happy new year?

I wrote most of this post last night, then rewatched some 90s comfort television, then tried to go to sleep. A little after one in the morning, I checked the news and saw what had happened in Quebec City, and then sleep was no longer an option. I honestly thought I could not feel worse about the state of the world last night than I already did. Every day brings some new horror. I wish for the naivety of just a few hours ago.

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The end of 2016 was full of work of all kinds, including a few things I'd never done before. Lots and lots of intense writing and editing. I received a lot of requests about manuscript consultations and writing coaching, but I had to put everyone off until the new year. And I still haven't gotten back to everyone as I still don't have time to do the work, which I feel bad about. I'm thinking of putting such work on indefinite hold for the year unless I can find an established press or a writing program to work with...i.e. somebody else outsourcing manuscripts for professional edits for a set, flat fee.

The highlight of fall 2016 was teaching in the Emerging Writers Intensive program in Banff. Banff is a magical place, not just for its incredible beauty but for the special alchemy of a place dedicated to art and creativity.

My students were amazingly talented, kind, insightful, and generous. I hope they don't mind me posting this photo here from our last night in Banff. (If you're in it and hate it, let me know and I'll take it down!)

2017 has started out in such a frightening way. Like most people I know, I find the news these days to be a constant horror show, and yet I can't look away. I don't want to start writing about it now, as I'm not sure how to start...or stop.

David Sipress, The New Yorker

What else? There's never enough time to do all the things I want to do. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on time management, but it's never quite good enough. One of my resolutions for 2017 is to blog more, but this is one I have rarely been successful at fulfilling.

My other resolutions are modest. I want to have people over more often. Please, if you know me, invite yourself over. This is a link that was going around about hosting that I found inspiring:

http://www.mothering.com/articles/host-crappy-dinner-see-friends-often/

How to Host a Crappy Dinner (and See Your Friends More Often) 

by Kelley Powell 

(who, I just realized, is a novelist who lives in Ottawa. I have her book around here somewhere)

Just know that there are piles of books and magazines and toys everywhere. We desperately need to vacuum. That is just the way things are. Maybe someday it will be better.

Little L is growing a lot. Ninety per cent of photos of her are blurry as she's always moving. And she is funnier and sillier every day. I've called her a silly goose so often that now when she erupts into giggles at her own antics, she always yells out, "Goose!"

Here she is on her birthday:

NYR check-in

How is everyone faring with their New Year’s Resolutions? It’s actually more than halfway through the year now (aughgh), but as good a time as any to take stock. (If you want to see my original post, full of hope and promise, it’s here.)

1) Finish one project and start another. I don’t know exactly what I even had in mind when I wrote ‘start another,’ since I’ve been midway through two projects for a while now. The ‘finish one project’ part is progressing, though it’ll still be a major challenge to wrap it up before the end of the year.

2) 100 blog posts. Hah!  Unless there is a strong uptick, I think I am bound to fail on this one.

3) Stop buying chips. Also a fail, mostly fueled by my desire to try novelty crisp flavours in Britain. (Cheese and onion! The perennial prawn cocktail! I even spotted haggis-flavoured crisps but managed to exercise near-superhuman restraint to avoid buying them.)

4) Take a photo every day. I’m  not sure at exactly what point I just completely forgot to do this, but it was in the spring and it was only after a week or so had gone by that I realized I had stopped, so there was no recovery possible. However, my manic vacation photo-taking has probably almost made up for this, quantity-wise, if nothing else.

So success is now riding completely on #1. Wish me luck. 

Now, as promised yesterday, here's a random vacation photo of the castle variety:

St. Andrew's Castle, Scotland

100 Blog Posts and Other New Year's Resolutions

It was hard to separate this year’s resolutions from actual goals, but along with the general resolution to write more this year than last year (very doable, I think), I've resolved to finish one specific project and make a start on another. (I’d love to undertake more than this, and I might, but these two at least seem within the realm of reality.)

Another goal is to write 100 blog posts in 2014. In 2013, I blogged more than I ever have before, with 88 posts, but there were still many months where I barely wrote at all. I’m aiming to do better in 2014 and I think it’s possible. Blogging was a great outlet for me last year, as well as a good way of supplementing my disastrous memory and giving me a feeling of accomplishment that is often hard to find when one is working on lengthy projects.

Other resolutions include not buying chips (note: not not eating chips…that seems too harsh…so you may see me standing outside a dépanneur clutching a five-dollar bill and coaxing passersby to help me out) and eating out less in general, both of which I’m feeling pretty optimistic about.

Another goal is to take a photo every day this year -- a goal I've had each of the last five years (or longer!) and which I've failed at every time. Not this year, though. At least if I don't have anything to say for 100 posts, there should at least be some pictures...
 

So what if they're all selfies, right?

Happy Lunar New Year (a little late)!

Saturday we had our annual Chinese New Year’s celebration.  J. made 8 separate completely amazing dishes (Dumplings! Hot and sour soup!  Lucky fish! Ribs!) and we had beer and champagne.   Then we watched half of Pitch Perfect and headed to karaoke. 

It’s the Year of the Snake! 

lovely Year of the Snake illustration from Bevolee

Friday afternoon was full of giddy good news (more on this later), an interview in the Mile End, and the exciting arrival of the annual PLR cheque.  After that, the weekend, as always, went by too fast.  I didn’t get to my laundry, but I did clean out three purses: over the course of a few weeks of use, the inside of any one of my bags resembles nothing so much as a wastebasket full of used tissues, crumpled receipts, and nearly empty packages of gum.  But in the process, I reclaimed four good pens, two bottles of Tylenol and a bottle of Advil.  Small victories.  I also knit some rows on my hat during Downton last night and got halfway caught up on email.  But according to the variety of cherry-picked internet horoscopes I’ve consulted, slow and steady is the way to go in the Year of the Snake. 

back to school

Allergies are killer…my sneezes are becoming more and more of a comedy routine in the way that only multiple sneezes can be.  People on the bus were staring at me with a curious pity last week (as opposed to a contagious horror…the signs of a ragweed culprit were pretty evident).  Today, they’re better.  It’s the upside of being a writerly shut-in. 

