Life, The Thing That Happens

Last week, my husband lost his job of 25 years, and I was diagnosed with stage two non-alcoholic liver disease, all within 48 hours. Emotionally, I’ve been all over the map for the last seven days. Optimistic one minute, crashed to the bottom of a pit the next. This morning I am definitely in the pit. My husband’s job was one of those new bosses coming in with a big broom and getting rid of old management situations. I saw it coming about six months ago, but I also didn’t. My husband tends to be fairly positive and optimistic, and I’m the cynic in the relationship, but because he thought things would be okay, so did I. We believe what we need to believe in the moment, I suppose.

The liver disease came as more of a shock. I’ve had pain under my ribs for years, but I always thought it was radiating from a vertebrae I have which isn’t quite in alignment with the rest of my back. I don’t drink (I might have four drinks a year, but inevitably it makes my head ache, so I tend to avoid it), don’t smoke, and usually eat a fairly decent diet and get regular exercise. This disease, as it turns out, is probably what killed my aunt (who raised me for the first six years of my life, and whom I have always considered my first real mother). She too didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, but unfortunately did have a great deal of stress in her life. She died of liver cancer, which is where this disease lands if it goes undiagnosed for too long. I did have it all checked out five years ago, and all my tests were clear. Still, I wish I’d gone in earlier—this time I’ve ended up with jaundice and bruising on my abdomen—I didn’t know you could actually bruise from the inside out, but yes, as it turns out, you can.

Either of these things would have sent us for a tailspin. I guess like Wile E. Coyote, we don’t see the anvil poised over our heads until it lands on us. Well, it landed with a thump last week, let me tell you. My husband did nothing wrong and they didn’t even give him a reason for letting him go, they just did it. He gave 25 years of his life to them, and always went above and beyond, including thousands (literally) of unpaid hours for them. Companies all seem the same in this regard these days—they simply have neither heart nor soul. We’re not exactly spring chickens, and he was only three years out from early retirement, so this has been such a blow to him.

I don’t know what the future holds, and while none of us do, currently mine seems completely blank—I can’t see a picture of it at all. I’m struggling to make huge changes to my diet, at a time when we have to cut right back on any and all expenses. Eating well is not cheap, as I’m sure most of you know. All of it feels exhausting, and I find myself truly overwhelmed. Other times I buck up and think of the people in my life who have had far worse things happen to them, and managed to get through it, or at least learn to live with it, despite what must often go on inside of them. In other moments I simply want to get in bed and pull the covers over my head for a few days. I have generalized anxiety, and of course it has shot off the charts this last week, and with my liver, I can no longer take my meds—so I stress about what the crazy anxiety is doing to me physically as well. And yes, I’m exercising, but it’s only taking the edge off right now. I think I’d need to run a marathon before I could bleed of this much anxiety. Stress always turns to anxiety for me, it’s my body’s default setting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it’s simply how I’m wired chemically speaking.

I’m not sure what all this will mean for my writing as we move forward. I don’t make enough money as a writer to sustain a household—not even close. So I may be looking for outside employment, which will put an end to writing much of anything for a while, I suspect. This is a really hard and bitter pill for me to swallow—writing is like breathing for me, I don’t function all that well when I’m not doing it. Unfortunately, I just have never hit that plateau where the books sell themselves, and I’m coming to grips with the fact it’s not likely I ever will. I’ve always had to advertise, which of course costs money—so at present, ads are something I can no longer sustain either.

I know often people don’t understand this—because the comments are said to my face—but writing is really hard work, which requires laser focus in order to do it well. I never want to put less than my best effort forth, and of course in times like this when my brain feels scattered it’s that much harder. And my self-esteem takes a hit, so I look at the book and think it’s a big horrible mess which will get terrible reviews if it ever sees the light of day.

There’s so much other stuff swirling in my head—it’s quite possible we’ll have to move and I hate that. I love this town, I love living here, my parents are getting older and starting to need more help, my girls are here or nearby, as are my grandbabies. I don’t like cities, and don’t want to live in one. I hate the thought of someone else living in my house, maybe ripping out the trees and roses I’ve spent years growing—it literally hurts my heart just to think of it. The world probably sees my type as a fool—an overly sensitive fool who loves the small things and wants to take care of them. I feel like so many of the people who succeed (in the way we seem hellbent on defining success in the West) are not good people, not kind, and not caring about what or who they destroy. Please note, I did not say ALL people who succeed, but a good number of them these days.

For now, though, I’m going to put my head down—once it stops spinning— and finish Butterflies (book five of the Exit Unicorns series) but until I have a better idea of how things will play out for us financially, I’m not sure I’ll be able to actually produce it for sale come March, or whenever it is done and edited.  I know many of my readers don’t realize that I don’t have a publisher, and therefore any and all expenses for production of anything—physical books, audiobooks, bookmarks, etc comes out of our pocket. So if the money isn’t there, there’s nothing much I can do about it. It might be there by then, but it’s quite possible it won’t be.  I’ll try to let you all know closer to the time, if I’m going to be able to put the book out for sale or not.  It’s not that I wouldn’t make my money back, I would, it’s just whether I can front it at the time.

Fortunately, the book is mostly written and I know working on what’s left will become a place of refuge for me—I love being in their world, because I totally forget about mine when I’m with them. I think I can still finish it by the end of this year, but if I’m not happy with it once it’s done, I will take the time to rework it until I am happy—or as happy as I ever am with my work.

This isn’t a plea for sympathy, by the way. When I’m upset, I tend to write it out, and that’s how I begin to sort it out in my head. Right now, my thoughts keep running in unproductive circles, so this is my attempt to start getting my head in some sort of order and hopefully begin to move forward in a less manic fashion. Also, I’m going to ask you really nicely not to tell me that change can be good, etc. I’m not in a place where I want to hear that right now.

I will find my fighting Irish spirit soon, I’m sure, it’s just taken one too many body blows this last while.

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Building a Chapter

These last few days, as I was writing, I thought a lot about what goes into each chapter, how each one is a singular thing which also must fit within the overall arc of where it’s placed within the book and also within the book itself.

I’ve been slowly stripping out bits and pieces which don’t belong in the book, or simply aren’t necessary to the narrative. One thing I’ve had to fight with myself over is taking a step back and realizing that not every chapter needs to be a work of art, some chapters are simply bridges which connect two other pieces of the story, or further the narrative.

I often write upside down, starting in the middle or even at the end of a chapter and working my way backwards until I arrive at the beginning. This latest chapter was one of those—I started in the middle and worked my way out and wrote the opening last. Sometimes I know how a chapter ends, but I don’t know where it starts, and sometimes it’s just the opposite.  This was one of those ‘workman’ chapters where I need an introduction to events that will unfold throughout the book. These are often the most difficult chapters for me to write. I know what needs to be done, but no lovely bit of prose is there to start me off, or some chunk of dialogue that tells me what’s happening; it’s just a blank screen and necessity. 🙂 So I know the information I need to convey, but the chapter also needs to have life in it, as well as fitting into the flow of what comes before and after.

