Category Archives: Life

Before the storm

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I have been enjoying those idyllic days between delivering a manuscript and receiving the editing changes. The days during which all my writing seems perfect and my hours stretch gloriously free.

During this break, I have been writing self-indulgent nonsense which will likely never be published; crafting Christmas presents; baking; losing Words with Friends games against my mother and sister; reading; playing tennis; and even… hemming curtains (I know. Crazy. It’s as if my body’s been invaded by an alien imposter.)

I have to take advantage of these days because my next couple weeks are booked solid with school presentations and at some point during those weeks, there’s going to be a clunk in my inbox. An editor will have read my manuscript and discovered that my writing is not-at-all perfect.

Winter is coming.

(That was really nerdy, wasn’t it? That last line? I told you… alien imposter.)

The people in the neighbourhood

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Today I filled in for my lovely friend Stacey as a volunteer for the Writer’s Exchange. The organization works to get inner-city kids excited about reading and writing. This morning, the team was helping grade one and two students at Thunderbird Elementary start their own book about what they’d like to be when they grow up.

To kick off the project, the Writers Exchange hosted a mini job fair. I was there to represent the writers of the world. There was also a farmer, a flight attendant, a nurse, a police officer, two basketball players (maybe they only travel in pairs?), a magazine publisher, and a teacher. (There was no firefighter, much to the disappointment of the nurse.)

It was like being a real-life part of Sesame Street.

I think the police officer won the “coolest tools” contest, with the nurse a close second. And the flight attendant got bonus points because she had a miniature airplane with her. But the kids liked that I could write whatever and whenever I chose, and that the illustrator for my 50 Questions books got all his best ideas by putting a chicken on his head. (You were a hit, Ross!)

At the end of the morning, one of the little boys put his head down on the table and refused to leave the library. I felt the same way, really. I wanted to stay and talk to all the other volunteers. How does one become a farmer, anyway?

Of all the nerve(s)

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I used to panic before all presentations. I’d lose sleep for a week, develop a terrible stomach ache, and erupt in acne.

Over the years, I’ve slowly improved. Before last week’s Vancouver Writers Fest talks, I lost only one night of sleep and had only one pimple (though it was ginormous).

Yesterday, I gave a lecture to a creative writing class at UBC, and I didn’t panic at all. I slept fine, had no unusual skin conditions, and even managed to dress appropriately.

But then, I woke up at 2 a.m. last night, stewing about all the things I should have done differently.

WHAT GOOD WAS THAT? THE PRESENTATION WAS OVER!

Sometimes I think I should take my brain back to the store and ask for a more reasonable replacement.

You know what would be good?

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There should be an automated hotline for idea testing. You call, you tell the computer your idea, and it calculates whether your notion is spectacularly good or ridiculously bad.

For example: Ring, ring. I think they should turn the Jericho military base into a giant urban farm, with some affordable housing thrown in. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Or: Ring, ring. I’d like to write a book about aliens who come to earth and they eat all the oil rigs and the humans fight the invaders but they should really be happy because the aliens have actually saved the Earth from climate change… Bzzzzzzz.

Or: Ring, ring. Musicians get to make all these cool recordings of political songs. So, for the duration of the election campaign, all writers should put down their pens and learn to play guitars… Bzzzzzzz.

Or maybe that’s actually a Ding! Ding! Ding!? See, I can’t tell. Thus the need for a hotline.

Reading, writing, and absolutely no arithmetic

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I’m a one-project-at-a-time kinda girl, but for the past couple weeks, I’ve been working on so many different things, my head is spinning. I have:

child_soldier

  • Booked presentations in West Van for November, Maple Ridge for December, and Richmond for February. (I haven’t been this popular since I had a free French-fry connection in high school. I hope all these people don’t expect me to wear my clothes right-side-out and speak in complete sentences.)
  • Finished an index for Extreme Battlefields, then reviewed said index once someone with a logical mind fixed it.

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  • Written a chapter of my newest non-fiction manuscript. (Only two left to go — hurray!)
  • Revised my novel. And… um… switched the gender of the protagonist. I didn’t mention that plan to my agent. Do you think she’ll notice?

One of these days, I’m even going to shower. Because it’s always good to have goals.

Tall northern tales

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The kids and I took a trip to the north coast last weekend to visit my month-old nephew. We flew into Terrace on a Dash 8 (i.e. a Westfalia on wings), then drove from Terrace to Prince Rupert. The route took us past looming cliffs (including one that arced right over the highway and dumped a waterfall onto our windshield) and the wide and wild Skeena River.

But wow, Prince Rupert is rainy. People who decide to live there have special IV lines permanently inserted, so they can receive daily infusions of vitamin D. (Not really.) (But they should.)