I’m taking a class through Continuing Education, so I am entering into the back-to-school feeling more than ever.  New beginnings!  The beginning of September is better for resolutions than January, and probably almost as good a contender as May Day, for those of us who have been to school (or have worked at schools) for most of our lives. 

And the campus is flowing with students, which is both bad (all my quiet library nooks will be overrun) and good (all the cafeterias are open again).  It’s always fun to see the trends made manifest by thousands of twenty-year-olds.  All I can say is that a whole generation is going to have fallen arches from all the flipflops out there. 

In other news, it’s Election Day.  I voted, and if you’re in Quebec, you should, too.  Who doesn’t love voting?!  And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t vote, consider yourself soundly scolded. 

something new

There has been such a flurry of activity in my little corner of the world that I can only conclude that some of the persistence has paid off.

There was packing (and now unpacking), moving, and of course this:

 

Then there was travelling and reading and relaxing, and now, now there is the editing.  I started working on the manuscript again this weekend, and I was encouraged by the fact that there was no cringing or recoiling from what I found on the page.  (Sometimes I find that when I work in great, deadline-induced bursts it is followed by some sort of amnesia…I am usually half-surprised to find just what it is I’ve written.)  Of course, I may start to feel differently as I move deeper into the novel, but just now I am encouraged, relieved, and excited to do the work. 

transformation time

Happy Lunar New Year! According to one of the dozen or so forecasts for the Year of the Dragon that I looked up (until I found something that caught my fancy…that’s the way horoscopes work, right?), 2012 is supposed to be a transformative year, a year of major shifts in one’s life (my Sheep horoscope seems to call for almost every kind of major life change imaginable). One site is calling it the Year of Empowerment – a time for risk-taking and moving outside one’s comfort zone. True or not, I like the sound of all that. (Sort of! It has to be admitted that my life is pretty great just the way it is, too.)




Bring on the Year of the Dragon!

Taking stock on old resoutions

I was going to take stock of how well I achieved my 2011 New Year’s Resolutions, but then I saw that the last ones I posted were at the beginning of 2010. I also saw that I only posted three times in all of 2011…clearly a resolution waiting to happen right there.

So I’ve had two years to work on these goals:

Read more American fiction

I did this, a little, though less than I would have liked. (Then again, I would prefer to have read more of everything, in every category.) I read The Corrections (yes, finally), A Visit From the Goon Squad (really amazing), We Need To Talk About Kevin (really good…very curious to see the movie, especially as Tilda Swinton seems like perfect casting), Home (tremendous), The Human Stain (the only Philip Roth I’d read before was Portnoy’s Complaint…my, what I’ve been missing), and Mr. Peanut (a totally dark and amazingly clever novel about marriage and murder). This last one was recommended to me by another amazing American writer, Joanna Pearson, whose novel The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills is the perfect YA treat. (YA = Young Adult, for those of you who don’t occasionally take great pleasure in dipping into what’s available for the younger set.)

Read more British fiction Unless you count rereading Villette, the only British novel I’m sure I’ve read is The Little Stranger. It’s a great story – I got spooked reading it – and it was the perfect companion piece to Downton Abbey, which I got swept up in last January. Oh no, wait! At some point I also read Skippy Dies (solid, enjoyable).

Read more poetry Yes, I absolutely did! Not only did I read a fair bit from the library, but I'm also fortunate enough to know a number of amazing poets who've published books recently. I promise you will not be disappointed by any of the following: Hypotheticals by Leigh Kotsilidis, The Id Kid by Linda Besner, A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People by Gabe Foreman, and All This Could Be Yours by Joshua Trotter. Now I just need people to do this all the time and I'll be totally covered on the poetry front.

Finish my novel Well, what does finish really mean? I finished and submitted the initial draft I’m sure I was referring to here. And then another. And…one more? And now I’m waiting for notes. That’s about as much as I feel like saying about this right now.

Write another one Hahaha, it is to laugh. Well, not really. I have two other serious projects underway, and a few other less ambitious things somewhat started/imagined/idly planned. But a lot of major work needs to happen before this gets crossed off the to-do list. 

Try writing something in another genre Yes! A little. Though I haven’t tried submitting anything yet.

Conclusion: Decent progress? Unless you consider the fact that I had two years to work on these. (Secondary conclusion: time to make some new goals.)

resolution

I am thinking about New Year’s Resolutions, as always. The gap between January 1^st and the Lunar New Year leaves a little room for resolution-tweaking or reaffirmations. Sometimes the goals I write down are too ambitious, or too amorphous to be useful. Be a better friend. What does that mean? What does it look like? (Probably: go out more. Check in on people you miss. Plan Skype dates with people who live far away. Don’t let emails languish in your inbox for too long without a response.)

Writing with a full-time job and any semblance of a social life is always something that requires heaps of resolve. I’m not sure whether this is ever something that can go on auto-pilot. In order to get anything done, I have to remind myself of what I want most of all and then set to work doing what I have to do in order to achieve that. Just about every day. And even then, I don’t always listen to my inner drill sergeant. It’s so hard when the diligence required to produce pages seems at odds with building and maintaining friendships and relationships – the things that, besides work, are supposed to make life worth living.

I wish “Just Do It” wasn’t so irrevocably linked to that all-too-successful advertising campaign. It really is a powerful little message/mantra.