1) It’s 9:54 am and I’m in my red checked pyjamas, drinking lai cha at the kitchen table, whilst keeping an eye out for my nemesis, Beet-stealing-hammock-gnawing-watashi-wo-bakanishiteiru-Black-Squirrel, as I ponder how to structure the climax scene of Darkness.

2) I don’t have to commute through rush hour traffic to sit at a disk in an office at a job that brings me no joy.

3) I am working on projects that I love and believe in. And my family and friends and community believe in me.

4) I can read all the books I want and it falls under professional development!!! The same can be said for watching films, plays, performances. Travel falls under research.

5) I meet a lot of interesting people.

6) No one tells me what to do. (Mmmmm. Well– editors make suggestions/recommendations, and a writer would be a fool to not to take them seriously. If books are mushrooms, then editors are part of the mycelium…. ^__^)

7) Groovy travel!

The simple/profound joy and pleasure of ‘making’….

I have many writer friends who have taken the teaching fork of the road, because it means economic stability. But they have very little time to write. I think it’s particularly difficult for writer/teachers who are novelists, because there’s a immersive quality to creating the world of a book, and to make it breathe. If you don’t have enough time to live in it yourself, it’s challenging to make it real on the page. It takes time. I envy these friends their economic stability, and they envy the amount of time I have to write. 

I love what I do. ~__~. It’s not ‘easy’, but is anything ever?

Endnote: I didn’t make doughnuts after all. But ate doughnut peaches!!!!

Things related to writing and my experiences of this art practice/career. Try not to be too self-indulgent. Let it orbit writing somehow, the process of it, from the practical concerns to the psychological challenges, the triumphs and the disappointments. The sharing of some of the things that have helped me continue. Technical matters connected to craft. All sorts of things! And, the odd ‘personal rant’ (yes, self-indulgent, but I hope I can be forgiven)….

People talk about “the writer’s life”, and I’m often bemused, because most of the time I’m in the midst of a book-length project, I’m not particularly social, I’m often worried about finances, and extremely stressed out about deadlines and my own capacity to somehow pull it off again. When some non-writers say, “the writer’s life”, it is inflected with a kind of longing, as if it might be glamorous or exciting. There are brief snatches of excitement, of course. And, there can be a lot of international travel, which is also a great privilege, especially if you wouldn’t have the capacity to make those journeys, otherwise. But for most writers these trips are few and far between, and, if one is not careful, the entire trip consists of hotels and conference rooms and airports, and you’ve seen nothing of the city, the communities, the history of some far-off place…. (It’s important to schedule time to interact with the city and people outside of your professional life, in order for the trip to be more than just a work-stop.)

Here is a true-life snapshot of this writer’s life:

Wake up from nightmare where I had been searching, for hours, for a thesis I’d written and I had to present, in order to graduate. I’m repeatedly rummaging through my desk in front of the entire class, opening manila files, rifling through pages, for a thesis I KNOW I’ve written, but I cannot find. The instructor and other students growing more and more impatient, as my anxiety and shame grow…. >__< . Fix self with cup of extra strong sweet coffee.

I’m on page 287 of Darkness, and I’d given myself a self-imposed delivery date of TOMORROW, to get the manuscript to my agent, so she can provide me with feedback so I have time enough to revise it before submission to my editor. Sometimes I’ve not blogged about how much I haven’t been able to write, in case my editor looks at my blog (HULLO– she has her own deadlines going on– she is not going to be checking up on me by reading my blog!!!!) and thinks I’m a deadbeat writer. >__< Likewise, concerns that my agent will think I’m unprofessional and will dump me. (I have this impression that it’s more difficult to find and retain an agent in Canada than it is to place your first book….)

Of course, all of this means I need to look up doughnut recipes! one that I have all the ingredients for, so I can make some, becauseI suddenly crave them (I can’t even remember the last time I bought a doughnut. I mean, I don’t crave doughnuts. Ever.) <weak smile>

For this writer, a lot of the struggles in finishing book projects are psychological. I still, somehow, get them done. But I can’t say it grows any easier.

There are other deadlines, too. The BC Arts grant deadline coming up Sept 15th. Need to submit minor tweak edits for upcoming paperback edition of Half World. And get to the public library newspaper archives to search for a citation I wrote in a paper for a conference. The online link has faded, and I need to track down a hard copy….