As we walked along the waterfront in the rain on Saturday, we met an octogenarian who had lived in town since World War II. He told us about Prince Rupert before there was road access. Then he pointed to a barge in the harbour carrying a collection of multi-coloured shacks. It was a floating logging camp, he said, and just like the ones on which he used to work.

As we were about to part, he said, “But the best thing about Prince Rupert is the climate.” My sister and brother-in-law and I all stared at him. “We don’t get the big storms they get in other places,” he said. “It’s peaceful here.”

He’d obviously had his vitamin D infusion that day.

According to my brother-in-law, Prince Rupert was supposed to be a major city. Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway, thought it could be the greatest deep-water port on the coast. But Charles died on the Titanic, and Prince Rupert’s big-city aspirations went with him.

I thought the whole trip was worth it just for that story. And for my nephew, of course, who is just as adorable as his big brother and who so far shows no signs of sunshine deficiency.

The dream conference

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Imagine this: a children’s literature conference where Stacey Matson was teaching storytelling and Carrie Mac giving a keynote about heroes, villains, and geeks. James McCann was offering a workshop on story mapping, Maggie de Vries on scene construction, and Jeremy Tankard on turning pictures into stories. Denise Jaden, Grant Lawrence, and Pia Guerra were speaking and mentoring. Would you want to go?

Because I would TOTALLY sign up!

Except… I am not 11 to 16. Damn it.

All last week, my daughter ran off to the VPL’s Writing and Book Camp each day and came home raving about the cool people she’d met and the things she’d discovered.

Then, on Friday, she got up in front of 150 or so people and read an excerpt from her short story. Calmly, clearly, as if it were no big deal.

I am hanging somewhere between immensely proud and insanely jealous.

Wind

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There was a wind storm in the middle of the night. Our windows were open, so I woke at 2 a.m. to the sound of our bedroom door going

BANG! Swing. BANG! Swing.

I got up and shut the windows. My husband didn’t stir.

I went back to bed.

I started thinking about the kids’ windows, so I got up to shut those. From my son’s room, I could hear the awning on the back patio flapping in the gusts as if it were about to lift off the roof and fly away. (Which did actually happen once before.)

I went back to my room. I shut off the alarm.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

My husband didn’t stir.

I went downstairs, into the backyard, and wound in the awning, which sounded like

Ee EEE Ee EEE Ee EEE.

This woke up my son.

MAAAAAAMMMMMAAAAAAA! MAAAAAMMMMAAAA!

Once he was settled, I turned the alarm back on.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

After that, I lay in bed for a while, waiting for all the beeping in my brain to stop.

In the morning, my husband said, “I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure you didn’t dream the wind storm?”

And then I had to kill him.

Camp dreams

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I bought a cherry-pitter last year, a fancy little machine involving springs and various compartments. I promptly put it in the cupboard and lost the instruction sheet. But THIS year, with a little help from youtube, I figured out how to use it. I am now a cherry-pitting genius. Dessert for everyone!

cherrypitter

In other news, my daughter is safely home from her first sleep-away camp. She loved it. They probably had to tie her up and haul her onto the bus to get her home.

All of her sentences now begin with:

“When I was at camp…”

or,

“My counsellor said…”

or,

“The ice cream cones/breakfasts/skits/costumes at camp were…”

She has learned movie-star poses, crazy dances, many songs (one of which is now permanently stuck in MY head), pranks, swimming tricks, nail-painting techniques, and riddles.

When I was eleven, you would have had to pay me (millions) to spend time with a large group of other tweens. But now it sounds pretty fun. I think if I could disguise myself and attend for a week, I’d come home with enough material for an entire middle-grade series.

But then my daughter would never speak to me again.

Dilemmas…

Death defying feats

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My daughter’s away at camp for the first time this week. We’re all missing her around here, but we’re also doing as many fun things as possible without her. Because, you know, people should be punished for wanting to leave us.

One of our excursions was the canopy walk at UBC Botanical Gardens. It sounds so serene, doesn’t it? As if it might be suitable for seniors in safari hats?

NOT EXACTLY!

I’ve actually been avoiding this particular canopy walk for years because I used to play ultimate with one of the guys who built it and, well… let’s just say he had too many substances in his bloodstream to be trusted with life-saving cables.

It was just as crazy as I feared. Look at this thing:

canopy

And when you’re miles above the ground, dangling from a tree, what do you not want to see? Duct tape.

canopy_tape

We made it, though. And we found this lovely barred owl waiting to celebrate our safe descent. Or maybe waiting to laugh if we fell to our deaths.

canopyowl

I don’t personally trust the look in his eyes.