I begin by asking myself where the chapter takes place, and the answer is clear—Pamela’s home. So then I ask what time of day it is, and when I stand inside the house and look around it’s clear to me that it’s early morning. No one is in the kitchen with me though, so I go up the stairs. Pamela’s asleep with baby Kathleen tucked in beside her. It’s a peaceful morning, and even Conor and Isabelle are still asleep. There’s someone downstairs though—I know it’s the nanny who works for Jamie, she’s sleeping in Lawrence’s old room. So a peaceful morning which is then shattered by a knocking on the door—and now I understand how the chapter will play out structurally. I know who is at the door as well, even though I’ve never seen him before.

  It’s early in the book so I know I have to remind people of what has happened to Pamela in the previous book, so that they know why someone knocking on the door would cause utter panic in her, and that’s a matter of balance—too much and it could become a long exposition of the history from the previous book, too little and people may not remember exactly what she has been through. I need to build in the effects of what has happened to her—and show it on the page. She’s worried not only for herself, but also for her children who have also been traumatized by recent events. So I know in this chapter I have to touch on her panic, her fears for her family, and also have a dialogue between her and the man on her doorstep that introduces the story line which will run throughout the entire book. This is both the centre and main purpose of the chapter—why is this man in her home and what does he want? This dialogue matters because it will set the stage for so much that follows. So I need to establish enough of who he is to give readers a sense of him. Dialogue is often a good starting place for me simply because I find it fairly easy to write- I can almost always tune into a conversation between two characters and the chapter can be built out from there.

Then of course the question becomes how to wrap it up? I like every chapter to have a closing line which feels like a closing line, not merely the last sentence on the page before we turn the page to a new chapter. It should feel complete so that the reader is ready to go on the next chapter as something fresh, though also connected to what’s come before. But of course you have to build to that closing sentence within the space of a paragraph or two. So then I have to consider what Pamela is feeling now that the man has left and she’s got a minute to breathe and think about things. Often chapter endings are a good way to summarize feelings and add in a bit more detail about where the character is at emotionally and mentally. So internal monologue often works well to end out chapters—this is one of those things I know in a logical fashion, but that I rarely think about when in the actual process of writing.

***

*At times it felt that her life was no longer known—like looking into the face of someone who’d once been beloved, and finding that she did not recognize them. And so she had made the conscious choice to love that which was no longer familiar. One had to choose to love the stranger’s face each and every day, and this she would do, because quite simply, there was no other choice to be had.*

***

And now it’s time to write the opening paragraphs and to immerse myself in that feeling of being deeply asleep, and having someone suddenly pound on your door—with the addition of already being very jumpy and prone to panic because of what happened to you in the last book.  What does that feel like and what are the mechanics of getting down the stairs with a barking dog and a little boy and toddler underfoot while juggling a newborn? Then there is, of course, that all important sentence to open the chapter, every bit as important as the final sentence closing it out. I agonize over opening sentences the most of anything within a chapter; the sentence needs to be fresh, and I have to decide what it’s going to do. Is it merely descriptive, is it serious, is it humorous, or is it meant to convey specific information? In this case I wanted something to convey the general feeling of the household, but more specifically from Pamela’s POV, because that’s the lens through which this chapter is told.

***

* SLEEP BEING—at present—a more precious commodity than gold in the Riordan household, Pamela found herself feeling rather homicidal toward the person who had the temerity to knock on her door early one morning three weeks after Kathleen’s birth.*

***

  Last I read through it to make certain it makes sense, has a nice flow to it and that I haven’t repeated details—something that is often an issue when you write out of order. I get rid of anything awkward, and touch up the details—the way a character appears, expanding on a bit of description and fixing any dialogue that doesn’t sound natural. I re-read the opening and closing few paragraphs, making certain the entry and exit of the chapter make sense and have a unified feel. In this particular case I couldn’t figure out the chapter title until it was completely done. Sometimes I’ll have a chapter title to start and then the chapter flows from there, but mostly I sift the chapter once it’s done and find that little nugget which suggests itself as the obvious title.

Last week I finished up a chapter which was purely descriptive of a passage of time in the characters’ lives—there’s no dialogue and the action is at a distance, we’re observing rather than participating. I use chapters like that to let the readers take in a deep breath, and because often all hell is about to break loose in the chapters that follow. So I need a resting place just for a beat of the story, and descriptive, narrative passages which cover a bit of time, work really well for that.

***

   *May swept past, June dawdled a little, and July was a glorious sweep, bringing long hours brimming with simple joys—a wild apple tree loaded with fruit, a pair of kits who travelled tumble-drunk with new life, following in the wake of their mother, a patch of wild strawberries, sun-warmed and sweet, and the utter happiness of watching the children flourish in the deep, summer light.*

***

So eleven pages, 3266 words, three days of writing and I have another completed chapter, and I’ve just established the groundwork for the trajectory of an entire story line.

And people wonder why big books take so long. 🙂

copyright 2019 Cindy Brandner Where Butterflies Dream

Immersion, Obsession and FAQ

The final year of working on a book is always a strange one. I often feel that I live in an alternate universe most of the time, emerging to make and eat meals, do laundry, walk dogs, and cram in the occasional visit with family. For the most part though, I live and breathe Belfast and all the other locations the book visits, and live the lives of Pamela, Casey, Jamie and company. It’s always a bit of a jolt to come out of my reverie at day’s end and realize I have to cook. It’s going well right now though, as I’m in that zone of immersion and obsession with the story. I could probably tell you more right now about a little cottage hidden away in the woods, than about what my (incredibly messy) office looks like.

So on to a little housekeeping here and answering questions that people have been asking.

Will Bare Knuckle or Spindrift ever be in physical format?

The answer is yes—eventually. This last year has been really production heavy— three audio books with all the attendant work that comes with that—editing the master files, as I always like to take the opportunity to fix things I missed with the books on the previous edits. Also the first three books being put out in hardcover versions, which also requires re-formatting, etc and all the fees that come with any new editions we choose to put out. This year will be incredibly busy with writing, if I’m to finish Butterflies by my self-imposed deadline of November. I think I can do it, as things are going along quite well at this point. But that means I can’t take on too much extra with producing different formats of previously released books.  I understand and appreciate that not everyone does digital books, but it’s simple for me to put out my shorter works in just that one format.

Part of the problem in producing all the various formats lies in the fact that people often think they want these additional formats, but when it comes right down to it, they don’t buy them in the end. I have to at least be able to make back my set up fees for the various formats, and unfortunately that’s not a given. I really have to weigh whether each story, and each edition of said story that I publish will be able to pay for itself.