So– make doughnuts or keep on writing? @_@

S and I made an effort to see most of the points on the island. Grassy Point was the most northern. Phipps Point the closest to our cottage. Shingle Spit, the stunning original-Star-Trek-series-like otherwordly rock formations at Norman’s Point, Down’s Point, and the mouth-dropping vistas of St. John’s Point in Helliwell Provincial Park. So many shifts in landscapes on such a small island. The blood stirred, the blood quickened. Eyes lighting, after the soar, the heart alights.

Helliwell Park began as a trail through Douglas Fir forest. So dry, until the rains come. The trees, the bark so thick and crested, their language is so quiet, so heavy with age and time. The trees gave way to a shock of golden yellow grasses on an open bluff and then so sudden plunge the sea. The drop, the plummet a step away, I felt a lemming urge to run across the grass, through the open space and float/fall into the deep blue. It was not a suicidal urge– more of a compulsion, a pull of beyond, something apart from words, something unknowable. Yellow of grass against blue of sky, blue of water. As if air can hold you aloft, if you only believed.

We trekked down to St. John’s Point. The tip that ledges into the open waters of the Georgia Strait. We had read that there was excellent diving waters, there. It was a cooler day than our beach excursions, but when would the chance arise again? We donned our gear. Rip tides, I said. Did you read anything about rip tides? I asked S. No, she said. The tide was almost high, but what did we know of the currents below the surface? But the urge to see…. I’ll go in first, don’t come in until I okay, I said. I’m sure it’s fine, but. And if there is a rip tide, ummm, just call for help, I said. Anyway, it’ll be fine.

The cold a shock that moves past muscles and settles into bone. I paddled about and it was fine, albeit cold! Okay, I said. Then splashed back in, to the beguiling, the green algae, the rock cliff, that didn’t extend only on the land, but broke away, down, down, into the dark depths. The water surface the imaginary layer between two skies. It’s night, down there. The place of jellyfish dreams and spider crab nightmares.

That’s why, I thought. That’s why I could feel the pull on the grassy cliff– it was the strenth of the deeps, the dark, unlit places, that called to a vestigial organ inside me that recognizes the past.

Sixteen-armed starfish, and delicate jellyfish. The rippling undulatory flow of its transparent cup, sunight glinting on its beautiful threads…. So lovely its fragile life, and so unlike my own. You have no brain stem, I kept thinking, behind my masked and snorkelled face. As if my thoughts, my own brain stem matters, to the jelly fish, to the sea. Sea urchins, ohhhh, I wanted to eat them! Eat them! Crack them open upon my belly, like I’m a sea otter! But it’s a provincial park, and protected…. I dove down to the ledge, and held one in my hand, then let it go. Then, looking further down, along the sheer of ocean cliff, I see monster sea urchins, the size of my head! Wahhhh! So BIG! I keep on thinking. The starfish, the sea urchins, those olive/grey/purpley fish the size of dinner plates. I haven’t been able to identify them yet. Hiking back through the park, we saw a bald eagle and two river otters swimming and eating in the strait. I never knew that river otters also lived in the ocean!

Yesterday was our last day, and we went for one last swim/snorkel at Little Tribune Bay. There was a giant jellyfish there, the size of my head! (Clearly, I think creatures that are as big as my head to be noteworthy…. This is not to suggest that I have a ‘big head’, although I do, but, I mean, I don’t think I’m completely egotistical, you know???). The other jellyfish had been ‘cuter’, the size of a sugar mandarin, but, once it’s the size of one’s head, well… you’ve gone to a different level of physical experience. Its underside was not transparent, but fleshy burgundy and slightly copper-like, the colour of old blood. What with its frilly edges and thickness, it looked like a giant swimming internal organ, a chimaera of a liver, a giant breast implant, and a vulva…. Whoa, I kept on thinking. Whoa. I touched the top of its curved mound. It felt like a cross between chicken cartilage, and the candied jelly cups you can buy at an Asian market…. ^__^. Early evening we hiked along the Mt Geoffrey escarpment. Again, through the forest. For the trees, it was not the wide views we had seen from the Helliwell bluffs. We cut across some of the forest terrain so that we could see over the escarpment. So high above Ford’s Cove. The cars were tinker toys below us. And in a dead tree, four enormous black birds. Ravens, I thought. Got out my binocolars. Small red heads, and white beaks– they were turkey vultures! So much life on the islands. So much to behold. Walking back through the deadfall, I was thinking, this is bad terrain, the perfect place to hurt yourself if you’re not careful, then a CRACK! as I trod upon an unseen dry branch, my foot slipped, and my ankle turned, pain needling up my leg as I toppled sideways, yanking my shoulder as I tried to break my fall. Durrrrrrhhhhh! Painpain, I hobbled to a large log and sat down. It was only a sprain, and the pain was manageable tho my pride had taken a substantive blow. S came round and I told her I think I sprained it. She massaged it to stretch out the tightened muscles (Painful, but helpful. She’s a massage therapist.) and then we found walking sticks to help me down the path to the car.
“Thank god this is not a date,” I exclaimed as I hobbled with my sticks. “So uncool. What a loser!”
“What do you mean this isn’t a date!” S cried out dramatically (teasing). “You mean I’ve been swimming and snorkelling every single day and I’m not going to get anything out of it??”
I laffed and laffed. She picked up a stick and kept me dorky company.

