition of paintings at the Ingram Gallery. When I came home, I did a load of laundry and had lunch. Soon I will leave for the Bloor Cinema to see the 9th film of 10 at TIFF. (Artifact) .

The reality is that between my activities of this past week, including some wonderful films (Amour, Quartet, The Gatekeepers, etc.), I have done a lot of writing. I never really know when I am wasting time and when what I do is productive. It may be necessary to my ongoing existence. But it may also be a way of easing into what I intend to do on a manuscript.

What I am working on now is a memoir. The title: Restless. That captures the life of someone who wastes time as well as all the other examples of restlessness in my life. I think. In any case, I am going to have a section critiqued by my colleagues at my writing group, Moosemeat, in ten days or so. So I have been looking for an extract that seems to be ready for their close inspection. And every time I sit down at the computer, I do something to prepare the excerpt I will send out a week before this critique.

View from my window this evening.

Creative Risk with a Blank Book. 1990.

Blank Book

(1990)

Yet another blank book. Who gave it to me this time? To draw? To write? That is the question. To take creative risks. My greatest risk may be to open this book and mar a blank page, to change the pristine quality of it. I can do as I please. Sky can appear overhead, visions of old women rocking in nursing homes, drooling over teddy bears. Anything at all. The flashing numbers of trades on the stock exchange I watched from the broker’s floor. The scallops I ate for dinner afterwards. All of it part of the flow of one life that I cannot seem to capture in a character or form to share with others. Today I do not mind. I have filled a page!

Some books are never published.

Some books should never have been published.

BEWARE!

It’s odd to think of inhabiting a womb. The one I inhabited had four occupants. One was born dead…

1/13/90

Dear Mikail Gorbachev,

abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxqz

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 l2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

22 23 24 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 34 35

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

#+X

                        36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Lithuania may be the downfall.

Or will you get a Nobel peace prize?

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Nelson Mandela will soon be released

67 68 69 70. He is 71 now and has been

in prison in South Africa for 25 years.

Winnie has waited. 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 My mother is

83. She is paralyzed on one side after a

stroke. 84 85 86 87 88 89 90. It’s odd

to think my sister and I shared a womb.

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Yours truly,

100

p.s. Blank books may turn out to be dangerous.

Labour Day. Toronto Island Escape. .

 Perhaps my last trip to the island now that September has come and summer is over. Or not. Although it felt as if it likely was the last trip for many folks on the ferry. School starts tomorrow. Harbinger of another season as is the fact that daylight gets shorter by a few minutes each day. I won't miss the humid heat, but even so I enjoyed the summer this year. There was so much to explore in the area of the city where I now live. Gradually I am doing so and feeling more at home each passing day.

On the island, I continued reading a thick book on Africa (The Fate of Africa) for a course in the fall. Although had I discovered this book myself, I would have read it anyway. Well written and very informative. I also found a bench in shade on Algonquin Island where I could see bits of the air show taking place at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) today. And walked a bit.

So, fall is in the air and as well as continuing to write on various writing projects, short stories, the memoir, I will pick up my TI|FF tickets this week and go to my first of 10 films on Thursday.

Mysterious Woman.

Who is the mysterious woman? Writing a memoir, I examine this woman's eyes. Her expression. She is sad, I think. At the very least, thoughtful. Or?

I wonder about her mood as she is me. Me in the 1970s. So long ago, but part of the thread that runs through my life till now. Telling stories of that decade when I was a young wife and mother and then a young single mother soon to be divorced.

Those were difficult, but good years. So perhaps thoughtful. 

#8. Life of a Writer. Memoir Excerpt.

Graham's death in 1992 when he is only in his late thirties happens just three months before I go to the Banff Centre of the Arts to work on a novel. Later it feels like the harbinger of all the deaths that follow that year, although unlike most of them it’s sudden and unexpected. Yet when I awaken to news of a plane crash on the island that morning in January, I wait to hear his name. On the ferry the previous afternoon on a rare winter trip to the island, I'd watched the small planes take off and land. And I'd thought of him then. Was he in one of those planes? I'd had shivers sensing that indeed he was.

A fellow volunteer at the Distress Centre a few years earlier, Graham and I went through training together. He was the 992nd volunteer at the centre in downtown Toronto; my number was 994. I’m not sure I ever knew his surname. To me he will always be Graham 992. He had piercing blue eyes, red hair and a luminous wit. Much younger than I, we were nonetheless compatible and he once invited me to his apartment for coffee and showed me his aquarium full of colourful tropical fish. The previous summer, he took another volunteer and me up in his small Piper aircraft. Liz’s number was somewhere in the early thousands.

We flew out over Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls, wing tipped so we could see the drama below. Liz sat in the front and threw up in a brown paper bag as the plane righted itself. Graham was a careful pilot. How he could crash on a clear day is beyond me. Did he want to?

In the month or so after his death, I write a poem - Flying - and take it to Banff where I show it to Don Coles, the resident poet, and later to another participant who is also a poet, Patricia Young, both of whom make helpful comments.


Flying (for Graham)

The day your plane crashes
I am walking along the boardwalk
beside the lake. It's the first time
I've been on the island since you
took Liz and me out over
Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls.
Liz sat in the front and threw up
in a bag as you tipped the wings
over the falls. Today I don't know
you're careening above me
in the sky. Even so, my thoughts
keep turning to you--how often we run into
each other despite
the size of this city--at the corner
of Yonge and College, on the subway,
on my way to yoga. I think of
your red hair that recedes slightly,
your piercing blue eyes, luminous wit.
I won't know till tomorrow morning
when I awaken to my clock radio
about the crash, that you're
the pilot. On the ferry
back to the city I
stand by the rail, watch
small aircraft
land and take off, land
and take
off.