The next question that I know will be asked once ‘Flights of Angels’ is out in its audio version will be, ‘When will ‘In the Country of Shadows’ be out in audio?’ It’s a fair question for which I don’t really have an answer just yet. It’s hugely expensive for me to have these produced. They are long books and good narrators like mine don’t come cheap—nor should they, by the way, lest it seem like I’m complaining. This last year I finally filed for my withheld taxes from the IRS, and used that for the bulk of paying for the production of the audio versions. I also ran a GoFundMe with perks, which so many of you were kind enough to participate in. However that was a lot of work and of the $6600 that was raised, I managed to keep roughly $2400 once the hardbacks were paid for (my cost on them) and the shipping on all the various books and prints was totalled up. Still, it was a big help in paying for the production of ‘Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears’, and it was fun, as well as pushing me to get the hardbacks produced. I’m all set for ‘Flights of Angels’, but alas that’s where the well runs dry financially speaking. I’m still tussling with the IRS over one of the years of withheld taxes, and it’s due to an error of theirs, but so far I can’t seem to get that straightened out with them. If I can get them to see the error, and they release the money, I will be able to fund Shadows at that point.  I will eventually get all the books done, but I don’t really know when at this point.

Right now I also need to consider the production costs for Butterflies—formatting, setting it up with the printer, and the cost of that initial run of books with the printer. I know this is all rather boring talk, but I try to be transparent with the reasons I can’t always get things done in a timely fashion. It generally comes down to two things—time and money. Which is true for so many things in life. On a side note, I plan to have both the hardback and softcover available from the get go with ‘Where Butterflies Dream’.

‘Where Butterflies Dream’ is a bit of a sprawling mess right now, but so was Shadows at this point in the process, so I’m not letting myself worry about that too much. Chunks of the book are in place—by that I mean runs of chapters and sections that are pretty much done, which means while it’s still a sprawl, it’s one with good supports in place. If all goes well, I’m looking at another St. Patrick’s Day (St. Patrick’s Day of 2020 just to be clear)

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

release, or the closest Tuesday to it, as Tuesday is release day in the book world.

One thing I can tell you about Butterflies is that if you cry as much reading it as I have in the creation of it, you’d best stock up on your tissues in preparation.

The Underpainting of Pain

The dictionary defines underpainting as ‘paint subsequently overlaid with another layer or with a finishing coat.’ For me, this has become a very apt metaphor for chronic pain. For the last five weeks or so, I’ve been on a bit of a journey, all because of an ad I saw on Facebook. The ad was for an app called Curable, and as it was a slow, grey Saturday when I stumbled across it, I didn’t scroll past with my usual rapid FB perusal. I clicked on the link to go find out more about what it was. It might be one of the smartest (albeit unknowing) clicks I’ve ever made.

At first I wasn’t certain what I thought about the app, it seemed a little too airy-fairy to me to be something that would actually be useful. You see, I’ve had chronic pain for a little over three years now. Even before that, going back many years, I had it on and off. On the rare day when I wasn’t experiencing some level of pain, I would feel ‘off’ and it would take a bit to realize it was because I had no pain. It’s amazing what we get used to, and what becomes our ‘normal’. Recently though, it had gotten to a place where I couldn’t manage more than ten minutes in my chair in front of the computer before I had to get up and try to find a way to bring the level of pain down. I was beginning to fear I’d never be able to finish my work-in-progress- book five of the Exit Unicorns series. Fear is a small word actually for how I was feeling- I was terrified. Because I love writing, I cannot fathom my life without it. Just the thought that I might not be able to write loomed like a big dark pit in front of me.

Over the years I had tried everything, and I should probably pause here and clarify- my pain was in my back but had migrated around the front of my ribs to the extent that my doctor was doing all sorts of tests on my liver, wondering if there was something dreadfully wrong with it. As I said, I’d tried everything- yoga, stretching, wheels, therapeutic massage, chiropractic treatments, acupuncture, pain patches etc. It had gotten to the place where anything I did, including massage, was only providing temporary relief- as in a few days, and then the pain was back (no pun intended) with a vengeance.

Anyone who experiences chronic pain can tell you that it grinds you down, and it starts to really limit your life. I was starting to weigh activities based on how much I was going to pay for it in pain dollars a few hours down the line. I’m fifty, and the thought of what my body might be like at eighty was scaring the tar out of me. Pain grinds you down mentally as well, so that depression- when it’s not setting up house in your head, is at the very least, hovering at your elbow making tea and planning on a lengthy visit. So, when I read the testimonials about Curable, I figured I had very little to lose, other than the money for the app.

Curable is really based around changing your ways of thinking around pain, and building neural pathways in your brain around dealing with that pain. One of the ‘education’ sessions (the lessons are divided into ‘Education, Meditation, Expressive Writing and Brain Training) led me to a book called ‘Mind Over Back Pain’. As I read it I began to think I now understood what was behind my back pain, and it wasn’t the car accident I’d had years ago (a four car pile up in four lanes of Vancouver traffic, and my seat belt didn’t catch until my face was about a half inch from the dash) nor was it the bad fall I took on ice years ago. It was something called TMS- Tension Myositis Syndrome. As much as this seemed a little crazy to me, I saw a lot of my symptoms in the stories the doctor who wrote the book related. This is all about the mind body connection and how emotions that we don’t deal with (even from years ago) can cause us very real physical pain. It’s how the mind protects us from all those messy emotions, it gives us physical pain as a distraction- and wow, is that an effective system. Really rather miserable, but effective.

There were two things the first lesson on the Curable app taught me, which have become a bit of a mantra for me. The first was ‘recovery is not a straight line’, which I remind myself of when I’m having a bad day- because when your body’s default setting is a high level of pain, it wants to go there every chance it gets. The second thing is, ‘the pain is not your fault’. There is always a level of blame that comes with back pain that doesn’t have an actual structural abnormality as one of its components- that somehow you’re doing something wrong- wrong chair, too many hours in front of the computer, bad posture, wrong shoes, bad attitude, you name it, because the list is endless, and I’ve had pretty much every item on it directed at me over the years of seeking help. If you start from that place, it turns out there’s no good destination, other than a lot of money spent on a fruitless search for a better chair- I even sat on one of those dang exercise balls for several weeks, only to learn that bouncing like a manic Tigger is not conducive to getting a lot of writing done.

I’m a fairly emotional being, so the idea that I wasn’t dealing with my emotions was rather startling to me. But, I think I was dealing with them on a very superficial level, and then rushing on without really accomplishing anything. As it turns out meditation (not something I’ve ever been good at, the staying still in one spot or the trying to create a blank canvas in my mind) is super effective for making you deal with your emotional detritus. It’s a little like opening a closet filled with years of junk, most of which you thought you’d lost somewhere along the way, and others that you’d forgotten you ever had at all. And it falls on your head, basically, sometimes one item at a time, and sometimes a bunch at once.

I will be honest, this has been the toughest route on the pain path that I’ve ever trod. But it’s (like all the hard things) the most effective. I’ve had two full weeks with minimal pain, and my Advil consumption has gone way down. Not every day is great, and there are days I do NOT want to deal with yet another level of anger/shame/guilt/sadness but I’m always glad that I took the time later- it might be two days later, but I’m glad I did it. I’ve even taken up talking to my brain in a stern fashion, and checking in to see which emotion is topmost when the pain starts  up- and it attempts to start up every blessed day. Sometimes just internally lecturing my brain does the trick, I just have to catch the pain before it gets over that first hurdle.