We finished the evening at the community centre, which screens films on the weekend. We watched The Kids Are Alright! So trippy. The community centre had chairs set up, and the screen was the kind you pull down. There were all ages there, and a lot of senior citizens. Folks took a good look at us as we took our seats. Not unfriendly, but, perhaps, curious? There aren’t so many people of colour on the island. The community experience reminded me a little of more ‘olden days’ experiences of watching films, like Cinema Paradiso…. As the film ended, people clapped. ^__^

What a lovely holiday/retreat…. Feel so lucky and rich with experiences, sights, scents, and renewed wonder. Would like to go back and see the island when the rains return. A different land in a different season. Apparently, the Labour Day weekend is the last day of the provincial ferry service, and the local residents hold a celebration. ^__^. They must tire of the busy holidayers. Thank you, Hornby Island. Thank you, S!

I’ve reached the 60 000 words mark of Darkness, and writing toward the final important scene. Rocking it out, dudes! Albeit, with a little hobble….

I’m on Hornby Island with a dear friend!!! The water. The tide. The crickets! Oh, LORDY I’VE MISSED THE SOUND OF CRICKETS! Why aren’t there any in Burnaby? Were they killed? Is it too damp? I don’t know. I’ve missed crickets something awful. I’ve been writing in the morning, and then we go out around noon to the beach. Today was the first day of glorious warmth. We went to little Tribune Bay, and it’s the more local hippie beach. People are casually nude– young hippies, older couples, young families with little children, and I think how much my friend E would love it here. I’ve gone nude, too. I can’t claim that I’m a nudist per se. Only that if one is not socially obligated to wear a swim suit when swimming in a body of water, why would you? Alas, I’ve crackled my back… >__< . I LOVE SNORKELLING!!! And the water is cool/cold, so you don’t notice the sunlight getting you through water. OUCH! But I saw awesome things! Two different kinds of eels, one burgundy and small (baby?), one green and white-spotted, the same shade as the transluscent seaweed I’ve been calling “sea lettuce” in my head. Hermit crabs, some kind of spider-looking crab, and dungeness. I caught them in my hands, and was proud, thinking I could catch my own feed if we needed. Flatfish, purple, green and orange starfish, pink and green anemones. Entire communes of anemones! One brilliant white one, on a stalk, like a mushroom. A yellow sea slug. Ohhhhh, the slow back and forth of seaweed glowing in the sunlight, the brilliance of the algae. If I could, I would take the pills, I would accept the surgery that would allow me to return to the sea. Why did we ever leave? The air is overrrated…. Not to speak of gravity.

Tomorrow is going to be another sunny day. I will slather myself with sunscreen, truly! Apparently there are 6-gilled sharks in the area but I suppose they are down deep cold. I paddle about on the surface, staying close to the shore, where the water is warmer.

My friend and I have been looking up info online at our cottage. Sometimes S inadvertently  inputs “Horny Island” and I think it’s the FUNNIEST THING! Hahahahahahaha! The topography here is so distinct and varied. White sand beaches to beach hoodoos carved out 0f sandstone, slate, by the salty tide. The ubiquitous dramatic red and green limbs of arbutus trees, patches of rich rain forest. And the changeable weather, the changeable sea. Yesterday the surf pounded and roared– today was a soothing murmur.