Now, I think of pain as the topmost painting, the one the world sees (though to be honest, if you met up with me, you wouldn’t know because I don’t talk about it a lot, because really I felt there was no point, it’s not like talking about it ever relieved it) and this painting is in some pretty dark colours- slashes of red, showers of black, glints of iron, corroded edges of copper. The underpainting though is the emotion, all the years of it shunted to the side, not dealt with as I kept moving through life- because of course you can’t do that work everyday- there are children who need attention, houses that need cleaning and an artist’s work to be done. But I’d finally hit that wall where the pain was bad enough that it forced me to look deeper. I’m pretty damn glad that I did, even though I know this path is going to be rocky and that it will sometimes turn back on itself, and I’ll lose sight of the destination.

For now each day, I’ll remind myself that recovery is not a straight line, and that the pain is not my fault.

The one exercise I haven’t done yet- expressive writing- go figure. 🙂

The image below is a rather beautiful example of underpainting, and that’s my aim- to have that emotional tapestry below the surface become a beautiful thing, even if I’m the only witness to it.

 

The Truth in the Tale

I’m not sure how the creative process works for other people. I mean, I’ve read about other writers, painters, etc and how their process works, (and always find it fascinating) but it’s one thing to read about something and quite another to actually understand how that works. Heck, I am not sure how my own works if I’m asked to put it down in writing. Creativity and inspiration are strange beasts, they seem rather like quixotic friends who love you one minute and aren’t speaking to you the next. On the days during which they aren’t communing with you, you do the grunt work—editing, rewriting, constructing the fiddly bits which connect one paragraph to the next. My mode of writing might best be described as flibbertigibbet-y and so I end up doing a lot of work with those fiddly bits.

I don’t outline, and other than the history of the various places in which my books are set I don’t feel that I need an outline. I let the characters tell the story to me as they like, and in their own time—Mr. Kirkpatrick often takes great advantage of this. Still, especially this late in the game, I usually have a fair idea of where things are headed. As the series winds down, I have to draw all the threads together and tie them off, if not neatly, then at least in a fashion which will make the readers happy, or this being a tale about Ireland, happy-ish.  So, I thought I had a fairly good idea of where the current installment is headed, the front end is written after all, and I feel no need to change that. I had a prologue mostly written, and thought I understood what it was trying to tell me, and where that would ultimately take the series, and how the entire story would bow out, so to speak. Then last week I had one of those odd days, where I was working on something else entirely (‘Bare Knuckle’) for those of you who follow what I’m up to at the moment, and I had a sentence which kept insisting itself, though it clearly did not belong in what I was working on. So I switched screens and wrote the sentence down, more to get it out of my head than anything and then I wrote another sentence and another, and then several paragraphs. I realized once I was done that I was looking at a prologue, one that was insisting itself. This doesn’t happen all that often but when it happens it’s often a bit troublesome because it usually means the characters are throwing me a huge curveball. The last chapter of ‘Shadows’ for instance which insisted itself from about six months into the writing of that book, until I wrote it down and it completely changed the course of the rest of the series. This new prologue threatens to do exactly that—I’m not entirely sure who is talking to me through the prologue, it’s either Jamie or Casey, but I don’t quite know which one yet. Their voices are very different but as this is in the form of a letter, it’s a little harder to tell which one is speaking. Normally, it’s very clear which POV I’m in, they think and feel differently, though they clearly have some commonalities. Sometimes it’s obvious because of their surroundings, but in this case that’s not giving me a clue at all, it’s not a house with which I’m familiar- the house where the person is sitting writing said letter.

Writing each of them is always very different, Casey presents easily, solid,  very ‘there’ and talking. Jamie is much more fluid and harder to capture on paper, so normally that would also be a tell. Alas, when Jamie writes letters or journal entries, he does so very easily, so the letter writer could well be him. If the prologue writer is Casey, then the series ends a little differently than I thought, but it’s not earth shattering, if it’s Jamie, it changes pretty much everything I thought I knew about how this series ends. And it might require another book in the series to let it play out. This will make my husband smug, of course, because he’s always believed there are six books in this series not five. I’ll just have to wait and see what they feed out to me over this next while, and what it means for their lives, and the telling of said lives. I’m not even sure I’m okay with what the letter writer seems to be telling me, but I do believe in telling the tale they want to tell, not the one I might prefer, because it just comes down to the truth of the tale and the integrity within the story because of it.

Ultimately, though this is, in part, what I love about writing, it’s always about the journey rather than the destination, and the characters keep it endlessly interesting.

 

This Is Why #MeToo

When the #MeToo movement broke a few weeks back, when women starting stepping up and telling their truths, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of utter exhaustion. It’s an exhaustion I’m familiar with, and that I’ve felt for a long time. I could have posted #MeToo many times over, and I even wanted to, but found I couldn’t. I actually felt physically ill and I simply couldn’t do it, though if you’d asked me why I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. Maybe it’s just that we women are so used to keeping other people’s dirty secrets, that it’s a really hard habit to break. I know it was really hard for a lot of women to make that hashtag and to post it, because to step up and say ‘Yes, this happened to me too,’ makes you feel like a bug exposed on a sheet of paper. We’re all very well acquainted with what happens to women who tell unpopular truths.

This morning though, as I see the pendulum start to swing the other way again, with too many people (oh so many of them women) saying ‘It’s ridiculous, it’s too much, this can’t have happened to this many women,’ I just found myself really really angry.  Well, sister, I’m here to tell you a hard truth—what you’ve seen in these last few weeks is the tip of the iceberg, it’s only the first wave in a tsunami of pain and darkness and terrible truths. If it hasn’t happened to you, count yourself blessed, but maybe be willing to listen to those who have gone through it. I don’t know all that many women who are unscathed by sexual harassment, abuse and violence.

So here’s my laundry list. And it’s by no means complete. And let me just say this up front—I’ve always been a pretty quiet soul, dressed fairly conservatively, just because I’m more comfortable that way and not because I stand in judgement of anyone who doesn’t. Women deserve to feel beautiful and to dress in whichever way makes them feel so.

-molested at the age of four by someone I should have been able to trust

-molested at the age of five by someone I should have been able to trust

-molested at the age of seven by someone I should have been able to trust

-at the age of nine my friend’s father killed her mother because she wouldn’t come back to him, then he killed himself and orphaned their children

-harassed at ten by a boy three years my senior, who was over six feet tall, while I weighed about 65 pounds at the time. I was terrified of this boy. He would corner me on the playground and put his hands down my shirt and up my skirt, etc. He was immensely stronger than me. I told a teacher, and was told to avoid him. At that age, I loved to swim—I mean I loved it with my whole self. It was my great joy to head to the pool every day in the summer after my chores were done. I was like a little seal and felt totally free in the water. I was a good, strong swimmer. But then that same boy started coming to the pool every afternoon too, and my time there became a nightmare. He’d undo the straps of my swimming top and try to pull down my bottoms under the water. He’d put his fingers inside my swimming bottoms. He almost drowned me one afternoon, which I remember with great vividness. I cannot tell you how terrified I was of this boy, I still can feel it in my chest talking about it now, forty years later. A lifeguard had to pull me out of the pool with a pole, as I vomited up water.

What finally stopped this boy, was another boy, his age and his size, saw what was happening in the pool one afternoon and came over and told him to stop or he’d beat the shit out of him. He waited for him outside the pool that afternoon, and told him if he ever saw him touching me again, he’d make sure he regretted it and then he walked me home. I never told my parents, because I had already internalized the idea that somehow, in some way, it was my fault. That I had done something to draw that attention, that apparently other girls weren’t doing. I know now though that other girls were keeping their secrets too. Odds were I didn’t have the language then to articulate what was happening to me—hell I was still playing with my barbies, and watching the ‘Donny and Marie’ show on Friday nights like it was a religion. There was no way to process what had been done to me, or to know I’d carry the fear with me into my life as an adult.

-at eleven I was followed home by a young man who lived on the other side of duplex a friend lived in. He followed me right into my yard, he’d actually run after me most of the way, because I was on a bike. To my horror my parents had gone out for a walk when I was gone, and I couldn’t get in the house. I did not know this person, and he was a good ten years older than me. I have no idea what he intended to do to me but he was about two feet away from me when my dog came around the corner and attacked him. My parents had arrived home in the nick of time. When my dad confronted him about what he was doing in our yard, he ran.

-at thirteen an older boy (he was eighteen) became obsessed with me. He would come swim at the lake where I lived, and where I swam after school. He was constantly rough housing me, picking me up and hurling me into the water, grabbing at my breasts etc. Again this boy was much older, and he was big and really strong. I weighed about one hundred lbs. soaking wet at this point. He took great pleasure in my fear and in my pleading with him to leave me alone. I stopped swimming after school. I hid from him. It’s what girls do, it’s what women do, we learn to behave like prey—we hide, we avoid, we make nice so that we won’t get hurt. The problem is we are hurting that entire time. The weight of all this crap is piling up on us year after year, incident by incident. And we internalize it all, because it’s too dangerous to tell the truth. We’ve been taught all our lives not to anger men, not to make a fuss, not to rock the boat. Be nice, look pretty and don’t ever ever get angry—because then you’re just one of those angry feminazi bitches.

-during all this time, I watched my cousin go through two abusive marriages, and took her to the hospital with burn marks, bruises around her throat and needing stitches in her face. All this done by a man who ‘loved’ her. And me knowing the entire time she would go back to him, and I felt quite certain, would eventually be killed by him. She wasn’t,but frankly that was a miracle.

– at seventeen I was chased across a walking bridge by a group of older boys threatening to find out if my pubic hair was the same colour as the hair on my head. I was terrified I was about to be raped. They stood behind me laughing after I managed to get off the bridge ahead of them. Why someone’s terror is so amusing to some people, I will never ever know.

-by eighteen I’d been called a whore, a slut, a cock tease, a bitch, etc. Most women have been called all those things, long before we’re even sexually active.

-at eighteen I was groped by a professor I’d gone to for hypnosis therapy. Extensively groped. I told a male friend and he said I must be imagining it (yeah, because every eighteen-year-old girl dreams of being groped by a man old enough to be her grandfather- literally in this case) but he liked the professor and insisted he was a good guy who would ‘never do such a thing’. I told a counsellor, and while she made it rather clear I wasn’t the first to complain, she also made it clear nothing would be done about it and maybe I should just not go to his office anymore, and you know, keep quiet about it too.

-at eighteen I was told by a man (ten years older than me) while I was stuck in a car with him, that he’d rape me if he thought he could get away with it. He also told me he could snap my neck without much effort. He could have too, he was big and also did enough drugs to be entirely unstable. I was completely terrified of him. He was related to me at the time through my cousin’s marriage. I never told anyone, because at that point, I no longer saw the point of telling people. They’d just tell me he’d never really do it, even if he’d said it. He was a good guy, don’t ya know.

-at eighteen I had a gun held to my head by a boy I thought I loved, because I had the nerve to break up with him. He said he’d rather I was dead if he couldn’t have me. I simply stood up, blank with utter panic and left the room, waiting to feel a bullet in my back or head. I made it out of that room, that house, that relationship, but I am all too aware that many girls and women don’t.

-in my 30s I was basically terrorized for some years by a neighbour. It got to the point where I told friends if I disappeared to tell the police to look in his back yard first. I said it jokingly but I meant it as well. My great sin? I’d talked back to him when he’d been rude and nasty to me one day when I was outside. He made my life a living hell until we finally sold our house and moved. Even then he showed up outside the new house we moved to that very first night. I talked to the police a few times, and they basically said I should avoid him if I could—which considering there was a driveway between us and nothing else, was a little difficult. After a conversation with his wife, during which she told me  that he’d gone on a rant after we put our house on the market, and told her he knew we couldn’t afford to move, and that I wasn’t going to escape him that way, I knew we had to go no matter what. Why he thought he knew what our finances were remains a mystery to me. I had made the mistake of angering him, and he really was determined to make me pay the price for that.

And then, of course, there are the every day things women know only too well—the men who tell you you’d be so much prettier if you’d just smile (I’ve never understood why some stranger thinks I should smile for them, so they can find me more attractive- that’s a real WTAF for me). The men who comment on your weight, your body, your face. The men who get really angry and abusive because you had the temerity to say no to them when they asked you out. For women, our bodies are public property from a very young age, and men of all ages feel free to make lewd and nasty comments from the minute we start to get breasts and hips, and suddenly that body which we took such joy in because it could run, and bike and swim and dance, is an embarrassment, becomes a tool for others to shame us and frighten us. We take all that inside and it becomes an unbearable weight. It becomes like a dark sludge you can’t ever quite wash away. And having said all of this, I am fully and starkly aware, that I have gotten off lightly compared to a lot of women. Women that I know and women that I don’t. So many women, who were once little girls who loved their bodies and all they could do with them.

When I said my list is nowhere near complete, I meant it. In truth you get so used to it as a female, that you don’t remember all of it because it would be too much to carry with you every day, everywhere. Because we know for the most part, people don’t want to hear it or will assume right out of the gate that we’re just another lying whore. If my language makes you uncomfortable, oh well, I’ve been called that a few times, and for no good reason other than saying no to a boy or a man. Because it’s not easy to say this shit—no one feels good about having this happen to them. We’ve all spent so much of our lives appeasing  angry males that it’s habit and self-preservation. And because I KNOW someone  is going to say it, I’ll save you the trouble, yes I know #notallmen and #ithappenstomentoo—there, you’re covered, you don’t need to say it, I said it for you.

So here’s me telling my truth. I don’t know if this will ease the weight I carry, or alleviate some of the exhaustion I’ve long felt around all of it. But hey, #MeToo.