I’m still writing, of course. I’ve hit 255 pages and counting. Sometimes I think about how many books George Bowering has published and it pisses me off as well as depresses me, but clearly I’m not George Bowering. I’m much better looking, for starters. (I can say this because he’s a friend. ^__- )

I’d been trying to meet daily writing quota with negative reinforcement at home…. But, man-oh-man– positive reinforcement model on Hornby Island sure feels nicer, I kid you not! I will try to develop a kinder program for me upon my return. An immigrant Japanese farmer Mennonite Baptist upbringing can screw a girl up…. (*o*)

Mood: whimsical <crooked grin>

I’ve just learned that Half World has been nominated for the 2011 American Library Association’s Best YA Fiction! Hurrah!

Receiving news like this is lovely positive reinforcement. And an antidote for what I call “Bad Voice” who can undermine one’s confidence, one’s creative practice, with self-perpetuating, ungenerative self-criticism.

I imagine most people, not only artists, writers, and creative workers, are periodically haunted by Bad Voice. I should blog about it some time…. ^_^. But not TODAY!

The sliver moon is already ’setting’. When I was in Zimbabwe with my father in 1995(6?) the curve of the moon lay at the ‘bottom”, like a shallow bowl. instead of on its side, like a parenthesis ( . This simple difference filled me with a sense of wonder and joy.

Whenever I watch meteor showers I think about Wyndham’s, The Day of the Triffids…. <grin>. 

Would I gaze at the Perseids even if it led to blindness?

Don’t you sometimes glance at the sun?

Basically, the story is propelled as a action-thriller-intrigue. DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, is a thief for hire that steals corporate secrets. Alongside this, we learn that his ‘wife’, Mal, pops up in the dream space while he is ‘working’ and it’s not really meant to happen. We also discover that she has died, and that there’s something suspicious about how it happened, thus introducing a mystery element. Cobb, also, is the father of two young children whom he cannot meet. The story ensues and his commitment to the project is ensured because of his desire to be able to return to his children. (This motivation is never really convincingly expressed in the film– it came across as a writerly rationale for why Cobb takes on the job.)

The second female character, Ariadne, is a convenient character in that she is a newbie, who is introduced to this world of dream espionage. Cobb wants to hire her to become a new architect of his team– the one who constructs the settings of the dream sequences. (9_9) ? She’s a convenient device because she is new to the workings of this dream works, so she asks a lot of questions and Cobb can tell her, thereby answering many of the audience’s questions of how this all works. For those who have read and watched a great deal of speculative work, the actual mechanics of the dream hack isn’t convincingly relayed. All I’m left with are the briefcase and the special drug. Really– how does it work? I’m actually more interested in how it works, than that they’re in a dream space where everything can be altered. I’m more interested in dream state, and the subconscious, then ’setting’. This is where Inception falls flat for me.

All of the characters come across as type, and the rich symbology and the metaphysical of the subconscious and dream states are profoundly underexplored. Dream-state becomes just an exotic setting. I found it particularly odd that although there were numerous participants in the dream heist, only Cobb was the member who had a troubled subconscious. I don’t think so. How could any of the other characters NOT have something buried in their subconscious? Wouldn’t they, as dreamers dreaming, albeit in a constructed dream space, open up the portals to their own subconscious? Tarkovsky’s film, Solaris, is an amazing example of this kind of exploration. An American remake with George Clooney (doesn’t that sound like a parodic line???) wasn’t half bad, much to my surprise, but check out the 1972 original. Aside from the real-time sequence when the protagonist was driving in a car, I loved the entire thing. Note: this is not an action-sequence film. It’s thoughtful, very slow and haunting.

Ursula K. le Guin published the novel, The Lathe of Heaven, in 1971. This novel is another interesting take on the integration of dreams and alternate realities that moves well beyond the dream-as-setting platform and explore notions of humanity, responsibility, agency and hope. I also have a recollection that the film Dreamscape (from the 80’s!) really felt dream/nightmare-ish-like, rather than contrived, tho it’s been ages since I saw it. And Inception totally reminded me of Dark City, an sf film from the 90’s that’s a must-see for anyone interested in alternate realities.

Ultimately, I didn’t care about any one character in Inception– I understood that I was meant to feel suspense, but I didn’t actually feel it. The morphing backdrops were very pretty…. I think I might have been happier to have seen this film as anime– the flatness of the characters might have made a transition toward archetype in this medium.

At the end of the film I was left with the summary that: Money can buy anything (this was how Cobb was hired in the first place, and how Saito, the Japanese corporate billionaire can wipe clean Cobb’s slate), and, It might all be a dream.