Of Golden Moons and Firelight

 

If a forest is a metaphor for the unknown, a drawing is the stroke-by-stroke journey through the unknown: a laying this in, a wiping that out, all the time watching for the image to take shape and lead you into its very specific story. The image begins to give itself to you; you follow it, you serve it. Hence the kinship of making and prayer manifests, with each evoking and shaping the other, creating images which walk right out of the emptiness which has contained them. – Meinrad Craighead

 

This is the season of retreat, of the turning in to spirit and to healing in the quiet and the long nights. This is the time I ebb away from the regular world into my interior space, that hut in the woods where the fire—smelling of the dark honey of peat—burns brightly through the long nights. This is the space into which I go as the Winter Crone breathes her frosted breath upon my windows, and knocks at my door with her ancient, wrinkled hands. By this fire I pick up my stitchery (not of the physical sort, I am without talent in that area) the knitting, crocheting, the sewing together of blocks to make a full quilt, decorated with pearls and ivy leaves, with barley sheaves and moonlight. Each stitch a word, a row a sentence, a block a paragraph, the end of a ball of wool—a scene entire. I feel like the characters draw close to the fire as well, sit down, and tell me their stories on a deeper level, threads of both black and gold, bright jewelled bits of detail scattered here and there. Pamela with a hot cup of tea and a shawl— because she is never warm in winter, Yevgena whose tea smells of plum brandy, and whose eyes could tell you the history of the world from before the first light. Jamie, quiet, reflective, but with a glimmer in his eyes which informs you that a wonderful tale is lurking in the near future. Casey with his hands in the air, as he describes something in detail—a house, a fairy tale castle, a cottage he repaired where an old woman lives hidden in the forest. And all around the sound of children breathing and dreaming in the depths of night and firelight.

In some ways a series is different than the construction of a single book. While there is still the unknown at the beginning of each segment, it’s more like one of those books with hollow pages, where with the turn of each leaf a little more of the final page—the full scene—is revealed. With this series I am nearing the end of that lovely book, turning the last few pages to see the full picture revealed. This book has a strange feel to it, both one of ending and beginning (still not entirely sure it’s the last book, but it’s the penultimate one at the very least). I’ve said before that each book is an element for me, and if spring was an element, that’s what this one would be. And then, of course, there is Yevgena’s story, which is truly a caravan traveling along a neverending and windy road—sometimes a brilliantly coloured road—all reds and purples and vivid greens, sometimes so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face, nor the traces of your spirit.

I always thought it would be wonderful to be a painter. My dad painted when I was little, and linseed oil is still one of my favourite scents in the whole world. I love how paint feels and the way it builds slowly, slowly into something so much bigger than its component parts. Writing is not so different though, one just uses words rather than paint to layer, to create detail, to make a world entire where one did not exist before. Finding those images which walk out of the emptiness, and people a landscape we didn’t know before.

In the winter I think it is natural for all creatures—including humans—to turn inward, to go underground as it were, to turn our faces from the busy, roaring world and find peace, find rest, find the fire that burns inside but needs quiet for its heat to be felt. This is the hearth upon which creative forces are built to last out the rest of the year. It is the season written in darkness and the ink of pearls, which shines with a luminous subtlety. We need slowness, thoughtfulness, meditation to see something both hidden and pale in its beauty.

This is the season when my book will go from pieces, chapters, chunks into something more streamlined—I know because I feel the exact bulk of where it is now at— and it will begin to actually resemble a cohesive book that someone will one day be able to read, and hopefully love. And so I will retreat, turn my face away, go underground and sit by the fire in that cottage in the forest, and find those images which walk out of emptiness, to people a world entire.

Sometimes it feels like all the magic is gone from the world, there is so much strife and pain that it’s easy to feel helpless and small in the presence of so much that is heartbreaking. I ask myself at times what I can do in the face of all this, and in truth there are a lot of small things I can do and one is to make a little escape for people, give them a refuge where they can hole up for a few days, before facing the world again. And some days, that is enough—to provide that escape.

Winter with her great frosted moons, her brilliance, her quiet, her utter stillness reminds me that there are old enchantments lurking at the edges of our vision, but we need to awaken them and bring them back full and breathing, so they can remind us that we are magic, that life itself is magic. It is a part of my job, to walk those edge places, be they hedgerow or heath, forest or tide line, and find the still, small enchantments that wait there, and make them into quilt blocks, and word paintings, travel-weary caravans and the conversation of friends around an ancient fire. It is a liminal space, both haunted and visceral, this territory of the storyteller.

‘The vardo was warm when I went back in, but I was chilled and got into the bed swiftly, relishing the rough linen of the blankets and the luxurious warmth of the quilt. I was tired but could not settle, and it seemed Zuza sensed my restlessness for she spoke then. 

   “Would you like me to tell you a story?” 

   “I’m not a baby,” I said, a little indignant, though there was part of me which longed for a story from this woman’s lips. 

   “Child, a body is never too old for a story. I love a story, if it is told right. Now, would you like a story?” 

   When she began, her voice changed and became something other, like an ephemeral body with a foot in this world, and the other in the world of the tale. It was a trait I found in every gifted storyteller I ran across in my life, this ability to inhabit two places at once.’

Fr. The Long Road copyright 2017 Cindy Brandner

 

 

 

 

 

The Hedge Dweller

 

   There is an old woman who lives on the edge of the forest, both the forest you can see and the one which lives in your mind and heart. You’ve always known her, even when you were a little girl, she walked near to you, a shadow glimpsed from eyes that weren’t yet veiled by the ways of the world.

I’ve always been drawn to this woman who lingers near the edge places of the world, the one with moss in her hair and the green and black of plant and soil upon her thumbs. Yesterday a friend came over for lunch and we got to talking about Jungian archetypes, and I told her about how drawn I am to the old woman in the hedge (or forest) and her response was ‘Well, that’s what you do, bring back tales from the other side of the hedge to share with people here.’ It struck a chord with me, because I suppose, it is what I do. I take down those glimpses I’m given ‘over the hedge’ and then transcribe them as best as I am able to. But I also feel it goes deeper than that, for me and for all women. Because we all know that woman in the hedge.

She is that old woman, the one you sense, the one that flits in the corner of your eye, more shadow than substance, or so it seems when you are young and cannot quite grasp the notion of being old, of having bent limbs and aching joints. She lives deep in the woods, in those Jungian forests of the primitive brain, the one which speaks loudest in times of fear and pain. She’s always just beyond the hedgerow, over the briars of wild rose and hawthorne, which both represent protected, undisturbed sleep. But this hedge dweller, this crone does not sleep, for she is busy spinning the fates of the world in her small cottage, hidden in the leaf flicker of the primeval forest. It is she who knows the words to speak to plants to release their full potency, she who knows the nine woods- which burn hot, which smoke out ghosts, which heal the invisible sicknesses. She knows the nine herbs too- those that are strewn upon ground and floor to make a bed for the midsummer gods to lie upon. It is she who sits by the fire, rocking, until her soul slips up the chimney, taking her to other dimensions where the view is both bigger and smaller, both universal and microbial.

I always glimpse her more easily this time of year, feel her wild nature shadowing my own. Perhaps it’s because this is a numinous time of year. You can feel the old gods rise as the sap does in the trees, as the shoots break the earth, as the flowers open and the birds hatch their young. You can feel that old woman- the one who has had so many names—Gaia, Isis, Durga, Freya, the Snake Woman, Danu, Artemis— rise from her roots, once again clothed in the green of youth. This feeling becomes more pronounced as the solstice approaches, and you know, or you remember in some primitive part of you, why people danced, why they went hand in hand off into the forest, to lie beneath a hazel tree away from prying eyes. You know why the fires were lit, and why you can feel the very earth hum beneath your feet, why the feminine was sacred— because she- this earth, this Gaia- was and is alive to the very last cell. This time of year is a rushing, it is being swept up with the ecstasy of the season- apparent in every budding flower and creeping vine, in every bursting tree and rising river. It’s in the beetle sleeping between rose petals, the bee drunk on pollen, the taste of lilac wine upon your tongue. It is the Mother in all her lush abundance.

The Goddess in her youth is represented by a birch, in motherhood by a hazel, and in the crone years by an alder. The ground beneath the alder was considered best suited for the psychic experience of the world of the dead. It takes the old woman of the hedgerow to straddle the boundary between worlds, to talk to the spirits and cut the ties of the world for them when it’s time. She is the wise woman, the crone, the hag.  The Germanic Hagadise or hagdusse– means ‘hedge-sitter’- and from that comes the English ‘hag’.  A hag  sat in the hedgerow between nature and culture, between the world of the spirits and that of humans. She brought knowledge from over the hedge—that of time and medicine, of the sacred and the profane, of body and spirit. She knows and tells the stories of what was and what will be.

She is the woman who knows the herbs to banish ghosts (St. John’s Wort, in case you’re wondering), those to render a woman more fertile, or less depending on her needs. In darker times she was called a witch, and in the original sense of the word, she was just that. For the old words from which witch derived—wik and wid—merely meant to prophesy, to consecrate, to bend and fold, to be wise and to share that wisdom.

The woman who sits in the hedge has ears that prick like those of a wolf, and her shadow has four feet and pads silently along the forest pathways under a quarter moon, sharp as a slice of metal. She lives in her instincts, her wisdom that of blood and bone, of loss and rage. She is immanent in all of nature, there at birth, there at death. She is Hecate, guarding the crossroads of life and death. She lives both backwards and forwards in time, for it is no more than a river to her, where currents run both ways.

The old woman of the forest, she who sees both sides of the hedge, comes to us in dreams, in instinct, in our fear and anger at an unjust world. She comes in healing hands when we care for the broken wing of a crow, or heed the cries of an abandoned kitten. She is at the heart of every fairy tale, waiting in her hut in the woods for us to come to her, seeking wisdom. It is easy enough, because that old woman who lingers near the hedgerow, who lives deep in the forest with the knowledge of herbs and animals and life in her hands and blood, is you, is me, is all of us. It think it’s possible that we have never needed her wisdom more than we do right now.

The Process- Grains

‘In writing poetry, one is always aided and even carried away by the rhythm of exterior things; for the lyric cadence is that of nature: of the waters, the wind, the night.  But to write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral; there one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help: on scaffoldings, alone with one’s consciousness.’ –Rainer Maria Rilke

In the early stages of writing a new book, the process really is much like what’s described in the lovely Rilke quote. I will have a vague idea of what the book is about, but it’s all sort of lovely airy-fairy misty stuff, with nothing concrete—until the words start going down and become sentences, and then become paragraphs and chapters and parts. Usually I get what I call ‘grains’ some small thing from a few words to several paragraphs, which will be the centre around which a chapter will form. If a book is going to be any good though, and touch the reader in the way that it should—live and breathe for the reader—then I need to be able to find that ‘rhythm of the blood’ and also the heart of each book. For me that rhythm of the blood comes most naturally in the form of ‘grains’.

Often these grains will take the story in a totally unexpected direction- which is one of the things I love best about writing—never knowing where the journey might lead. So I’m just going to use a few as an example of how the process works for me.

(all these pieces are copyrighted 2017 Cindy Brandner).

Grain number one

This one came to me while I was out walking, I usually get my best ideas while I’m walking or when I’m soaking in the tub—water seems to be a natural conduit for those creative whispers from the universe. And yes, I do think the universe does whisper, in an infinite variety of ways. I truly never know where inspiration is going to come from.

…a cold perfume…— yes, that’s all there is to this particular grain, just three words. I don’t know who it belongs to, or even which story it belongs to. I jot down the phrase and let it stew for a day or two, and then suddently the fragment enlarges a little to this—  “It’s like a cold perfume on the air, a scent that chills you to the bone and yet is inevitable at the same time.” I realize it’s being said, rather than thought, and I know it’s Yevgena who is saying it as soon as I hear the words in my head. Once I’m centred in her head, I can look out through her eyes and see what she’s seeing, and maybe then know what it is she’s talking about. She’s standing at the top of a hill, looking down over it- there’s something coming, something that worries her- that premonition is her cold perfume. It has something to do with a woman, not one she knows but one she will soon encounter—and that’s as far as the grain of sand has gone thus far. But it’s enough to get started with and I know the story will slowly gather itself, one grain upon the next, until hopefully there is a complete and glowing pearl when it’s done.

Grain number two

‘The small valley below was mysterious with shadow, the firelit hollow glowing like a fiery chrysanthemum in a pool of dusk. Longing seized her as well as fear—she wanted to go as she hadn’t ever wanted anything, but she dreaded it in almost equal measure. Something, some small voice she was becoming more and more aware of lately, whispered that tonight her life would change and that she might not like all the things that change brought with it.’ 

I knew this was Yevgena even as I started because that’s what I was working on- a short story featuring her. I was writing a bit where she’s in Ireland, after the war and her release from the concentration camp. But when I got inside her head for this, I sensed someone very young, still naïve, quite sheltered, not the woman I am used to dealing with who has a great deal of scar tissue in her heart. This is a young girl who has no idea what’s ahead of her just yet. I also know, just by looking through her eyes, that this is not an Irish landscape laid out before her, it’s a Russian one- thick with conifers, bigger in scope- this makes sense because Russia is where she grew up, until she married her Roma husband and took to life on the road. She’s looking over a valley she’s never seen before, and yet I know it’s not terribly far from her home. She longs to enter it- why? She also dreads it- why? These are questions that will need to be answered as the piece develops.  I know it’s going to be a night of great importance to her, but I don’t quite know why yet. Once the story unfolds in its entirety, I’ll have the answer to that.

Grain number three

All I had to start this was one line- ‘It was like a drowned mosaic…’ well, it’s a phrase really. It just kept a beat in my head for a few days, on and off, so I jotted it down and returned to it later, mostly to stare and wonder just what it was that was like a drowned mosaic. It sat like that for a few days, staring back at me like a phlegmatic frog, until suddenly it stretched itself out and took a small leap, giving me an idea of what it was about. So here’s the stretched out version-  ‘It was like a drowned mosaic, one of those ones sometimes found in Britain, sunk into an underground stream, the beautiful tiled floors with leopards and roses which the Romans had put in their bathhouses. The places where the tile had risen to the surface, and where the water was clearest were those moments—edged in crimson, leaved in gold—which were his life with Pamela and the children.’

So now I know it’s Casey and it’s his own thinking around his memory loss, and it’s clear he’s regaining bits and pieces but there’s still stuff in the dark. I need a sense of where this fits in the overall structure of the book though, and I don’t yet know. So if those are the bright bits of the mosaic, what are the darker bits?