Sigh…. I think I was hoping this film would be more rich with ideas around dreams and dream-theft, but it was not. I guess this was my expectation and desire. If one wasn’t looking for more expansion into the ideas of the dream-state and the workings of the subconscious, this film might have been exciting and entertaining?

I think it’s time for me  to reread The Lathe of Heaven, and take out the  Solaris dvd from the library. (Originally a novel by Stanislaw Lem.)

Thinking about our conversation has brought me back to my own writing. I suspect that there are aspects of the culturally translative at work in my texts, even if I’m not writing from one language to another. Curiouser and curiouser…. For instance, I know that I have a particular writing (for lack of better word) ’style’. I am prone to dropping subject pronouns, for instance, and also very fond of sentence fragments. I’ve come to this ’style’ as a natural extension of spoken Japanese. In Japanese, it’s not necessary to include a subject reference all the time, because after it’s used once, it is inferred that it’s still there. To bring up the subject repeatedly just sounds crazy. When I first began submitting my work for publication I had to fight to keep my sentence fragments and dropped pronoun references. Even now, if I come to a new editor, I have to argue for it all over again.

Culturally, this is very important to me. Because it’s not only about proper grammar– what might be at work are different forms of culturally constructed/situated units of thought. These differences casts the worldview through an alternate facet. And that’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not saying it’s a free-for-all. Ditch grammar, do anything you want. Clearly that would result in a lot of unshapely fiction. But if you find you’re repeatedly being critiqued about an identifiable aspect of your writing, that crops up across a range of stories, etc. maybe it has a specific cultural source. Don’t purge it right away. Pick it up. Hold it in your palms. Raise it to the light and see if it shines.

Stop.  

Some suggest that you should just write through the awful, put it all down, and then you will write past this moment and into a better place.

I suppose this could work, even if it doesn’t work, because time is passing in the midst of writing tinny offkey words…. But I don’t want to bruise my ears on top of tired and depleted.

I think these moments of “cannot write” happen to me because when I’m writing I’m not just involved with the project at an intellectual level, but also at an emotive and intuitive level as well. Emotions and intuition are filtered and channelled into story just as much as technique, theory, structure, plot, characterization, etc. So, when something in my personal life (tho, really, there’s so much grey area between a writer’s personal and private life, especially if you work from home and live with a family, etc. ) that taxes me spiritually and emotionally, it can become very difficult in moving forward in creative writing.

So what? Difficult things/times are difficult for everyone, it could be said. A shopkeeper, a dentist, an accountant, a short-order cook, a car wash attendant, a lifeguard, a dog-walker, everyone can feel depleted, and they still have to work. Suck it up.

There’s this amazing concept in Japan called kotodama. I’m not able to do it any justice, on a blog, but the basic idea (shared by many other cultures as well) is that when we speak a word, we are not just speaking a word– we are invoking it. The word becomes a living thing. (i.e. the word is god, etc.) Imagine! All those words, coming alive, like little beasts and creatures and flitting off into the universe…. When I’m in the right place, I can feeeeel the aliveness of words, and they are miraculous. When I’m not in the right place I’m not able to invoke them, and they fall, like unformed brick, upon the ground. And, I think this has to do with spirit.

The reality is that there are deadlines. Rent, groceries, bills and the press of time. Summer is more than half over, and, still, the words fall lifeless. Inert.

I try not to beat myself up. Because it doesn’t help at all! Instead, I try to do things that will nourish my spirit and my soul. I read novels. I watch some movies. I meet with friends and talk and laugh and share a meal. Listen to music and cut flowers from my modest flowerbeds and bring them to my desk. Borrow a friend’s old bicycle. Eat one piece of chocolate-covered Manuka Honey every day, because the package says, “Happiness Guaranteed”…. ^__^

It also helps to have a wonderfully supportive and professional agent! I asked to meet up with her and requested a “gentle kick in the pants” as well as “a few words encouragement”. She said just the right things at the right time, and I rode the skytrain back home, thoughtful and lighter. Since then I’ve written four pages. The words aren’t flying out into the world like swallows swooping from their nests– maybe they are more like fledgling robin….

But, I have faith that the spirit will grow stronger. The spirit cannot be strong all the time. Look to the cycles of nature. The seasons, the tides, the phases of the moon….

All in time.