The darker bits where the water was murky, were other things—things that were crucial to him, for he could not rejoin his old life fully if he didn’t know what had happened to him. He thought until he knew, until it all—even the dark and fear—came back to him, he would not be able to settle in, he would not be a full part of his family again. The doctors in New York had been of the opinion that he’d blocked it in part because of the trauma and that it might re-emerge when his brain felt safe enough to release those particular pieces of information. Either that, they’d said, or a sharp shock might do it.

So then I naturally wondered just what a sharp shock might be? Apparently Casey was wondering too.

When he’d enquired as to just what might be considered a ‘sharp shock’, he’d been told that running into whomever had done this—indicating his head—might just bring back his memory of what had happened. How one ran into a man, or men, who’d tried to kill you, without knowing who they were, was the question. There were old haunts of his in Belfast, places he remembered or about which Patrick had told him with concern in his face for just what Casey might want with such information. He hadn’t yet gone into the city during daylight hours, only a few times at night or near to it, the dusk hiding his face, his turned up collar, beard and low-brimmed cap, keeping his face hidden from those he passed. His size was a problem, not many men were as tall or broad of shoulder as he was. Still, he’d managed to pass unnoticed, if one didn’t count those that crossed the street to avoid him. With the beard, the cap, and the general nature of his presence (Eddy had once called him a forbidding bastard) people did tend to avoid him.

   So what did a man do then, if he felt he needed that sharp shock in order to see the other pieces of the mosaic—the dark parts, which would give him the full truth. Casey took a deep breath and watched the sun slip further through the branches of the oak. Aye, a sharp shock was likely what was necessary, a walk right into the heart of the maelstrom, otherwise known as republican Belfast. He only hoped the act wouldn’t get him killed. 

Now I have a solid start on a chapter, and also the lead-in to the four or five chapters which follow, which ends up being a solid anchor for that section of the book. Clearly, the top end will have to be worked on- he’s outside obviously (where he goes to do most of his thinking) and so I’ll need to situate him and have some sort of preamble to his thinking, possibly grounding it a bit with whatever is taking place in his life at this point. You see how those few words though became something much larger and how it became clear to me just where in the book this bit belonged. It’s rare I start any chapter at the beginning, I usually have to go back and ‘fill-in’ the top end of said chapter. The same goes for books, I generally have to go back and write the first few chapters once I’m done most of the book, though this book is presenting itself in a more chronological fashion than my norm.

One last grain…

‘She looked over at Jamie, his presence steadying her and banishing the vision of the workhouse back to that nightmare plane on which it lived. The fire left half his face in shadow and the other half touched with flickers of gold and red, painting him light-dark against the rough plaster wall behind him. She wished she could sketch him, could capture this moment with him and Kathleen, as if drawing the two of them would distill the moment and hold it, golden as honey, somewhere in time’s bottle.’   

An entire chapter grew out of this simple glimpse (and it was a glimpse in my head, looking at Jamie and knowing I was seeing him through Pamela’s eyes) at a quiet moment the two of them are having with their very new daughter. I’m not going to post any more of it here, because it’s too spoiler-y in nature, but this small piece ended up about two-thirds of the way through the chapter—so it grew in both directions, up and down. Sometimes a grain will grow quickly, other times it might sit fallow for months before I return to it and suddenly see what it’s meant to become. Sometimes I fret with it (like an oyster) on and off until finally it takes form.

I see the grains as that ‘rhythm of the blood’ because they are the naturally occurring bits of the story which give it life and make the characters breathe. It’s where the characters speak to me, in essence, and these are the building blocks of my particular ‘cathedral’.

In the following weeks—or maybe months considering how slow I am about getting blog posts together—I am hoping to write a few posts on various aspects of writing. I find it a bit hard to ‘tell’ how I write, (a natural teacher I am not) as I usually am so lost in the process that I don’t necessarily pay close attention to how I’m doing things. Maybe I’ll give myself some insight through writing these posts and hopefully you’ll enjoy them too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Season of Mist and Reflection

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

 

It is officially autumn where I live, and for me the absolute best time of year. I’m not a huge fan of summer, I’m not even sure why, it just kind of dogs me down. This past summer was a season of loss for our family too—we lost three family members, a couple of friends and one of our beloved cats. I am not sad to shut the door on summer any year, but this year I am really ready for it to be done. I was diagnosed with anemia too, which has made me see everything through a scrim of exhaustion for the last few months (it’s a temporary condition and I’m starting to pull out of that funk, I think).

In part I love the fall because it’s such a porous season. It’s like a beautiful person approaching old age and you can see through the flesh to the beauty of the bones, to the very essence of them. The trees turn golden and crimson and yet you can see the winter there in the boughs, waiting. It’s a bittersweet feeling and all the more poignant for the knowledge that it is the most fleeting of seasons. Earth’s jeweller is hard at work this time of year- in the ruby of rowan berries and rose hips, the gold of birch leaves, in the pale silver mist rising from cooling ponds and streams and the strung diamonds of dewy spider webs. These are the most priceless of jewels, and they lend a richness to the heart which no ring or choker can match.

This morning I was walking in the park that edges my neighbourhood. There’s a pond there where a few years ago I watched a flock of geese come in to land. I could actually feel the air swooshing past my ears as they used their wings to brake. It was one of those moments that freeze frame in your heart, and you can pull out to look at later when you most need it. The geese are gone already, though they seemed to abandon the pond partway through the summer. I count them each year and know that less and less of them return. It is one of those things I notice but wish I didn’t understand. I wonder at times, if there will come a year when there simply aren’t any. As I said, it’s a porous season and the reflections are not always happy ones.

Creativity returns for me in the fall, I feel a surge and a tingle in my fingers and an absolute need to write. It’s as if the characters know it’s the thin time of year and so they come closer, speak a little louder and allow me to simply inhabit their world more fully.

We can feel the touch of those who have departed in the fall. They too can come closer and linger, and we can feel them across the divide the way we can’t in other seasons. The Celts knew this, it was what Samhain was all about. Welcoming home the dead, and keeping council with them for a night. The year, to the ancient Celts, had two hinges and Samhain was the door to the dark half of it. They considered winter the season of ghosts and Samhain was the night those ghosts rose from the Underworld. On Samhain, time became meaningless and past, present and future were all one.

As I listened to geese going overhead the other night, under the light of a full harvest moon, I thought of how the Irish once believed those lonely calls were that of the Wild Hunt, the cavalcade of fairies who came abroad on those nights to gather the spirits of the dead who were lost and roaming untethered by either hearth or family. I love that idea, that there is someone to gather the spirits of those departed from us, always too soon, no matter their years, it’s always too soon.

This porous season is a time of harvest and reflection before the dark half the year sets in. Autumn is the season I wish I could breathe in so deeply that I could taste it in the depths of winter. It is the season of staying, of harvesting, of gathering in and turning toward spirit. And so I will listen to the ghosts who linger near, and hear what they have to say to me. After all, they are my own.

I began with Rilke, and so I will end with him as well.

 

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling

away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one. It’s in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.